History.

It was developed by American physician Edmund Jacobson and presented first in 1908 at Harvard University. In 1929, Jacobson published the book "Progressive Relaxation", which included a detailed procedure for removing muscular tension. His work led to the use of the word "relax", in the sense of "to become less tense, anxious or stressed, to calm down". He continued to work on this topic throughout his life and wrote several books about it.

Training.

These learning sessions are not exercises or self-hypnosis. Training sessions are conducted in a darkened room with the learner in a reclined position and eyes closed. The instructions begin by telling the person to relax and just let go, detaching from thoughts or physical distractions or trying to solve problems. In each session the teacher reviews tensing one particular muscle group. A modification of the technique is "biofeedback" in which one uses external measuring devices to indicate how successful one is in relaxing and then to use those techniques to relax without the help of external measuring devices. Progressive muscle relaxation is suggested to be applied daily. The technique has its own top-down sequence, beginning with the upper body and proceeding to the lower parts. Typically, the duration of a course is eight weeks, with each weekly session each lasting an hour or so. Progressive muscle relaxation technique requires a high degree of personal motivation, as the effects are often seen only after prolonged sessions. Before starting a course it might be recommended to consult with a doctor in order to ensure special care and attention is paid to selected muscle groups, as well as to obtain a recommendation on the ideal course. Jacobson's progressive relaxation has remained popular with modern physical therapists. Although many institutions and individuals offer progressive muscle relaxation training, what they teach is not standardized, and no credentialing process is available for progressive muscle relaxation technique instructors.

Applications.

There are two general purposes of tension control: prophylactic and therapeutic.

Insomnia.

Nowadays, non-pharmacological treatment of insomnia has become an alternative replacement or complement to routine medical care. Progressive muscle relaxation is used as a treatment for some causes of insomnia. They are meant to reduce physical tension and interrupt the racing thoughts processes that affect sleep. A common psychological problem of cancer patients and particularly for those in pain is insomnia. Some studies reported benefits of the Progressive muscle relaxation technique used by cancer patients. One of them postulated: "the significant effect for the muscle relaxation group on the sleep onset latency indicates that the subjects' self-reported insomnia was significantly improved. Total sleep time was increased as well".

Pain relief.

Pain is one of the most frequent symptoms in patients undergoing surgery or cancer chemotherapy and various treatments are proposed for its relief, including relaxation techniques. Progressive muscle relaxation technique is suggested to lead to an increase in blood flow which supplies more oxygen, thus enhancing local metabolism, resulting in reduced pain and muscle spasms. Additionally, progressive muscle relaxation might reduce the perception of pain as well as providing pain relief by the patients after undergoing surgery. One of the recent study has been indicated "a significant tension decrease in all the types of muscle between pre- and post-relaxation situations for patients after surgery a result of Progressive Muscle Relaxation". Also, the progressive muscle relaxation technique has been indicated to show some positive achievements in the treatment of chronic pelvic pain in women. In case of chronic pain it seems to be not possible to avoid the pain but possible to avoid the perceived threat (pain). Chronic pelvic pain often associated as results from abdominal functioning of the nervous system (often called "neuropathic pain"). If medications prescribed fail to be successful, women may be referred to a practice specializing in a pain management, such as progressive muscle relaxation technique. Here, the treatment aims to release tightness of the muscles in the abdomen and lower back, as well as musculoskeletal tension.

Sport.

Several studies tried to demonstrate whether there are some advantages to apply the progressive muscle relaxation technique into the sports field. Professional sports require constant tension from athletes both physically and mentally, therefore the progressive muscle relaxation technique may help athletes achieve optimal performance and optimize functioning in daily life. H.A. Hashim and H. Hanafi conducted an experiment with adolescent soccer players to understand the effects of progressive muscle relaxation on athletes. Results obtained in this experiment suggested reductions in the confusion, depression, fatigue, and tension subscale scores following progressive muscle relaxation.

Schizophrenia.

Progressive muscle relaxation technique has been used in psychiatric settings as an alternative means of coping with subjective stress and state anxiety. A few modern studies are reported a therapeutic effectiveness on psychological distress and anxiety symptoms as well as on response/remission for people with schizophrenia. There is evidence revealing a decrease in stress level after regular training, after which patients tend to feel a greater sense of wellness and well-being. Moreover, they aim to learn how to manage stressful situations, especially those related to "self-control", "assuming responsibility" and "positive re-evaluation". However, the application of progressive muscle relaxation technique to the patients with schizophrenia is not widely used and requires additional research.

Other.

Progressive relaxation has formed the basis for natural-childbirth methods.

Long term effects.

According to "Encyclopedia of medicine" by Miller-Keane, long term effects of practicing progressive muscle relaxation include:

Progressive muscle relaxation (PMR) is a non-pharmacological method of deep muscle relaxation, based on the premise that muscle tension is the body's psychological response to anxiety-provoking thoughts and that muscle relaxation blocks anxiety. The technique involves learning to monitor the tension in specific muscle groups by first tensing each muscle group. This tension is then released, as attention is directed towards the differences felt during tension and relaxation.

渐进式肌肉放松法(Progressive muscle relaxation PMR)是一个非药理学深层肌肉放松的方法,它的实施基于这样一个前提:肌肉紧张是身体对引发焦虑的思想的心理反应,放松肌肉可以阻止焦虑情绪。 该技术包括通过首先收紧每个肌肉群来学习控制特定肌肉群收紧。然后放松紧张的肌肉,以此来集中注意肌肉在紧张和放松期间感觉的差异。


Names.

The province of Gallia Transalpina ("Transalpine Gaul") was later renamed Gallia Narbonensis, after its newly established capital of Colonia Narbo Martius (colloquially known as Narbo, at the location of the modern Narbonne), a Roman colony founded on the coast in 118 BC. The Romans had called it "Provincia Nostra" ("our province") or simply "Provincia" ("the province"). The term has survived in the modern French and Occitan names of the eastern part of the area (French "Provence", Occitan "Provença"), now a région of France.

Founding.

By the mid-2nd century BC, Rome was trading heavily with the Greek colony of Massalia (modern Marseille) on the southern coast of Gaul. Massalia, founded by colonists from Phocaea, was by this point centuries old and quite prosperous. Rome entered into an alliance with Massalia, by which it agreed to protect the town from local Gauls, nearby Aquitani, sea-borne Carthaginians and other rivals, in exchange for a small strip of land that it wanted in order to build a road to Hispania, to assist in troop transport. The Massalians, for their part, cared more for their economic prosperity than they did for territorial integrity.  During this period, the Mediterranean settlements on the coast were threatened by the powerful Gallic tribes to the north, especially the tribes known as the Arverni and the Allobroges. In 123 BC, the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus (later additionally named Allobrogicus) campaigned in the area and defeated the Allobroges and the Arverni under King Bituitus. This defeat substantially weakened the Arverni and ensured the further security of Gallia Narbonensis.  In this strip of land, the Romans founded the town of Narbonne in 118 BC. At the same time, they built the Via Domitia, the first Roman road in Gaul, connecting Gaul to Hispania, and the Via Aquitania, which led toward the Atlantic through Tolosa (Toulouse) and Burdigala (Bordeaux). Thus the Romans built a crossroads that made Narbonne an optimal trading center, and Narbonne became a major trading competitor to Massalia. From Narbonne, the Romans established the province of Transalpine Gaul, later called Gallia Narbonensis.

Later history.

Control of the province, which bordered directly on Italia, gave the Roman state several advantages: control of the land route between Italy and the Iberian peninsula; a territorial buffer against Gallic attacks on Italy; and control of the lucrative trade routes of the Rhône valley between Gaul and the markets of Massalia. It was from the capital of Narbonne that Julius Caesar began his Gallic Wars.  The area became a Roman province in 121 BC, originally under the name Gallia Transalpina (Transalpine Gaul). The name distinguished it from Cisalpine Gaul on the near side of the Alps to Rome. In 40 BC, during the Second Triumvirate, Lepidus was given responsibility for Narbonese Gaul (along with Hispania and Africa), while Mark Antony was given the balance of Gaul.  Emperor Diocletian's administrative reorganization of the Empire in 314 merged the provinces "Gallia Narbonensis" and "Gallia Aquitania" into a new administrative unit called "Dioecesis Viennensis" (Diocese of Vienne) with the capital more to the north in Vienne. The new diocese's name was later changed to "Dioecesis Septem Provinciarum" (Diocese of the Seven Provinces), indicating that Diocletian had demoted the word "province" to mean a smaller subdivision than in traditional usage.  "Galla Narbonensis" and surrounding areas were incorporated into the Visigothic Kingdom between AD 462 and 477, permanently ending Roman political control. After the Gothic takeover, the Visigothic dominions were to be generally known as Septimania, while to the east of the lower Rhone the term Provence came into use.

Gallia Narbonensis (Latin for "Gaul of Narbonne", from its chief settlement) was a Roman province located in what is now Languedoc and Provence, in southern France. It was also known as Provincia Nostra ("Our Province"), from its having been the first Roman province north of the Alps, and as Gallia Transalpina ("Transalpine Gaul"), distinguishing it from Cisalpine Gaul in northern Italy. It became a Roman province in the late 2nd century BC. Its boundaries were roughly defined by the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Cévennes and Alps to the west and north. The western region of Gallia Narbonensis was known as Septimania.

纳博讷高卢()是罗马帝国位于今法国朗格多克和普罗旺斯的一个行省,也被称为诺斯特拉行省(意为“我们的行省”),是罗马帝国在阿尔卑斯山以北的第一个行省,起初称为山北高卢(与意大利北部的山南高卢相对应),前121年,罗马人在征服高卢南部隆河地区的阿洛布罗基人等部落后设立行省。南临地中海,西接塞文山脉,北抵阿尔卑斯山,该地区西部即塞普提曼尼亚。行省总督由元老院任命,属于元老院行省。


Early life.

Family.

Peter Mandelson was born in Hendon, Middlesex, on 21 October 1953, the son of Mary Joyce ("née" Morrison) and George Norman Mandelson. His father's family were Jewish; his grandfather had founded the Harrow United Synagogue. His father (known as Tony) was the advertising manager of "The Jewish Chronicle" who was commissioned as an officer in the Royal Dragoons in the Second World War. On his mother's side, Mandelson is a grandson of Herbert Morrison, the London County Council Leader and Labour Cabinet Minister in the Attlee ministry.  Mandelson was raised in Hampstead Garden Suburb. He says of his childhood - "my whole upbringing was framed around the Suburb - my friendships and values".

Education.

Mandelson attended Garden Suburb School, and between 1965 and 1972, Hendon County Grammar School. In 1966 he appeared on stage with the local amateur theatre group, the Hampstead Garden Suburb Dramatic Society, as the eponymous lead in "The Winslow Boy".  From 1973 to 1976 he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at St Catherine's College, Oxford. During his teenage years he was a member of the Young Communist League, but later became a member of the Oxford University Labour Club.

Early career.

In the late 1970s he became Chairman of the British Youth Council. As Chair of the BYC, he was a delegate in 1978 to the Soviet-organised World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Cuba. There, with several future Labour Cabinet colleagues, he – together with future IUSY President Hilary Barnard, Charles Clarke, Richard Corbett and Trevor Phillips – successfully frustrated agreement on a distorted Soviet text on youth in the capitalist countries.  He was elected to Lambeth Borough Council in September 1979 but stood down in 1982, disillusioned with the state of Labour politics.  Mandelson then worked for some time as a television producer at London Weekend Television on "Weekend World", where he formed a friendship with his superior John ("now" Lord) Birt.

Political career.

Labour's Director of Communications.

In 1985, the Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock appointed him as the party's Director of Communications. As Director, he was one of the first people in Britain to whom the term "spin doctor" was applied; he was thus called "the Prince of Darkness".  In 1986 Mandelson ran the campaign at the Fulham by-election in which Labour defeated the Conservative Party. For the 1987 election campaign, Mandelson commissioned film director Hugh Hudson, whose "Chariots of Fire" (1981) had won an Oscar as Best Picture, to make a party political broadcast promoting Neil Kinnock as a potential prime minister. Tagged "Kinnock – the Movie", it led to the party leader's approval rating being raised by 16% or 19% in polls and was even repeated in another PPB slot. The election, held on 11 June 1987, returned Margaret Thatcher's Conservatives for the third time, although Labour gained 20 seats, and, this time, convincingly pushed the SDP-Liberal Alliance into third place. Opponents termed the Labour Party's election campaign "a brilliantly successful election defeat".  He ceased being a Labour Party official in 1990 when he was selected as Labour candidate for the safe seat of Hartlepool.  Malcolm Tucker, the fictional character from Armando Iannucci's "The Thick of It", is based, in part, on Mandelson.

As an MP.

Mandelson was first elected to the House of Commons at the 1992 general election, and made several speeches outlining his strong support for the European Union. Although sidelined during the brief period when John Smith led the party, Mandelson was by now close to two Shadow Cabinet members – Gordon Brown and Tony Blair – each regarded as potential future leaders of the party.  Following Smith's sudden death on 12 May 1994, Mandelson chose to back Blair for the leadership, believing him to be a superior communicator to Brown and played a leading role in the leadership campaign. This created antagonism between Mandelson and Brown, though they were considered allies in the Labour Party. In 1994 Kate Garvey suggested that Mandelson (who was at the time being derided by the trade unions and other Labour factions), should adopt a "nom de guerre" throughout Blair's leadership bid, so that he might conceal his considerable role within the campaign team. Mandelson agreed to be called "Bobby" for the duration and was thanked by Blair using this name in his victory speech.  After becoming a close ally and trusted adviser to Tony Blair, Mandelson was Labour's election campaign director for the 1997 general election, which Labour won decisively.

Minister without Portfolio.

He was appointed as a Minister without Portfolio in the Cabinet Office, where his job was to co-ordinate within government. A few months later, he also acquired responsibility for the Millennium Dome, after Blair decided to go ahead with the project despite the opposition of most of the cabinet (including the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport who had been running it). Jennie Page, the Dome project's chief executive, was abruptly sacked after a farcical opening night. She gave evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee for Culture and Heritage in June 2000. In what was seen as a reference to the close interest in the Dome from Mandelson, known at the time as so-called "Dome Secretary" and his successor Lord Falconer of Thoroton, Page told the committee: "I made several attempts to persuade ministers that standing back from the Dome would be good for them as well as good for the Dome".  In July 1998 he was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; he launched the Millennium Bug And Electronic Commerce Bill and a Competitiveness White Paper, which he described, as 'bold, far reaching and absolutely necessary'. He also appointed a "Net Tsar" to lead the UK in what he termed the "new industrial revolution". In 1998 he was appointed a Privy Counsellor.  Mandelson bought a home in Notting Hill in 1996 partly with an interest-free loan of £373,000 from Geoffrey Robinson, a cabinet colleague and millionaire whose business dealings were subject to an inquiry by Mandelson's department. Mandelson contended that he had deliberately not taken part in any decisions relating to Robinson. However, he had not declared the loan in the Register of Members' Interests and resigned in December 1998. Mandelson had also not declared the loan to his building society (the Britannia) although they decided not to take any action, with the CEO stating "I am satisfied that the information given to us at the time of the mortgage application was accurate." Mandelson initially thought he could weather the press storm, but had to resign when it became clear that the Prime Minister thought nothing else would clear the air.  In October 2000 it was reported that Robinson had "accused Peter Mandelson of lying to the Commons about the home loan affair that cost both of them their government jobs."

Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

He was out of the Cabinet for ten months. In October 1999 he was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, replacing Mo Mowlam. In his very first speech in the post he mistakenly referred to himself as the "Secretary of State for Ireland." During his tenure he oversaw the creation of the devolved legislative assembly and power-sharing executive and reform of the police service.  On 24 January 2001 Mandelson resigned from the Government for a second time, following accusations of using his position to influence a passport application. He had contacted Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien on behalf of Srichand Hinduja, an Indian businessman who was seeking British citizenship and whose family firm was to become the main sponsor of the "Faith Zone" in the Millennium Dome. At the time Hinduja and his brothers were under investigation by the Indian government for alleged involvement in the Bofors scandal. Mandelson insisted he had done nothing wrong and was exonerated by an independent inquiry by Sir Anthony Hammond, which concluded that neither Mandelson nor anyone else had acted improperly. The front-page headline in "The Independent" read in part "Passport to Oblivion".  At the 2001 general election Mandelson was challenged by Arthur Scargill of the Socialist Labour Party and by John Booth, a former Labour Party press officer standing as "Genuine Labour", but Mandelson was re-elected with a large majority. This prompted him to make an exuberant acceptance speech, which was televised live, in which he declared that "I'm a fighter, not a quitter" and referred to his "inner steel".

Stepping down as MP.

Despite Labour success in the June 2001 general election, a third Cabinet appointment did not materialise and he indicated his interest in becoming the United Kingdom's European Commissioner when the new Commission was established in 2004. Both of Britain's Commissioners, Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten, were due to stand down. Appointment as a European Commissioner would require his resignation from Parliament precipitating a by-election in his Hartlepool constituency. His appointment was announced in the summer and on 8 September 2004 Mandelson resigned his seat by submitting his name as Steward of the Manor of Northstead. Labour won the subsequent Hartlepool by-election with a much-reduced majority of 2,033 votes (equating to 40.7% of the vote). He was succeeded as MP for Hartlepool by Iain Wright.

European Commissioner.

On 22 November 2004 Mandelson became Britain's European Commissioner, taking the trade portfolio.  In October 2008 he left his post as Trade Commissioner to return to UK politics. As a former EU Commissioner, Lord Mandelson is entitled to a £31,000 pension when he reaches the age of 65 years. This however is contingent on a "duty of loyalty to the Communities", which applies also after his term in office. The Taxpayers' Alliance, which uncovered the threat to his pension, demanded that he should declare the conflict of interest and either relinquish his EU pay cheques or resign as a minister. "When one considers that his new ministerial post deals specifically with business, enterprise and regulatory reform – all areas that are intimately involved with EU legislation, regulation and policy –" the group said, "the conflict of interest is even more stark." Mandelson did not agree that he had a conflict of interests. "He has always had a clear view of British interests and how they are secured by our EU membership," a spokesperson said.

Peerage and return to Cabinet.

On 3 October 2008, as part of Gordon Brown's Cabinet reshuffle, it was announced amid some controversy that Mandelson would return to Government in the re-designated post of Business Secretary and would be raised to the peerage, thus becoming a member of the House of Lords. On 13 October 2008 he was created Baron Mandelson, of Foy in the County of Herefordshire and of Hartlepool in the County of Durham, and was introduced in the House of Lords the same day.  Following his return to office, Mandelson supported the planned Heathrow expansion. On 6 March 2009, environmental protester Leila Deen of anti-aviation group Plane Stupid approached him outside a summit on the government's low carbon industrial strategy and threw a cup of green custard in his face in protest over his support for a third runway at Heathrow Airport. The protester was cautioned on 9 April for causing "harassment, alarm or distress".  In a Cabinet reshuffle on 5 June 2009 Mandelson was granted the honorific title of First Secretary of State and appointed Lord President of the Council; it was also announced that the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills would be merged into his, giving him the new title of Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and that he would continue as President of the Board of Trade.  Mandelson was a member of 35 of the 43 Cabinet committees and subcommittees.  In August 2009 Mandelson was widely reported to have ordered "technical measures" such as internet disconnection to be included in the draft of the Digital Economy Act 2010 after a "big lobbying operation", even though the Digital Britain report had rejected this type of punishment. "The Independent" reported that according to their Whitehall sources, Mandelson was persuaded that tough laws were needed to reduce online copyright infringement following an intensive lobbying campaign by influential people in the music and film industry. The paper also reported that this included a meeting with DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen at the Rothschild family villa on the Greek island of Corfu. Mandelson's spokesperson claimed that there had been no discussion of internet piracy during the Corfu dinner and suggested that the decision to reverse Lord Carter's findings had been taken in late July before the trip. "The Times" reported after the Corfu meeting that an unnamed Whitehall source had confirmed that before this trip, Mandelson had shown little personal interest in the Digital Britain agenda, which has been ongoing for several years. According to the source of "The Times", Mandelson returned from holiday and effectively issued an edict that the regulation needed to be tougher.  In August 2011 a Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed that Mandelson had decided to approve the inclusion of technical measures, such as the disconnection of internet access, at least two months before public consultation had finished and that he had shown little interest in the consultation. Letters from Mandelson's office document talks with Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group on 2 June 2009 and that on the following day Mandelson advised Lord Carter about the "possibility of [the Secretary of State] having a power to direct Ofcom to go directly to introduce technical measures". Mandelson made the formal announcement that technical measures, including disconnection, were to be included in the Digital Economy Bill two months later on 7 August 2009.  An opinion poll conducted by the centre-left think tank Compass found in March 2009 that Mandelson was less disliked by party members than Deputy Leader Harriet Harman. This was felt to be unusual as Mandelson "historically has been unpopular among Labour members". Tony Blair's assertion in 1996 that "my project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson" was seen as prophetic in late September 2009 when Mandelson was enthusiastically received at the party conference in Brighton.

Post-Cabinet career.

After the Labour Party lost the 2010 general election, Mandelson's memoirs, "", were published in July 2010, two months after leaving office. The memoirs were subsequently criticised by Labour leadership contenders Ed and David Miliband and Andy Burnham. During this time he was appointed President of the international think tank Policy Network.  In November 2010, Mandelson and Benjamin Wegg-Prosser founded Global Counsel, a consultancy firm based in London, with the financial support of WPP, the advertising giant. The firm provides advice for corporate strategists and senior management worldwide. Mandelson has been criticised for so far not disclosing his clients.  In 1999, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 Mandelson was an invited guest of the Bilderberg Group and attended the annual conferences.  In January 2011, it was announced that Mandelson would serve as a senior adviser to the advisory investment banking firm, Lazard. In 2013, he also joined the Board of Trustees of Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Gesellschaft. In May 2011 it was revealed that there was speculation that Mandelson had been approached by China to be a candidate for the leadership of the International Monetary Fund, even though Mandelson had not been a finance minister or headed a central bank. However, it was then speculated that Mandelson would stand to succeed Pascal Lamy as Director-General of the World Trade Organization, backed by David Cameron.  In May 2012, Mandelson confirmed that he was advising Asia Pulp & Paper (APP) in selling timber products to Europe. In 2012 APP was accused of illegal logging in Indonesia and damaging the habitats of rare animals such as the Sumatran tiger. At least 67 companies worldwide, such as Tesco and Kraft Foods since 2004 and Danone since 2012 have boycotted APP.  In 2013, Mandelson was appointed to the revived post of High Steward of Hull, a ceremonial position held by his grandfather Herbert Morrison in 1956–65 and defunct since 1974.

Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.

After the 2015 Labour leadership election resulted in Jeremy Corbyn becoming the party leader, Mandelson stated that he believed that Labour was now unelectable, but advised party members unhappy with the situation to wait for Corbyn to demonstrate this before working to replace him. He wished for an early general election to force Corbyn out. In February 2017, he said Corbyn had "no idea in the 21st century how to conduct himself as a leader of a party putting itself forward in a democratic election" and "I work every single day to bring forward the end of [Corbyn's] tenure in office".  After the results of the 2017 general election became known, Mandelson conceded that Corbyn's election campaign was "very sure footed" and the result, in which Labour gained seats and denied the Conservatives a majority, unexpected. "I was wrong" about Corbyn, he told BBC News. "I am very surprised, an earthquake has happened in British politics and I did not foresee it", although he doubted Corbyn's ability to gain a Commons majority. Two years later, in the 2019 general election, Labour suffered their worst defeat since the 1930s. Mandelson described the result as "not undeserved", arguing that Corbyn's leadership as one of the main reasons for Labour's defeat.

Remain Campaign.

During the 2016 EU referendum, Mandelson sat on the board on Britain Stronger IN Europe, the official "Remain" campaign. The campaign was unsuccessful.  Following the referendum, Mandelson was an outspoken supporter of a People's Vote.

Controversies.

During the 2009 expenses scandal "The Daily Telegraph" raised questions about the timing of Mandelson's second home allowance claim, dating from 2004, saying, "Lord Mandelson billed the taxpayer for almost £3,000 of work on his constituency home in Hartlepool less than a week after announcing his decision to stand down as an MP." Mandelson said in a statement, "The work done was necessary maintenance. All claims made were reasonable and submitted consistent with parliamentary rules."  On 22 April 2005 "The Times" revealed that Mandelson had spent the previous New Year's Eve on the yacht of Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft, which was at the centre of a major EU investigation and although it did not allege impropriety, it did state that Mandelson's visit was inappropriate for a serving European Commissioner.  During the summer of 2008 Mandelson had a widely publicised disagreement with Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France. Sarkozy accused him of trying to sell out European farmers and appeared to blame his handling of the Doha round of trade talks for the "no" vote in the Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon. Mandelson said his position at world trade talks had been undermined and told the BBC he did not start the row, saying, "I stood up for myself, I'm not to be bullied." He said he believed the row was over but renewed his warnings on protectionism.  In 2008 Mandelson was hospitalised, suffering from a kidney stone. At this time, melamine added to milk in China had caused kidney stones and other ailments in thousands of Chinese children, killing at least six. Ironically, during the previous week Mandelson had drunk a glass of Chinese yoghurt in front of reporters in order to show his confidence in Chinese dairy products, although his own kidney stones were unrelated.  In October 2008 Mandelson was reported to have maintained private contacts over several years with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, most recently on holiday in August 2008 on Deripaska's yacht at Taverna Agni on the Greek island of Corfu. News of the contacts sparked criticism because, as European Union Trade Commissioner, Mandelson had been responsible for two decisions to cut aluminium tariffs that had benefited Deripaska's United Company RusAl. Mandelson denied that there had been a conflict of interest and insisted that he had never discussed aluminium tariffs with Deripaska. On 26 October 2008 the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague claimed the "whole country" wanted "transparency" about Mandelson's previous meetings with Deripaska. In response, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Mandelson's dealings with Deripaska had been "found to be above board". Mandelson said that meeting business figures from "across the range" in emerging economies was part of his brief as EU Trade Commissioner. On 29 October 2008, while Mandelson was on a ministerial visit to Moscow, it was alleged in the British press that Valery Pechenkin, the head of security at Deripaska's company Basic Element, had organised a swift entry visa for Mandelson when he turned up in Moscow to visit Deripaska in 2005.  In June 2013, writing for the Progress website, Mandelson warned Labour it risked harming its election chances if affiliated trade unions continued to "manipulate parliamentary selections" as was alleged in the 2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection controversy.  In April 2014 it was reported that Mandelson had strong ties to Russian conglomerate Sistema.

Non-political commitments.

Mandelson was until 8 October 2008 the President of Central School of Speech and Drama. He was replaced in this un-remunerated post by playwright Harold Pinter, who died two months later.  In 2011, Mandelson was guest of honour at Herbert Morrison Primary School in Vauxhall, South London. The school was hosting a special themed day in honour of Mandelson's grandfather, Herbert Morrison, after whom the school was named.

Personal life.

Partner and sexuality.

Mandelson is gay and he is said to be 'intensely private' about his personal life. During his time as a former government leader, the press – tabloid and broadsheet alike – often portrayed Mandelson as effeminate through "the linguistic resources of camp" (as evidenced through his common nickname, 'Mandy') and narcissistic – sometimes including coded references to homosexual acts in their descriptions of his actions.  He has lived with his life partner Reinaldo Avila da Silva, a Portuguese-English translator, since March 1998.

Attempted outings and harassment.

While his sexual orientation was known to friends, colleagues and constituents, in 1987 the "News of the World" ran an issue that attempted to out Mandelson as gay. Mandelson preferred to keep his personal life private and as such did not respond. Mandelson was outed again by Matthew Parris in 1998 on the BBC programme "Newsnight". This led to press harassment of his partner, with the "Daily Express" sending a reporter to take pictures of him while he was at his languages course.  An internal investigation later found that the photos had been obtained without Avila da Silva's consent and images of him attempting to cover his face had been secretly deleted. Mandelson phoned the BBC and the Press Complaints Commission following "Newsnight" broadcast, and an internal memo was later sent within the BBC, stating that "Under no circumstances whatsoever should allegations about the private life of Peter Mandelson be repeated or referred to on any broadcast."  He was made an Officier of the Legion of Honour in February 2017.

Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour politician, president of international think tank Policy Network, and chairman of strategic advisory firm Global Counsel.

文德森,文德森男爵,PC(英语:Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson,1953年-10月21日),英国工党政治家,他与贝理雅及白高敦等人被视为把工党在1990年代重新塑造成「新工党」(New Labour)的关键人物之一。 文德森本于1992年至2004年任下议院哈特尔普尔(Hartlepool)选区议员,后来自2004年至2008年出任欧盟贸易专员。


Classification of soil pH ranges.

The United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service classifies soil pH ranges as follows:

Determining pH.

Methods of determining pH include:  Precise, repeatable measures of soil pH are required for scientific research and monitoring. This generally entails laboratory analysis using a standard protocol; an example of such a protocol is that in the USDA Soil Survey Field and Laboratory Methods Manual. In this document the three-page protocol for soil pH measurement includes the following sections: Application; Summary of Method; Interferences; Safety; Equipment; Reagents; and Procedure.

Factors affecting soil pH.

The pH of a natural soil depends on the mineral composition of the parent material of the soil, and the weathering reactions undergone by that parent material. In warm, humid environments, soil acidification occurs over time as the products of weathering are leached by water moving laterally or downwards through the soil. In dry climates, however, soil weathering and leaching are less intense and soil pH is often neutral or alkaline.

Sources of acidity.

Many processes contribute to soil acidification. These include:

Sources of alkalinity.

Total soil alkalinity increases with:  The accumulation of alkalinity in a soil (as carbonates and bicarbonates of Na, K, Ca and Mg) occurs when there is insufficient water flowing through the soils to leach soluble salts. This may be due to arid conditions, or poor internal soil drainage; in these situations most of the water that enters the soil is transpired (taken up by plants) or evaporates, rather than flowing through the soil.  The soil pH usually increases when the total alkalinity increases, but the balance of the added cations also has a marked effect on the soil pH. For example, increasing the amount of sodium in an alkaline soil tends to induce dissolution of calcium carbonate, which increases the pH. Calcareous soils may vary in pH from 7.0 to 9.5, depending on the degree to which or dominate the soluble cations.

Effect of soil pH on plant growth.

Acid soils.

Plants grown in acid soils can experience a variety of stresses including aluminium (Al), hydrogen (H), and/or manganese (Mn) toxicity, as well as nutrient deficiencies of calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg).  Aluminium toxicity is the most widespread problem in acid soils. Aluminium is present in all soils, but dissolved Al is toxic to plants; Al is most soluble at low pH; above pH 5.0, there is little Al in soluble form in most soils. Aluminium is not a plant nutrient, and as such, is not actively taken up by the plants, but enters plant roots passively through osmosis. Aluminium inhibits root growth; lateral roots and root tips become thickened and roots lack fine branching; root tips may turn brown. In the root, the initial effect of Al is the inhibition of the expansion of the cells of the rhizodermis, leading to their rupture; thereafter it is known to interfere with many physiological processes including the uptake and transport of calcium and other essential nutrients, cell division, cell wall formation, and enzyme activity.  Proton (H ion) stress can also limit plant growth. The proton pump, H-ATPase, of the plasmalemma of root cells works to maintain the near-neutral pH of their cytoplasm. A high proton activity (pH within the range 3.0–4.0 for most plant species) in the external growth medium overcomes the capacity of the cell to maintain the cytoplasmic pH and growth shuts down.  In soils with a high content of manganese-containing minerals, Mn toxicity can become a problem at pH 5.6 and lower. Manganese, like aluminium, becomes increasingly soluble as pH drops, and Mn toxicity symptoms can be seen at pH levels below 5.6. Manganese is an essential plant nutrient, so plants transport Mn into leaves. Classic symptoms of Mn toxicity are crinkling or cupping of leaves.

Nutrient availability in relation to soil pH.

Soil pH affects the availability of some plant nutrients:  As discussed above, aluminium toxicity has direct effects on plant growth; however, by limiting root growth, it also reduces the availability of plant nutrients. Because roots are damaged, nutrient uptake is reduced, and deficiencies of the macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and magnesium) are frequently encountered in very strongly acidic to ultra-acidic soils (pH<5.0).  Molybdenum availability is increased at higher pH; this is because the molybdate ion is more strongly sorbed by clay particles at lower pH.  Zinc, iron, copper and manganese show decreased availability at higher pH (increased sorption at higher pH).  The effect of pH on phosphorus availability varies considerably, depending on soil conditions and the crop in question. The prevailing view in the 1940s and 1950s was that P availability was maximized near neutrality (soil pH 6.5–7.5), and decreased at higher and lower pH. Interactions of phosphorus with pH in the moderately to slightly acidic range (pH 5.5–6.5) are, however, far more complex than is suggested by this view. Laboratory tests, glasshouse trials and field trials have indicated that increases in pH within this range may increase, decrease, or have no effect on P availability to plants.

Water availability in relation to soil pH.

Strongly alkaline soils are sodic and dispersive, with slow infiltration, low hydraulic conductivity and poor available water capacity. Plant growth is severely restricted because aeration is poor when the soil is wet; in dry conditions, plant-available water is rapidly depleted and the soils become hard and cloddy (high soil strength).  Many strongly acidic soils, on the other hand, have strong aggregation, good internal drainage, and good water-holding characteristics. However, for many plant species, aluminium toxicity severely limits root growth, and moisture stress can occur even when the soil is relatively moist.

Plant pH preferences.

In general terms, different plant species are adapted to soils of different pH ranges. For many species, the suitable soil pH range is fairly well known. Online databases of plant characteristics, such "USDA PLANTS" and "Plants for a Future" can be used to look up the suitable soil pH range of a wide range of plants. Documents like "Ellenberg's indicator values for British plants" can also be consulted.  However, a plant may be intolerant of a particular pH in some soils as a result of a particular mechanism, and that mechanism may not apply in other soils. For example, a soil low in molybdenum may not be suitable for soybean plants at pH 5.5, but soils with sufficient molybdenum allow optimal growth at that pH. Similarly, some calcifuges (plants intolerant of high-pH soils) can tolerate calcareous soils if sufficient phosphorus is supplied. Another confounding factor is that different varieties of the same species often have different suitable soil pH ranges. Plant breeders can use this to breed varieties that can tolerate conditions that are otherwise considered unsuitable for that species – examples are projects to breed aluminium-tolerant and manganese-tolerant varieties of cereal crops for food production in strongly acidic soils.  The table below gives suitable soil pH ranges for some widely cultivated plants as found in the "USDA PLANTS Database". Some species (like "Pinus radiata" and "Opuntia ficus-indica") tolerate only a narrow range in soil pH, whereas others (such as "Vetiveria zizanioides") tolerate a very wide pH range.

Changing soil pH.

Increasing pH of acidic soil.

Finely ground agricultural lime is often applied to acid soils to increase soil pH (liming). The amount of limestone or chalk needed to change pH is determined by the mesh size of the lime (how finely it is ground) and the buffering capacity of the soil. A high mesh size (60 mesh = 0.25 mm; 100 mesh = 0.149 mm) indicates a finely ground lime that will react quickly with soil acidity. The buffering capacity of a soil depends on the clay content of the soil, the type of clay, and the amount of organic matter present, and may be related to the soil cation exchange capacity. Soils with high clay content will have a higher buffering capacity than soils with little clay, and soils with high organic matter will have a higher buffering capacity than those with low organic matter. Soils with higher buffering capacity require a greater amount of lime to achieve an equivalent change in pH.  Amendments other than agricultural lime that can be used to increase the pH of soil include wood ash, industrial calcium oxide (burnt lime), magnesium oxide, basic slag (calcium silicate), and oyster shells. These products increase the pH of soils through various acid-base reactions. Calcium silicate neutralizes active acidity in the soil by reacting with H ions to form monosilicic acid (HSiO), a neutral solute.

Decreasing the pH of alkaline soil.

The pH of an alkaline soil can be reduced by adding acidifying agents or acidic organic materials. Elemental sulfur (90–99% S) has been used at application rates of 300–500 kg/ha – it slowly oxidizes in soil to form sulfuric acid. Acidifying fertilizers, such as ammonium sulfate, ammonium nitrate and urea, can help to reduce the pH of a soil because ammonium oxidises to form nitric acid. Acidifying organic materials include peat or sphagnum peat moss.  However, in high-pH soils with a high calcium carbonate content (more than 2%), it can be very costly and/or ineffective to attempt to reduce the pH with acids. In such cases, it is often more efficient to add phosphorus, iron, manganese, copper and/or zinc instead, because deficiencies of these nutrients are the most common reasons for poor plant growth in calcareous soils.

Soil pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity (alkalinity) of a soil. pH is defined as the negative logarithm (base 10) of the activity of hydronium ions ( or, more precisely, ) in a solution. In soils, it is measured in a slurry of soil mixed with water (or a salt solution, such as 0.01 M ), and normally falls between 3 and 10, with 7 being neutral. Acid soils have a pH below 7 and alkaline soils have a pH above 7. Ultra-acidic soils (pH < 3.5) and very strongly alkaline soils (pH > 9) are rare.

土壤pH值是衡量土壤中酸度或碱度所代表的意义。是溶液中氢离子活度的一种标度,也就是通常意义上溶液酸碱程度的衡量标准。土壤pH被认为是土壤中的主要变量,因为它控制发生的许多化学过程。


科帕卡瓦纳 (里约热内卢)

History.

The district was originally called "Sacopenapã" (translated from the Tupi language, it means "the way of the socós", the socós being a kind of bird) until the mid-18th century. It was renamed after the construction of a chapel holding a replica of the Virgen de Copacabana, the patron saint of Bolivia. The name may be derived from the Aymara "kota kahuana", meaning "view of the lake." The social scientist Mario Montaño Aragón found in the "archives of Indias" in Sevilla, Spain, a different history: "Kotakawana" is the god of fertility in ancient Andean mythology, the equivalent to the classical Greek goddess Aphrodite or the Roman Venus. This god is androgynous and lives in the Titicaca, and his court consists of creatures (male and female) that are represented in colonial sculptures and in Catholic churches. They were called "Umantuus", known as mermaids in Western culture.

Characteristics.

Copacabana begins at Princesa Isabel Avenue and ends at Posto Seis (lifeguard watchtower Six). Beyond Copacabana, there are two small beaches: one, inside Fort Copacabana and the other, right after it: Diabo ("Devil") Beach. Arpoador beach, where surfers go after its perfect waves, comes next, followed by the famous borough of Ipanema. The area was one of the four "Olympic Zones" during the 2016 Summer Olympics. According to Riotur, the Tourism Secretariat of Rio de Janeiro, there are 63 hotels and 10 hostels in Copacabana.

Copacabana Beach.

Copacabana beach, located at the Atlantic shore, stretches from Posto Dois (lifeguard watchtower Two) to Posto Seis (lifeguard watchtower Six). Leme is at Posto Um (lifeguard watchtower One). There are historic forts at both ends of Copacabana beach; Fort Copacabana, built in 1914, is at the south end by Posto Seis and Fort Duque de Caxias, built in 1779, at the north end. One curiosity is that the lifeguard watchtower of Posto Seis never existed. Hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and residential buildings dot the promenade facing Avenida Atlântica. On Sundays and holidays, one side of Avenida Atlântica is closed to cars, giving residents and tourists more space for activities along the beach.  Copacabana Beach plays host to millions of revellers during the annual New Year's Eve celebrations, and in most years, has been the official venue of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.

Copacabana promenade.

The Copacabana promenade is a pavement landscape in large scale (4 kilometres long). It was rebuilt in 1970 and has used a black and white Portuguese pavement design since its origin in the 1930s: a geometric wave. The Copacabana promenade was designed by Roberto Burle Marx.

Living standard.

Copacabana has the 11th highest Human Development Index in Rio; the 2000 census put the HDI of Copacabana at 0.902.

Neighbourhood.

According to the IBGE, 160,000 people live in Copacabana and 44,000 or 27.5% of them are 60 years old or older. Copacabana covers an area of 7.84 km which gives the borough a population density of 20,400 people per km. Residential buildings eleven to thirteen stories high built next to each other dominate the borough. Houses and two-story buildings are rare.  When Rio was the capital of Brazil, Copacabana was considered one of the best neighborhoods in the country.

Transportation.

More than 40 different bus routes serve Copacabana, as do three subway Metro stations: Cantagalo, Siqueira Campos and Cardeal Arcoverde.  Three major arteries parallel to each other cut across the entire borough: Avenida Atlântica (Atlantic Avenue), which is a 6-lane, 4 km avenue by the beachside, Nossa Senhora de Copacabana Avenue and Barata Ribeiro/Raul Pompéia Street both of which are 4 lanes and 3.5 km in length. Barata Ribeiro Street changes its name to Raul Pompéia Street after the Sá Freire Alvim Tunnel. Twenty-four streets intersect all three major arteries, and seven other streets intersect some of the three.

New Year's Eve in Copacabana.

The fireworks display in Rio de Janeiro to celebrate New Year's Eve is one of the largest in the world, lasting 15 to 20 minutes. It is estimated that 2,000,000 people go to Copacabana Beach to see the spectacle. The festival also includes a concert that extends throughout the night. The celebration has become one of the biggest tourist attractions of Rio de Janeiro, attracting visitors from all over Brazil as well as from different parts of the world, and the city hotels generally stay fully booked.

History.

New Year's Eve has been celebrated on Copacabana beach since the 1950s when cults of African origin such as Candomblé and Umbanda gathered in small groups dressed in white for ritual celebrations. The first fireworks display occurred in 1976, sponsored by a hotel on the waterfront and this has been repeated ever since. In the 1990s the city saw it as a great opportunity to promote the city and organized and expanded the event.  An assessment made during the New Year's Eve 1992 highlighted the risks associated with increasing crowd numbers on Copacabana beach after the fireworks display. Since the 1993-94 event concerts have been held on the beach to retain the public. The result was a success with egress spaced out over a period of 2 hours without the previous turmoil, although critics claimed that it denied the spirit of the New Year's tradition of a religious festival with fireworks by the sea. The following year Rod Stewart beat attendance records. Finally, the Tribute to Tom Jobim - with Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Chico Buarque, and Paulinho da Viola - consolidated the shows at the Copacabana Réveillon.  There was a need to transform the fireworks display in a show of the same quality. The fireworks display was created by entrepreneurs Ricardo Amaral and Marius. From the previous 8–10 minutes the time was extended to 20 minutes and the quality and diversity of the fireworks was improved. A technical problem in fireworks 2000 required the use of ferries from New Year's Eve 2001-02. New Year's Eve has begun to compete with the Carnival, and since 1992 it has been a tourist attraction in its own right.

Copacabana () is a "bairro" (neighbourhood) located in the South Zone of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is known for its 4 km (2.5 miles) balneario beach, which is one of the most famous in the world.

科帕卡瓦纳(Copacabana)是巴西里约热内卢南区的一个街区,面积7.84 km2,人口16万。该区以4公里长的海滩著称,这是全世界最著名的海滩之一。酒店,餐馆,酒吧,夜总会和住宅楼宇点缀4公里长的海滨葡式碎石路。


Life and career.

Manin gained a doctorate in 1960 at the Steklov Mathematics Institute as a student of Igor Shafarevich. He is now a Professor at the Max-Planck-Institut für Mathematik in Bonn, and a professor emeritus at Northwestern University.  Manin's early work included papers on the arithmetic and formal groups of abelian varieties, the Mordell conjecture in the function field case, and algebraic differential equations. The Gauss–Manin connection is a basic ingredient of the study of cohomology in families of algebraic varieties. He wrote a book on cubic surfaces and cubic forms, showing how to apply both classical and contemporary methods of algebraic geometry, as well as nonassociative algebra. He also indicated the role of the Brauer group, via Grothendieck's theory of global Azumaya algebras, in accounting for obstructions to the Hasse principle, setting off a generation of further work. He pioneered the field of arithmetic topology (along with John Tate, David Mumford, Michael Artin and Barry Mazur). He also formulated the Manin conjecture, which predicts the asymptotic behaviour of the number of rational points of bounded height on algebraic varieties. He has further written on Yang–Mills theory, quantum information, and mirror symmetry.  Manin had over 40 doctoral students, including Vladimir Berkovich, Mariusz Wodzicki, Alexander Beilinson, Ivan Cherednik, Alexei Skorobogatov, Vladimir Drinfeld, Mikhail Kapranov, Vyacheslav Shokurov, Arend Bayer and Victor Kolyvagin, as well as foreign students including Hà Huy Khoái.

Awards.

He was awarded the Brouwer Medal in 1987, the first Nemmers Prize in Mathematics in 1994, the Schock Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1999, the Cantor Medal of the German Mathematical Society in 2002, the King Faisal International Prize in 2002 and the Bolyai Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2010.  In 1990 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Yuri Ivanovich Manin (; born February 16, 1937) is a Russian mathematician, known for work in algebraic geometry and diophantine geometry, and many expository works ranging from mathematical logic to theoretical physics. Moreover, Manin was one of the first to propose the idea of a quantum computer in 1980 with his book "Computable and Uncomputable".

尤里·伊万诺维奇·马宁(,1937年-2月16日),俄罗斯数学家,从事代数几何和丢番图几何的研究,还开展了数理逻辑、理论物理学等领域的阐释性工作。 此外,曼宁是1980年最早提出量子计算机想法的人之一,其相关著作为《可计算和不可计算》。


Early life, education, and career.

Robert Edwin Peary was born on May 6, 1856, in Cresson, Pennsylvania, to Charles N. and Mary P. Peary. After his father died in 1859, Peary's mother moved with their son and settled in Portland, Maine. After growing up there, Peary attended Bowdoin College, some to the north, where he was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon and Phi Beta Kappa fraternities. He graduated in 1877 with a civil engineering degree.  Peary lived in Fryeburg, Maine, from 1878 to 1879. During that time he made a profile survey from the top of Fryeburg's Jockey Cap Rock. The 360-degree survey names the larger hills and mountains visible from the summit. After Peary's death, his boyhood friend, Alfred E. Burton, suggested that the profile survey be made into a monument. It was cast in bronze and set atop a granite cylinder and erected to his memory by the Peary family in 1938. A hike of less than a mile leads visitors to the summit and the monument.  After college, Peary worked as a draftsman making technical drawings at the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey office in Washington, D.C. He joined the United States Navy and on October 26, 1881, was commissioned as a civil engineer, with the relative rank of lieutenant. From 1884 to 1885 he was an assistant engineer on the surveys for the Nicaragua Canal and later became the engineer in charge. As reflected in a diary entry he made in 1885, during his time in the Navy, he resolved to be the first man to reach the North Pole.  In April 1886, he wrote a paper for the National Academy of Sciences proposing two methods for crossing Greenland's ice cap. One was to start from the west coast and trek about to the east coast. The second, more difficult path, was to start from Whale Sound at the top of the known portion of Baffin Bay and travel north to determine whether Greenland was an island or if it extended all the way across the Arctic. Peary was promoted to the rank of lieutenant commander on January 5, 1901, and to commander on April 6, 1902.

Initial Arctic expeditions.

Peary made his first expedition to the Arctic in 1886, intending to cross Greenland by dog sled, taking the first of his own suggested paths. He was given six months' leave from the Navy, and he received $500 from his mother to book passage north and buy supplies. He sailed on a whaler to Greenland, arriving in Godhavn on June 6, 1886. Peary wanted to make a solo trek, but a young Danish official named Christian Maigaard convinced him he would die if he went out alone. Maigaard and Peary set off together and traveled nearly due east before turning back because they were short on food. This was the second-farthest penetration of Greenland's ice sheet at the time. Peary returned home knowing more of what was required for long-distance ice trekking. Back in Washington attending with the US Navy, in November 1887 Peary was ordered to survey likely routes for a proposed Nicaragua Canal. To complete his tropical outfit he needed a sun hat. He went to a men's clothing store where he met 21-year-old Matthew Henson, a black man working as a sales clerk. Learning that Henson had six years of seagoing experience as a cabin boy, Peary immediately hired him as a personal valet.  On assignment in the jungles of Nicaragua, Peary told Henson of his dream of Arctic exploration. Henson accompanied Peary on every one of his subsequent Arctic expeditions, becoming his field assistant and "first man", a critical member of his team.

Second Greenland expedition.

In 1891, Peary returned to Greenland, taking the second, more difficult route that he laid out in 1886: traveling farther north to find out whether Greenland was a larger landmass extending to the North Pole. He was financed by several groups, including the American Geographic Society, the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. Members of this expedition included Peary's aide Henson, Frederick A. Cook, who served as the group's surgeon; the expedition's ethnologist, Norwegian skier Eivind Astrup; bird expert and marksman Langdon Gibson, and John M. Verhoeff, who was a weatherman and mineralogist. Peary also took his wife along as dietitian, though she had no formal training. Newspaper reports criticized Peary for bringing his wife. On June 6, 1891, the party left Brooklyn, New York, in the seal hunting ship SS "Kite". In July, as "Kite" was ramming through sheets of surface ice, the ship's iron tiller suddenly spun around and broke Peary's lower leg; both bones snapped between the knee and ankle. Peary was unloaded with the rest of the supplies at a camp they called Red Cliff, at the mouth of MacCormick Fjord at the north west end of Inglefield Gulf. A dwelling was built for his recuperation during the next six months. Josephine stayed with Peary. Gibson, Cook, Verhoeff, and Astrup hunted game by boat and became familiar with the area and the Inuit people. Unlike most previous explorers, Peary had studied Inuit survival techniques; he built igloos during the expedition and dressed in practical furs in the native fashion. By wearing furs to preserve body heat and building igloos, he was able to dispense with the extra weight of tents and sleeping bags when on the march. Peary also relied on the Inuit as hunters and dog-drivers on his expeditions. He pioneered the system—which he called the "Peary system"—of using support teams and establishing supply caches for Arctic travel. The Inuit were curious about the American party and came to visit Red Cliff. Josephine was bothered by their body odor (they did not bathe), their flea infestations and their food. She studied the people, however, and kept a journal of her experiences. In September 1891, Peary's men took dog sled teams and pushed inland onto the ice sheet to lay caches of supplies. They did not go farther than from Red Cliff.  Peary's leg mended by February 1892. By April, he made some short trips with Josephine and an Inuit dog sled driver to native villages to purchase supplies. On May 3, 1892, Peary finally set out on the intended trek with Henson, Gibson, Cook, and Astrup. At about the mark, Peary continued on with Astrup. The two found the high view from Navy Cliff to be revealing: they saw Independence Fjord and concluded that Greenland was an island. The men trekked back to Red Cliff and arrived on August 6, having traveled a total of.  In 1896, he received his degrees in Kane Lodge No. 454, New York City, and presented the Lodge the Masonic Flag that was raised on May 20–25, 1895, at Independence Bay, Greenland. He was a Master Mason.

1898–1902 expeditions.

As a result of Peary's 1898–1902 expedition, he claimed an 1899 visual discovery of "Jesup Land" west of Ellesmere. He claimed that this sighting of Axel Heiberg Island was prior to its discovery by Norwegian explorer Otto Sverdrup's expedition. This contention has been universally rejected by exploration societies and historians. However, the American Geographical Society and the Royal Geographical Society of London honored Peary for tenacity, mapping of previously uncharted areas, and his discovery in 1900 of Cape Jesup at the north tip of Greenland. Peary also achieved a "farthest north" for the western hemisphere in 1902 north of Canada's Ellesmere Island. Peary was promoted to lieutenant commander in the Navy in 1901 and to commander in 1902.

1905–1906 expedition.

Peary's next expedition was supported by fundraising through the Peary Arctic Club, with generous gifts of $50,000 from George Crocker, the youngest son of banker Charles Crocker, and $25,000 from Morris K. Jesup, to buy Peary a new ship. The navigated through the ice between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, establishing an American hemisphere "farthest north by ship". The 1906 "Peary System" dogsled drive for the pole across the rough sea ice of the Arctic Ocean started from the north tip of Ellesmere at 83° north latitude. The parties made well under a day until they became separated by a storm. As a result, Peary was without a companion sufficiently trained in navigation to verify his account from that point northward. With insufficient food, and uncertainty whether he could negotiate the ice between himself and land, he made the best possible dash and barely escaped with his life from the melting ice. On April 20, he was no farther north than 86°30' latitude. For obvious reasons, this latitude was never published by Peary. It is in a typescript of his April 1906 diary, discovered by Wally Herbert in his assessment commissioned by the National Geographic Society in the late 1980s. (Herbert, 1989). The typescript suddenly stopped there, one day before Peary's April 21 purported "farthest". The original of the April 1906 record is the only missing diary of Peary's exploration career. He claimed the next day to have achieved a Farthest North world record at 87°06' and returned to 86°30' without camping. This implied a trip of at least between sleeping, even assuming direct travel with no detours.  After returning to "Roosevelt" in May, Peary began weeks of difficult travel in June heading west along the shore of Ellesmere. He discovered Cape Colgate, from whose summit he claimed in his 1907 book that he had seen a previously undiscovered far-north "Crocker Land" to the northwest on June 24, 1906. A later review of his diary for this time and place found that he had written, "No land visible." On December 15, 1906, the National Geographic Society of the United States, which was primarily known for publishing a popular magazine, certified Peary's 1905–1906 expedition and "Farthest" with its highest honor, the Hubbard Medal. No major professional geographical society followed suit. In 1914 Donald MacMillan and Fitzhugh Green's expedition found that Crocker Land did not exist.

Reaching the North Pole.

For his final assault on the pole, Peary and 23 men, including Ross Gilmore Marvin, set off from New York City on July 6, 1908, aboard the "Roosevelt", commanded by Robert Bartlett. They wintered near Cape Sheridan on Ellesmere Island, and from Ellesmere departed for the pole on February 28, 1909. The last support party was turned back from Bartlett Camp on April 1, in a latitude no greater than 87° 45' N. The figure is based upon Bartlett's slight miscomputation of the distance of a single Sumner line from the pole.  On the final stage of the journey toward the North Pole, Peary told Bartlett to stay behind. He continued with five assistants, none but Henson (who had served as navigator and craftsman on Peary's 1891-2 expedition) capable of making navigation observations: Matthew Henson, Ootah, Egigingwah, Seegloo, and Ooqueah. On April 6, he established Camp Jesup within of the pole according to his own readings Henson scouted ahead to what was thought to be the North Pole site; he returned with the greeting, "I think I'm the first man to sit on top of the world," much to Peary's chagrin.  Peary was unable to fully enjoy the fruits of his labors. Upon returning to civilization, he learned that Frederick A. Cook, a surgeon on the 1891–1892 Peary expedition, claimed to have reached the pole in 1908. Despite remaining doubts, a committee of the National Geographic Society, as well as the Naval Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives, credited Peary with reaching the North Pole.  A reassessment of Peary's notebook in 1988 by polar explorer Wally Herbert found it "lacking in essential data", thus renewing doubts about Peary's discovery.

Later life.

Peary was promoted to the rank of captain in the Navy on October 20, 1910. By his lobbying, Peary headed off a move among some U.S. Congressmen to have his claim to the pole evaluated by other explorers. Eventually recognized by Congress to have "attained" the pole, Peary was given the Thanks of Congress by a special act in March 1911. Peary was promoted to the rank of rear admiral in the Navy Civil Engineer Corps, retroactive to April 6, 1909. He retired the same day, to Eagle Island on the coast of Maine, in the town of Harpswell.  His home there has been designated a Maine State Historic Site. After his retirement, Peary received many honors from numerous scientific societies in Europe and America for his Arctic explorations and discoveries. He served twice as president of The Explorers Club, from 1909 to 1911, and 1913 to 1916.  In early 1916, Peary became chairman of the National Aerial Coast Patrol Commission, a private organization created by the Aero Club of America. It advocated the use of aircraft to detect warships and submarines off the U.S. coast. Peary used his celebrity to promote the use of military and naval aviation, which led directly to the formation of Naval Reserve aerial coastal patrol units during the First World War. At the close of the First World War, Peary proposed a system of eight airmail routes, which became the genesis of the U.S. Postal Service's airmail system.  Peary died in Washington, D.C. on February 20, 1920. He was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. More than 60 years later, Matthew Henson was honored by being re-interred nearby in Arlington Cemetery on April 6, 1988.

Marriage and family.

On August 11, 1888, Peary married Josephine Diebitsch, a business school valedictorian who thought the modern woman should be more than just a mother. Diebitsch had started working at the Smithsonian Institution when she was 19–20 years old, replacing her father after he became ill and filling his position as a linguist. She resigned from the Smithsonian in 1886 upon becoming engaged to Peary.  The newlyweds honeymooned in Atlantic City, New Jersey, then moved to Philadelphia because Peary was assigned there. Peary's mother accompanied them on their honeymoon, and she moved into their Philadelphia apartment but not without friction between the two women. Josephine told Peary that his mother should return to live in Maine. They had two children together, Marie Ahnighito and Robert Peary, Jr. His daughter wrote several books, including a children's book about the Arctic adventures. As an explorer, Peary was frequently gone for years at a time. In their first 23 years of marriage, he spent only three with his wife and family. He missed the birth of his son and his early death.  Peary and his aide Henson both had relationships with Inuit women outside of marriage and fathered children with them. Peary appears to have started a relationship with Aleqasina ("Alakahsingwah") when she was about 14 years old. She bore him at least two children, including a son called Kaala, Karree, or Kali. French explorer and ethnologist Jean Malaurie was the first to report on Peary's descendants after spending a year in Greenland in 1951–52.  S. Allen Counter, a Harvard neuroscience professor, interested in Henson's role in the Arctic expeditions, went to Greenland in 1986. He found Peary's son Kali and Henson's son Anaukaq, then octogenarians, and some of their descendants. Counter arranged to bring the men and their families to the United States to meet their American relatives and see their fathers' gravesites. Later, Counter wrote about the episode in his book, "North Pole Legacy: Black, White, and Eskimo" (1991). He also gained national recognition of Henson's role in the expeditions. A subsequent documentary by the same name was also released. Wally Herbert also noted the relationship and children in his book on Peary's 1909 expedition, published in 1989.

Controversy.

Peary's claim to have reached the North Pole has long been subject to doubt. Some polar historians believe that Peary honestly thought he had reached the pole. Others have suggested that he was guilty of deliberately exaggerating his accomplishments. Peary's account has been newly criticized by Pierre Berton (2001) and Bruce Henderson (2005).

Lack of independent validation.

Peary did not submit his evidence for review to neutral national or international parties or to other explorers. Peary's claim was certified by the National Geographic Society (NGS) in 1909 after a cursory examination of Peary's records, as NGS was a major sponsor of his expedition. This was a few weeks before Cook's Pole claim was rejected by a Danish panel of explorers and navigational experts.  The National Geographic Society limited access to Peary's records. At the time, his proofs were not made available for scrutiny by other professionals, as had been done by the Danish panel. Gilbert Grosvenor persuaded the National Academy of Sciences not to get involved. The Royal Geographical Society (RGS) of London gave Peary its gold medal in 1910, despite internal council splits which only became known in the 1970s. The RGS based their decision on the belief that the NGS had performed a serious scrutiny of the "proofs", which was not the case. Neither the American Geographical Society nor any of the geographical societies of semi-Arctic Scandinavia has recognized Peary's North Pole claim.

Criticisms.

Omissions in navigational documentation.

The party that accompanied Peary on the final stage of the journey did not include anyone trained in navigation who could either confirm or contradict Peary's own navigational work. This was further exacerbated by Peary's failure to produce records of observed data for steering, for the direction ("variation") of the compass, for his longitudinal position at any time, or for zeroing-in on the pole either latitudinally or transversely beyond Bartlett Camp.

Inconsistent speeds.

The last five marches when Peary was accompanied by a navigator (Capt. Bob Bartlett) averaged no better than marching north. But once the last support party turned back at "Camp Bartlett", where Bartlett was ordered southward, at least from the pole, Peary's claimed speeds immediately doubled for the five marches to Camp Jesup. The recorded speeds quadrupled during the two and a half-day return to Camp Bartlett – at which point his speed slowed drastically. Peary's account of a beeline journey to the pole and back—which would have assisted his claim of such speed—is contradicted by his companion Henson's account of tortured detours to avoid "pressure ridges" (ice floes' rough edges, often a few meters high) and "leads" (open water between those floes).  In his official report, Peary claimed to have traveled a total of 304 nautical miles between April 2, 1909, (when he left Bartlett's last camp) and April 9 (when he returned there), to the pole, the same distance back, and in the vicinity of the pole. These distances are counted without detours due to drift, leads and difficult ice, i.e. the distance traveled must have been significantly higher to make good the distance claimed. Peary and his party arrived back in Cape Columbia on the morning of April 23, 1909, only about two and a half days after Capt Bartlett, yet Peary claimed he had traveled a minimum of more than Bartlett (to the Pole and vicinity).  The conflicting and unverified claims of Cook and Peary prompted Roald Amundsen to take extensive precautions in navigation during his Antarctic expedition so as to leave no room for doubt concerning his 1911 attainment of the South Pole, which—like Robert Falcon Scott's a month later in 1912—was supported by the sextant, theodolite, and compass observations of several other navigators.

Review of Peary's diary.

The diary that Robert E. Peary kept on his 1909 polar expedition was finally made available for research in 1986. Historian Larry Schweikart examined it, finding that: the writing was consistent throughout (giving no evidence of post-expedition alteration), that there were consistent pemmican and other stains on all pages, and that all evidence was consistent with a conclusion that Peary's observations were made on the spot he claimed. Schweikart compared the reports and experiences of Japanese explorer Naomi Uemura, who reached the North Pole alone in 1978, to those of Peary and found they were consistent. However, Peary made no entries in the diary on the crucial days of April 6 and 7, 1909, and his famous words "The Pole at Last!", allegedly written in his diary at the pole, were written on loose slips of paper that were inserted into the diary.

1984 and 1989 National Geographic Society studies.

In 1984 the National Geographic Society (a major sponsor of Peary's expeditions) commissioned the Arctic explorer Wally Herbert to write an assessment of Peary's original 1909 diary and astronomical observations. As Herbert researched the material, he came to believe that Peary must have falsified his records and concluded that he did not reach the Pole. His book, "The Noose of Laurels", caused a furor when it was published in 1989. If Peary did not reach the pole in 1909, Herbert himself would claim the record of being the first to reach the pole on foot.  In 1989 the NGS also conducted a two-dimensional photogrammetric analysis of the shadows in photographs and a review of ocean depth measures taken by Peary; its staff concluded that he was no more than away from the pole. Peary's original camera (a 1908 #4 Folding Pocket Kodak) has not survived. As such cameras were made with at least six different lenses from various manufacturers, the focal length of the lens—and hence the shadow analysis based on it—must be considered uncertain at best. The NGS has never released Peary's photos for an independent analysis. Specialists questioned the Society's conclusions.  The NGS commissioned the Foundation for the Promotion of the Art of Navigation to resolve the issue. Their 1989 report concluded that Peary had indeed reached the Pole. Gilbert M. Grosvenor, president of the NGS, said, "I consider this the end of a historic controversy and the confirmation of due justice to a great explorer."

Review of depth soundings.

Supporters of Peary and Henson assert that the depth soundings they made on the outward journey have been matched by recent surveys, and so their claim of having reached the Pole is confirmed. Only the first few of the Peary party's soundings, taken nearest the shore, touched bottom; experts have said their usefulness is limited to showing that he was above deep water. Peary stated (in 1909 Congressional hearings about the expedition) that he made no longitudinal observations during his trip, only latitude observations, yet he maintained he stayed on the "Columbia meridian" all along, and that his soundings were made on this meridian. The pack ice was moving all the time, so he had no way of knowing where he was without longitudinal observations.

Recreation of expedition in 2005.

British explorer Tom Avery and four companions recreated the outward portion of Peary's journey in 2005, using replica wooden sleds and Canadian Eskimo Dog teams. They ensured their sled weights were the same as Peary's sleds throughout their journey. They reached the North Pole in 36 days, 22 hours—nearly five hours faster than Peary. Avery writes on his web site that: The admiration and respect which I hold for Robert Peary, Matthew Henson and the four Inuit men who ventured North in 1909, has grown enormously since we set out from Cape Columbia. Having now seen for myself how he traveled across the pack ice, I am more convinced than ever that Peary did indeed discover the North Pole."After reaching the Pole, Avery and his team were airlifted off the ice rather than returning by dogsled.  Analysis of the speeds made by Avery do more to cast doubt on Peary's claim than to confirm it. While Peary claimed made good in his last five marches, horrific ice conditions meant that Avery managed only in his last five marches. Avery never exceeded in any five-day stretch, and was losing over a day at this time to the southerly drift of the ice. Avery matched Peary's overall 37-day total in part because Peary was held up by open water for five days at the Big Lead. But Peary had a team consisting of 133 dogs and 25 men, meaning he was able to keep his "polar party" fresh for the sprint to the Pole. Peary's team was more experienced than Avery's at dog sledding.

Legacy.

Several United States Navy ships have been named. The Peary–MacMillan Arctic Museum at Bowdoin College is named for Peary and fellow Arctic explorer Donald B. MacMillan. In 1986, the United States Postal Service issued a 22-cent postage stamp in honor of Peary and Henson; they were previously honored in 1959.  Peary Land, Peary Glacier, Peary Nunatak and Cape Peary in Greenland, Peary Bay and Peary Channel in Canada, as well as Mount Peary in Antarctica, are named in his honor. The lunar crater Peary, appropriately located at the moon's north pole, is also named after him.  Camp Peary in York County, Virginia is named for Admiral Peary. Originally established as a Navy Seabee training center during World War II, it was repurposed in the 1950s as a Central Intelligence Agency training facility. It is commonly called "The Farm".  Major General Adolphus Greely, leader of the ill fated Lady Franklin Bay Expedition from 1881 to 1884, noted that no Arctic expert questioned that Peary courageously risked his life traveling hundreds of miles from land, and that he reached regions adjacent to the pole. After initial acceptance of Peary's claim, he later came to doubt Peary's having reached 90°.  In his book "Ninety Degrees North", polar historian Fergus Fleming describes Peary as "undoubtedly the most driven, possibly the most successful and probably the most unpleasant man in the annals of polar exploration".  In 1932, and expedition was made by Robert Bartlett and Peary's daughter, Marie Ahnighito Peary Stafford on the "Effie M. Morrissey" to erect a monument to Peary at Cape York, Greenland.

Honors.

Medals Honorary degrees  Honorary memberships  Other

Robert Edwin Peary Sr. (; May 6, 1856 – February 20, 1920) was an American explorer and United States Navy officer who made several expeditions to the Arctic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best known for claiming to have reached the geographic North Pole with his expedition on April 6, 1909.

罗伯特·埃德温·皮里(Robert Edwin Peary,1856年-5月6日-1920年-2月20日),美国极地探险家、美国海军少将,曾多次探险格陵兰,并证明其为第一大岛。


Characteristics.

Microscopium is a small constellation bordered by Capricornus to the north, Piscis Austrinus and Grus to the east, Sagittarius to the west, and Indus to the south, touching on Telescopium to the southwest. The recommended three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Mic". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of four segments ("illustrated in infobox"). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and, while the declination coordinates are between −27.45° and −45.09°. The whole constellation is visible to observers south of latitude 45°N. Given that its brightest stars are of fifth magnitude, the constellation is invisible to the naked eye in areas with light polluted skies.

Features.

Stars.

French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille charted and designated ten stars with the Bayer designations Alpha through to Iota in 1756. A star in neighbouring Indus that Lacaille had labelled Nu Indi turned out to be in Microscopium, so Gould renamed it Nu Microscopii. Francis Baily considered Gamma and Epsilon Microscopii to belong to the neighbouring constellation Piscis Austrinus, but subsequent cartographers did not follow this. In his 1725 "Catalogus Britannicus", John Flamsteed labelled the stars 1, 2, 3 and 4 Piscis Austrini, which became Gamma Microscopii, HR 8076, HR 8110 and Epsilon Microscopii respectively. Within the constellation's borders, there are 43 stars brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.  Depicting the eyepiece of the microscope is Gamma Microscopii, which—at magnitude of 4.68—is the brightest star in the constellation. Having spent much of its 620-million-year lifespan as a blue-white main sequence star, it has swollen and cooled to become a yellow giant of spectral type G6III, with a diameter ten times that of the Sun. Measurement of its parallax yields a distance of 223 ± 8 light years from Earth. It likely passed within 1.14 and 3.45 light-years of the Sun some 3.9 million years ago, at around 2.5 times the mass of the Sun, it is possibly massive enough and close enough to disturb the Oort cloud. Alpha Microscopii is also an ageing yellow giant star of spectral type G7III with an apparent magnitude of 4.90. Located 400 ± 30 light-years away from Earth, it has swollen to 17.5 times the diameter of the Sun. Alpha has a 10th magnitude companion, visible in 7.5 cm telescopes, though this is a coincidental closeness rather than a true binary system. Epsilon Microscopii lies 166 ± 5 light-years away, and is a white star of apparent magnitude 4.7, and spectral type A1V. Theta and Theta Microscopii make up a wide double whose components are splittable to the naked eye. Both are white A-class magnetic spectrum variable stars with strong metallic lines, similar to Cor Caroli. They mark the constellation's specimen slide.  Many notable objects are too faint to be seen with the naked eye. AX Microscopii, better known as Lacaille 8760, is a red dwarf which lies only 12.9 light-years from the Solar System. At magnitude 6.68, it is the brightest red dwarf in the sky. BO Microscopii is a rapidly rotating star that has 80% the diameter of the Sun. Nicknamed "Speedy Mic", it has a rotation period of 9 hours 7 minutes. An active star, it has prominent stellar flares that average 100 times stronger than those of the Sun, and are emitting energy mainly in the X-ray and ultraviolet bands of the spectrum. It lies 218 ± 4 light-years away from the Sun. AT Microscopii is a binary star system, both members of which are flare star red dwarfs. The system lies close to and may form a very wide triple system with AU Microscopii, a young star which appears to be a planetary system in the making with a debris disk. The three stars are candidate members of the Beta Pictoris moving group, one of the nearest associations of stars that share a common motion through space.  The Astronomical Society of Southern Africa in 2003 reported that observations of four of the Mira variables in Microscopium were very urgently needed as data on their light curves was incomplete. Two of them—R and S Microscopii—are challenging stars for novice amateur astronomers, and the other two, U and RY Microscopii, are more difficult still. Another red giant, T Microscopii, is a semiregular variable that ranges between magnitudes 7.7 and 9.6 over 344 days. Of apparent magnitude 11, DD Microscopii is a symbiotic star system composed of an orange giant of spectral type K2III and white dwarf in close orbit, with the smaller star ionizing the stellar wind of the larger star. The system has a low metallicity. Combined with its high galactic latitude, this indicates that the star system has its origin in the galactic halo of the Milky Way.  HD 205739 is a yellow-white main sequence star of spectral type F7V that is around 1.22 times as massive and 2.3 times as luminous as the Sun. It has a Jupiter-sized planet with an orbital period of 280 days that was discovered by the radial velocity method. WASP-7 is a star of spectral type F5V with an apparent magnitude of 9.54, about 1.28 times as massive as the Sun. Its hot Jupiter planet—WASP-7b—was discovered by transit method and found to orbit the star every 4.95 days. HD 202628 is a sunlike star of spectral type G2V with a debris disk that ranges from 158 to 220 AU distant. Its inner edge is sharply defined, indicating a probable planet orbiting between 86 and 158 AU from the star.

Deep sky objects.

Describing Microscopium as "totally unremarkable", astronomer Patrick Moore concluded there was nothing of interest for amateur observers. NGC 6925 is a barred spiral galaxy of apparent magnitude 11.3 which is lens-shaped, as it lies almost edge-on to observers on Earth, 3.7 degrees west-northwest of Alpha Microscopii. SN 2011ei, a Type II Supernova in NGC 6925, was discovered by Stu Parker in New Zealand in July 2011. NGC 6923 lies nearby and is a magnitude fainter still. The Microscopium Void is a roughly rectangular region of relatively empty space, bounded by incomplete sheets of galaxies from other voids. The Microscopium Supercluster is an overdensity of galaxy clusters that was first noticed in the early 1990s. The component Abell clusters 3695 and 3696 are likely to be gravitationally bound, while the relations of Abell clusters 3693 and 3705 in the same field are unclear.

Meteor showers.

The Microscopids are a minor meteor shower that appear from June to mid-July.

History.

The stars that comprise Microscopium are in a region previously considered the hind feet of Sagittarius, a neighbouring constellation. John Ellard Gore wrote that al-Sufi seems to have reported that Ptolemy had seen the stars but he (Al Sufi) did not pinpoint their positions. Microscopium itself was introduced in 1751–52 by Lacaille with the French name "le Microscope", after he had observed and catalogued 10,000 southern stars during a two-year stay at the Cape of Good Hope. He devised fourteen new constellations in uncharted regions of the Southern Celestial Hemisphere not visible from Europe. All but one honoured instruments that symbolised the Age of Enlightenment. Commemorating the compound microscope, the Microscope's name had been Latinised by Lacaille to "Microscopium" by 1763.

Microscopium ("the Microscope") is a minor constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere, one of twelve created in the 18th century by French astronomer Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille and one of several depicting scientific instruments. The name is a Latinised form of the Greek word for microscope. Its stars are faint and hardly visible from most of the non-tropical Northern Hemisphere.

显微镜座(英语:Microscopium)是南天半球中的一个星座,由法国天文学家尼可拉·路易·拉卡伊于18世纪确立,是拉卡伊星座家族中以科学仪器命名的12个星座之一。显微镜座的英文名来自古希腊语中显微镜一词的拉丁化。它的恒星光芒黯淡,在北半球热带以外的大部分地区几乎不可见。


Biography.

Early career.

As his praetorship was in 60 or 59 BC, Titus Labienus most likely was born around 100 BC. Many sources suggest that he came from the town of Cingulum in Picenum. His family was of equestrian status. He most likely had early ties with Pompey during his time as a patron for Picenum and his desire to rise in military rank. His early service was c. 78–75 BC in Cilicia under Publius Servilius Vatia Isauricus fighting pirates and the Isaurian hill tribes.

Tribune of the Plebs, Trial of Gaius Rabirius.

In 63 BC, Titus Labienus was a tribune of the Plebs with close ties to Pompey. Gaius Julius Caesar was also working closely with Pompey and therefore he and Labienus occasionally cooperated. These interactions were the seed that eventually developed into a friendship between Labienus and Caesar.  At Caesar's instigation, Labienus accused Gaius Rabirius of high treason (perduellio) for the murder of the tribune Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and of his uncle Titus Labienus in 100 BC. The purpose of this trial was to discredit the so-called "final decree of the Senate" (senatus consultum ultimum), an emergency measure of the senate commonly used against the Populares and the Roman assemblies. Labienus used the antiquated procedure of the duumviri, used in the early republic, against Rabirius. The procedure bypassed normal criminal law and Rabirius would be tried without defense. Since tribunes were sacrosanct, it was seen as an act against the gods to kill one. Thus punishment of the culprit was seen as more of a cleansing to appease the gods. The killing was seen as a pollution so profound that a normal criminal trial was unnecessary and immediate cleansing was necessary to avoid the wrath of the gods. The duumviri were assigned to accuse under the pretense of obvious guilt and cleanse the culprit through scourging.  Rabirius appealed to the Centuriate Assembly and Cicero spoke in his defense. However, before the assembly could vote, Metellus Celer used his powers as an augur to claim the sightings of bad omens and take down the flag in Janiculum. This postponed the trial. Rabirius was ultimately sentenced to exile, as he was unable to pay an unreasonable fine.  In the same year Labienus carried a plebiscite returning the elections of the pontifices to the people. This indirectly secured for Caesar the dignity of Pontifex Maximus, by his act of supporting Labienus in this cause (Dio Cassius xxxvii. 37).  Labienus was more a soldier than politician, and primarily used his office as a gateway to secure himself positions of high military command. After his term as tribune, Labienus served as Caesar's legate in Gaul.

Lieutenant under Caesar in Gaul.

Labienus acted as Caesar's senior legate (second-in-command) during his campaign in Gaul and was the only legate mentioned by name in Caesar's writings about his first campaign. He was a skilled cavalry commander and could be considered a military genius.  Labienus commanded the winter quarters in Vesontio in 58 BC. He also had full command of the legions in Gaul during Caesar's absence, as his "legatus pro praetore". He had this privilege when Caesar was administering justice in Cisalpine Gaul as well as during Caesar's second campaign in Britain (in 54 BC).  In 57 BC, during the Belgian campaign, in a battle against the Atrebates and Nervii near Sabis, Labienus, commanding the 9th and 10th legions, defeated the opposing Atrebates force and proceeded to take the enemy camp. From there he sent the 10th Legion against the rear of the Nervii line while they were engaged with the rest of Caesar's army, single-handedly turning the tide of battle and securing Caesar the victory.  Labienus is also credited with the defeat of the Treviri under Indutiomarus. Labienus spent days with his army fortified in their camp, while Indutiomarus harassed him daily in an attempt at intimidation and demoralization. Labienus waited for the right moment, when Indutiomarus and his forces were returning to their camp disorganized, to send out his cavalry through two gates. He gave them the orders to first kill Indutiomarus, then his trailing forces on their return. Labienus's men were successful, and with the death of their leader, the Treviri army scattered. The Treviri forces later regrouped under relatives of Indutiomarus and moved upon Labienus, setting up camp across the river from his legions, waiting for reinforcements from the Germans. Labienus feigned a withdrawal, enticing the Treviri to cross the river, after which he turned around and had his men attack. Being in such a disadvantageous position, the Treviri forces were shattered. After hearing this, the German reinforcements turned around.  Labienus's victory over the Parisii at Lutetia in the Battle of Lutetia is another example of his tactical genius. Sending five cohorts back towards Agedincum, and himself crossing the Sequana River with three legions, he tricked the enemy into thinking that he had divided his army and was crossing the river in three places. The enemy army split into thirds and pursued Labienus. The main body met Labienus which he subsequently surrounded with the rest of his legions. He then annihilated the reinforcements with his cavalry.  In September, 51 BC, Caesar made Labienus governor of Cisalpine Gaul.

Defection from Caesar, command under Pompey in Civil War.

After Caesar crossed the Rubicon, Labienus left his post in Cisalpine Gaul and joined Pompey. He was rapturously welcomed on the Pompeian side, bringing some Gallic and German cavalry with him. He also brought an account on Caesar's military strength.  In the book, "Biography of Titus Labienus, Caesar’s Lieutenant in Gaul", Tyrrell notes that modern historians describe Labienus's actions as a defection from Caesar, and do not hesitate to call him a “deserter” or “renegade”, possibly due to their liking for Caesar. Tyrrell recognizes that in the end, Labienus can be described as a man who “joined the legitimate government in its struggle against a revolutionary proconsul who placed his own dignitas above his country” (Tyrrell, 36). Tyrrell points out, however, that "Labienus had proved on every occasion his capacity for independent command. He could easily have felt himself Caesar’s equal in the field. Although a praetorius since 59 or 58, a consulship with its subsequent provincial army was not forthcoming. The consulship with Caesar, even if seriously planned, would not have altered the balance of power between them. Antonius’ election to the augurate, the first step to the consulship, showed the direction of Caesar's purposes. Caesar's enemies held out a new opportunity to gain an army. Three years later he could boast that he had won the loyalty of his troops (BAf. 19.3)." Beyond that, we cannot go.".  Pompey made Labienus commander of the cavalry (magister equitum). Labienus attempted to convince Pompey to face Caesar in Italy and not retreat to Hispania (Iberian Peninsula, comprising modern Spain and Portugal) to regroup, insisting that Caesar's army was thin and weakened after his campaign in Gaul.  But Labienus's ill fortune under Pompey was as marked as his success had been under Caesar. From the defeat at the Battle of Pharsalus, where he commanded the cavalry, he fled to Corcyra, and after hearing of the death of Pompey then proceeded to Africa. He created confidence in the followers of Pompey by lying to them, claiming that Caesar had received a mortal wound at the Battle of Pharsalus. He was able through sheer force of numbers to inflict a slight check upon Caesar at the Battle of Ruspina in 46 BC. By arranging his troops into dense formations, he tricked Caesar into thinking he had only foot soldiers, and was able to rout Caesar's cavalry and surround his army. However, Labienus was unable to defeat Caesar's forces, and was compelled to leave the field. After the defeat at the Battle of Thapsus, he joined the younger Gnaeus Pompeius in Hispania.  Death came to Labienus in the Battle of Munda, an evenly matched conflict between the armies of Caesar and the sons of Pompey. King Bogud, an ally of Caesar, approached the Pompeians with his army from the rear. Labienus was commanding the Pompeians’ cavalry unit at the time, and seeing this, took the cavalry from the front lines to meet him. The Pompeian legions misinterpreted this as a retreat, became disheartened and began to break. Pompeians suffered massive casualties during the rout. This defeat ended Caesar's Civil War. Labienus was killed during the rout. He was buried by Caesar with full honors. According to Appian, however, (BC2.105), his head was brought to Caesar.

Fictional accounts.

Labienus is featured in "The Gods of War", a novel by British author Conn Iggulden, though in a much reduced role, as his historical position as Caesar's second-in-command is filled instead by Marcus Junius Brutus, whose relationship with Caesar is conversely greatly expanded. He was also an important minor character in the later "Masters of Rome" novels by Australian author Colleen McCullough. In these, his first appearance is in the Trial of Rabirius, but this is placed rather later in the political year than it is usually stated as having been, orchestrated by Caesar as a reaction to Cicero's decision to have several Catiline conspirators executed without trial while the "Senatus Consultum Ultimum" is in force - rather than as a prior warning against such an action before the decree was even in place. He then falls on hard times because he had drawn the disfavour of Pompey for having an affair with his Picentine wife Mucia Tertia. He is portrayed latterly as a very capable but fierce and cruel soldier and commander, whose brilliance wins battles in Gaul, but whose brutality went some way towards alienating Caesar's Gallic allies and thus causing the battles in the first place. McCullough takes a somewhat different interpretation of the events, and has Caesar shunning Labienus, instead of Labienus defecting to Pompey. In the novels, Caesar disowns Labienus when it comes to civil war, not wanting him on his side because he is too cruel and unpredictable. Labienus was also featured in the BBC One docudrama "". Labienus is a prominent character in S.J.A. Turney's series 'Marius' Mules'.

Titus Labienus (c. 100 BC – 17 March 45 BC) was a professional Roman soldier in the late Roman Republic. He served as tribune of the Plebs in 63 BC. Although remembered as one of Julius Caesar's lieutenants in Gaul, mentioned frequently in the accounts of his military campaigns, Labienus chose to oppose him during the Civil War and was killed at Munda. He was the father of Quintus Labienus.

提图斯·拉比埃努斯(,约公元前100年-公元前45年3月17日)是罗马共和国末期的一位罗马职业军人。他于公元前63年曾担任过平民保民官。虽然在人们的印象中,他频繁出现在各种有关高卢征伐的记载当中,是尤利乌斯·凯撒在高卢地区最信赖的副将之一,但他在此后的内战中倒向了庞培,并最终在蒙达会战中被杀。