History.

The party was founded in 1932, and was initially known as the St Kitts Workers' League. It put forward two candidates in the 1937 elections, both of which were elected. It subsequently won all the elected seats in 1940, 1943 and 1946.  From 1946 until 1978 the party was led by Robert Bradshaw. It saw most of its success on Saint Kitts, as voters on Nevis and Anguilla tended to elect independents and local parties. It was the only party to contest the 1952 elections and won all eight seats. They retained power in the 1957 despite losing three seats to independents. The party was also victorious in 1961, and were renamed the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla Labour Party in 1966. They went on to win the 1966, 1971 and 1975 elections, winning seven seats on each occasion.  When Anguilla seceded in 1980, the party adopted its current name. In the elections that year the party was reduced to four seats, and although it was the largest faction in the National Assembly, the opposition People's Action Movement was able to form a coalition government. The Labour Party was reduced to two seats in the 1984 elections, and remained with only two MPs after the 1989 elections. Although it received the most votes in the 1993 elections and won the same number of seats as the PAM, the PAM remained in power. However, early elections were called in 1995, in which the Labour Party won a majority of seats. They increased their majority in the 2000 elections and retained power in elections in 2004 and 2010.

The Saint Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP) is a centre-left political party in Saint Kitts and Nevis. It is currently in opposition in the country after winning two of the eleven seats in the 2020 general election. It is the oldest active political party in the English-speaking Caribbean.

圣基茨和尼维斯工党(英语:Saint Kitts-Nevis Labour Party)是圣基茨和尼维斯的一个中间偏左政党。 在圣基茨和尼维斯联邦1983年独立之后,曾在1995年至2015年执政20年,由党魁登齐尔·道格拉斯就任总理,该党在2015年举行的最近一次议会选举中赢得39.27%的选票以及11个议席中的3席,现为在野党。


Plot.

"Inukami!" revolves around Keita Kawahira, a descendant of an Inukami-tamer clan and considered a failure by the clan due to his attitude towards his duty and being unable to find an Inukami to bond with. Inukami, literally "dog god", are benevolent creatures that possess spiritual powers. They are a type of demon with the appearance of a dog who can transform into a human form. Along with a partner from the historic Inukami-tamer clan, they act to obliterate evil and proliferate righteousness. Keita is initially unable to find an Inukami to bond with, but eventually finds a beautiful Inukami named Yoko that decided to become his Inukami, causing Keita to become overjoyed. However, his joy is short-lived when he discovers that she is a very problematic and uncontrollable Inukami. At first Yoko is shown to be selfish and just thinks of herself, to help with this problem Keita's cousin Kaoru sends one of his Inukamis, Nadeshiko, over to help. Keita becomes attracted to Nadeshiko. However, Yoko is thrown into a jealous rage, this is subdued when Keita's grandma's Inukami Hake calms Yoko down stating that Nadeshiko's visit was short and was only here to help Yoko. After Nadeshiko leaves, Yoko grows even closer to Keita although she is annoyed by Keita's flirting with the rest of Kaoru's inukamis when they go to visit.  Things later get heated up when Keita fights a shinigami in order to save the last heir of a wealthy family from death. Yoko ends up beating the shinigami. However, Keita sees what appears to be a large fox where Yoko was fighting, but in the end he blacked out. Towards the end everyone is getting ready to celebrate Keita's grandma's birthday, a special guest who is a giant frog appears looking for Keita, Yoko mistakes him for a perverted frog but learns that the frog's name is Hakusan Meikun. Hakusan, a fallen wizard tells Yoko how he was chosen by Keita and thus became free from a sentence he was serving after making a contract with Keita, in return Hakusan gave him magic abilities. After hearing the story, Yoko becomes jealous and worried that she might get replaced something that is noticed by Nadeshiko. Yoko has a secret hidden and feels guilt, to help with this Nadeshiko suggests confessing to her like she would to Keita with her eyes closed, Yoko agrees and as she is confessing; Nadeshiko slips away and is replaced by Keita who overheard Yoko talking to her. Stunned by seeing Keita by her side which Yoko apologizes to Keita that she did not tell him sooner, something Keita does not care about. Keita states he likes Yoko for Yoko, reminds that he chose her and asks to stay by her side. Overjoyed by what Yoko heard, but takes the confession of love to her, she also confesses that she scared away the other Inukamis who were in fact interested in him when he was looking for one in order to have him all to herself and confesses her love to Keita.

Media.

Light novels.

"Inukami!" began as a series of light novels written by Mamizu Arisawa, and drawn by Kanna Wakatsuki. The series originally started serialization in MediaWorks' now-defunct light novel magazine "Dengeki hp" with the release of volume seventeen on April 18, 2002. "Inukami" continued to be serialized in "Dengeki hp" for another four initial chapters until the release of volume twenty-one of the magazine on December 18, 2002. The following month on January 10, 2003 the first bound volume of the series was published by ASCII Media Works under their "Dengeki Bunko" publishing label. Volumes continued to be published until December 10, 2008 with the release of the sixteenth novel. Of the volumes, the first fourteen were of the main series, and the fifteenth and sixteenth books, entitled "Inukami! EX Wan!" and "Inukami! EX Wanwan!!" respectively, were bonus novels of collected short stories with illustrations provided by Mari Matsuzawa who also drew the "Inukami!" manga. Another novel entitled "Inukami Special Edition" was only released as a promotional gift for the animated film. Additional chapters were also serialized in "Dengeki hp" volumes twenty-three through thirty, thirty-two through thirty-four, and thirty-eight through forty-two. A ten-part original short story compilation is posted online at the anime's official website.

Manga.

A manga adaptation illustrated by Mari Matsuzawa was serialized in the now-defunct shōnen manga magazine "Dengeki Comic Gao!" between October 27, 2005 and February 27, 2008, published by MediaWorks. The manga chapters were collected into six bound volumes released by ASCII Media Works under their "Dengeki Comics" publishing label between March 27, 2006 and May 27, 2008. A single-volume anthology titled "Inukami! Anthology~" was released by ASCII Media Works on September 27, 2006. The anthology was a collaboration between sixteen artists and manga authors, some of which include: Yukari Higa, Mari Matsuzawa, Suiren Shōfū, Keiichi Sumi, Kanna Wakatsuki, and Yasu. The manga has been licensed by Seven Seas Entertainment for distribution in English in North America; five volumes have been released, the first one being in November 2008. Two omnibus collections were also released in November 2010 and March 2011.

Anime.

An anime adaptation produced by Seven Arcs and directed by Keizō Kusakawa aired on TV Tokyo in Japan between April 6 and September 28, 2006, containing twenty-six episodes. The episodes were released on nine DVD compilations released between August 9, 2006 and April 4, 2007 in limited edition versions, and between October 4, 2006 and June 6, 2007 in regular versions; the first volume contained two episodes, while each of the subsequent volumes contained three episodes. The series is licensed for a February 26, 2019 North American Blu-ray release by Discotek Media. The series has been licensed in Malaysia by Hong feng Entertainment with an all-region code DVD and is subtitled in English.  Shortly after the anime's premiere, a scheduled episode of "Inukami!" was interrupted by TV Tokyo extending live coverage of the 2006 World Team Table Tennis Championships, which lead an incensed fan of the show to send cremated human remains to TV Tokyo's headquarters.  Four pieces of theme music were used for the anime: one opening theme and three ending themes. The opening theme is by Yui Horie and the maxi single for the song was released on May 24, 2006. The main ending theme is by Aice, and the single was released in limited and regular editions also on May 24, 2006. Episode twelve's ending theme is by Nana Mizuki, and episode eighteen's ending theme is by Super Zō-sans & Rice. Seven character song albums were released between January 25 and August 23, 2006, and an additional character vocal album entitled "Paradiso" was released on December 21, 2006. The anime's first original soundtrack was released on September 21, 2006, and the second followed on November 22, 2006.  An animated film titled was produced by Seven Arcs, and directed by Keizō Kusakawa. The film, which only has a runtime of twenty-five minutes, premiered in Japanese theaters on April 21, 2007 as one of the three films released at Dengeki Bunko's Movie Festival, the others being "Shakugan no Shana" and "Kino's Journey". The DVD was released on September 26, 2007 by King Records.

Internet radio show.

An Internet radio show to promote the "Inukami!" anime series called was released through Starchild Net Radio between May 12, 2006 and May 25, 2007 every week on Friday. The program had fifty-five episodes and was hosted by Kaori Nazuka who played Nadeshiko in the anime, and Shizuka Hasegawa who played Tomohane in the anime. The show's theme song was called "Puppy's clock", and the show also used three theme songs from the anime: "Hikari", used as an opening theme in the twenty-seventh broadcast, "Yūjō Monogatari: Danshi (?) Version" used as an ending theme in the twentieth and twenty-seventh broadcasts, and "Yūjō Monogatari" used as an ending theme in all the other broadcasts. The show contained six corners, or parts to the show, and had several guests to the show who were related to the anime's production who include: Mamizu Arisawa, Jun Fukuyama, Yui Horie, Rika Morinaga. A CD containing some of the broadcasts was later sold on January 24, 2007.

Visual novel.

A sound novel, with card game attributes, based on the series was released in limited and regular editions on December 6, 2007 by ASCII Media Works playable on the Nintendo DS; the limited edition version came bundled with a drama CD. The game is titled "Inukami! feat. Animation", and like the title implies, parts of the game are animated. "Inukami!" is one of the few light novels originally published by ASCII Media Works that has been made into a sound novel under DS Dengeki Bunko, a section of ASCII Media Works which produces sound novels playable on the Nintendo DS based from light novels published under ASCII Media Works' "Dengeki Bunko" publishing label, and was the third such release.

A manga adaptation by Mari Matsuzawa was serialized in MediaWorks' now-defunct shōnen manga magazine "Dengeki Comic Gao!" between October 2005 and February 2008. The manga has been licensed by Seven Seas Entertainment for distribution in North America; the first volume was released in November 2008. A twenty-six episode anime adaptation of the series produced by Seven Arcs aired between April and September 2006 on TV Tokyo in Japan. An Internet radio show was also produced, along with a visual novel released by ASCII Media Works, and a twenty-five-minute-long film released in Japanese theaters in April 2007. Another light novel entitled "Inukami Special Edition" was only released as a promotional gift for the animated film.

为有泽真水的轻小说,由电击文库发行,并改编成漫画及动画作品。


Overview.

The Basel III standard aims to strengthen the requirements from the Basel II standard on bank's minimum capital ratios. In addition, it introduces requirements on liquid asset holdings and funding stability, thereby seeking to mitigate the risk of a run on the bank.

Key principles.

Capital requirements.

The original Basel III rule from 2010 required banks to fund themselves with 4.5% of common equity (up from 2% in Basel II) of risk-weighted assets (RWAs). Since 2015, a minimum Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) ratio of 4.5% must be maintained at all times by the bank. This ratio is calculated as follows:  The minimum Tier 1 capital increases from 4% in Basel II to 6%, applicable in 2015, over RWAs. This 6% is composed of 4.5% of CET1, plus an extra 1.5% of Additional Tier 1 (AT1).  Furthermore, Basel III introduced two additional capital buffers:

Leverage ratio.

Basel III introduced a minimum "leverage ratio". This is a non-risk-based leverage ratio and is calculated by dividing Tier 1 capital by the bank's average total consolidated assets (sum of the exposures of all assets and non-balance sheet items). The banks are expected to maintain a leverage ratio in excess of 3% under Basel III.  In July 2013, the U.S. Federal Reserve announced that the minimum Basel III leverage ratio would be 6% for 8 Systemically important financial institution (SIFI) banks and 5% for their insured bank holding companies.

Liquidity requirements.

Basel III introduced two required liquidity ratios.

US version of the Basel Liquidity Coverage Ratio requirements.

On 24 October 2013, the Federal Reserve Board of Governors approved an interagency proposal for the U.S. version of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS)'s Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). The ratio would apply to certain U.S. banking organizations and other systemically important financial institutions. The comment period for the proposal closed on 31 January 2014.  The United States' LCR proposal came out significantly tougher than BCBS's version, especially for larger bank holding companies. The proposal requires financial institutions and FSOC designated nonbank financial companies to have an adequate stock of high-quality liquid assets (HQLA) that can be quickly liquidated to meet liquidity needs over a short period of time.  The LCR consists of two parts: the numerator is the value of HQLA, and the denominator consists of the total net cash outflows over a specified stress period (total expected cash outflows minus total expected cash inflows).  The Liquidity Coverage Ratio applies to U.S. banking operations with assets of more than $10 billion. The proposal would require:  The US proposal divides qualifying HQLAs into three specific categories (Level 1, Level 2A, and Level 2B). Across the categories, the combination of Level 2A and 2B assets cannot exceed 40% HQLA with 2B assets limited to a maximum of 15% of HQLA.  The proposal requires that the LCR be at least equal to or greater than 1.0 and includes a multiyear transition period that would require: 80% compliance starting 1 January 2015, 90% compliance starting 1 January 2016, and 100% compliance starting 1 January 2017.  Lastly, the proposal requires both sets of firms (large bank holding companies and regional firms) subject to the LCR requirements to submit remediation plans to U.S. regulators to address what actions would be taken if the LCR falls below 100% for three or more consecutive days.  As of September 2010, proposed Basel III norms asked for ratios as: 7–9.5% (4.5% + 2.5% (conservation buffer) + 0–2.5% (seasonal buffer)) for common equity and 8.5–11% for Tier 1 capital and 10.5–13% for total capital.

Implementation.

Summary of originally-proposed changes (2010) in Basel Committee language.

On 15 April 2014, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS) released the final version of its "Supervisory Framework for Measuring and Controlling Large Exposures" (SFLE) that builds on longstanding BCBS guidance on credit exposure concentrations.  On 3 September 2014, the U.S. banking agencies (Federal Reserve, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation) issued their final rule implementing the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). The LCR is a short-term liquidity measure intended to ensure that banking organizations maintain a sufficient pool of liquid assets to cover net cash outflows over a 30-day stress period.  On 11 March 2016, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision released the second of three proposals on public disclosure of regulatory metrics and qualitative data by banking institutions. The proposal requires disclosures on market risk to be more granular for both the standardized approach and regulatory approval of internal models.

US implementation.

The US Federal Reserve announced in December 2011 that it would implement substantially all of the Basel III rules. It summarized them as follows, and made clear they would apply not only to banks but also to all institutions with more than US$50 billion in assets:  As of January 2014, the United States has been on track to implement many of the Basel III rules, despite differences in ratio requirements and calculations.

European implementation.

The implementing act of the Basel III agreements in the European Union has been the new legislative package comprising Directive 2013/36/EU (CRD IV) and Regulation (EU) No. 575/2013 on prudential requirements for credit institutions and investment firms (CRR).  The new package, approved in 2013, replaced the Capital Requirements Directives (2006/48 and 2006/49).

Analysis of Basel III impact.

In the United States higher capital requirements resulted in contractions in trading operations and the number of personnel employed on trading floors.

Macroeconomic impact.

An OECD study, released on 17 February 2011, estimated that the medium-term impact of Basel III implementation on GDP growth would be in the range of −0.05% to −0.15% per year. Economic output would be mainly affected by an increase in bank lending spreads, as banks pass a rise in bank funding costs, due to higher capital requirements, to their customers. To meet the capital requirements originally effective in 2015 banks were estimated to increase their lending spreads on average by about 15 basis points. Capital requirements effective as of 2019 (7% for the common equity ratio, 8.5% for the Tier 1 capital ratio) could increase bank lending spreads by about 50 basis points. The estimated effects on GDP growth assume no active response from monetary policy. To the extent that monetary policy would no longer be constrained by the zero lower bound, the Basel III impact on economic output could be offset by a reduction (or delayed increase) in monetary policy rates by about 30 to 80 basis points.  Basel III was also criticized as negatively affecting the stability of the financial system by increasing incentives of banks to game the regulatory framework.

Criticism.

Think tanks such as the World Pensions Council have argued that Basel III merely builds on and further expands the existing Basel II regulatory base without fundamentally questioning its core tenets, notably the ever-growing reliance on standardized assessments of "credit risk" marketed by two private sector agencies- Moody's and S&P, thus using public policy to strengthen anti-competitive duopolistic practices. The conflicted and unreliable credit ratings of these agencies is generally seen as a major contributor to the US housing bubble. Academics have criticized Basel III for continuing to allow large banks to calculate credit risk using internal models and for setting overall minimum capital requirements too low.  Opaque treatment of all derivatives contracts is also criticized. While institutions have many legitimate ("hedging", "insurance") risk reduction reasons to deal in derivatives, the Basel III accords: Since derivatives present major unknowns in a crisis these are seen as major failings by some critics causing several to claim that the "too big to fail" status remains with respect to major derivatives dealers who aggressively took on risk of an event they did not believe would happen—but did. As Basel III does not absolutely require extreme scenarios that management flatly rejects to be included in stress testing this remains a vulnerability. "Standardized external auditing and modelling is an issue proposed to be addressed in Basel 4 however."  A few critics argue that capitalization regulation is inherently fruitless due to these and similar problems and—despite an opposite ideological view of regulation—agree that "too big to fail" persists.  Basel III has been criticized similarly for its paper burden and risk inhibition by banks, organized in the Institute of International Finance, an international association of global banks based in Washington, D.C., who argue that it would "hurt" both their business and overall economic growth. Basel III was also criticized as negatively affecting the stability of the financial system by increasing incentives of banks to game the regulatory framework. The American Bankers Association, community banks organized in the Independent Community Bankers of America, and some of the most liberal Democrats in the U.S. Congress, including the entire Maryland congressional delegation with Democratic Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski and Representatives Chris Van Hollen and Elijah Cummings, voiced opposition to Basel III in their comments to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, saying that the Basel III proposals, if implemented, would hurt small banks by increasing "their capital holdings dramatically on mortgage and small business loans".  Professor Robert Reich has argued that Basel III did not go far enough to regulate banks as he believes inadequate regulation was a cause of the financial crisis. On 6 January 2013 the global banking sector won a significant easing of Basel III Rules, when the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision extended not only the implementation schedule to 2019, but broadened the definition of liquid assets.  Before the enactment of Basel III in 2011, the Institute of International Finance (IIF, a Washington D.C.-based, 450-member banking trade association), argued against the implementation of the accords, claiming it would hurt banks and economic growth.  The American Banker's Association, community banks organized in the Independent Community Bankers of America, and some of the most liberal Democrats in the U.S. Congress, including the entire Maryland congressional delegation with Democratic Sens. Cardin and Mikulski and Reps. Van Hollen and Cummings, voiced opposition to Basel III in their comments submitted to FDIC, saying that the Basel III proposals, if implemented, would hurt small banks by increasing "their capital holdings dramatically on mortgage and small business loans."  Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich argued that Basel III did not go far enough to regulate banks since, he believed, inadequate regulation was a cause of the financial crisis. However, this assertion has not been proven in any academic literature and, in fact, much of the regulation called for by Reich targets areas which were not a problem in the global financial crisis (i.e. all-service investment banks were not harmed or did not harm the financial system, with stand-alone ones such as Lehman Brothers failing).  On 6 January 2013 the global banking sector won a significant easing of Basel III Rules, when the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision extended not only the implementation schedule to 2019, but broadened the definition of liquid assets.  In 2019, American investor Michael Burry criticized Basel III for what he characterizes as "more or less remov[ing] price discovery from the credit markets, meaning risk does not have an accurate pricing mechanism in interest rates anymore."

Further studies.

In addition to articles used for references (see References), this section lists links to publicly available high-quality studies on Basel III. This section may be updated frequently as Basel III remains under development.

Basel III (or the Third Basel Accord or Basel Standards) is a global, voluntary regulatory framework on bank capital adequacy, stress testing, and market liquidity risk. This third installment of the Basel Accords ("see Basel I, Basel II") was developed in response to the deficiencies in financial regulation revealed by the financial crisis of 2007–08. It is intended to strengthen bank capital requirements by increasing bank liquidity and decreasing bank leverage.

巴塞尔协议III(英语:Basel III)是由国际清算银行制定,同时得到世界各主要经济体的中央银行(即巴塞尔银行监理委员会)参与制定并同意实施的全球金融监管标准。作为巴塞尔协议的第三版,协议着眼于通过设定关于资本充足率、压力测试、市场流动性风险考量等方面的标准,从而应对在2008年前后的次贷危机中显现出来的金融体系的监管不足。协议强化了资本充足率要求,并新增了关于流动性与杠杆比率的要求。例如,在巴塞尔协议II中,对于信贷和其它信用资产的风险的衡量在很大程度上依赖于外部机构(特别是信用评级机构)的评定,而这个些机构又是不在被监管的范围内的。这导致了一些事后得知并不安全的资产(如某些债权抵押证券)在当时被贴上了非常安全的AAA标签,而这些也对金融危机的产生起了推波助澜的作用。在巴塞尔协议III中,这此信贷产品的风险的衡量则被要求进行更为严谨的情景分析。


Geology.

Zealandia is largely made up of two nearly parallel ridges, separated by a failed rift, where the rift breakup of the continent stops and becomes a filled graben. The ridges rise above the sea floor to heights of, with few rocky islands rising above sea level. The ridges are continental rock, but are lower in elevation than normal continents because their crust is thinner than usual, approximately thick, and consequently they do not float as high above the Earth's mantle.  About 25 million years ago, the southern part of Zealandia (on the Pacific Plate) began to shift relative to the northern part (on the Indo-Australian Plate). The resulting displacement by approximately along the Alpine Fault is evident in geological maps. Movement along this plate boundary has also offset the New Caledonia Basin from its previous continuation through the Bounty Trough.  Compression across the boundary has uplifted the Southern Alps, although due to rapid erosion their height reflects only a small fraction of the uplift. Farther north, subduction of the Pacific Plate has led to extensive volcanism, including the Coromandel and Taupo Volcanic Zones. Associated rifting and subsidence has produced the Hauraki Graben and more recently the Whakatane Graben and Wanganui Basin.  Volcanism on Zealandia has also taken place repeatedly in various parts of the continental fragment before, during and after it rifted away from the supercontinent Gondwana. Although Zealandia has shifted approximately to the northwest with respect to the underlying mantle from the time when it rifted from Antarctica, recurring intracontinental volcanism exhibits magma composition similar to that of volcanoes in previously adjacent parts of Antarctica and Australia.  This volcanism is widespread across Zealandia but generally of low volume apart from the huge mid to late Miocene shield volcanoes that developed the Banks and Otago Peninsulas. In addition, it took place continually in numerous limited regions all through the Late Cretaceous and the Cenozoic. However, its causes are still in dispute. During the Miocene, the northern section of Zealandia (Lord Howe Rise) might have slid over a stationary hotspot, forming the Lord Howe Seamount Chain.  Zealandia is occasionally divided by scientists into two regions, North Zealandia (or Western Province) and South Zealandia (or Eastern Province), the latter of which contains most of the Median Batholith crust. These two features are separated by the Alpine Fault and Kermadec Trench and by the wedge-shaped Hikurangi Plateau, and are moving separately to each other.

Classification as a continent.

The case for Zealandia being a continent in its own right was argued by Nick Mortimer and Hamish Campbell in their book "Zealandia: Our continent revealed" in 2014, citing geological and ecological evidence to support the proposal.  In 2017, a team of eleven geologists from New Zealand, New Caledonia, and Australia concluded that Zealandia fulfills all the requirements to be considered a drowned continent, rather than a microcontinent or continental fragment. This verdict was widely covered by news media.

Biogeography.

New Caledonia lies at the northern end of the ancient continent, while New Zealand rises at the plate boundary that bisects it. These land masses are two outposts of the Antarctic Flora, including Araucarias and Podocarps. At Curio Bay, logs of a fossilized forest closely related to modern Kauri and Norfolk pine can be seen that grew on Zealandia about 180 million years ago during the Jurassic period, before it split from Gondwana. These were buried by volcanic mud flows and gradually replaced by silica to produce the fossils now exposed by the sea.  During glacial periods, more of Zealandia becomes a terrestrial rather than a marine environment. Zealandia was originally thought to have no native land mammal fauna, but the discovery in 2006 of a fossil mammal jaw from the Miocene in the Otago region shows otherwise.

Political divisions.

The total land area (including inland water bodies) of Zealandia is. Of this, New Zealand comprises the majority, at, or 93%) which includes the mainland (the North and South Islands), nearby islands, and most outlying islands, including the Chatham Islands, the New Zealand Subantarctic Islands, the Solander Islands, and the Three Kings Islands (but not the Kermadec Islands or Macquarie Island (Australia), which are part of the rift).  New Caledonia and the islands surrounding it comprise some or 7%) and the remainder is made up of various territories of Australia including the Lord Howe Island Group (New South Wales) at or 0.02%), Norfolk Island at or 0.01%), as well as the Elizabeth and Middleton Reefs (Coral Sea Islands Territory) with.

Population.

The total human population of Zealandia today is about 5 million people.

Zealandia (), also known as the New Zealand continent or Tasmantis, is an almost entirely submerged mass of continental crust that subsided after breaking away from Gondwanaland 83–79 million years ago. It has variously been described as a continental fragment, a microcontinent, a submerged continent, and a continent. The name and concept for Zealandia was proposed by Bruce Luyendyk in 1995.

西兰大陆(英语:Zealandia),也被称为西兰洲、西兰蒂亚和塔斯曼提斯(Tasmantis),是一块几乎被淹没的微大陆(microcontinent)。于8500万到6000万年前从包围澳洲大陆的冈瓦那大陆分裂并分离,随后沉入海底,面积490万平方公里。此大陆目前有94%的区域已被海水淹没,只有新西兰、新喀里多尼亚、诺福克岛及一些其余岛屿还浮于水面上,总面积大约490万平方公里,等于三分之二的澳洲。


History.

Bigtable development began in 2004 and is now used by a number of Google applications, such as web indexing, MapReduce, which is often used for generating and modifying data stored in Bigtable, Google Maps, Google Book Search, "My Search History", Google Earth, Blogger.com, Google Code hosting, YouTube, and Gmail. Google's reasons for developing its own database include scalability and better control of performance characteristics.  Google's Spanner RDBMS is layered on an implementation of Bigtable with a Paxos group for two-phase commits to each table. Google F1 was built using Spanner to replace an implementation based on MySQL.

Design.

Bigtable is one of the prototypical examples of a wide column store. It maps two arbitrary string values (row key and column key) and timestamp (hence three-dimensional mapping) into an associated arbitrary byte array. It is not a relational database and can be better defined as a sparse, distributed multi-dimensional sorted map. Bigtable is designed to scale into the petabyte range across "hundreds or thousands of machines, and to make it easy to add more machines [to] the system and automatically start taking advantage of those resources without any reconfiguration". For example, Google's copy of the web can be stored in a bigtable where the row key is a domain-reversed URL, and columns describe various properties of a web page, with one particular column holding the page itself. The page column can have several timestamped versions describing different copies of the web page timestamped by when they were fetched. Each cell of a bigtable can have zero or more timestamped versions of the data. Another function of the timestamp is to allow for both versioning and garbage collection of expired data.  Tables are split into multiple "tablets" – segments of the table are split at certain row keys so that each tablet is a few hundred megabytes or a few gigabytes in size. A bigtable is somewhat like a mapreduce worker pool in that thousands to hundreds of thousands of tablet shards may be served by hundreds to thousands of BigTable servers. When Table size threaten to grow beyond a specified limit, the tablets may be compressed using the algorithm BMDiff and the Zippy compression algorithm publicly known and open-sourced as Snappy, which is a less space-optimal variation of LZ77 but more efficient in terms of computing time. The locations in the GFS of tablets are recorded as database entries in multiple special tablets, which are called "META1" tablets. META1 tablets are found by querying the single "META0" tablet, which typically resides on a server of its own since it is often queried by clients as to the location of the "META1" tablet which itself has the answer to the question of where the actual data is located. Like GFS's master server, the META0 server is not generally a bottleneck since the processor time and bandwidth necessary to discover and transmit META1 locations is minimal and clients aggressively cache locations to minimize queries.

Bigtable is a compressed, high performance, proprietary data storage system built on Google File System, Chubby Lock Service, SSTable (log-structured storage like LevelDB) and a few other Google technologies. On May 6, 2015, a public version of Bigtable was made available as a service. Bigtable also underlies Google Cloud Datastore, which is available as a part of the Google Cloud Platform.

BigTable是一种压缩的、高效能的、高可扩展性的,基于Google档案系统(Google File System,GFS)的数据存储系统,用于储存大规模结构化数据,适用于云端计算。


Early life.

Ed Schieffelin was born in a coal-mining region of Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, the son of a prominent New York and Pennsylvania family, in 1847. His great-grandfather Jacob Schieffelin, Sr., born in 1757, joined the Loyalist army and served as Henry Hamilton's secretary during the Revolutionary War. Schieffelin was captured in 1779 and held prisoner in Williamsburg, Virginia. He escaped to Canada, where in 1780 he was appointed a lieutenant in the Queen's Rangers by Henry Clinton. He spent time in Montreal and Detroit, before returning to New York, where in 1794 he founded a drug company with his brother Lawrence. This firm still exists as a liquor import house, Schieffelin & Somerset.  In January 1849, Jacob, Jr. traveled to California with his sons Alfred and Edward Girard on the ship "Morrison". They arrived in September, but almost immediately booked passage home via Panama in November. Jacob Schieffelin, Jr. traveled overland and joined his brother and Ed. Schieffelin's father Clinton Emanuel Del Pela Schieffelin settled in the Rogue Valley, Oregon Territory, in the mid-1850s to raise cattle, grain and children. The family maintained an interest in the mining activities in the area.

Hunt for gold and silver.

At age 17, Schieffelin set out on his own as a prospector and miner. He began looking for gold and silver in about 1865. From Oregon, he went east to Coeur d'Alene, then searched across Nevada into Death Valley, back into Colorado and then New Mexico.  In 1876, David P. Lansing of Phoenix, Arizona, described Schieffelin as "about the strangest specimen of human flesh I ever saw. He was tall and had black hair that hung several inches below his shoulder and a beard that had not been trimmed or combed for so long a time that it was a mass of unkempt knots and mats. He wore clothing pieced and patched from deerskins, corduroy and flannel, and his hat was originally a slouch hat that had been pieced with rabbit skin until very little of the original felt remained."  A year later as a 30-year-old, Schieffelin moved to California to find gold. He surveyed the Grand Canyon area as well. Unsuccessful, he heard that a group of Hualapai Indians had enlisted as scouts for the U.S. Army, which was establishing a camp to counter the Chiricahua Apache threat and to secure the nearby border with Mexico. The Army established Camp Huachuca at the foot of the Huachuca Mountains in Pima County, Arizona Territory on March 3, 1877. Silver had already been discovered in some northern areas of Arizona Territory, but the southern portion had been under continued Apache attack.  Schieffelin accompanied the scouts on a few trips into the back country while prospecting part-time. He finally decided to stay put and explore the hills east full-time. The hills east of the San Pedro River where he prospected could be dangerous. They were only about from the hostile Chiricahua Apache Indians led by Cochise, Geronimo and Victorio that had established a stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains.

Ore discovery.

Frederick Brunckow, a Prussian-born mining engineer, discovered silver in the hills of Cochise County in 1858. He built a cabin near the San Pedro River after finding a small silver deposit nearby. He hired three other white men and about a dozen Mexican miners. In September 1860, two of the white men were robbed and murdered at the cabin and Brunchow was found dead in the mine with a rock drill through him. The German cook blamed the Mexican workers for the murders. After Brunckow's death, ongoing conflict with native Indians prevented further development of the mines for several years. Brunckow's San Pedro mine influenced Ed Schieffelin to prospect the rocky outcropping northeast of the cabin. In 1876, Schieffelin and his party were attacked by Apaches, and a man named Lenox was killed. The cabin was the site of 22 murders during the frontier days.  When friend and fellow army scout Al Sieber learned what Schieffelin was up to, he is quoted as telling him, "The only rock you will find out there will be your own tombstone". Another account reported Schieffelin's friends told him, "Better take your coffin with you; you will find your tombstone there, and nothing else."  In 1877, Schieffelin used Brunckow's cabin as a base of operations to survey the country. After many months, Ed was working the hills east of the San Pedro River when he found pieces of silver ore in a dry wash on a high plateau called Goose Flats. It took him several more months to find the source. When he located the vein, he estimated the vein to be long and wide. Schieffelin's claim was sited near Lenox's grave site, and when he filed his first mining claim on September 21, 1877, he fittingly named his stake "Tombstone".  Flat broke, Schieffelin persuaded William Griffith to pay for the legal paperwork required to file a mining claim on September 3, 1877. Tucson did not have an assay office, and when they showed the sample ore to some local men, they thought it was worthless.  With only 30 cents in his pocket, Schieffelin set out to find his brother Al, whom he had not seen in four years. He believed Al was working the Silver King mine, about to the north in central Arizona Territory near present-day Globe. But Schieffelin learned that Al had moved on to the McCracken Mine in Signal City, Arizona, another north. Schieffelin spent his 30 cents on tobacco and had to pause in his search for his brother to earn enough money to go on. He found a job as a hoist operator at the Champion silver mine, and for fourteen days hauled up a dozen tons of ore every night by cranking a hand windlass.

Partnership formed.

When Ed finally located his brother in February 1878, Al asked the foreman at the McCracken mine to look at brother Ed's ore specimens. The foreman thought the samples were mostly lead. Unconvinced, Schieffelin showed the samples to 20 or 30 others who had some expertise, and they all thought the ore worthless. Frustrated, Schieffelin threw his ore specimens out his brother's cabin door, as far as he could throw, but at the last minute held on to three of them. For the next four weeks he worked in the McCracken Mine, wielding a pick and shovel.  Ed learned about the McCracken Mine's recently arrived assayer, Richard Gird, who had a reputation as an expert. Taking his last three ore samples, Ed Schieffelin asked Gird if he thought they were worth assaying. Gird took a look and said he'd get back to Ed. Three days later, Al shook Ed out of his bunk and said Gird wanted to see him now. When they met, Gird told Ed that he valued the best of the ore samples at $2,000 a ton. Ed, Al Schieffelin and Richard Gird formed a partnership on the spot. Gird offered his expertise, connections, and a grubstake. They shook hands on their three-way deal, a gentlemen's agreement that was never put down on paper but that resulted in millions of dollars of wealth for all three men. When Richard resigned, his employer offered to make him general superintendent of the mine, but he refused.  Gird bought a second-hand blue spring wagon and loaded it with supplies, his assay equipment, and also bought a second mule that with Ed's mule could haul the wagon. Gird wanted time to wind up his affairs and to wait for spring and better weather, but Ed insisted they depart immediately. Al hesitated to leave his well-paid, $4.00 a day job as a miner. Ed and Gird didn't wait for him, but left that day. Al reconsidered and joined them that night. Reaching Arizona Territory, and despite reports of continued Apache raids and the murder of miners and ranchers in the area, the three men returned to Cochise County and set up camp at the Brunckow cabin. The deaths of several locals at the hands of the Apache Indians were testified to by the fresh graves near the cabin. The three partners formed the Tombstone Gold and Silver Mining Company to hold title to their claims. Gird built a crude assay furnace in the cabin's fireplace. He found that Schieffelin's initial find of silver ore was valuable, but within a few weeks of mining the vein, Ed discovered it ended in a pinch about three feet deep. His brother Al and Gird were despondent but Ed was optimistic he could find more ore deposits. He continued his search for many more weeks until one day Al found Ed joyously exclaiming over another sample of float ore he had found. Indifferently, Al told Ed he was a "lucky cuss," and that became the name of one of the richest mining claims in the Tombstone District. The ore samples assayed at $15,000 a ton. Ed shortly afterward identified another claim, the "Tough Nut" lode, rich in horn silver.  On June 17, 1879, Schieffelin showed up in Tucson driving the blue spring wagon carrying the first load of silver bullion valued at $18,744 (about $ today)

Tombstone founded.

When the first claims were filed, the initial settlement of tents and cabins was located at Watervale near the Lucky Cuss mine. By March 1879, about 100 residents occupied tents and shacks at Watervale. Former Territorial Governor Anson P.K. Safford offered financial backing for a cut of the men's mining claims, and Ed Schieffelin, his brother Al, and their partner Richard Gird formed the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company and built a stamping mill. On March 5, 1879, U.S. Deputy Mineral Surveyor Solon M. Allis finished laying out a new town site on a mesa named Goose Flats at, to top of the Tough Nut mine, and large enough to hold a growing town. The town was named "Tombstone" after Schieffelin's initial mining claim. The shelters at Watervale were relocated to the new town site and a scattering of cabins and tents were quickly built for about 100 residents.  During the first few months of mining, the upper portion of the Tombstone mining district was accidentally discovered by Ed Williams and Jack Friday. Late one night, their mules broke loose and dragging their chain, left the miners' dry camp for water along an Indian trail. The men tracked the mules' chain trail all the way to the Schieffelin camp. Williams and Friday noticed a bright gleam where the iron had dragged across bare rock. They filed a claim for their find, but Al and Ed Schieffelin and Richard Gird contested their claim, asserting it violated their earlier claims. When the two parties finally resolved their arguments and counterclaims, they agreed to divide the ground. Williams and Friday took the higher end, which they called the Grand Central, and the Schieffelin company took the lower end, which they named the Contention in remembrance of the quarrel that led to its founding. Those two mines were eventually the most profitable mines in Tombstone. Some of the ore from the "Lucky Cuss", "Tough Nut", and the "Contention" mines assayed at around $15,000 to the ton. Ed Schieffelin preferred prospecting to running a mine and he left Tombstone to find more ore. When he returned four months later, Gird had lined up buyers for their interest in the Contention, which they sold for $10,000 to J.H. White and S. Denson, who represented W.D. Dean of San Francisco. The sellers thought the $10,000 price was exorbitant. The Grand Central and Contention claims turned out to be the richest claims in the district, producing millions of dollars in bullion. The Schieffelin company also soon sold a half-interest in the Lucky Cuss, and the other half turned into a steady stream of money.  On March 13, 1879, Al and Ed Schieffelin sold their two-thirds interest in the Tombstone Mining and Milling Company, which owned the Tough Nut mine, for US$1 million each to the Corbin brothers, Hamilton Distin of Philadelphia, and Simmons Squire of Boston. Safford became president of the new Tombstone Gold and Silver Milling and Mining Company with Richard Gird as superintendent. Ed moved on, but Al remained in Tombstone for some time longer. Gird later sold off his one-third interest for US$1 million, doubling what the Schieffelins had been paid. Gird remained in the territory but Ed Schieffelin left to pursue other interests.  When Cochise County was formed in February 1881, Tombstone became the county seat. In 1881, early in Tombstone's rapid growth, Ed's brother Al built Schieffelin Hall as a theater, recital hall, and a meeting place for Tombstone citizens. His great-niece Mary Schieffelin Brady reopened it in 1964 and it remains an attraction in Tombstone. It is the largest standing adobe structure in the southwest United States.  At its height in the mid-1880s, Tombstone's population was officially about 7,000 miners, but some estimates figure in an additional 5–7,000 women and children, Chinese, Mexicans, and prostitutes. In the late 1880s, the silver mines reached the water table and the mines eventually filled with water. Tombstone's population faded, until tourism became its main attraction.

Later life.

Ed had accumulated more than $1 million in wealth as a result of the silver boom. While he had maintained a casual appearance, including long hair and beard, he cleaned himself up. He traveled to New York City, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities. He met many distinguished people. Ever restless, over the next 20 years Ed showed up at nearly every boom town in the West.  Schieffelin had made a practice of studying maps and believed there was a great "continental belt" of mineral wealth that extended from South America through Mexico, the United States, and British Columbia. During 1882, Ed prepared for what he planned to be a three-year survey of mineral wealth. He began the expedition with his brother Al and three others on a trip up the Yukon River. They commissioned construction of and fitted out a small, shallow-draft sternwheel steamer which they named the "New Packet". Schieffelin prospected during the trip in Alaska and found some specks of gold. He was for a while convinced he had found the continental belt he had been searching for. But he was extremely discouraged by the Arctic cold he experienced, up to 50 F below zero (-46 C). He decided that mining in Alaska was a lost cause and he returned to the lower 48 states.  In 1883, he returned to San Francisco, where he met Mrs. Mary E. Brown. They married the same year in La Junta, Colorado, and they spent part of the winter in Salt Lake City, Utah. In the spring of 1884, they returned to California, where Ed built a mansion for his wife across the bay from San Francisco in Alameda. They bought a home in Los Angeles that they shared with Ed's brother Al until Al died of consumption in 1885.

Early death.

In 1897 Schieffelin bought a ranch near his brothers Effingham (Eff) and Jacob (Jay) outside Woodville, now Rogue River, Oregon. He continued prospecting in the Canyonville area, where he searched for gold and silver. On May 12, 1897, after he had not shown up in town for supplies for several days, his neighbor checked on him and found him face down on the floor of his miner's cabin. The coroner ruled that he had died of a heart attack. The ore samples found in his cabin were later reported to have assayed at more than $2,000 to the ton. Other reports from his family said it was only valued at $7 per ton. Schieffelin did not leave a map or directions behind pointing to the origins of his discovery. He was initially buried near his cabin about east of Canyonville.  It was shortly afterward learned that he had requested to be buried in Tombstone. "It is my wish, if convenient, to be buried in the dress of a prospector, my old pick and canteen with me, on top of the granite hills, about three miles westerly from the City of Tombstone, Arizona, and that a monument, such as prospectors build when locating a mining claim, be built over my grave." Schieffelin was interred about northwest of Tombstone, Arizona, near the dry wash in which he originally found silver ore and the later location of the Grand Central Mine. He was buried as his will specified: in mining clothes, with pick, shovel, and his old canteen. He divided his estate between his wife and his brother Jay. "I give my wife, Mary E. Schieffelin, all interests, both real and personal properties—in Alameda and Santa Clara Counties, California—also fifteen $1,000 University of Arizona Bonds. All other properties, both real and personal, I give to my brother, Jay L. Schieffelin." Mary Schieffelin moved to New York City after her husband's death.

Legacy.

A tall monument representing the type of marker a miner makes in claiming a strike was erected near the spot of his original claim. The plaque on it reads, "Ed Shieffelin, died May 12, 1897, aged 49 years, 8 months. A dutiful son, a faithful husband, a kind brother, and a true friend." Years before, Schieffelin had written, "I never wanted to be rich, I just wanted to get close to the earth and see mother nature's gold." Schieffelin Gulch Road in the Rogue Valley, Oregon is named after the family who homesteaded there.  There are widely varying estimates of the value of gold and silver mined during the course of Tombstone's history. In 1883, writer Patrick Hamilton estimated that during the first four years of activity the mines produced about $25,000,000 (approximately $ today). Other estimates include $40 million to $85 million (about $ to $ today). Renewed mining is planned for the area.  The character actor Strother Martin played Schieffelin in the 1967 episode "Silver Tombstone" of the syndicated television series "Death Valley Days". In the story line, after years of failure, Schieffelin is convinced that he is on the verge of a bonanza. He invites his brother to join him in the pending strike. Jamie Farr appears as Dick Gird.

Edward Lawrence Schieffelin (1847–1897) was an Indian scout and prospector who discovered silver in the Arizona Territory, which led to the founding of Tombstone, Arizona. He partnered with his brother Al and mining engineer Richard Gird in a handshake deal that produced millions of dollars in wealth for all three men. During the course of Tombstone's mining history, about US $85,000,000 in silver was produced from its mines.

爱德华·劳伦斯·席费林(英语:Edward Lawrence Schieffelin,1847年-1897年),美国印第安人搜索者、采矿者。


Description.

The wind farm site is more than off the North Foreland on the Kent coast. It is in the area between Long Sand and Kentish Knock, between Margate in Kent and Clacton in Essex. The site has water depths of no more than 25 m and is mostly away from deep water shipping lanes. It is north of the shallow cross estuary channel, the Fisherman's Gat and astride of the Foulger's Gat.  The first phase consisted of 175 Siemens Wind Power SWT-3.6 turbines and two offshore substations, giving a wind farm with a peak rated power of 630 MW. Each turbine and offshore substation is erected on a monopile foundation, and connected together by of 33 kV array cables. The two offshore substations are connected to an onshore substation at Cleve Hill (near Graveney) on the north Kent coast, by four 150 kV subsea export cables, in total. It is named after London because the power goes to the London grid.  The smaller Thanet Wind Farm is to the south.  The array is intended to reduce annual emissions by about 900,000 tons, equal to the emissions of 300,000 passenger cars.

History.

In 2001 environmental studies identified areas of the outer Thames Estuary as potential sites for offshore wind farms; the Department of Trade and Industry published the paper "Future Offshore — A Strategic Framework for the Offshore Wind Industry", which identified the outer Thames Estuary as one of three potential areas for future wind farm development (Round 2 wind farms). The Crown Estate awarded a 50-year lease to "London Array Ltd" (a consortium of E.ON UK Renewables, Shell WindEnergy, and CORE Limited) in December 2003. A planning application was submitted in 2005, which was approved in December 2006. Planning permission for the onshore electricity substation was granted in November 2007.  In May 2008, Shell announced that it was pulling out of the project. It was announced in July 2008 that E.ON UK and DONG Energy would buy Shell's stake. Subsequently, on 16 October 2008, London Array announced the Abu Dhabi based Masdar would join E.ON as a joint venture party in the scheme. Under the agreement, Masdar purchased 40% of E.ON's half share of the scheme, giving Masdar a 20% stake in the project overall. The resultant ownership was 50% DONG Energy, 30% E.ON UK Renewables and 20% Masdar.  In March 2009, the backers agreed on an initial investment of €2.2 billion. Financing of phase 1 was achieved through the European Investment Bank and the Danish Export Credit Fund with £250 million.  In 2013, in response to Ofgem "Offshore Transmission Owner" regulations, the consortium divested the electrical transmission assets of the wind farm (valued at £459 million) to Blue Transmission London Array Limited – an entity incorporated by Barclays Infrastructure Funds Management Limited (Barclays) and Diamond UK Transmission Corporation (a Mitsubishi Corporation subsidiary).  In January 2014, DONG sold half its stake to Quebec public pension plan manager ("").  At the time of its construction it was the largest offshore wind farm in the world.

Construction and commissioning.

Offshore work began in March 2011 with construction of the first foundation.  Turbines were supplied by Siemens Wind Power. Their foundations were built by a joint-venture between Per Aarsleff and Bilfinger Berger Ingenieurbau GmbH. The same company supplied and installed the monopiles. Generators were installed by MPI and A2SEA, using an installation vessel and a jack-up barge "Sea Worker". Two offshore substations were designed, fabricated and installed by Future Energy, a joint venture between Fabricom, Iemants and Geosea, while electrical systems and onshore substation work was undertaken by Siemens Transmission & Distribution. The subsea export cable was supplied by Nexans and array cables by JDR Cable Systems. The array cables and the export cables were installed by VSMC.  The wind farm started producing electricity at the end of October 2012. All 175 turbines of phase 1 were confirmed fully operational on 8 April 2013, and the wind farm was formally inaugurated by the Prime minister David Cameron on 4 July 2013. In December 2015 it produced 369 GWh, a monthly capacity factor of 78.9%. It produced 2.5 TWh in 2015. During two days of January 2016, production varied from 3 MW to 619 MW.

Phase 2.

A second phase was planned which would have seen a further 166 turbines installed to increase the capacity to 1000 MW. However, the second phase was scaled back and finally cancelled in February 2014 after concerns were raised by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds about its effect on a local population of red-throated divers.

The London Array is a 175-turbine 630 MW Round 2 offshore wind farm located off the Kent coast in the outer Thames Estuary in the United Kingdom. It was the largest offshore wind farm in the world until Walney Extension reached full production in September 2018.

伦敦阵列(),全名「伦敦阵列离岸风力发电厂」(英语:London Array Offshore Wind Farm),为一座海上风力发电厂,位于英国泰晤士河口外肯特郡海岸11公里(7英里)处,为英国第二轮离岸风电计划中的发电厂之一。在2013年到2018年间,伦敦阵列为世界上最大的海上风力发电厂。但2018年9月沃尔尼风力发电厂落成后,其超越伦敦阵列成为世界上最大的海上风力发电厂。


Description.

"Postosuchus" was one of the largest carnivorous reptiles during the late Triassic. Adults reached around in height, in length from snout to tail tip and their mass might have ranged from. It had a massively built skull bearing dagger-like teeth. The neck was elongated, expanding to a short torso and long tail. Along with remains of the skeleton, paleontologists also identify osteoderms, which were thick plates forming scales. These were on its back, neck, and possibly above or under the tail.  The neck of "Postosuchus" consists of at least eight cervical vertebrae followed by sixteen dorsals, while four co-ossified sacral vertebrae supported the hips. It is thought to be over thirty vertebrae in the tail decreasing in size to the end. The pelvis with the hooked pubis and the rod-like ischium looked like those of carnosaur dinosaurs. The ribcage of "Postosuchus" had typical archosaur structure, composed of large and slender, curved ribs. In some discoveries ribs were found associated with gastralia, dermal bones located in the ventral region of the body.

Skull.

The skull of "Postosuchus" was constructed narrow in front and extended wide and deep behind. It was 55 cm in length and 21 cm broad and deep. There are many fenestrae (openings) present in the bones that lighten the skull, providing space for the muscles. Like more derived archosaurs, the lower jaw had mandibular fenestrae (openings at the lower jaw), formed by the junction of the dentary with other jaw bones (surangular and angular). "Postosuchus" had very good long distant sight, due to large orbits, supporting large and sharp eyes, and strong olfaction provided by elongated nostrils. Inside the skull, under the nostrils, there was a hollow that may have contained the Jacobson's organ, an olfactory sensory organ sometimes referred as the "sixth sense". The jaws held large and sharp serrated teeth, of which some were developed even larger to operate as hooked sabers. A complete tooth found among "Postosuchus" remains in North Carolina measured about 7.2 cm in height. "Postosuchus" possessed heterodonty dentition, which means each tooth was different in size and shape from the others. The upper jaw contained seventeen teeth, with each premaxilla bearing only four teeth and each maxilla thirteen teeth. In the lower jaw were over thirty teeth. Replacement activity in "Postosuchus" was different from that of crocodiles, since the replacement tooth didn't fit directly in the pulp cavity of the old tooth, but grew until resorption of the old tooth was complete.

Limbs and posture.

With the forelimbs being approximately 64% of the hindlimbs, "Postosuchus" had small hands bearing five toes. Only the first toe bore a large claw, which was used as an offensive weapon, and the forelimbs were robust, probably to hold the prey. The feet were much larger than the hands, with the fifth metatarsal forming a hook shape. The halluxes were slenderer than the other toes and the marginal ones could not touch the ground. Being a crurotarsan, the heel and ankle of "Postosuchus" resemble those of modern crocodiles. The limbs were located underneath the body giving "Postosuchus" an upright stance. Historically, there has been debate over whether or not rauisuchids like "Postosuchus" were mainly bipedal or quadrupedal. Each one of "Postosuchus"'s two forelimbs was slightly over half the size of the hindlimbs. This characteristic of short forelimbs can usually be seen in bipedal reptiles. Chatterjee suggested that "Postosuchus" could walk in an erect stance, since the short forelimbs were probably used only during slow locomotion. In 1995 Robert Long and Phillip A. Murry argued that "Postosuchus" was heavily built and quadrupedal. Peyer et al. 2008, argued that the thick pectoral girdle served for locomotion of the forelimbs. They noted that this does not, however, detract from the theory that "Postosuchus" could also walk bipedally. In 2013, a major study of the skeletal structure concluded that "Postosuchus" may have been an obligate biped based on evidence from the anatomy of the digits, vertebrae, and pelvis. The proportions of the limbs and weight-bearing sections of the spine were very similar to many theropod dinosaurs, nearly all of which are thought to have been strictly bipedal.

History.

During an expedition in 1980, paleontologists of the Texas Tech University discovered a new geological site rich in fossils near Post, Garza County, Texas, US, where a dozen well-preserved specimens belonging to a new rauisuchid were found. In the following years further excavation in the Post Quarry, in Cooper Canyon Formation (Dockum Group), unearthed many remains of late Triassic terrestrial fauna. The holotype of "P. kirkpatricki" (TTUP 9000), representing a well-preserved skull and a partial postcranial skeleton, was described along with other findings of this new genus by paleontologist Sankar Chatterjee in 1985. A paratype, TTU-P 9002, representing a well-preserved skull and a complete skeleton was also assigned to this species. Chatterjee named the species after Mr. and Mrs. Jack Kirkpatrick who helped during his fieldwork. Subsequently, some specimens (such manus and toe bones) were re-assigned to "Chatterjeea" and "Lythrosuchus"; Long and Murry pointed out that many of the juvenile skeletons (TTUP 9003-9011), which Chatterjee assigned to "P. kirkpatricki", belong to a distinct genus, named "Chatterjeea elegans". Furthermore, in 2006 Nesbitt and Norell argued that "Chatterjeea" is a junior synonym of "Shuvosaurus".  In 2008, Peyer "et al.", described a new species of "Postosuchus", "P. alisonae" that was discovered in 1992 in Triangle Brick Co. Quarry, Durham County, North Carolina. The remains were prepared and reconstructed between 1994 and 1998 by the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of North Carolina. The specific name is in reference to Alison L. Chambers, who worked to popularize paleontology in North Carolina. The skeleton of "P. alisonae" consists of a few cranial bones, seven neck, one back, and four tail vertebrae, ribs, gastralia ("belly ribs"), chevrons, bony scutes, much of the shoulder girdles, most of the forelimbs except the left wrist and hand, most of the hindlimbs except for the thigh bones, and pieces from the hip. Moreover, the well-preserved remains of "P. alisonae" shed new light on parts of "Postosuchus" anatomy, which were previously not well known. Specifically, the differences between the manus bones of "P. kirkpatricki" and "P. alisonae" confirm the chimera theory (associated fossils belonging to different animals) suggested by Long and Murry. The holotype specimen of "P. alisonae" (UNC 15575) is also unusual in its preservation of gut contents: bones from at least four other animals, including a partial skeleton of an aetosaur, a snout, coracoid, and humerus of the traversodontid cynodont "Plinthogomphodon", two phalanges from a dicynodont, and a possible temnospondyl bone. Furthermore, the "Postosuchus" was positioned on top of a skeleton of the sphenosuchian "Dromicosuchus", which included tooth marks on the skull and neck. "P. alisonae" represents the largest suchian reptile recovered from the quarry and the first articulated specimen of 'rauisuchian' archosaur found in eastern North America.

Putative occurrences.

Specimens similar to "Postosuchus" were discovered in Crosby County, Texas in 1920, and described by paleontologist Ermine Cowles Case in 1922. The fossils were composed only of an isolated braincase (UM 7473) and fragments of pelvic bones (UM 7244). Case then mistakenly assigned these specimens to the dinosaur genus "Coelophysis". In the case of the braincase later assigned to "Postosuchus", in 2002 paleontologist David J. Gower argued that the specimen is not complete and may belong to an ornithodire. Between 1932 and 1934, Case discovered other fossils of caudal vertebrae (UMMP 13670) in Rotten Hill, Texas, and a complete pelvis (UCMP V72183/113314) near Kalgary, Texas. Within the same period, paleontologist Charles Lewis Camp collected over a hundred "rauisuchian" bones, from what is now the Petrified Forest National Park of Arizona, which belong to at least seven individuals (UCMP A296, MNA 207C). Later, more remains came to light. In 1943, Case again described a pelvis along with a pubis (UM 23127) from the Dockum Group of Texas, which dates from the Carnian through the early Norian stages of Late Triassic period. These early findings, from 1932 to 1943, were initially referred to as a new phytosaur reptile, but assigned forty years later to "Postosuchus".  The first articulated skeleton referred to "P. kirkpatricki" (CM 73372) was recovered by David S. Berman of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, in Coelophysis Quarry at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, between 1988 and 1989. This specimen was composed of a well-preserved skeleton without skull and was described by Long and Murry in 1995, Weinbaum in 2002 and Novak in 2004. The specimen represents a skeletally immature individual because none of the neural sutures are closed. It was referred to "P. kirkpatricki" by Long and Murry (1995) without specific justification, and more recent studies accepted this referral. Nevertheless, Nesbitt (2011) noted that these studies failed to note any synapomorphies unique to "P. kirkpatricki" and CM 73372. Weinbaum (2002) and Novak (2004) even noted that the preacetabular process of the ilium in CM 73372 was much longer than that of "P. kirkpatricki". Nesbitt (2011) also noted that CM 73372 differs from "P. kirkpatricki" and "Rauisuchus" in possessing a concave ventral margin of the ilium, and from "P. alisonae" in processing an asymmetrical distal end of the fourth metatarsal. Nesbitt (2011) couldn't differentiate CM 73372 and "Polonosuchus" as they overlap only in the caudal vertebrae. A phylogenetic analysis conducted by Nesbitt (2011), one of the most extensive on archosaurs, found CM 73372 to be the most basal crocodylomorph, thus referable neither to "P. kirkpatricki" nor to Rauisuchidae.  In their description of "Vivaron", Lessner "et al." (2016) questioned the random referral of all rauisuchid material from the southwestern US to "Postosuchus", saying that the discovery of "Vivaron" stresses the need for a re-appraisal of all material from localities younger or older than unequivocal remains of "Postosuchus" and "Vivaron".

Paleoecology.

"Postosuchus" lived in a tropical environment. The moist and warm region consisted of ferns, such as "Cynepteris", "Phelopteris" and "Clathropteris", gymnosperms, represented by "Pelourdea", "Araucarioxylon", "Woodworthia", "Otozamites" and "Dinophyton", and cycads like "Sanmiguelia". Plants of the Dockum Group are not well known since the oxidizing of the environment has destroyed most of the plant fossils. Some of them may, however, provide information about the climate in Dockum Group during the late Triassic period. For example, the discovery of large specimens belonging to "Araucarioxylon" determine that the region was well watered. The fauna found in Dockum Group confirm that there were lakes and/or rivers containing fish such as the cartilaginous "Xenacanthus", the lobe-finned "Chinlea" and the dipnoan "Ceratodus". On the shores of these rivers lived labyrinthodonts ("Latiscopus") and reptiles such as "Malerisaurus" and "Trilophosaurus". Also living on the margins of the lakes were the archosaurs "Leptosuchus", "Nicrosaurus" and "Rutiodon". "Postosuchus" lived in the uplands along with "Coelophysis" and other archosaurs such as "Desmatosuchus" and "Typothorax". "Postosuchus" was one of the largest animals in that ecosystem and preyed on herbivores such as "Trilophosaurus" and "Typothorax".

Postosuchus, meaning "Crocodile from Post", is an extinct genus of rauisuchid reptiles comprising two species, "P. kirkpatricki" and "P. alisonae", that lived in what is now North America during the Late Triassic. "Postosuchus" is a member of the clade Pseudosuchia, the lineage of archosaurs that includes modern crocodilians (the other main group of archosaurs is Avemetatarsalia, the lineage that includes non-avian dinosaurs and their descendants, birds). Its name refers to Post Quarry, a place in Texas where many fossils of the type species, "P. kirkpatricki", were found. It was one of the apex predators of its area during the Triassic, larger than the small dinosaur predators of its time (such as "Coelophysis"). It was a hunter which probably preyed on dicynodonts and many other creatures smaller than itself.

波斯特鳄属(属名:Postosuchus)又译后鳄龙,是种主龙类爬行动物,属于伪鳄类的副鳄形类,是现代鳄鱼的早期远亲。牠们生存于三叠纪晚期的北美洲,约2亿2100万年前到2亿200万年前。波斯特鳄是该地区三叠纪时期的顶级掠食动物。波斯特鳄可能猎食其他较小型的爬行动物。


Types.

Ice discs.

Ice discs form on the outer bends in a river where the accelerating water creates a force called 'rotational shear', which breaks off a chunk of ice and twists it around. As the disc rotates, it grinds against surrounding ice — smoothing into a circle. A relatively uncommon phenomenon, one of the earliest recordings is of a slowly revolving disc spotted on the Mianus River and reported in an 1895 edition of "Scientific American".

Ice pans.

River specialist and geography professor Joe Desloges states that ice pans are "surface slabs of ice that form in the center of a lake or creek, instead of along the water’s edge". As water cools, ice crystals form into 'frazil ice' and can cluster together into a pan-shaped formation. If an ice pan accumulates enough frazil ice and the current remains slow, the pan may transform into a 'hanging dam', a heavy block of ice with high ridges and a low centre.

Formation.

Conditions.

It is believed that ice circles form in eddy currents. It has been shown that existing ice discs can maintain their rotation due to melting.

Physics.

Ice circles tend to rotate even when they form in water that is not moving. The ice circle lowers the temperature of the water around it, which causes the water to become denser than the slightly warmer water around it. The dense water then sinks and creates its own circular motion, causing the ice circle to rotate.

Size.

An unusual natural phenomenon, ice disks occur in slowly moving water in cold climates and can vary in size, with circles more than 15 metres (49 ft) in diameter observed. Ice Circle of Vana-Vigala in Estonia is reported to have had a diameter of over 20 meters, whilst one approximately 298 feet (91 meters) in diameter appeared in Westbrook, Maine in January 2019.

Notable Examples.

Ice discs have most frequently been observed in Scandinavia and North America. An ice disc was observed in Wales in December 2008 and another one in England in January 2009. An ice disc was observed on the Sheyenne River in North Dakota in December 2013. An ice circle of approximately in diameter was observed and photographed in Lake Katrine, New York on the Esopus Creek around January 23, 2014. In Idaho, extreme weather led to a rare sighting of an ice disc on the Snake River on January 22, 2014.  On January 14, 2019, an ice disc approximately 298 feet (91 metres) wide on the Presumpscot River in Westbrook, Maine, United States drew wide media attention. A smaller disc was reported by park rangers in Baxter State Park, in northern Maine, the same month. In January, 2020, an ice disc appeared on the Kennebec River in Skowhegan, Maine, United States

Artificial ice circles.

Artificial ice circles have also been created by cutting a large circle in a sheet of ice. These artificial creations are called "ice carousels". Record setting ice carousels are recorded by the World Ice Carousel Association.

Ice discs, ice circles, ice pans, or ice crepes are a very rare natural phenomenon that occurs in slow moving water in cold climates. They are thin circular slabs of ice that rotate slowly on a body of water's surface.

冰圈(或称冰盘),是一种在水中缓慢旋转的圆形薄冰片,一般认为形成于涡旋中。冰圈通常于斯堪的纳维亚半岛和北美洲出现,但它们偶尔也会在如英格兰和威尔士等较南部的地区被观察到(如:2008年的威尔士、和2009年的英格兰所观察到的冰圈)。


Themes.

Historical geography seeks to determine how cultural features of various societies across the planet emerged and evolved by understanding their interaction with their local environment and surroundings.

Development of the discipline.

In its early days, historical geography was difficult to define as a subject. A textbook from the 1950s cites a previous definition as an 'unsound attempt by geographers to explain history'. Its author, J. B. Mitchell, came down firmly on the side of geography: 'the historical geographer is a geographer first last and all the time'. By 1975 the first number of the "Journal of Historical Geography" had widened the discipline to a broader church: 'the writings of scholars of any disciplinary provenance who have something to say about matters of geographical interest relating to past time'.  For some in the United States of America, the term "historical geography" has a more specialized meaning: the name given by Carl Ortwin Sauer of the University of California, Berkeley to his program of reorganizing cultural geography (some say all geography) along regional lines, beginning in the first decades of the 20th century. To Sauer, a landscape and the cultures in it could only be understood if all of its influences through history were taken into account: physical, cultural, economic, political, environmental. Sauer stressed regional specialization as the only means of gaining sufficient expertise on regions of the world. Sauer's philosophy was the principal shaper of American geographic thought in the mid-20th century. Regional specialists remain in academic geography departments to this day. Despite this, some geographers feel that it harmed the discipline; that too much effort was spent on data collection and classification, and too little on analysis and explanation. Studies became more and more area-specific as later geographers struggled to find places to make names for themselves. These factors may have led in turn to the 1950s crisis in geography, which raised serious questions about geography as an academic discipline in the USA.  This sub-branch of human geography is closely related to history, environmental history, and historical ecology.

Historical geography is the branch of geography that studies the ways in which geographic phenomena have changed over time. It is a synthesizing discipline which shares both topical and methodological similarities with history, anthropology, ecology, geology, environmental studies, literary studies, and other fields. Although the majority of work in historical geography is considered human geography, the field also encompasses studies of geographic change which are not primarily anthropogenic. Historical geography is often a major component of school and university curricula in geography and social studies. Current research in historical geography is being performed by scholars in more than forty countries.

历史地理学或历史地理是研究在历史发展中地理环境及其演变规律的学科。基本上历史地理是把地理学加上时间影响的因素,所以它是地理学的分支学科,又与沿革地理研究有密不可分的关系。


Plot.

Lucia Nanami, the mermaid princess of the North Pacific Ocean, sets out on land to find the boy that she had saved from a tsunami wave seven years before the beginning of the story, to whom she fell in love and had entrusted her pink pearl. She eventually finds the boy: a teenage surfer named Kaito Dōmoto. However, Kaito does not recognize Lucia in her human form. She cannot directly tell Kaito who she really is; otherwise, according to mermaid legend, she would turn into bubbles and disappear. Lucia tries to convince Kaito into figuring out who she really is (since the legend doesn't say anything about the other person discovering a mermaid's true identity by him or her self).  At the same time, Lucia has been told that a group of water demons have invaded the sea world and she must gather six other Mermaid Princesses and their pearls to bring back the legendary goddess Aqua Regina to stop them. To fulfill this, she joins forces with Hanon and Rina, the Mermaid Princesses who came up to dry land, use their pearls, turn into singing Teen idols, and use their voices as an offensive power. After the water demons fail, the Black Beauty Sisters show up to steal the show. The Mermaid Princess believe in themselves and believe they can defeat the Black Beauty Sisters, which they do.

Media.

Manga.

The original manga, created by Yokote with illustrations by Hanamori, began serializing in the September 2002 issue of "Nakayoshi". There are a total of 32 chapters, with final one published on the April 2005 issue of the said magazine (released March 2005). There are a total of seven "tankōbon" volumes by Kodansha, the first six containing five chapters each and final one having two. They were released between March 20, 2003 and April 30, 2005.  Del Rey Manga acquired the rights to publish the manga for the North American audience. It began releasing the manga on April 2006 under the title "Pichi Pichi Pitch: Mermaid Melody". The English translations of the seven volumes were released from April 25, 2006 to October 30, 2007. The seventh volume, aside from the final two chapters, also contains two preview chapters from other manga.

Anime.

An anime adaptation produced by TV Aichi, We've, and Tokyu Agency, animated by Actas and Synergy Japan, and directed by Yoshitaka Fujimoto aired in Japan in two seasons. The first season, simply named "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch" and covers manga chapters 1 to 20, aired between April 5, 2003 and March 27, 2004. They were compiled into 14 DVD volumes. The second season, "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure", which adapts events from chapters 21 to 30, was aired between April 3 to December 25, 2004. Unlike the first season, "Pure" was compiled into two DVD box sets containing a total of 11 discs.  ADV Films acquired the license to the anime on June 2004 for its North American release, but was eventually dropped due to difficulty in finding backers and securing a TV airing deal. While the acquisition of the license and the production of the English anime predated that of the manga, it is unknown if a release will occur. That is because as of 2009, the anime has been completely dubbed but is being held by Kodansha. In addition, some foreign dubs such as Spanish and French dubbed versions was translated from the unreleased ADV Films' English-dubbed version as a reference when Elastic Rights acquired the licensing rights to Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch from Kodansha in Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and French-speaking Europe and Africa. Likewise, there's an alternative English dub version which it was made in Malaysia by an unknown dubbing studio for (which released the anime series in Asia outside Japan and Korea on behalf of Kodansha). It aired on TV3 in 2006 and later moved its sister channel TV9 in English with or without Malay subtitles. However, the Malaysian English dubbed version became very hard to find than the ADV's dubbed version since it never officially released to home video neither in Malaysia nor in English-speaking Asian territories.  A total of six theme songs were composed for the anime. The first opening theme, by Miyuki Kanbe, and the first ending theme by Asumi Nakata, are used in the first 28 episodes. For 29th to the 52nd episodes, "Rainbow Notes♪" by Kanbe and by Nakata, Hitomi Terakado, and Mayumi Asano, are the second opening and ending themes respectively. For "Pure", the opening theme is "Before the Moment" by Eri Kitamura while by Nakata, Terakado, and Asano is the ending song.

Other music.

There are also other pieces of music used in the anime, either as battle songs performed by the Mermaid Princesses or their enemies or as insert songs. All songs listed below are compiled in several character singles, soundtrack, and vocal albums (which also include the theme songs listed above):

Video games.

Three video games (developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan) were released on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance console during the original run of the anime. All the games featured multiplayer capabilities, but required each player to have his or her own copy of the game in order to play.

Reception.

Reviews for the English manga have been generally unfavorable. Robert Harris of Mania.com has managed to score all of its volumes Cs and below, even going insofar as to rate its 7th and final volume an F-, making it the only manga series on site to receive such a score. Meanwhile, Anime News Network's Melissa Harper managed to only review the second volume of the manga and commented that while it has good visuals, its story is too childish in some of its elements.

A 91-episode anime series was produced by TV Aichi, divided into two seasons, aired in Japan from April 2003 to December 2004. The first season is composed of 52 episodes, while the second, entitled "Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch Pure", lasted for 39.

《真珠美人鱼》()是由横手美智子原作,花森小桃作画的日本漫画作品。以魔法少女为题材,由讲谈社发行。2003年改编成电视动画,由We've及爱知电视台制作。中文版本方面,香港漫画版由天下出版社发行,台湾漫画版由长鸿出版社发行,动画版则分别于香港的无线电视翡翠台,以及台湾的东森幼幼台、华视、momo亲子台播放。