Dennis C. Blair

Dennis Cutler Blair (born February 4, 1947) is the former United States Director of National Intelligence and is a retired United States Navy admiral who was the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific region. Blair was a career officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the White House during the presidencies of both President Jimmy Carter and President Ronald Reagan. Blair retired from the Navy in 2002 as an Admiral. In 2009, Blair was selected as President Barack Obama’s first Director of National Intelligence, but after a series of bureaucratic battles, he resigned on May 20, 2010.
He currently serves as a member of the Energy Security Leadership Council of Securing America's Future Energy, and is on the boards of the Atlantic Council, Freedom House, the National Bureau of Asian Research, and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. He also serves as co-chair of the annual Pacific Energy Summit.
He also serves as a senior advisor to Ron Wahid, Chairman of Arcanum, a global strategic intelligence company and subsidiary of Magellan Investment Holdings.
Early years.
Blair was born in Kittery, Maine, the son of Abbie Dora (née Ansel) and Captain Carvel Hall Blair. He is a sixth-generation naval officer and the great-great-great-grandson of Confederate Chief Engineer William Price Williamson of North Carolina, who is credited with first suggesting that the hull of the be used to build the Confederate ironclad . He also counts portrait painter Charles Willson Peale and U.S. Attorney General William Wirt among his ancestors.
Blair attended St. Andrew's School (1964), and, as a classmate of Oliver North graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1968. The class of 1968 at the academy also included retired Admiral Michael Mullen, the 17th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former Senator James H. Webb, and retired General Michael Hagee, former Commandant of the Marine Corps, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden.
Naval career.
Following his graduation from the Naval Academy, he was assigned to the guided missile destroyer . He then received a Rhodes Scholarship, reading Russian studies at Oxford University, attending during the same time future president Bill Clinton studied there. He served as a White House Fellow from 1975 to 1976 with Wesley Clark and Marshall Carter.
Blair spent over 34 years in the United States Navy. He served on guided missile destroyers in both the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and commanded the Kitty Hawk Battle Group between 1994 and 1995. Blair commanded the USS "Cochrane" from 1984 to 1986 and the Pearl Harbor Naval Station from 1988 to 1989. Blair was known as a thoughtful commander, but is also remembered for moments of levity during his leadership. He is believed to be the first naval officer to ever attempt water-skiing behind his modern destroyer as skipper.
His last job in the military was as Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command, the highest-ranking officer over most of the U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region. During his tenure, he developed a series of programs and joint exercises with militaries in the region and broadened the relationships between the U.S. military and partner nations.
Blair was in command at USPACOM when a United States Navy EP-3E ARIES II signals intelligence aircraft and a People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) J-8II interceptor fighter jet collided in mid-air, resulting in the death of a Chinese crewmember and the emergency landing of the EP-3. Following the landing, the 24 U.S. crewmen aboard were detained in China for 10 days. The so-called Hainan Island incident threatened to escalate already tense relations between the United States and China. Blair played in a key role in managing the crisis.
Previously, he was Director of the Joint Staff in the Office of the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and served in budget and policy positions on several major Navy staffs and the National Security Council staff. He was also the first Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support. He retired from the Navy in 2002.
Reports of disobeying orders.
According to journalist Alan Nairn, during his tenure as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, Blair disobeyed orders from civilians in the Clinton administration during the 1999 East Timorese crisis. Amid growing international concern over violence against the independence movement in Indonesian-occupied East Timor, Blair was ordered to meet with General Wiranto, the commander of the Indonesian military, and to tell him to shut down the pro-Indonesia militia. According to Nairn, two days after the Liquiçá Church Massacre, Blair failed to deliver this message, instead presenting Wiranto with an offer of military assistance and a personal invitation to be Blair's guest in Hawaii. Consequently, Wiranto's "forces increased the Timor killings". During his confirmation hearing as Director of National Intelligence, Blair denied the accusations: "In our conversations with leaders of Indonesia, both military and civilian, we decried and said that the torture and killing that was being conducted by paramilitary groups and some military groups in East Timor had to stop"; "those who say that I was somehow carrying out my own policy or saying things that were not in accordance with American policy are just flat wrong". Blair was unanimously approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee, his tenure lasting just fifteen months, at which point he was fired, reportedly for disobeying orders from President Obama.
Conflict of interest.
His membership on the board of directors of EDO Corporation, a subcontractor for the F-22 Raptor fighter program, and ownership of its stock was raised as a potential conflict of interest after the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) issued a study that endorsed a three-year contract for the program. In a 2006 report, the Project on Government Oversight publicized the results of this study and exposed Blair's conflict of interest. Blair told the "Washington Post", "My review was not affected at all by my association with EDO Corp., and the report was a good one". He originally chose not to recuse himself because he claimed his link to EDO was not of sufficient "scale" to require it, but he subsequently resigned from the EDO board to avoid any misperceptions.
On December 20 2006, "The Washington Post" reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General's investigation into the affair found Blair had violated IDA's Conflict of Interest rules but did not influence the result of IDA's study. Blair observed, "with all due respect to the Inspector General, I find it hard to understand how I could be criticized for violating conflict of interest standards when I didn't have any influence on the study".
Decorations and notability.
His decorations include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with three oak leaf clusters (4 awards), Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (4 awards), Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Navy Achievement Medal, and the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal with one star (2 awards), as well as numerous other campaign and service awards. He has been decorated by the governments of Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, Thailand and Taiwan.
Retirement.
After retiring from the Navy, Blair held the "John M. Shalikashvili Chair in National Security Studies" at The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR), and the "General of the Army Omar N. Bradley Chair of Strategic Leadership" at Dickinson College and the U.S. Army War College. He served as President of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) from 2003 to 2007, a U.S. government think tank in the Washington, D.C. area focused on national security. He was also Deputy Executive Director of the Project on National Security Reform.
Blair is now serving as the Chairman of the Board at Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA, a U.S.-Japan relations think tank in Washington, DC. He also serves as co-chair of the Pacific Energy Summit, an annual forum that brings together key energy and environmental stakeholders from across the Asia-Pacific to discuss policies and practices needed to promote energy and environmental security.
Blair is the co-head of the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property along with former governor of Utah and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman.
Director of National Intelligence.
Nomination.
Dennis C. Blair became the third Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on January 29, 2009, after being nominated by newly inaugurated President Barack Obama.
The East Timor and Indonesia Action Network opposed Blair's nomination for Director of National Intelligence, saying "His actions demonstrate the failure of engagement to temper the Indonesian military’s behavior and his actions helped to reinforce impunity for senior Indonesian officials that continues to this day".
During his confirmation, Director Blair indicated he did not support a domestic intelligence agency separate from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also promised to end special interrogation regimes, believing the Intelligence Community must conduct analysis on opportunities as well as threats.
Appointment of Intelligence Community representatives.
In May 2009, Blair attempted to assert the DNI's role as the head of the Intelligence Community with a memo claiming authority to appoint CIA chiefs of station abroad. This was vehemently opposed by CIA Director Leon Panetta, who issued a memo of his own.
Blair's two predecessors, Mike McConnell and John Negroponte, were both unable to bring this role under the auspices of the DNI, the authority to appoint chiefs of station having been the province of the CIA since 1947. According to news reports, President Bush issued an executive order to give Blair his congressionally-mandated powers to force the CIA and other intelligence agencies to cooperate with his office. A number of government executives agreed that the DNI should not have to go to the President each time the DNI wants to implement guidance. In late July 2009, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence backed Director Blair, asking the CIA to give "prompt adherence" to Blair's decision.
However, on November 10, 2009, the White House decided in the CIA's favor, agreeing that the authority to appoint station chiefs overseas should remain with the CIA. Some intelligence experts believed this significantly weakened the DNI's authority, comparing the DNI to a DCI without an agency. Senator Susan Collins of Maine expressed concerns during hearings over the botched 2009 Christmas terrorist attack that the White House had undermined the power of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence by siding with the CIA in turf disputes, specifically citing this disagreement over intelligence community appointees. In a January 2010 statement to lawmakers by Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, who led the 9-11 Commission Report, Kean and Hamilton urged Obama to be clear who was in charge and urged a strong DNI. According to "The Washington Post", a former Clinton administration official suggested scrapping the DNI position if Blair were removed.
Testimony on use of assassination on United States citizens.
On February 3, 2010, as Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair testified before Congress, "If that direct action--we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that...I would rather go into details in closed session, Mr. Chairman, but we don't target people for free speech. We target them for taking action that threatens Americans or has resulted in it." Blair also said: "Being a U.S. citizen will not spare an American from getting assassinated by military or intelligence operatives overseas if the individual is working with terrorists and planning to attack fellow Americans."
Dismissal.
On May 20, 2010, President Obama asked for Blair's resignation, from his role as Director of National Intelligence which was tendered that day effective May 28. There are conflicting reports as to why Blair was asked to resign.
U.S.–France intelligence project linked to Blair's dismissal.
On May 22, 2010, two days after the resignation was announced, U.S. officials leaked information to "The New York Times" stating that Blair's dismissal had been related to his continual pushing of a U.S.–French intelligence-sharing project "with other countries". Blair and Bernard Bajolet, intelligence advisor to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, had commenced negotiations between October and December 2009 on the pact. The treaty was to have been a legally binding reciprocal no-spying arrangement between France and the United States, whereby each country would take over operations for the other in their home-territory. Under the proposed treaty, U.S. operations in France would be run by French intelligence. This was to be a signed treaty arrangement, a more formal version than the UK–USA Security Agreement. In the month before the treaty failure, President Sarkozy made a number of U.S. visits, the first visit was on March 31, 2010. During the visit, Sarkozy was the first head of state invited by Obama to dine in the White House's private dining quarters. Press releases from both governments made mention of the close relationship between the two heads of state. Mr. Sarkozy was also in Washington for the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit from April 12–14, immediately prior to President Obama's rejection of the treaty produced by eight months of negotiations by Blair.
US officials claimed that the U.S.–France intelligence-sharing treaty had been rejected by President Obama, adding that DNI Blair's "continued pushing" for the pact after presidential rejection were grounds for his dismissal. It was further claimed that President Sarkozy had been upset at the late-stage U.S. drawback in the deal. U.S. sources claimed that the treaty had been signed, despite U.S. claims that the treaty had been rejected by President Obama.
In an unusual response, the Palais de l'Elysee confirmed that such a treaty had been negotiated, adding that "we weren't the askers" in the deal, denying any French disappointment. French officials further specified that part of the U.S. offer to France comprised access to a "secure intelligence data and retrieval exchange system", this being an in-progress U.S. acquisition under the auspices of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. French officials characterized the treaty as minor, stating, "nothing has changed in our relationship" in relation to the treaty failure and Blair's dismissal. Officially, France denies conducting operations on U.S. soil.
Possible DNI–CIA political issues related to dismissal.
Matthew Aid, an espionage historian, offered a different rationale for Blair's dismissal.
According to Aid, the White House's rejection of Blair's attempt to bring the appointment of station chiefs under the DNI's authority soured Blair's relationships with Panetta, despite a long personal friendship between the two, and Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, who had sided with Panetta in the dispute (Brennan later succeeded Panetta as Director of the CIA). When it was discovered that the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting and the attempted bombing of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 a month later could have been prevented with better inter-agency intelligence sharing, Brennan and Panetta allegedly blamed Blair (which, according to Aid, was not justified), resulting in Obama's decision to replace him.


Kay Stonham

Kay Stonham is a British actress, writer and academic.
Background.
Stonham graduated from Rose Bruford College in 1977. Stonham has a master's degree in Screenwriting for Film and Television from Royal Holloway, University of London. She was a member of the regular cast of Jasper Carrott's BBC TV comedy sketch show "Carrott's Lib" in 1982. She co-created and co-wrote series one and two of the BBC Radio 4 series "Robin and Wendy's Wet Weekends", and was sole writer on series three and four. She took the part of Wendy Mayfield opposite collaborator on the first two series Simon Greenall as Robin Mayfield.
Career.
She created the series "Audio Diaries" for Radio 4 which ran for three series from 1998 to 2001. This innovative mockumentary was ahead of its time in style and content.
As a performer she appeared in another mock documentary series "People Like Us" both in its Radio 4 and BBC 2 incarnations. She was also a contributor to other Radio 4 comedy shows including "The Sunday Format", "Dead Ringers" and "Week Ending". She won the Radio Light Entertainment Titheridge Award in 1995.
In 1995 she shared a Writers' Guild of Great Britain award with her co-writers for the television comedy series "Harry Enfield and Chums". Simon Greenall shared the same award. Other TV sketch shows she has written for include "Alistair McGowan's Big Impression" for BBC 1, and "Alas Smith and Jones" for BBC 2, "The Sketch Show" for ITV, "Comedy Nation" for BBC 2 and "TV to Go" for BBC 1.
She was a table writer on My Family in 2006.
Her work for children's and young peoples TV includes, "Kerching" for CBBC, "Girls in Love" for Granada Kids, and "Grange Hill" for Mersey Television. "Dani's House" for CBBC and "Shaun the Sheep" for Aardman Animation.
Teaching.
She is a Teaching Fellow in Screenwriting at Worcester University. She also teaches screenwriting at the London Film School.


Daniel Cane

Daniel Cane is a founder of Blackboard Inc. and CourseInfo LLC. He is CEO and co-founder of Modernizing Medicine
Biography.
Cane grew up in Lake Worth, Florida United States, attended Lake Worth High School and graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree from the undergraduate business program at Cornell University Department of Applied Economics and Management. In 1997, during his senior year at Cornell, he co-founded CourseInfo LLC, a small e-learning company focused on the development of a new course management system.
In 1998, "CourseInfo LLC", founded by Cane and Stephen Gilfus, and "Blackboard LLC", founded by Michael Chasen and Matthew Pittinsky merged to form Blackboard Inc. The first line of e-learning products was branded Blackboard CourseInfo, but the CourseInfo brand was dropped in 2000.
In February 2009, Cane left Blackboard to found Kadoo, a web service that gives users 10GB of free space to upload and share photos, videos, files or other digital assets. The site owner retains control over their file space in the cloud. Cane created a social-sharing platform based on the concepts of relationship context searching. The Kadoo platform enabled the person sharing the information to control who had access and revoke permissions after the fact. Kadoo raised $5M in VC and was sold to 3Sixty Enterprises.
On July 2011 Blackboard was purchased for $1.6 Billion by Providence Equity Partners.
Cane is currently the CEO and co-founder of South Florida-based Modernizing Medicine, a healthcare IT company. Co-founded by Cane and Chief Medical Officer Michael Sherling, M.D., the company has had five rounds of financing, the most recent round occurring in May 2017 with a $231 million investment by Warburg Pincus . Since founding the company in 2010, Cane's company raised a total of nearly $300M in funding and hired almost 800 employees.
In 2019, the company relocated their headquarters in Boca Raton, Fl to the 'old IBM campus' where the PC was first invented.
Cane has been invited to speak at forums in Florida and other U.S. states, and in 2013 participated in The Human Experience, the first TEDx in Delray Beach. At the United Nations headquarters in New York, he was a panel member at the United Nations Economic and Social Council's Civil Society Forum: “Building Partnerships in the Field of Education through Science, Technology and Innovation.” He has also spoken on South Florida Technology Alliance CEO panels and other local technology events.


Scone School of Arts

The Scone School of Arts was a Mechanics' Institute that provided adult education in the town of Scone, New South Wales, Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century. The School, founded in 1868, occupied two heritage listed buildings in Scone - the first from 1873 to 1917, the second from 1924 until the School's closure in 1954.
History.
The origins of the School of Arts can be traced back to the 1841 establishment of a reading society, The Scone Book Society, one of the first educational groups to be established in New South Wales. In 1854, funds were raised to establish the Scone Mutual Instruction Class and Juvenile Library; efforts to establish adult education followed, leading to the formation of a 40-strong Mutual Improvement Association and a reading room in 1868. This was reconstituted as Scone School of Arts in the same year so that it might be eligible for government grants to construct its own building. In February 1869, it had appointed a librarian and purchased books, had 70 members, and was holding regular monthly meetings. In 1868, Bertrand Gordon, third son of Charles Gordon, 10th Marquess of Huntly was elected to the School's committee; at a debate on whether the discovery of gold had been beneficial to Australia, he argued in favour of the motion. In May 1869, "The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser" reported on entertainments as part of fund-raising by the School.
First building.
In January 1871, the School began to raise funds for a building, for which plans were approved in July 1871. A site (91 Kingdon Street) between the town's Presbyterian church and the railway line, was purchased for £11. The proposed hall measured 50ft by 25ft, with a stage and two skillion rooms, and was to be of brick construction with a shingle roof. The 50,000 bricks required for construction were locally produced by a John Newman at £2 per 1000 bricks, and construction began in late 1872. The building officially opened on 9 September 1873. In September 1873, "The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River Advertiser" described it as having "a handsome stuccoed front, of the Tuscan order ... built of brick on a stone foundation, and is roofed with galvanised iron."
This building, now incorporating the local library, with 1359 books, was later (1887-1889) extended to include a new stage, proscenium, reading room, library, ante-room and porch. It hosted a variety of activities, meetings and events, including lectures. Notable speakers included Mark Twain (on 19 December 1895), who gave a talk on 'morals' which, according to the "Scone Advocate", was punctuated with "droll sayings and humour," and Banjo Patterson in 1900.
During the 1890s and 1900s many exhibitions and competitions were held at the school, including needlework, drawing, mapping, writing, spelling bees, elocutionary and music contests. In 1890, it opened a gym (which closed soon after). Membership peaked at 192 in 1906. By July 1908, it started to hold classes including dress-making, cutting and millinery with instructors coming from Sydney Technical College. The School of Arts established drama and musical clubs, and had a billiards table.
It was also used as a drill hall during World War I, having been compulsorily acquired by the Department of Defence for £850 in 1917. The building later reopened as a dance school, a pop-up shop, and as bed and breakfast accommodation, called Willowgate Hall.
Second building.
After the wartime requisition of its first building, the School of Arts eventually located to 214 Kelly Street. It initially purchased land from the Presbyterian Church, but later opted for a new site, for which it paid £330. Its new building, budgeted to cost £1800, was designed by architect Walter Pender and constructed by H Taylor. The Scone branch of the Returned Soldiers' and Sailors' Imperial League of Australia (RSSILA) donated £100 towards the building's cost on condition that they could display an Honour Roll in its lobby and use a room for meetings. Named the Scone Soldiers' Memorial School of Arts, the new building was officially opened on 24 March 1924 and helped the School attract new members, with membership reaching 220. A memorial arch commemorating those who lost their lives in World War I was officially unveiled on 26 August 1924.
During the Great Depression, the school lost government funding, and its reading collection was reduced. An "All Nations Fair" was twice held to raise funds, along with concerts, socials and euchre parties, and in 1933 it hosted exhibition billiards matches by Horace Lindrum. In 1936, the Scone Branch of the Country Women's Association moved their rest rooms to the building, and a baby health clinic opened in 1938. In 1939 work began on installing sewerage to the building and undertaking some renovations.
After World War II, social changes including the passage of Australia's Free Public Library Act began to affect the School's future, and in 1953 the School of Arts Committee proposed to donate the building to Scone Council on condition that it continue to be used as a library; this proposal was accepted by the Council in April 1954. The building was modernised, stocked with new books, and was officially opened on 31 July 1954 by the State Governor, Lieutenant General Sir John Northcott. In 2011, the library was moved to the old Scone Shire Council Chambers, while the former School of Arts building was sold to Transcare, a not-for-profit community organisation providing support and services for local residents.
External link.
A Plan for the Second Building


CERTPOINT Systems

CERTPOINT Systems Inc. is an e-learning software company headquartered in Roslyn Heights, New York that provides e-learning, learning content, talent, performance and workforce management solutions. It has offices in Brussels, Paris, Barcelona, Los Angeles, Abu Dhabi, Johannesburg and Moscow.
History.
Certpoint was founded in 1996 in New York by father and son Constantin and Ara Ohanian.
Formerly known as Vuepoint.
The company's first client was The Hartford, an insurance company that remains a customer decades later. Certpoint clients include Toyota, Honda, Stanley Black & Decker.
Just recently, DCI Donor Services, Inc selected Certpoint as its learning management system (LMS) provider across its family of organ and tissue recovery companies.
On June 1, 2007, Vuepoint and Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training (CERT) became partners and was renamed CERTPOINT Systems Inc.
On 15 November 2011, Certpoint secured $3.5 million growth round to expand sales and channel partnerships.
On March 4, 2013, Infor announced an agreement to combine with the company. Upon completion of the transaction, as announced on April 2, 2013, the company became part of Infor's Learning Technologies team, where they were led by the CERTPOINT's CEO, Ara Ohanian, who became vice president and general manager.
Product.
CERTPOINTVLS and CERTPOINTVLS Mobile are all-in-one global learning platforms.
K-tango is a mobile sales enablement platform which enhances IQ in sales and support channels
External links.
[[Category:Software companies based in New York (state)]]
[[Category:Educational software companies]]
[[Category:Software companies of the United States]]


Alyson Brooks

Alyson Brooks is an American theoretical astrophysicist and professor at Rutgers University. She uses large-scale simulations to determine how galaxies form.
Early life and education.
Brooks grew up in Minnesota. She was interested in astronomy from a young age, and asked for a telescope as a Christmas gift when she was eight. However, she was discouraged from pursuing a career in science in her teens because of the perception that research would be isolating and unwelcoming to women. She started her undergraduate degree in English in 1996 at Macalester College. After doing well in an astronomy elective course, she was invited to join a research project and later changed her major to physics upon discovering the collaborative nature of astronomical research. She wrote an honours thesis called "Boron in the small magellanic cloud: a novel test of light element formation".
Between 2000 and 2008, Brooks was a graduate student at the University of Washington. She completed a master's degree in 2004, then a PhD in 2008. She was supervised by Fabio Governato. Her thesis was "The role of gas in the evolution of disk galaxies".
Career.
Brooks completed postdoctoral fellowships at Caltech from 2008 to 2011 and then at the University of Wisconsin, Madison from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, Brooks became an assistant professor in physics at Rutgers University.
She specialises in large-scale simulations of galaxy formation starting approximately one million years after the Big Bang. These simulations can take up to months to run and require supercomputers. Her results suggest that stars and supernovae displace dark matter, reorganising the universe in a manner consistent with experimental observations which cannot directly detect dark matter. Brooks collaborates with high energy particle physicists who are interested in applying her findings to help tune dark matter astrophysical models. Her simulations use higher spatial resolution than previous efforts, allowing her to include dynamics of dwarf galaxies in addition to large structures. Dwarf galaxies are thought to contain a large proportion of dark matter, making them useful candidates for studying the evolution of the dark matter distribution including its disappearance. Brooks found that dark matter self-interactions, previously thought to be a way to indirectly observe dark matter in dwarf galaxies, may not be a significant factor after all after the Fermi Large Area Telescope delivered no positive results for a gamma ray–dark matter annihilation theory. One of her main contributions to state-of-the-art lambda-cold-dark-matter simulations is including baryonic matter despite its relatively smaller mass than dark matter.
Brooks will use the James Webb Space Telescope to image stars and dwarf galaxies in detail in the infrared, including the Messier 92 (M92) star cluster, dwarf galaxy Draco II, and the Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) galaxy. The objective is to study how these structures formed and to track their motion.
She was an organiser of the 2019 "Inclusive Astronomy" meeting. Starting in 2014, she was a member of the American Astronomical Society's Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy. Brooks is involved in mentorship activities for undergraduate students, particularly women and minorities in science.
Personal life.
Brooks enjoys literature and always has a book on the go. She also enjoys biking and movies.


World Voices

World Voices was a vocal ensemble based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, conducted by Dr. Karle Erickson, Artistic Director. The ensemble was founded in 1996 as "Karle Erickson’s Metropolitan Chorale", but changed its name to World Voices within one season. It performed until its dissolution in 2008. At each of its concerts, World Voices focused on the music of a particular culture or region of the world. Membership in the chorale has ranged from about 25 to 40 vocalists over its 13 years of existence.
The ensemble routinely collaborates with instrumentalists associated with the music from a specific culture. Among the artists World Voices has collaborated with are:
World Voices commissioned several original works, including “Wo Ayi Me A Ma” by Sowah Mensah in March 2001, “Of This Turtle Isle” by Brent Michael Davids in 2002, “Si Ji” by Chinese composer Zhou Long in March 2005, and "Medicine Woman" by Janika Vandervelde in 2006 with Cochise Anderson playing Native American flutes and percussion.
World Voices performed music from at least 62 countries in 35 different languages. Seven CD's of global music have been released: “Latino Groove”, “A Cultural Odyssey”, “A Global Palette”, “ Celebrating Global Cultures” and “Mosaic", "A World of Christmas", and "Hope for Our Time."


Mat Johnson

Mat Johnson (born August 19, 1970 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American fiction writer who works in both prose and the comics format. In 2007, he was named the first USA James Baldwin Fellow by United States Artists.
Life and career.
Johnson was born and raised in the Germantown and Mount Airy communities in Philadelphia.
His mother is African-American and his father is Irish Catholic. He attended Greene Street Friends School, West Chester University, University of Wales, Swansea, and ultimately received his B.A. from Earlham College. In 1993 he was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Johnson received his M.F.A. from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1999.
Johnson has taught at Rutgers University, Columbia University, Bard College, and "The Callaloo Journal" Writers Retreat. He was a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. He is currently a Professor at the University of Oregon's Creative Writing Program.
Johnson's first novel, "Drop" (2000), was a coming-of-age novel about a self-hating Philadelphian who thinks he has found his escape when he takes a job at a Brixton-based advertising agency in London, U.K. The work was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection; "Interview" magazine named Johnson as a "Writer on the Verge"; and "Drop" was listed among "Best Novels of the Year" by "Progressive Magazine."
In 2003, Johnson published "Hunting in Harlem" (2003), a satire about gentrification in Harlem and an exploration of belief versus fanaticism. "Hunting in Harlem" won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Novel of the Year.
Johnson made his first move into the comics form with the publication of the five-issue limited series "Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite" (Vertigo 2005), where he took an existing character of the Hellblazer franchise and created an origin story that strove to offer depth and dignity to a character who was arguably a racial stereotype of the noble savage. The work was set in 18th-century Manhattan, and was based on the research that Johnson was conducting for his first historical work, "The Great Negro Plot".
"The Great Negro Plot" is a creative nonfiction that recounts the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741 and the resultant trial and hysteria.
In February 2008, Vertigo Comics published Johnson's graphic novel "Incognegro", a noir mystery that deals with the issue of passing and the lynching past of the American South. The work is illustrated by British artist Warren Pleece with cover artwork by Stephen John Phillips.
From 2006–2007, Johnson wrote the blog "Niggerati Manor", which discussed African-American literature and culture.
Awards.
Johnson was named a 2007 USA James Baldwin Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists. On September 21, 2011, Johnson was awarded the Dos Passos Prize for Literature for his body of work focused on American themes and the human experience.
Works.
Novels
Nonfiction
Comics
Anthologies


73rd Writers Guild of America Awards

The 73rd Writers Guild of America Awards honored the best writing in film, television and radio of 2020. Nominees for television and radio were announced on February 3, 2021, while nominees for film were announced on February 16, 2021. The winners were announced in a virtual ceremony on March 21, 2021.


Night Call

"Night Call" is a 1964 episode of the American television anthology series "The Twilight Zone" directed by Jacques Tourneur. The story follows an elderly woman, played by Gladys Cooper, who receives persistent disturbing phone calls from an anonymous caller. It is based on Richard Matheson's 1961 short story, "Long Distance Call", although it ends much differently.
Plot.
An elderly woman, Elva Keene (Gladys Cooper), receives strange anonymous phone calls in the middle of a stormy night. During the first calls she hears only static. Later she hears a man moaning and she repeatedly demands to know who is calling. The man continues to call and keeps repeating "Hello?" over and over. Finally he says, "Hello? Where are you? I want to talk to you." Elva, terrified, screams at the man to leave her alone.
The phone company traces the calls to a telephone line that has fallen in a cemetery.
Elva and her housekeeper, who believes the calls are the result of a bad connection, visit the cemetery where she finds that the line is resting on the grave of her long-deceased fiancé, Brian Douglas. Elva says that she always insisted on having her own way, and Brian always did what she said. Brian died a week before they were to be married. That day, she insisted on driving, lost control of the car and hit a tree. The accident crippled her and caused Brian to fly through the windshield, killing him.
Now that she can talk to him again, she won't have to be alone. At home, she picks up the phone and calls to Brian's ghost, pleading with him to answer. He replies that she told him to leave her alone and that he always does what she says. Then the line goes dead, leaving Elva alone and crying in her bed.
Notes.
The original short story ends when Elva Keene finds out the call is coming from the cemetery. The caller is never identified; instead, the story ends the following night, when the phone rings and she answers. The voice says: "Hello, Mrs. Keene. I'll be right over."
The premiere of "Night Call" was scheduled for Friday, November 22, 1963. Hours before it was to air, however, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas. It was rescheduled, as were all of the other network shows. "Night Call" finally premiered on February 7, 1964.


Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science

The Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science (TAMS) is a two-year residential early entrance college program serving approximately 375 high school juniors and seniors at the University of North Texas. Students are admitted from every region of the state through a selective admissions process. TAMS is a member of the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology.
History.
TAMS was established on June 23, 1987 by the 70th Texas Legislature, in order to provide high school students an opportunity to take advanced coursework in math, science, and engineering. It was designed as a residential program at the University of North Texas for high school-aged students gifted in mathematics and science.
The establishment of this innovative program is from national concern among educators about anticipated shortages of students who would be sufficiently well prepared in mathematical and scientific problem solving. Recognizing that American youth would need to compete in an increasingly technological society, several states including Texas opted to create alternative educational programs that would attract students to the fields of mathematics and science as well as offer bright, motivated young people an accelerated education in these areas of study. TAMS differs from other state-supported residential math and science schools in that the academy offers students the opportunity to complete two years of college concurrently with the last two years of high school.
The first TAMS class arrived on August 22, 1988. This graduating Class of 1990 included 65 students, colloquially known as "TAMSters." The academy has since grown and, in recent years, the graduating classes have been as large as 185 students.
Admissions.
TAMS is required by "to identify exceptionally gifted and intelligent high school students at the junior and senior levels and offer them a challenging education to maximize their development".
Applicants are limited to Texas residents in high school. The admissions process for TAMS is holistic and modeled on those of most colleges. Applications are typically accepted between July and mid-May of a student's sophomore year of high school, though some freshmen apply. Multiple criteria are assessed, including middle and high school grades, the rigor of classes taken at school (particularly for mathematics classes), letters of recommendation from teachers and an academic counselor or principal, SAT scores from no later than the January of the applicant's sophomore year, and an essay. Selected applicants are then invited to interview at one of TAMS's "Interview Days." During Interview Day, applicants take algebra diagnostic tests, tour the campus, and attend group interviews. Out of more than 500 students who apply each year, only around 200 are ultimately accepted into the program. Complete application instructions can be found here.
Academics.
Due to the selectivity of its admissions process, TAMS has traditionally had a strong academic culture among its students. The class of 2015 alone had 66 National Merit Semifinalists out of a graduating class size of less than 200. In 2013 the average SAT score for TAMS students was 2121, the second highest of any school in Texas and tenth highest in the nation. TAMS students have placed in numerous state, national and global competitions, most notably in research-based competitions such as the Intel Talent Search and Siemens Competition. In the 2013 Siemens Foundation Competition, 2 TAMS students were named regional finalists and 17 more were recognized as semifinalists. In 2014, The Siemens Foundation awarded 7 TAMS students the placement of regional finalists, and 16 more as semifinalists; 2015 saw 16 semifinalists and 3 regionals finalists from TAMS. Most recently, 15 TAMS seniors were awarded semifinalist status in the 2016 Siemens competition; senior Prateek Kalakuntla advanced to regional finalist and subsequently national finalists status, winning $30,000 at national finals in December 2016.
Curriculum.
TAMS operates wholly within the University of North Texas. TAMS students take UNT classes for their two years at TAMS, and graduate with a TAMS high school diploma as well as a UNT college transcript with a minimum of 57 hours of transferable college credits. While at TAMS, they are considered to be concurrently enrolled in high school and college, and attain a college-like experience all while living among same-age peers.
TAMS students essentially follow a college workload and schedule, and take classes alongside regular UNT students. They are officially UNT students with "TAMS" as their major. Core subjects required for graduation include biology or computer science, chemistry, physics (mechanics and electromagnetism), mathematics (precalculus and calculus), English literature, US history, and political science. All courses are UNT university courses and taught by UNT faculty and professors. A wide variety of elective courses may be taken in addition to required classes after the first semester. Students are also required to attend a weekly seminar on Monday afternoons, which includes various presentations covering academic topics like research opportunities and non-academic topics.
All core courses must be taken at TAMS/UNT during the fall and spring semesters, though some elective courses may be taken during the summer. The minimum cumulative GPA required for graduation is 3.0. Students whose GPA drops below this threshold are put on academic probation, and may be dismissed from the academy. During the first semester only, the minimum GPA that a student can have is 2.7. Students whose GPA is below this value will be dismissed within the first semester. Students who have a GPA between 2.7 and 3.0 will be placed on academic probation for the following semester.
Tuition and fees.
TAMS students are responsible for paying for room and board in McConnell Hall and a mandatory UNT meal plan every semester, as well as a yearly $2500 program charge and approximately $5500 tuition fees (after scholarship is applied). About thirty percent of students receive financial aid through programs such as FAFSA to defray costs. Funding for TAMS is provided through a special appropriations bill and with support from the Foundation School Fund.
Research, scholarships, and awards.
Students at TAMS are encouraged to take the opportunity of conducting research under the guidance of a professor either on or off-campus during the school year as well as during the summer.<ref name="https://tams.unt.edu/research">https://tams.unt.edu/research</ref> The TAMS Summer Research Scholarship is offered to about 60 students per year to fund these research pursuits; students performing research throughout the summer typically commit 30 to 40 hours per week to the lab. Students' research are often recognized by professors listing a student as co-author of a papers or by awards at competitions such as Siemens Westinghouse Competition in Science and Technology and the Intel Science Talent Search. From 1999 to 2016, TAMS students were named semifinalists 84 times in the talent search and finalists 11 times. This was tied the fifth most finalists of any school during this period. A number of students also compete for the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship as university students. TAMS students are frequently quite successful in the competition; in 2016, all four TAMS students nominated by the University of North Texas won the scholarship, making UNT one of the few universities in the country to achieve this feat.
In 2012, while attending TAMS, Monica Thieu became the youngest person ever to win the Jeopardy! College Championship.
Student life.
TAMS students have created an unofficial Wiki page which has more information regarding student life at TAMS. This page is primarily maintained by current TAMS students.
Because they are technically considered students at the University of North Texas, TAMS students enjoy all of the same benefits as other UNT students including access to and usage of university cafeterias, libraries, recreational facilities and participation in UNT-sponsored activities and competitions. An exception to this is a nightly curfew (see below).
McConnell Hall.
All TAMS students live in McConnell Hall. In the program's early days, TAMS students shared the building with regular UNT students before the program grew too large to share its dormitory with other students. McConnell Hall, originally built in 1961 as an all-female dormitory, consists of four wings (the hall originally had three before a major expansion in 1990) and three floors, segregated by gender and grade level. The hall is furnished with a kitchenette, multiple meeting rooms, laundry rooms, bathrooms and two common rooms. One of the common rooms, the Smitty Study, serves as a public recreation room when it is not functioning as a study area during quiet hours. The other common room, Mac Café, aptly named because it once was home to a university cafeteria, hosts various student activities and serves as a gathering place for both academic and social interaction.
Students reside in pairs in any one of the hall's 374 dual-occupancy dormitories, each of which includes two beds, dressers and drawers, desks, a sink, internet access and electrical sockets; some rooms contain a private toilet and shower, while others share a bathroom with adjacent rooms. Community bathrooms are available for the remaining rooms. Because all TAMS students live in the same building and in close proximity, TAMS tends to be a very close-knit community. While students can, for the most part, schedule their own day however they wish, all students have a curfew and must remain inside the hall from 11 p.m. (1.00 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights) to 6 a.m. without special permission. However, students may submit requests to be absent overnight or past curfew if they wish to do so.
Volunteering.
The TAMS program allows students to find volunteering opportunities within the Denton, Texas area. Most volunteering activities are coordinated through numerous clubs and organizations within the program as well as through student life. TAMS students participate throughout the academic year. Volunteering ranges from, but not limited to grade school tutoring, hospital and nursing home volunteering, participating in Denton environmental clean up, hosting UNT sponsored charity auctions and service events, etc. Students have also established non-profit start up programs that promote volunteering within the Denton community. PCS 2 Prosper is one of the many notable organizations that have been founded by TAMS students. Volunteers collect donated computers and laptops from the community and some companies, and distributes them to schools and homes in need after repairing and renovating them.
Forward Tutoring is a prominent non-profit start up created by TAMS students with the mission to build a community of mentors and tutors. It is known to be an online tutoring service in which TAMS students volunteer their time to schools in need of academic aid. Student who seek this aid in turn participate in community services for other non-profit organizations. The organization gained recognition for its program and was able to receive a grant in 2011 from the Murphy Entrepreneurship after a generally well received beta launch.
Clubs and events.
TAMS students participate in the UNT community through activities such as community service projects and tutoring. TAMS has a number of student activities and events, ranging from academic competitions to performance and cultural groups. Club meetings and activities are usually coordinated using Facebook. Most clubs at TAMS offer numerous volunteering and community service opportunities. Despite the fact that only hours volunteered during the school year while at TAMS count, in the 2014–2015 school year students at TAMS volunteered an average of over 98 hours per student. In addition to clubs, students may join any UNT clubs outside of TAMS. A selection of currently active clubs (as well as selected competitions entered by TAMS students), many of which offer volunteering opportunities, can be found below:
Many students participate in yearly or more frequent events such as proms, school dances, talent shows, coffee houses, and an annual homecoming dance. Frequent workshops featuring guest speakers (often TAMS alumni) are also held for TAMS students covering a variety of topics, from college admissions to working in the industry. College visits take place on a regular basis as well.


Kim languages

The Kim languages are a small group of the Mbum–Day languages of the provisional Savanna family, spoken in southern Chad. There are there languages:
Goundo is nearly extinct, and Besme has only a thousand or so speakers.
The Kim languages were labeled "G14" in Joseph Greenberg's Adamawa language-family proposal.
References.


Stuart Hamilton

(Robert) Stuart Hamilton, CM, Hon. LL.D, A.R.C.T. (September 28, 1929 – January 1, 2017) was an award-winning Canadian accompanist, vocal coach, and opera producer based in Toronto. He was a well-known advocate of post-Baroque French opera. He was recognized nationally for his work as the longtime quiz master for CBC Radio’s "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera", he taught opera repertoire and diction at the University of Toronto.
As one of Canada’s top vocal coaches for over 65 years, he has inspired and coached generations of singers. As a piano accompanist, he had performed alongside internationally celebrated artists such as: Isabel Bayrakdarian, Mary Lou Fallis, Maureen Forrester, Elizabeth Benson Guy, Ben Heppner, Rosemarie Landry, Richard Margison, Dustin Lee Hiles, Stuart Howe, Lois Marshall, Roxolana Roslak, and Mary Simmons.
Life and career.
Early life in Regina.
Born in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the city's General Hospital, Hamilton grew up in a house at 2325 Angus Street near what later became known as "The Crescents" neighbourhood His mother, Florence Hamilton (née Stuart; 1893-1983) was from North Dakota and worked as a nurse (she later remarried under the surname Twiss). His father, James Shire Hamilton (1897-1954), was from Galt, Ontario (now part of Cambridge), and worked as a corporate lawyer. Stuart was their fourth child after Peter, Dorothy and Douglas. A few years later, in 1937, the Hamilton household would welcome another addition, Patricia, known in the family as "Patsy", who would grow up to become a famous Canadian actor of “" fame.
Despite being born at the very beginning of the Great Depression in Canada, in the hardest-hit Prairie Provinces, Hamilton seems to have grown up in relative comfort and happiness. He went to Davin Public Elementary School near his family home. He attended and graduated high school at Regina Collegiate which later renamed Central Collegiate Institute, and is now closed.
His first musical training was in the Lakeview Boys Choir in Regina, under the direction of Kay Hayworth.
While in public school, he also took drama classes with Jean Brown in her private Drama School. His drama coach suggested he favour comedic roles over dramatic leads.
In 1943, at the age of 14, his parents agreed to send him to piano lessons with Martha Somerville Allan. He continued studying with Allan for close to three years.
Toronto.
In 1946, Hamilton's parents moved to Saskatoon. He decided to stay behind to continue his lessons, moving into an apartment with Mrs. Annie Hailstone, a dress-maker. Hamilton moved to Toronto in 1947 to join his sister Dorothy Marshall (née Hamilton), who was already settled in the city and was pursuing her own singing career. He began his piano performance studies at The Royal Conservatory of Music with the Chilean-Canadian composer, pianist, and teacher Alberto Guerrero. Guerrero noted of Hamilton's hands: "...not only were these hands small and stubby but the double-jointed fingers seemed like an insurmountable obstacle." His student nonetheless persevered. He was later diagnosed as having Dupuytren's contracture, eventually resulting in an operation to straighten one of his forefingers. Another forefinger remained bent. Nonetheless, he continued to play piano recreationally and gave a farewell concert on his 85th birthday.
In 1948, to help support his studies, he worked for $2.00 per night as a uniformed usher at Eaton Auditorium, Canada's premier concert stage. This job allowed him to see many performances of The Eaton Auditorium concert series. He also coached singers on the side for twenty-five cents an hour. In 1950 he earned certification as an Associate of The Royal Conservatory of Music (ARCT).
Hamilton spent much of his time in the 1950s involved in the Toronto classical music scene. These seminal years laid much of the ground for his future career in Canadian music. He started frequenting performances and social events of The Royal Conservatory Opera (later known as the Canadian Opera Company) with Herman Geiger-Torel, Nicholas Goldschmidt, and Arnold Walter. After a false start working for Herman Geiger-Torel at the Royal Conservatory Opera School, Hamilton accepted an offer from soprano June Kowalchuck, founder of Hamilton Opera Company, to become their chorus director, rehearsal pianist, and occasional conductor, which he did for a period of five years. His connection to the city of Hamilton was strengthened further when he accepted his first position as a voice teacher at the local Music Conservatory, which required him to spend two full days in the "Steel City" per week. The other days of the week Hamilton spent in Toronto, coaching Elizabeth Benson Guy, Maureen Forrester, and Lois Marshall.
From 1966 onward he performed sporadically on CBC Radio usually as an accompanist.
 In 1967, at age 38, he took up a significant technical and musical challenge by accepting the role of pianist and singer in a production of "Beyond the Fringe", a role made famous in England by Dudley Moore. The show was performed in Buffalo, New York for six weeks, in Toronto for six months, and he later toured across Eastern Canada with a final run in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. During afternoons and off days, Hamilton practiced for his 1967 New York City piano recital. Theodore Strongin wrote in the New York Times that his playing "had a poetic feel to it that was beguiling". As a prelude to his second New York recital, he performed the program in Toronto. The Toronto critics were rather unkind. After a second New York recital in 1968, and a third one in London's Wigmore Hall in 1971, Hamilton decided not to further pursue a concert career and concentrated his efforts on the Toronto classical music scene. Canadian Children's Opera Chorus commissioned and performed the Charles Wilson opera "The Sleeping Giant". Mr Hamilton played the piano. In winter 1974, he was the music director of an abridged "La Boheme" which ran two months at The Theatre in the Dell in Toronto.
Opera in Concert, 1974.
In 1974, Hamilton initiated the annual Opera in Concert series at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts in Toronto, acting as artistic director, producer, and accompanist. His aim was to use the large pool of talented local singers by offering them opportunities to learn and perform rarely produced works. Normally presenting four operas each season, with the occasional double or triple bill, each opera was performed twice using alternate casts, in concert versions with piano. By 1991 over three hundred singers had presented more than sixty operas, many of which had been given their Canadian or Toronto premières. In 1994 Hamilton stepped down as Artistic Director of Opera in Concert, though he continued his association with the company as artistic advisor and Artistic Director Emeritus.
The operas performed by Opera in Concert under Hamilton's direction have included:
Later career.
Hamilton was also the first Music Director of the Canadian Opera Company Ensemble. One of his duties with the COC Ensemble was as music director of the COC Summer Festival at Harbourfront Centre. In 1981 he relinquished this position, to act as Lois Marshall's accompanist on her farewell recital tour.
In 1977 he alternated with Anna Russell as the Duchess in COC production of Daughter of the Regiment.
Hamilton has two film credits. One was for a cameo role with his sister Patricia Hamilton (credited as "Mme. Selitsky's Accompanist") in the film "Anne of Green Gables" in 1985. He also appeared in the TV series "A Scattering of Seeds" (as himself) in 2001.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Hamilton was in regular demand as an adjudicator for competitions such as the CBC Young Performers' Competition, Opera America Auditions, the Sullivan Foundation Awards, the Oralia Dominquez Competition (in Mexico), and the George London Foundation Awards.
In 1981, he became the host of the opera quiz on the CBC's "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera" April–December broadcasts. From 1982-2007 Hamilton worked as the Quiz Master on CBC's weekly Saturday Afternoon at the Opera, as well as appearing regularly as a panelist, and occasionally guest quiz master, on the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts in New York City. Hamilton's last Opera Quiz for "Saturday Afternoon at the Opera" was in the fall of 2007.
Hamilton has appeared regularly for the Canadian Opera Company and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as lecturer and commentator.
In 2008 Hamilton served as guest judge for "Bathroom Divas" for seasons 1 and 2.
Hamilton continued to teach opera repertoire and diction at the University of Toronto. He was adjudicator at the Royal Conservatory of Music. He also maintained a full coaching schedule and devoted time to master classes across Canada.
Hamilton's autobiography "Opening Windows" was published by Dundurn Press in the fall of 2012.
Personal life and death.
Hamilton was known to friends and colleagues by his middle name, Stuart, or by his nickname "Stuartissimo" (a portmanteau of "Stuart" and the musical term "fortissimo").
Hamilton's brother Lieutenant James Douglas Hamilton served in the Canadian Armed Forces in the Korean War and died in action within a month of his deployment. His brother Captain Peter Hamilton worked as a commercial aircraft pilot, and died in the tragic Air Canada Flight 621 crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport in 1970.
Hamilton has two living siblings. Dorothy Marshall (née Hamilton) has worked as a volunteer for the Canadian Opera Company Archive Library. Patricia Hamilton continues working in theatre and television after 12 years at the Shaw Festival. Patricia's son (Hamilton's nephew) is actor Ben Carlson.
Hamilton identified as gay. "He never doubted or hid his sexual identity, even as a young man in the heteronormative 1950s. 'I've never had the nerve to pretend I wasn't gay,' he wrote in "Opening Windows"."
After years battling prostate cancer, Hamilton died on January 1, 2017, aged 87.


Anthony Ramos (artist)

Anthony Ramos is an American video artist, performance artist and painter. He was born in 1944 in Providence, Rhode Island, and lives in the South of France.
Education, awards and early career.
Before he received an M.F.A. from the California Institute of the Arts he had studied painting at Southern Illinois University. He was a graduate assistant to Allan Kaprow. A conscientious objector, Ramos was jailed for 18 months for draft evasion.
Early in his career he received a National Endowment for the Arts Visual Arts Fellowship, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, and an Aspen Fellowship from the Aspen Institute. During the 1970s and 1980s, Ramos traveled widely in Europe, Africa, China and the Middle East. He documented the end of Portugal's colonial rule in Cape Verde and in Guinea-Bissau. He was in Teheran during the 1980 Iran hostage crisis.
Exhibitions and screenings.
Ramos' pioneering video works have been shown at the
Teaching and painting.
Anthony Ramos taught at Rhode Island School of Design, New York University, and the University of California at San Diego, among others. Since the late 1980s he has primarily worked in painting. Several international venues exhibited his work, among them the American Jazz Museum and Bruce R. Watkins Cultural Center, Kansas City; Biennale de Dakar, Senegal.


DSL filter

A DSL filter (also DSL splitter or microfilter) is an analog low-pass filter installed between analog devices (such as telephones or analog modems) and a plain old telephone service (POTS) line. The DSL filter prevents interference between such devices and a digital subscriber line (DSL) service connected to the same line. Without DSL filters, signals or echoes from analog devices at the top of their frequency range can reduce performance and create connection problems with DSL service, while those from the DSL service at the bottom of its range can cause line noise and other problems for analog devices.
The concept of a low pass filter for ADSL was first described in 1996 by Vic Charlton when working for the Canadian Operations Development Consortium: Low-Pass Filter On All Phones.
DSL filters are passive devices, requiring no power source to operate. Some high-quality filters may contain active transistors to refine the signal.
Components.
The primary distinguishing factor between high-quality and low-quality filters is the use of transistors in high-quality (and more expensive) active filters, in addition to the usual components like capacitors, resistors, and ferrite cores, while the low-quality passive filters lack transistors.
Installation.
Typical installation for an existing home involves installing DSL filters on every telephone, fax machine, voice band modem, and other voiceband device in the home, leaving the DSL modem as the only unfiltered device. For wall mounted phones, the filter is in the form of a plate hung on the standard wall mount, on which the phone hangs in turn.
In cases where it is possible to run new cables, it can be advantageous to split the telephone line after it enters the home, installing a single DSL filter on one leg and running it to every jack in the home where an analog device will be in use, and dedicating the other (unfiltered) leg to the DSL modem. Some devices such as monitored alarms and Telephone Devices for the Deaf, mainly certain older models using an acoustic coupler, may be hardwired and may not easily accept a DSL filter. Some of these devices can be successfully filtered with a DSL filter or splitter, especially if the hardwired connection is converted into a jacked connection.
If it is not practical to run new cables, it is often still possible to split the telephone line at the point of entry in some cases. If Category 3 cable, Category 4 cable, or Category 5 cable was used to wire the premises and at least one pair of wires in the cable is unused, a "whole house" DSL filter can be installed at the point of entry, usually a Network Interface Device (NID) box. Although an in-line filter could be used for this purpose, special whole-house filters are available to make the installation easier. The wire pair that connects to telephones and fax machines is connected to the telephone company feed through the filter, while the wire pair that connects to the DSL modem is connected directly to the telephone company feed, unfiltered. At the wall jack where the DSL modem is installed, a commercial 2-line splitter adapter is used that puts each line of the cable on its own jack port, connected as Line 1. The telephone, if any, is plugged into the Line 1 jack and the DSL modem is plugged into the Line 2 jack of the adapter, but is fed through the Line 1 contacts in that jack location. Due to the self-shielding nature of twisted wire pairs, this cable sharing technique works well for Category 4 and 5 cables. Since old-style Category 3 cables contain four parallel strands of wire, there is crosstalk and ADSL signal degradation between pairs, so cable sharing should be limited to 20 meters (65 ft), or so. This approach saves considerable money and labor, as the only changes to the premise wiring may occur at the NID and the only additional equipment needed is a 2-line splitter adapter. If the Line 2 wire pair was originally not connected at the wall jack where the DSL modem is to be used, it may be necessary to complete this step as well.
Some DSL modems have filtering circuitry built-in, to which the telephones and fax machines can be connected.
Maintenance and failure.
The usual symptom of a failed filter is frequent DSL disconnects or slow internet speed. The usual procedure to test for failed filters is to remove all filters and all other devices and extension cables from the telephone line. Then connect the DSL modem or router directly to the main phone line socket and check to see whether the internet speed increases or disconnects reduce. If this works, one or more microfilter(s) used with the analog devices need to be replaced.


Paul Bertelson

Paul Bertelson (1926–2008), was an internationally recognized experimental cognitive psychologist.
Background and academic achievements.
Graduated from the Solvay Business School in 1949 and from the Psychology School in 1953, both at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Paul Bertelson obtained a PhD grant from the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) at the Laboratory of Psychology. From 1955 to 1959 he was Assistant of Professor André Ombredane, obtaining his PhD in Psychology in 1959. He became Professor in 1962 (teaching Experimental psychology and Cognitive psychology) and Emeritus Professor in 1990.
At ULB, Paul Bertelson created the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology in 1964, being its Head until 1990. He was President of the Faculty of Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences from 1977 to 1980. He acted as President of the XXVth International Congress of Psychology (Brussels, 1992) and was one of the founding members of the European Training Program in Brain and Behaviour Research in 1969. He was also member of the steering Committees of the Attention and Performance Seminars and of the Annual Bressanone meetings in Cognitive Neuropsychology. In 1985, Paul Bertelson and four other leading figures in the field of Cognitive Psychology (Alan Baddeley, Janet Jackson, John Michon, and Wolfgang Prinz) founded the European Society for Cognitive Psychology (ESCOP). He acted as President (1991–92) and Vice-president (1993–94) of ESCOP. To honor his contributions to the field, the board of ESCOP decided to award a prestigious prize every two years to a young and outstanding scientist, naming the award the “Paul Bertelson award”.
Scientific achievements.
At the beginning of his career, he stayed for one year (1957) at the M.R.C. Applied Psychology Research Unit in Cambridge where he interacted with Poulton, Donald Broadbent and others. This led him to take part in the study of “skills”, i.e. of the processes involved in reaction time situations, based on the idea (expressed in his PhD thesis) that the comprehension of the mechanisms of complex abilities can be reached by studying systematically how elementary reactions are integrated in a continuous activity. He thus manipulated sequential dependencies to examine the preparation to react as this is limited by uncertainty concerning both the nature and the moment of the signal occurrence. The demonstration of a repetition effect was one of his most important results. Methodologically, the “Bertelson’s repetition effect” was indeed an important contribution to later priming studies. In this domain, Bertelson also contributed to better understand the refractoriness or central intermittence phenomenon.

 In the early 1970s, Paul Bertelson, while training PhD students who became his close collaborators, channeled his research into three new main directions: (1) on perception, with a detailed program to understand the spatial and temporal aspects of audiovisual interactions (Monique Radeau), (2) on cognitive neuropsychology, mainly concerning hemispheric differences and the role of spatial attention in perceptual laterality effects (José Morais); and (3) on cognitive psycholinguistics, in particular the role of phonemic awareness in learning to read, compared to other forms of phonological awareness (Jesus Alegria, José Morais, Alain Content, Régine Kolinsky); and the processing of written words, including in braille reading (Daniel Holender, Philippe Mousty). Bertelson also strongly encouraged the development by Jesus Alegria and Jacqueline Leybaert, in collaboration with his colleague Olivier Périer, of a fourth research line, on the role of phonology in literacy processes in deaf children.

In all these programs, important scientific accomplishments have been performed, turning Paul Bertelson’s Laboratoire de Pychologie expérimentale one of the most influential centers of experimental cognitive psychology in Europe until less than ten years ago. Now formally extinguished, this Laboratory was the precursor, and its still active researchers a significant force, of the present ULB’s Center for Research in Cognition and Neurosciences (CRCN), itself one component of the ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI).
In the last years of his life, Paul Bertelson has been also associated to Tilburg University where he strongly collaborated with Beatrice de Gelder and Jean Vroomen both on audiovisual interactions (mainly in a neuropsychological perspective) and on psycholinguistic issues.
Main publications.
Bertelson, P., & Boons, J.-P. (1960). Time uncertainty and choice reaction time. Nature, 187, 531-532.

Bertelson, P. (1961). Sequential redundancy and speed in a serial two-choice responding task. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 13, 90-102.

Bertelson, P. (1965). Serial choice reaction-time as a function of response versus signal-and-response repetition. Nature, 206, 217-218.

Bertelson, P., & Barzeele, J. (1965). Interaction of time-uncertainty and relative signal frequency in determining choice reaction time. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70, 448-451.

Bertelson, P. (1966). Central intermittency twenty years later. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 18, 153-163.

Bertelson, P., & Tisseyre. F. (1966). Choice reaction time as a function of stimulus versus response relative frequency of occurrence. Nature, 212, 1069-1070.

Bertelson, P. (1967). The time course of preparation. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 19, 272-279.

Bertelson, P. (1972). Listening from left to right versus right to left. Perception, 1, 161-165.

Morais, J., & Bertelson, P. (1975). Spatial position versus ear of entry as determinant of the auditory laterality effects: a stereophonic test. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 1, 253-262.

Holender, D., & Bertelson, P. (1975). Selective preparation and time uncertainty. Acta Psychologica, 39, 193-203.

Morais, J., Cary, L., Alegria, J., & Bertelson, P. (1979). Does awareness of speech as a sequence of phones arise spontaneously? Cognition, 7, 323-331.

Bertelson, P. (1982). Lateral differences in normal man and lateralization of brain function. International Journal of Psychology, 17, 173-210.

Bertelson, P., Morais, J., Alegria, J., & Content, A. (1985). Phonetic analysis capacity and learning to read. Nature, 313, 73-74.

Mousty, P., & Bertelson, P. (1985). A study of braille reading: 1. Reading speed as a function of hand usage and context. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 37, 217-233.

Bertelson, P., Mousty, P., & D'Alimonte, G. (1985). A study of braille reading: 2. Patterns of hand activity in one-handed and two-handed reading. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. 37, 235-256.

Bertelson, P. (1986). The onset of literacy: Liminal remarks. Cognition, 24, 1-30.

Bertelson, P., Mousty, P., & Radeau, M. (1992). The time course of Braille word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 18, 284-297.

Mousty, P., & Bertelson, P. (1992). Finger movements in braille reading: The effect of local ambiguity. Cognition, 43, 67-84.

De Gelder, B., & Bertelson, P. (2003). Multisensory integration, perception and ecological validity. Trends in cognitive sciences, 7, 460-467.

Bertelson, P., Vroomen, J., & De Gelder, B. (2003). Visual recalibration of auditory speech identification: a McGurk aftereffect. Psychological Science, 14, 592-597.


School and College Ability Test

The School and College Ability Test (SCAT), is a standardized test conducted in the United States that measures math and verbal reasoning abilities in gifted children.
About.
The SCAT is used by the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) as an above-grade-level entrance exam for students in grades 2–8. Students in grades 2-3 take the Elementary SCAT designed for students in grades 4-5. Students in grades 4-5 take the Intermediate SCAT designed for students in grades 6-8. Students in grades 6 and above take the Advanced SCAT designed for students in grades 9-12. There are 55 questions per section, 5 of which are experimental. The percentile ranks for the SCAT have not been updated since 1979. So, when your child takes this test, your child is being compared to a national sample of children who took the test in 1979.
The equivalent test in the UK is the CAT4 test run by GL Assessment and consists of a battery of 4 individual tests; Verbal Reasoning, Non-Verbal Reasoning, Spatial Reasoning, Quantitative Reasoning. CAT4 is used as an admission test and also by schools to determine potential (gifted or weaker children).
Qualification.
Anyone who pays for the test may take it; there are no requirements for testing.
Scoring.
Scoring is based on a three-step process in which a child's raw score is scaled based on the test version and then compared to the results of the test scores of normal students in the higher-level grade. Please keep in mind that the group of normal students took this test in 1979. So, your child's percentile ranks could be different if compared to a more recent group of test takers.
 The minimum scores required for qualification for the 2nd to 10th grade CTY summer courses are below:


44th Writers Guild of America Awards

The 44th Writers Guild of America Awards honored the best television, and film writers of 1991. Winners were announced in 1992.
Winners & Nominees.
Film.
Winners are listed first highlighted in boldface.


Keith Milow

Keith Milow is a British artist, born in London (1945), grew up in Baldock, Hertfordshire, lived in New York City (1980–2002) and Amsterdam (2002–2014), now lives in London. He is an abstract sculptor, as well as a painter and printmaker. His work has been characterised as architectural, monumental, procedural, enigmatic and poetical.
Biography.
Keith Milow was educated at The Knights Templar School in Baldock, Camberwell School of Art, 1962–1967, and Royal College of Art, 1967–1968. In 1970 he received a Gregory Fellowship from Leeds University, which was followed in 1972 by a Harkness Fellowship to the USA.
During the 1970s, Milow was considered part of the British artistic avant-garde along with artists such as Richard Long, Gilbert & George, Michael Craig-Martin, Mark Lancaster, Tim Head, Nicholas Pope, John Walker, David Tremlett, Barry Flanagan, Art & Language and Derek Jarman. According to art historian Jo Melvin, Milow "helped to shape and define a critical period of new and experimental art practices in Britain when the distinctions between painting and sculpture and equally importantly between figuration and abstract collapsed".
Throughout his career Keith Milow has been pre-occupied with the form of the Latin cross which resulted in several hundred cross sculptures as well as drawings. During the 1990s, he produced series of disc-shaped sculptures ('tondi') that pay tribute to what he considered the great artists of the 20th century. Paintings from this period frequently contain names from this personal canon of modern art. Some of his painting and drawing demonstrate a mathematical precision that has the appearance of being computer-generated. Often his work is the result of a direct response to other artists' oeuvres, notably the Dutch painter Piet Mondrian. In the words of Jo Melvin: "Milow's work is infused in the history of painting, the subject of painting and its meaning. Something else slips through in the game of chance. It is a piece of magic – the combination of mystery with structure, order and process".
Awards included the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Award (1976), the Arts Council of Great Britain Major Award (1979), the Edward Albee Foundation Award (1983) and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Award (2017). In 2015, he was nominated for the Charles Wollaston Award of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and in 2017 for the Daiwa Foundation Art Prize.
Exhibitions.
In 1970 Keith Milow had his first solo show with Nigel Greenwood Gallery, an exhibition that sold out with Tate being one of the buyers. Greenwood continued to show Milow until 1992. Other galleries that held solo exhibitions of his work include Duffy & Sons, New York (1973), Hester Van Royen Gallery, London (1975), Kettle's Yard Gallery, Cambridge (1976), Gallerie Albert Baronian, Brussels (1977), Park Square Gallery, Leeds (1977), Roundhouse Gallery, London (1978), Galerie Loyse Oppenheim, Geneva (1979), Annina Nosei Gallery, New York (1981, 1982), Alexander Wood Gallery, New York (1987), John Davis Gallery, New York (1988), Gallery 630B, New Orleans (1990), Nohra Haime Gallery, New York (1990–99), Aicart & Aijtink, Hilversum (2007–13), and Dadiani Fine Art, London (2017).
Group exhibitions included the 'Young Contemporaries' at Tate Britain (1967), 'Six at the Hayward', Hayward Gallery (1969), ' Works on Paper', Museum of Modern Art (1971), British exhibition, Art Basel (1975), 'Arte Inglese Oggi', Palazzo Reale, Milan (1976), 'British Painting 1952–1977', Royal Academy of Art (1977), 'British Art Now', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (1980), 'Aspects of British Art Today', Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art (1982), ' Modern British Sculpture', Whitechapel Gallery (1986), 'Modern British Sculpture', Tate Liverpool (1988), 'Contemporary British Artists: Mirror up to Nature', Denver Art Museum (1998), 'United Enemies: Sculpture in 1960s and 1970s Britain', Henry Moore Institute (2011–12), 'Royal Academy Summer Exhibition', Royal Academy of Arts (2015–17, 2019), and 'BP Portrait Award', National Portrait Gallery (2019).
Collections.
Works of Milow are included in public collections, such as Tate Galleries, Imperial War Museum, Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds City Art Gallery, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest), Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Guggenheim Museum, Walker Art Center, Dallas Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, National Gallery of Australia and Art Gallery of South Australia. An important commission of 1998 was the piece "20th Century - Thames", consisting of four large tondi in the lobby of One Canada Square (Canary Wharf, London).


James Newton

James W. Newton (born May 1, 1953) is an American jazz and classical flutist.
Biography.
From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African-American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone, and clarinet. In high school he took up the flute, influenced by Eric Dolphy. In addition to taking lessons in classical music on flute, he also studied jazz with Buddy Collette. He completed his formal musical training at California State University, Los Angeles.
From 1972 to 1975, together with David Murray, Bobby Bradford, and Arthur Blythe, Newton was a member of drummer (and later critic) Stanley Crouch's band Black Music Infinity. From 1978 to 1981 he lived in New York, leading a trio with pianist and composer Anthony Davis and cellist Abdul Wadud. These three played extended chamber jazz and Third Stream compositions by Newton and Davis. With Davis, Newton founded a quartet and toured successfully in Europe in the early 1980s. Afterwards, he performed with a wide variety of musicians, including projects by John Carter and the Mingus Dynasty. Newton has released four recordings of his solo improvisations for flute. Since the 1990s Newton has often worked with musicians from other cultural spheres, including Jon Jang, Gao Hong, Kadri Gopalnath, and Shubhendra Rao, and has taken part in many cross-cultural projects.
Newton has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, L'Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris, Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Southwest Chamber Music, California EAR Unit, New York New Music Ensemble, and the San Francisco Ballet.
He served for five years as Musical Director/Conductor of the Luckman Jazz Orchestra and has held professorships at the University of California, Irvine, the California Institute of the Arts, and California State University, Los Angeles. In 1989 he wrote and published a method book entitled "The Improvising Flute". In 2007 he published "Daily Focus For The Flute".
He has also composed classical works for chamber ensemble and orchestra, as well as electronic music. In 1997 he wrote an opera, "The Songs of Freedom". In his compositional output, he specializes in chamber music and writing for unconventional instrumentations. He has also written a symphony and composed for ballet and modern dance. In 2006 he composed a Latin Mass which premiered in Prato, Italy, in February 2007.
Accolades.
He has received Guggenheim (1992) and Rockefeller fellowships, Montreux Grande Prix Du Disque, and "Down Beat" International Critics Jazz Album of the Year. He has also been voted the top flutist for 23 consecutive years in "Down Beat" magazine's International Critic's Poll.
Beastie Boys lawsuit.
In 2000, Newton sued the alternative rock and hip hop group Beastie Boys (and their producer, record companies, publishers, and music video-related companies) for repeatedly using a six-second, three-note sample of "Choir", Newton's 1978 composition for flute and voice, in their song "Pass the Mic". According to the group, Newton declined a settlement offer and, in a counter-offer, demanded "millions" and 50 percent ownership and control of "Pass the Mic", despite the sample being only one of hundreds of sounds in the song.
In the federal district court case, Newton claimed that the group infringed his copyright on the composition by making use of the three-note sequence embodied in the sampled sound recording. The group argued that copyright law treats sound recordings and the underlying compositions as separate entities with different thresholds for originality; a six-second audio clip must be licensed from the record company, but under the "de minimis" doctrine, a mere three notes of a composition need not be licensed from the composer or publisher.
With summary judgment in 2002, the court agreed with Beastie Boys, holding that the group had fulfilled its legal obligation by licensing only the sound recording in 1992. At that time, Beastie Boys paid a fee of US$1,000 to ECM Records, the record label to which Newton had previously given contractual permission to license the sound recording. As is standard procedure in copyright cases, Beastie Boys then asked the court for Newton's lawyers to reimburse Beastie Boys' lawyers for $492,000 in legal fees, but the court declined to award costs.
Newton appealed, but in 2003, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's decision in favor of Beastie Boys. Newton petitioned the court to re-hear the case en banc, but this resulted in a 2004 amended opinion in which the court strengthened its position.
Discography.
As sideman.
With Arthur Blythe
With John Carter
With Buddy Collette
With Chico Freeman
With Leroy Jenkins
With David Murray


Peter D. Kramer

Peter D. Kramer (born October 22, 1948), is an American psychiatrist and faculty member of Brown Medical School specializing in the area of clinical depression.
Early life.
Peter D. Kramer was born on October 22, 1948 in New York City to Jewish Holocaust survivors. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor of arts degree in 1970 and an MD in 1976.


Dog whistle

A dog whistle (also known as silent whistle or Galton's whistle) is a type of whistle that emits sound in the ultrasonic range, which most humans cannot hear but some other animals can, including dogs and domestic cats, and is used in their training. It was invented in 1876 by Francis Galton and is mentioned in his book "Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development", in which he describes experiments to test the range of frequencies that could be heard by various animals, such as a house cat.
The upper limit of the human hearing range is about 20 kilohertz (kHz) for children, declining to 15–17 kHz for middle-age adults. The top end of a dog's hearing range is about 45 kHz, while a cat's is 64 kHz. It is thought that the wild ancestors of cats and dogs evolved this higher hearing range in order to hear high-frequency sounds made by their preferred prey, small rodents. The frequency of most dog whistles is within the range of 23 to 54 kHz, so they are above the range of human hearing, although some are adjustable down into the audible range.
To human ears, a dog whistle makes only a quiet hissing sound. The advantage of the dog whistle is that it doesn't produce a loud irritating noise for humans that a normal whistle would produce, so it can be used to train or command animals without disturbing nearby people. Some dog whistles have adjustable sliders for active control of the frequency produced. Trainers may use the whistle simply to gather a dog's attention, or to inflict pain for the purpose of behaviour modification.
In addition to lung-powered whistles, there are also electronic dog whistle devices that emit ultrasonic sound via piezoelectric emitters. The electronic variety are sometimes coupled with bark-detection circuits in an effort to curb barking behaviour.
This kind of whistle can also be used to determine the hearing range for people and for physics demonstrations requiring ultrasonic sounds.


Serge Daan

Serge Daan (11 June 1940 – 9 February 2018) was a Dutch scientist, known for his significant contributions to the field of Chronobiology.
Early life and education.
Serge Daan (Mook, 1940) was born in a wind mill, grew up in the Dutch countryside, and went to high school (Gymnasium β) in Deventer. The Daan family was highly interested in biology and undertook enterprises in this field, such as investigating the ecology of reptiles in the Mediterranean area. As a consequence of this interest, Serge studied biology at the University of Amsterdam.
Academic career.
In September 1973, Serge received his Ph.D. in Amsterdam (cum laude) with a thesis on hibernation. He was subsequently trained as a postdoc by the two founders of modern chronobiology, Jürgen Aschoff and Colin Pittendrigh. This 4-year episode, at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Andechs, Bavaria and Stanford University in California, and the lifelong collaboration and friendship with both were crucial for his professional career. In 1975, Daan was appointed associate professor at the University of Groningen in the Animal Ecology group of R.H. Drent. In 1994 he became Extra-ordinarius in Chronobiology, and in 1996 Professor of Ethology. Since 2003 he has occupied the prestigious Niko Tinbergen chair in Behavioral Biology.
Research.
Serge Daan’s research focuses on the temporal organisation of behaviour in animals and humans. In about 250 publications he contributed a number of key concepts and models that have improved understanding of the ‘circadian’ (circa 24-h) rhythms of rest and activity, the regulation of human sleep, and the annual timing of reproduction.
Circadian rhythms.
Working with Pittendrigh, Daan developed many of the theoretical foundations for understanding the dynamics of circadian oscillators. Many other studies have followed, shifting the focus from behavioural black box models to testable hypotheses about underlying molecular mechanisms.
Regulation of human sleep.
Work on circadian rhythms by others in the field culminated in the notion that a single circadian pacemaker exists to keep track of environmental time, while at the same time controlling downstream oscillations in physiology and behaviour. However, this notion was inconsistent with observations of the timing of sleep in human subjects living in isolation from time cues. Serge Daan, together with Borbély and Beersma, developed a model which convincingly explained the observations. It was called the two-process model of sleep regulation and explained human sleep regulation in terms of two key processes: a circadian pacemaker, and a homeostatic drive to sleep that increases during wake and decreases during sleep. Today, the two process model is used as the basis for most predictive models of sleep and performance.
Annual timing of reproduction.
Apart from daily alternations in the environment, there are substantial seasonal variations that animals must adapt to across the year. Working with Drent, Daan showed that one strategy used to deal with seasonal changes is to adjust the number and even sex of offspring.
Organisation.
Serge Daan held many offices in academia. He was member of the board of Earth and Life Sciences of NWO – the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (1997–2002), and chairman of the NWO program Evolution and Behaviour (2002–2009). He was president of the Dutch Society for Behavioural Biology (1996–2001). From 2001 to 2004 he was vice-dean for research at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Groningen, and together with dean D.A. Wiersma was responsible for incisive changes such as the tenure track system and the Rosalind Franklin fellowships for women. From 2007 till 2009 he was dean of this Faculty.
Teaching.
Serge Daan taught a wide array of courses on all levels of the curriculum of Biology (animal ecology, zoology, human ethology, chronobiology, animal behaviour, evolution), including the recent tutorial Honours College for highly talented students. He supervised more than 200 master students during their research projects. Serge Daan took the initiative to set up and coordinate the top-master program in Behavioural and Cognitive Neurosciences at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands.
Ph.D.s supervised.
To date, Daan has supervised 43 Ph.D. students.
1986 D. Masman: The annual cycle of the kestrel, "Falco tinnunculus". A study in behavioural energetics.
1988 C. Dijkstra: Reproductive tactics in the Kestrel, "Falco tinnunculus". A study in evolutionary biology.
1988 T. Meijer: Reproductive decisions in the Kestrel, "Falco tinnunculus". A study in physiological ecology.
1988 D.J. Dijk: Spectral analysis of the sleep EEG. Experiments inspired by the two-process model of sleep regulation. (cum laude)
1989 J.H. Meijer: Neuropharmacological and photic manipulation of the circadian pacemaker.
1991 M.P. Gerkema: Ultradian and circadian oscillators in the temporal organization of behaviour in voles.
1993 P.C.J. Franken: Sleep homeostasis and brain temperature. Experimental and simulation studies in the rat.
1995 S. Verhulst: Reproductive decisions in the Great Tit: An optimality approach. (cum laude)
1995 M.W.G. Brinkhof: Timing of reproduction. An experimental study in coots.
1996 C. Deerenberg: Parental energy and fitness costs in birds.
1996 T. de Boer: Sleep regulation in the Djungarian hamster. The effects of temperature, photoperiod and daily torpor.
1997 P.M. Meerlo: Behavioural and chronobiological consequences of social stress in rats.
1997 K.C. de Kogel: Long-term effects of brood size on offspring. An experimental study in the Zebrafinch.
1999 A.M. Strijkstra: Periodic euthermy during hibernation in the European ground squirrel: causes and consequences.
1999 P.E. Boon: Daylength and growth: Behaviour, energy balance and protein synthesis.
1999 M.J.H. Kas: Sleep and circadian timekeeping in "Octodon degus".
2000 I.R. Pen: Sex allocation in a life history context. (cum laude)
2001 R.A. Hut: Natural entrainment of circadian systems. A study in the diurnal ground squirrel "Spermophilus citellus".
2001 K. Jansen: Circadian rhythms in pacemaker and behavior. (a study in the Common vole, "Microtus arvalis")
2001 M. Oklejewicz: The rate of living in tau mutant Syrian hamsters. Studies on the impact of a circadian allele on temporal organisation.
2002 B.I. Tieleman: Avian adaptation along an aridity gradient. Physiology, behavior, and life history. (cum laude)
2003 C. Carere: Personality as an epigenetic suite of traits. A study on a passerine bird.
2003 B. Riedstra: Development and social nature of feather pecking.
2003 B.A.M. Biemans: A time to remember. Consequences of ageing on the circadian memory modulation in rodents.
2004 C.M. Eising: Mother knows best? Costs and benefits of differential hormone allocation in birds.
2004 W. Müller: Maternal phenotypic engineering. Adaptation and constraint in prenatal maternal effects.
2004 N.B. Baron von Engelhardt: Proximate control in avian sex allocation - a study in zebra finches.
2005 M. Rüger: Lighting up the human clock: Effects of bright light on physiological and psychological states in humans.
2005 K. Spoelstra: Dawn and Dusk. Behavioural and molecular complexity in circadian entrainment.
2005 S. Engel: Racing the wind. Water economy and energy expenditure in avian endurance flight.
2006 P.D. Dijkstra: Know thine enemy. Intrasexual selection and sympatric speciation in a Lake Victoria cichlid fish.
2006 P. Korsten: Avian sex allocation and ornamental coloration. A study on blue tits.
2007 C. Schmidt-Wellenburg: Costs of migration. Short- and long-term consequences of avian endurance flight.
2007 L.M. Vaanholt: The rate of living in mice. Impacts of activity and temperature on energy metabolism and longevity.
2007 A. Zavada: Defining and determining the properties of the human sleep homeostat.
2007 D. van der Veen: Neural substrate and the timing of behaviour in a multiple clock system.
2009 T. Limbourg: Parental care in relation to offspring sex and mate attractiveness in the Blue tit.
2009 R.H.E. Mullers: The commuting parent. Energetic constraints in a long distance forager, the Cape gannet.
2009 K.A. Schubert: Breeding on a budget. Fundamental links between energy metabolism and mammalian life history trade-offs. (cum laude)
2009 M.A. Comas Soberats: Entrainment to daylength in the mouse circadian system. Behavioural and molecular analyses. (cum laude)
Honorary doctorate:
2009 Michael Menaker, University of Virginia
"Stellagama stellio daani".
A subspecies of lizard found on some Greek Aegean islands and Turkish Anatolia, "Stellagama stellio daani", is named after S. Daan. The subspecies differs from the nominotypical subspecies ("S. stellio stellio") by having a black-gray head instead of yellowish or reddish head color. This difference was noted by Serge Daan during his investigations in the Mediterranean area, and reported in a paper in 1967 .
Social gatherings.
Serge Daan and his wife Ruth Hohe-Daan are well known for their hospitality within the scientific community. Throughout the years, many biologists have stayed in their house ‘villa Later’ in Paterswolde.
Serge and Ruth are also well known for organising a yearly summer garden party for the people working in the lab.
Honors and awards.
1967 UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM: The annual student award, for a study on: Lateral undulations in the spinal cord in lizard locomotion
1980 Laudakia stellio daani, a Greek and Turkish lizard, named after S.Daan by A.Beutler, E. Frør, Mitt. Zool. Ges. Braunau 3: 255-290
1992 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT Forschungspreis (Research Prize) (Germany)
2000 ROYAL SOCIETY of CANADA, elected Foreign Fellow
2002 Recipient of “Aschoff’s Rule”, meeting of the Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, Amelia Island (Fa, USA). Many chronobiologists will envy Serge for this prize. It is the ruler that was owned by Jürgen Aschoff, one of the fathers of modern chronobiology. The ruler is awarded each time by the previous winner to a new winner, who is selected because he or she is doing chronobiological research with a different technique in a different species than the previous winner. The names of the winners are listed on the back of the ruler.
2003 Appointed as Niko Tinbergen Distinguished Professor in Behavioural Biology
2005 Ridder in de Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw (Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion)
2006 INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR BIOLOGY (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science). Without doubt, this is the most prestigious prize Serge Daan obtained. Many biologists consider this prize to be the highest international award in Biology. For Serge Daan, the fact that this prize introduced him to the royal family of Japan represents a special dimension.
2008 Eminent Scientist Award (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)