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# Enniskillen
**Enniskillen** (`{{IPAc-en|ˌ|ɛ|n|ᵻ|s|ˈ|k|ɪ|l|ən}}`{=mediawiki} `{{respell|EN|iss|KIL|ən}}`{=mediawiki}, from *Inis Ceithleann* `{{IPAc-ga|'|i|n'|i|s'|-|'|k'|e|l'|@|N}}`{=mediawiki}, \'Ceithlenn\'s island\') is the largest town in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It is in the middle of the county, between the Upper and Lower sections of Lough Erne. It had a population of 14,086 at the 2011 census. Enniskillen Castle was built in the 15th century as a stronghold of the Maguires, before coming under English control in the early 17th century. The castle and town were expanded during the Plantation of Ulster. It was the seat of local government for the former Fermanagh District Council, and is the county town of Fermanagh. The town is in a civil parish of the same name.
## Toponymy
The town\'s name comes from the *Inis Ceithleann*. This refers to Cethlenn, a figure in Irish mythology who may have been a goddess. Local legend has it that Cethlenn was wounded in battle by an arrow and attempted to swim across the River Erne, which surrounds the island, but she never reached the other side, so the island was named in reference to her. It has been anglicised many ways over the centuries -- *Iniskellen*, *Iniskellin*, *Iniskillin*, *Iniskillen*, *Inishkellen*, *Inishkellin*, *Inishkillin*, *Inishkillen* and so on.
## History
The town\'s oldest building is Enniskillen Castle, built by Hugh (Maguire) the Hospitable who died in 1428. An earthwork, the Skonce on the shore of Lough Erne, may be the remains of an earlier motte. The castle was the stronghold of the junior branch of the Maguires. The first watergate was built around 1580 by Cú Chonnacht Maguire, though subsequent lowering of the level of the lough has left it without water. The strategic position of the castle made its capture important for the English in 1593, to support their plans for the control of Ulster. The castle was besieged three times in 1594--95. The English, led by a Captain Dowdall, captured it in February 1594. Maguire then laid siege to it, and defeated a relieving force at the Battle of the Ford of the Biscuits at Drumane Bridge on the Arney River. Although the defenders were relieved, Maguire gained possession of the castle from 1595 to 1598 and it was not finally captured by the English until 1607.
This was part of a wider campaign to bring the province of Ulster under English control; the final capture of Enniskillen Castle in 1607 was followed by the Plantation of Ulster, during which the lands of the native Irish were seized and handed over to planters loyal to the English Crown. The Maguires were supplanted by William Cole, originally from Devon, who was appointed by James I to build an English settlement there in 1612.
Captain Cole was installed as Constable and strengthened the castle wall and built a \"fair house\" on the old foundation as the centre point of the county town. The first Protestant parish church was erected on the hilltop in 1627. By 1630 the town had around 180 inhabitants, mostly comprising English and Scottish settlers. The Royal Free School of Fermanagh was moved onto the island in 1643. The first bridges were drawbridges; permanent bridges were not installed before 1688.
By 1689 the town had grown significantly. During the conflict which resulted from the ousting of King James II by his Protestant rival, William III, Enniskillen and Derry were the focus of Williamite resistance in Ireland, including the nearby Battle of Newtownbutler.
Enniskillen and Derry were the two garrisons in Ulster that were not wholly loyal to James II, and it was the last town to fall before the Siege of Derry. As a direct result of this conflict, Enniskillen developed not only as a market town but also as a garrison, which became home to two regiments.
The former site of Fermanagh College at Gaol Square (the college has now moved to the old Erne Hospital site) was the former Enniskillen Gaol. Many people were tried and hanged in the square during the times of public execution. Part of the old goal is still standing. Enniskillen Town Hall was designed by William Scott and completed in 1901.
### Military history {#military_history}
Enniskillen is the site of the foundation of two British Army regiments:
- Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers
- The Inniskillings (6th Dragoons)
The town\'s name (with the archaic spelling) continues to form part of the title to The Royal Irish Regiment (27th (Inniskilling) 83rd and 87th and Ulster Defence Regiment). Enniskillen Castle features on the cap badge of both regiments.
### The Troubles {#the_troubles}
Enniskillen was the site of several events during The Troubles, the most notable being the Remembrance Day bombing in which 11 people were killed. Bill Clinton opened The Clinton Centre in 2002 on the site of the bombing. The Provisional Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the attack.
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# Enniskillen
## History
### Alleged sexual abuse and assault {#alleged_sexual_abuse_and_assault}
In 2019, at least nine men reported to the police and the press and said in public forums that, in the 1980s and 90s, when they were children, they were repeatedly molested and raped by a paedophile ring of at least 20 men in the Enniskillen area. Investigations are continuing.
## Demography
### 2021 Census
On Census day 2021 there were 14,086 people living in Enniskillen. Of these:
- 61.52% (8,666) belong to or were brought up in the Catholic Christian faith and 29.09% (4,097) belong to or were brought up in various \'Protestant and Other Christian (including Christian related)\' denominations. 2.2% (310) belong to other religions and 7.19% (1,013) had no religious background.
- 22.8% (3,212) indicated that they had a British only identity, 34.68% (4,885) had an Irish only identity and 26.4% (3,179) had a Northern Irish only identity (respondents could indicate more than one national identity)
### 2011 Census {#census_1}
On Census day (27 March 2011) there were 13,823 people living in Enniskillen (5,733 households), accounting for 0.76% of the NI total and representing an increase of 1.6% on the Census 2001 population of 13,599. Of these:
- 19.76% were aged under 16 years and 15.59% were aged 65 and over;
- 51.80% of the usually resident population were female and 48.20% were male;
- 61.62% belong to or were brought up in the Catholic Christian faith and 33.55% belong to or were brought up in various \'Protestant and Other Christian (including Christian related)\' denominations
- 35.59% indicated that they had a British national identity, 33.77% had an Irish national identity and 30.35% had a Northern Irish national identity (respondents could indicate more than one national identity)
- 39 years was the average (median) age of the population
- 13.03% had some knowledge of Irish (Gaelic) and 3.65% had some knowledge of Ulster-Scots
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# Enniskillen
## Places of interest {#places_of_interest}
### Churches
There are four churches in the town centre. These are:
- St. Macartin\'s Cathedral (Church of Ireland) -- This church dates from 1840. It was built on the site of an earlier Plantation church.
- St. Michael\'s Church (Catholic) -- This church dates from 1875 although an earlier church on the site dates from 1803.
- Enniskillen Methodist Church -- This church opened in 1867. It has a Palladian facade.
- Enniskillen Presbyterian Church -- The current church was erected in 1897 although there is evidence of a building dating back to 1700.
There are several other churches outside the town centre.
### Historic Buildings {#historic_buildings}
Some of these buildings are outside the town.
- Castle Coole
- Colebrooke House, Brookeborough -- eleven miles east of Enniskillen; built 1820
- Cole\'s Monument
- Enniskillen Castle
- Enniskillen Town Hall
- Enniskillen Courthouse -- built 1785
- Florence Court -- eight miles outside Enniskillen; 18th century
- Monea Castle
- Portora Castle
- The Regimental Museum of the Inniskilling Regiment
### Natural Phenomena {#natural_phenomena}
- The Marble Arch Caves
- Cuilcagh Mountain Global Geo-Park
- Lough Navar and the Cliffs of Magho
### Other
- Ardhowen Theatre
- The Clinton Centre
- The Round O
- William Blake\'s pub -- historic public house
## Gallery
<File:Enniskillen> Castle by Paride.JPG\|Enniskillen Castle <File:Enniskillen>, Co. Fermanagh, late 19th century (7595791674).jpg\|Enniskillen in the late 19th century <File:Enniskillen> Registry Office - geograph.org.uk - 485072.jpg\|Enniskillen Town Hall <File:Enniskillen> St. Michael\'s Church NW 2012 09 17.jpg\|St. Michael\'s Church, Enniskillen <File:Methodist> Church, Enniskillen - geograph.org.uk - 1370358.jpg\|Methodist Church, Enniskillen <File:Cole> Monument at Fort Hill Park, Enniskillen - geograph.org.uk - 1361418.jpg\|Cole\'s Monument, Enniskillen <File:Enniskillen> Courthouse - geograph.org.uk - 928129.jpg\|Enniskillen Courthouse <File:Portora> Castle.jpg\|Portora Castle <File:ArdhowenTheatre>, Enniskillen - geograph.org.uk - 789403.jpg\|ArdhowenTheatre, Enniskillen <File:William> Blake Pub, Enniskillen - geograph.org.uk - 928131.jpg\|William Blake Pub, Enniskillen
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# Enniskillen
## Sports
### Association football {#association_football}
As of season 2023/24, the town has five association football teams, Enniskillen Rangers, Enniskillen Town United F.C., Enniskillen Athletic, Enniskillen Galaxy and Enniskillen Rovers. Founded in 1953, Enniskillen Rangers are the oldest and most successful of these, having won the Irish Junior Cup five times, most recently in season 2023/24, when they defeated Cleary Celtic FC 2--0 in Stangmore Park, Dungannon, the Fermanagh & Western Division One title 19 times and the Mulhern Cup 16 times. They play their home games at The Ball Range.
Enniskillen Rangers have several notable former players including Sandy Fulton and Jim Cleary.
Enniskillen Town United F.C. currently play in the Fermanagh & Western 1st Division. Their most notable former player is Michael McGovern who won 32 senior caps for Northern Ireland and as of January 2024 was on loan at Livingston F.C. from parent club Heart of Midlothian F.C. Enniskillen Town United F.C. currently play their home games at St Michael\'s GS Pavilion in Enniskillen.
### Rugby
Enniskillen Rugby Football Club was founded in 1925 and plays its home games at Mullaghmeen. The club currently`{{when|date=August 2022}}`{=mediawiki} fields 4 senior men\'s teams, a senior ladies\' team, a range of male and female youth teams, a vibrant mini section and a disability tag team called The Enniskillen Elks. Enniskillen XV won the Ulster Towns Cup in the 2018/19 season, defeating Ballyclare 19--0. The team currently play in Kukri Ulster Rugby Championship Division 1.
The rugby club was formed on 28 August 1925, when 37 attended a meeting in Enniskillen Town Hall. The name Enniskillen Rugby Club was agreed and the club adopted the rules of the Dublin University Football Club. The first match was played on 30 September 1925 against Ballyshannon in County Donegal.
### Gaelic games {#gaelic_games}
Enniskillen Gaels is a Gaelic Athletic Association club founded in 1927. It is based at Brewster Park, Enniskillen. The club has had success in both Gaelic football and hurling winning in both county and provincial competitions.
## International events {#international_events}
Enniskillen was the venue of the 39th G8 summit which was held on 17 and 18 June 2013. It was held at the Lough Erne Resort, a five-star hotel and golf resort on the shore of Lough Erne. The gathering was the biggest international diplomatic gathering ever held in Northern Ireland. Among the G8 leaders who attended were British Prime Minister David Cameron, United States President Barack Obama, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the past, Enniskillen has hosted an array of international events, most notably stages of the World Waterski World Cup, annually from 2005 to 2007 at the Broadmeadow. Despite its success, Enniskillen was not chosen as a World Cup Stop for 2008.
In January 2009, Enniskillen hosted the ceremonial start of Rally Ireland 2009, the first stage of the WRC FIA World Rally Championship 2009 Calendar.
Enniskillen has hosted the Happy Days arts festival since 2012, which celebrates \"the work and influence of Nobel Prize-winning writer Samuel Beckett\" and is the \"first annual, international, multi-arts festival to be held in Northern Ireland since the launch of the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen\'s in 1962\".
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# Enniskillen
## Notable natives and residents {#notable_natives_and_residents}
### Arts and Media {#arts_and_media}
- Samuel Beckett, playwright, educated at Portora Royal School
- Nathan Carter, singer
- Charles Duff, Irish author of books on language learning and other subjects
- Adrian Dunbar, actor, born and brought up in Enniskillen
- Nial Fulton, film and television producer, educated at Portora Royal School
- Neil Hannon, lead singer/composer of the pop band The Divine Comedy, educated at Portora Royal School
- Charles Lawson, most notable for playing Jim McDonald in *Coronation Street*
- Lisa McHugh, country music singer; born in Glasgow, Scotland, she moved to Enniskillen as an adult.
- Fearghal McKinney, journalist, former UTV broadcaster and member of the Northern Ireland Assembly
- Nigel McLoughlin, poet, editor of *Iota* poetry journal and Professor of Creativity and Poetics, University of Gloucestershire
- Ciarán McMenamin, television actor and author
- Frank Ormsby, poet
- David Robinson, photographer and publisher, educated at Portora Royal School
- William Scott, artist
- Mick Softley singer and songwriter for Bob Dylan and Donovan, lived in the town at the time of his death
- Joan Trimble, pianist and composer
- Oscar Wilde, satirist and playwright, educated at Portora Royal School
- Ron Wilson, a news anchor with Network Ten in Australia
### Business
- James Gamble, co-founder of Procter & Gamble, educated at Portora Royal School
### Medicine and Science {#medicine_and_science}
- Denis Burkitt, FRS, surgeon and epidemiologist
### Military
- Eric Bell, recipient of the Victoria Cross
- Henry Hartigan, recipient of the Victoria Cross
- James McGuire, recipient of the Victoria Cross
- George Nurse, recipient of the Victoria Cross
### Politics
- Gerald Grosvenor, 6th Duke of Westminster, brought up at the family\'s estate at Ely Lodge
- Gordon Wilson, Irish senator and peace campaigner, who lived on Cooper Crescent
### Religion
- Edward Cooney, evangelist and early leader of the Cooneyite and Go-Preacher sects, educated at Portora Royal School
- Edward Kernan, a Roman Catholic bishop
- Henry Francis Lyte, hymn composer, most notably of \"Abide with Me\", educated at Portora Royal School
- John McElroy (1782--1877), Jesuit priest, founder of Boston College
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# Enniskillen
## Notable natives and residents {#notable_natives_and_residents}
### Sports {#sports_1}
- Robert Baloucoune, rugby union player, was born and grew up in Enniskillen, learned his rugby at Portora Royal School and made his international debut for Ireland in July 2021
- Declan Burns, Irish kayaking athlete, three-time Irish Olympic representative and former World Superstars runner-up
- Roy Carroll, goalkeeper who played for a number of professional clubs, most notably Manchester United F. C. and who was capped 45 times by Northern Ireland
- Timothy Cathcart, rally driver
- Harry Chatton, football player, from the 1920s and 1930s, who was a dual international for both the IFA and FAI Irish international teams
- Jim Cleary, former Glentoran footballer and member of Northern Ireland\'s 1982 World Cup squad
- William Emerson, football player who won 11 caps for Ireland between 1919 and 1923
- Gordon Ferris, Northern Irish former heavyweight boxer who was both Irish and British champion in the early 1980s
- Casey Howe, international footballer for the Northern Ireland Women\'s team
- Frank Hoy, professional wrestler, was born in the town
- Ted Keenan, record-breaking long-distance swimmer, inducted in 1984 into the Fort Lauderdale International Swimming Hall of Fame
- Robert Kerr, Olympic 100m gold medalist in the 1908 Olympics for Canada
- Kyle Lafferty, striker, professional football player for a number of clubs, most notably Rangers F. C., with 89 Northern Ireland international caps
- Andrew Little, former professional football player and Northern Ireland international, educated at Portora Royal School
- J. J. McCoy (rugby union), from nearby Monea, Jimmy first played rugby for Portora Royal School, Enniskillen
- Michael McGovern, former Northern Ireland international goalkeeper, currently on loan to Livingston F. C. from parent club Heart of Midlothian F. C.
- Kieran McKenna, football manager, appointed to take charge of Ipswich Town FC in December 2021
- Harry Mercer, former player for Enniskillen Corinthians F.C. who, while with Linfield F.C., won a senior Ireland cap while still an amateur
- Holly Nixon, former member of Portora Boat Club and World Champion oarswoman
- Gavin Noble, Irish international triathlete, educated at Portora Royal School
- Dick Rowley, football player who won six caps for Ireland between 1929 and 1931
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# Enniskillen
## Education
There are numerous schools and colleges in and around the Enniskillen area, from primary level to secondary level, including some further education colleges such as the technical college.
### Primary level {#primary_level}
- Enniskillen Integrated Primary school
- Model primary school
- Holy Trinity Primary School
- Jones Memorial Primary School
- Mullnaskea Primary School
### Secondary level {#secondary_level}
- Erne Integrated College
- Devenish College
- Enniskillen Royal Grammar School
- Mount Lourdes Enniskillen; convent girls\' grammar school
- St Michael\'s College; boys\' grammar school
- St Fanchea\'s College
- St Joseph\'s College
### Colleges
- Enniskillen Campus of the College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise (CAFRE)
- Enniskillen Campus South West College
## Transport
### Rail -- historic {#rail_historic}
Railway lines from Enniskillen railway station linked the town with Derry (Londonderry and Enniskillen Railway) from 1854, Dundalk (Irish North Western Railway) from 1861, Bundoran (Enniskillen and Bundoran Railway) from 1868 and Sligo from 1882. By 1883 the Great Northern Railway (Ireland) absorbed all the lines except the Sligo, Leitrim and Northern Counties Railway (SLNCR), which remained independent throughout its existence. In October 1957 the Government of Northern Ireland closed the GNR lines, which made it impossible for the SLNCR to continue and forced it to also close.
### Rail -- current {#rail_current}
Today the nearest railway station to Enniskillen is Sligo station which is served by multiple trains to Dublin Connolly and is operated by Iarnród Éireann. The Dublin-Sligo railway line has a two-hourly service run by Iarnród Éireann. A connecting bus from Sligo via Manorhamilton to Enniskillen is operated by Bus Éireann.
### Bus
Bus service to Enniskillen is provided by both Ulsterbus and Bus Éireann, from Enniskillen bus station. Number 261, 261b and X261 Goldline buses run from Belfast to Enniskillen. Bus Éireann Route 30 runs from Donegal to Dublin Airport/Dublin City via Enniskillen.
### Air
Enniskillen has a World War II-era airport, Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport. The airport had scheduled flights in the past but now serves mainly private traffic.
### Road
The town is on the main A4/N16 route linking Belfast and Sligo, and on the main Dublin to Ballyshannon route, the N3/A46/A509.
## Twinning
Enniskillen was originally twinned with Brackwede -- a Bielefeld suburb -- where the Inniskilling Dragoon Guards were stationed in the late 1950s when the twinning was initiated; however, this suburb was incorporated into Stadt Bielefeld in 1973, the city with which Enniskillen is now officially twinned.
Though the twinning arrangements are still operational, at a meeting of the Regeneration and Community Committee, in February 2018, it was agreed that the twinning arrangements would be formally terminated at the end of the Council term in June 2018. However, Fermanagh and Omagh District Council still have plans to send representatives to Brackwede for the 60th-anniversary celebrations of the twinning. Therefore, the future of the twinning is now somewhat unclear.
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# Enniskillen
## Climate
Enniskillen has a maritime climate with a narrow range of temperatures and rainfall. The nearest official Met Office weather station for which online records are available is at Lough Navar Forest, about 8+1/2 mi northwest of Enniskillen. Data has also more recently been collected from Enniskillen/St Angelo Airport, under 4 mi north of the town centre, which should in time give a more accurate representation of the climate of the Enniskillen area.
The absolute maximum temperature is 29.8 C, recorded during July 2006. In an \'average\' year, the warmest day is 25.5 C and only 2.4 days a year should rise to 25.1 C or above. The respective absolute maximum for St Angelo is 29.4 C
The absolute minimum temperature is -12.9 C, recorded during January 1984. In an \'average\' year, the coldest night should fall to -8.2 C. Lough Navar is a frosty location, with some 76 air frosts recorded in a typical year. It is likely that Enniskillen town centre is significantly less frosty than this. The absolute minimum at St Angelo is -14.5 C, reported during the record cold month of December 2010.
The warmest month on record at St Angelo was August 1995 with a mean temperature of 18.8 C (mean maximum 23.3 C, mean minimum 12.9 C), while the coldest month was December 2010, with a mean temperature of -1.8 C (mean maximum 2.9 C, mean minimum -5.9 C).
Rainfall is high, averaging over 1500 mm. 212 days of the year report at least 1 mm of precipitation, ranging from 15 days during April, May and June, to 20 days in October, November, December, January and March.
The Köppen climate classification subtype for this climate is \"Cfb\" (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate). `{{Weather box
|location = Lough Navar Forest: {{convert|126|m|ft|0|abbr=on}} 1991–2020 normals, extremes 1960–2019
|collapsed =
|metric first = Yes
|single line = Yes
|Jan record high C = 13.3
|Feb record high C = 15.4
|Mar record high C = 20.0
|Apr record high C = 23.2
|May record high C = 26.5
|Jun record high C = 29.7
|Jul record high C = 29.8
|Aug record high C = 28.0
|Sep record high C = 23.2
|Oct record high C = 19.5
|Nov record high C = 16.8
|Dec record high C = 14.3
|year record high C =
|Jan high C = 6.8
|Feb high C = 7.5
|Mar high C = 9.6
|Apr high C = 12.3
|May high C = 15.3
|Jun high C = 17.4
|Jul high C = 18.6
|Aug high C = 18.3
|Sep high C = 16.1
|Oct high C = 12.5
|Nov high C = 9.2
|Dec high C = 7.1
|year high C =
|Jan mean C = 3.7
|Feb mean C = 4.1
|Mar mean C = 5.4
|Apr mean C = 7.4
|May mean C = 10.2
|Jun mean C = 12.5
|Jul mean C = 14.2
|Aug mean C = 13.9
|Sep mean C = 11.7
|Oct mean C = 8.7
|Nov mean C = 5.9
|Dec mean C = 3.9
|year mean C =
|Jan low C = 0.6
|Feb low C = 0.6
|Mar low C = 1.3
|Apr low C = 2.5
|May low C = 5.0
|Jun low C = 7.8
|Jul low C = 9.7
|Aug low C = 9.4
|Sep low C = 7.3
|Oct low C = 4.9
|Nov low C = 2.6
|Dec low C = 0.8
|year low C =
|Jan record low C = -12.9
|Feb record low C = -10.5
|Mar record low C = -11.6
|Apr record low C = -7.3
|May record low C = -4.4
|Jun record low C = -2.4
|Jul record low C = 1.0
|Aug record low C = 0.2
|Sep record low C = -2.6
|Oct record low C = -7.2
|Nov record low C = -8.4
|Dec record low C = -14.5
|year record low C =
|precipitation colour = green
|Jan precipitation mm = 172.0
|Feb precipitation mm = 131.6
|Mar precipitation mm = 121.6
|Apr precipitation mm = 108.9
|May precipitation mm = 103.5
|Jun precipitation mm = 96.8
|Jul precipitation mm = 115.0
|Aug precipitation mm = 122.9
|Sep precipitation mm = 116.5
|Oct precipitation mm = 153.7
|Nov precipitation mm = 172.6
|Dec precipitation mm = 180.9
|year precipitation mm = 1596.3
|Jan precipitation days = 19.8
|Feb precipitation days = 17.8
|Mar precipitation days = 17.8
|Apr precipitation days = 16.5
|May precipitation days = 15.8
|Jun precipitation days = 14.9
|Jul precipitation days = 17.7
|Aug precipitation days = 18.0
|Sep precipitation days = 16.9
|Oct precipitation days = 18.0
|Nov precipitation days = 20.4
|Dec precipitation days = 19.8
|year precipitation days =
|source 1 = Météo Climat<ref>{{cite web
|url= http://climate-datas-weather.dynalias.org/listenormale-1991-2020-4-p183.php
|title= United Kingdom climate normals 1991-2020
|publisher=Météo Climat
|access-date= 1 May 2024}}</ref>
|source 2 = [[Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute|KNMI]] (extremes)<ref>{{cite web
|url = https://climexp.knmi.nl/ecatmin
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# Eric S. Raymond
**Eric Steven Raymond** (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as **ESR**, is an American software developer, open-source software advocate, and author of the 1997 essay and 1999 book *The Cathedral and the Bazaar*. He wrote a guidebook for the Roguelike game *NetHack*. In the 1990s, he edited and updated the Jargon File, published as *The New Hacker\'s Dictionary*.
## Early life {#early_life}
Raymond was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1957, and lived in Venezuela as a child. His family moved to Pennsylvania in 1971. He developed cerebral palsy at birth; his weakened physical condition motivated him to go into computing.
## Career
Raymond began his programming career writing proprietary software, between 1980 and 1985. In 1990, noting that the Jargon File had not been maintained since about 1983, he adopted it, but not without criticism; Paul Dourish maintains an archived original version of the Jargon File, because, he says, Raymond\'s updates \"essentially destroyed what held it together.\"
In 1996, Raymond took over development of the open-source email software \"popclient\", renaming it to Fetchmail. Soon after this experience, in 1997, he wrote the essay \"The Cathedral and the Bazaar\", detailing his thoughts on open-source software development and why it should be done as openly as possible (the \"bazaar\" approach). The essay was based in part on his experience in developing Fetchmail. He first presented his thesis at the annual Linux Kongress on May 27, 1997. He later expanded the essay into a book, *The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary*, in 1999. The essay has been widely cited. The internal white paper by Frank Hecker that led to the release of the Mozilla (then Netscape) source code in 1998 cited *The Cathedral and the Bazaar* as \"independent validation\" of ideas proposed by Eric Hahn and Jamie Zawinski. Hahn would later describe the 1999 book as \"clearly influential\".
From the late 1990s onward, due in part to the popularity of his essay, Raymond became a prominent voice in the open source movement. He co-founded the Open Source Initiative (OSI) in 1998, taking on the self-appointed role of ambassador of open source to the press, business and public. He remains active in OSI, but stepped down as president of the initiative in February 2005. In early March 2020, he was removed from two Open Source Initiative mailing lists due to posts that violated the OSI\'s Code of Conduct.
In 1998, Raymond received and published a Microsoft document expressing worry about the quality of rival open-source software. He named this document, together with others subsequently leaked, \"*The Halloween Documents*\".
Between 2000 and 2002, he created Configuration Menu Language 2 (CML2), a source code configuration system; while originally intended for the Linux operating system, it was rejected by kernel developers. (Raymond attributed this rejection to \"kernel list politics\", but Linus Torvalds said in a 2007 mailing list post that as a matter of policy, the development team preferred more incremental changes.) Raymond\'s 2003 book *The Art of Unix Programming* discusses user tools for programming and other tasks.
Some versions of *NetHack* still include Raymond\'s guide. He has also contributed code and content to the free software video game *The Battle for Wesnoth*.
Raymond is the main developer of NTPsec, a \"secure, hardened replacement\" for the Unix utility NTP.
Raymond has written numerous open-source tools, including cvs-fast-export, a tool for exporting CVS repositories to Git fast-import streams, and \"reposurgeon\", a tool for exporting SVN repositories.
## Views on open source {#views_on_open_source}
Raymond coined an aphorism he dubbed Linus\'s law, inspired by Linus Torvalds: \"Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow\". It first appeared in his book *The Cathedral and the Bazaar*.
Raymond has refused to speculate on whether the \"bazaar\" development model could be applied to works such as books and music, saying that he does not want to \"weaken the winning argument for open-sourcing software by tying it to a potential loser\".
Raymond claims his method of promoting open-source software has been effective because he has used \"a strategy of making rational, technical, utility-maximization arguments in which I explicitly disclaimed having any normative or moralizing agenda.\" Raymond has had a number of public disputes with other figures in the free software movement. As head of the Open Source Initiative, he argued that advocates should focus on the potential for better products. The \"very seductive\" moral and ethical rhetoric of Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation fails, he said, \"not because his principles are wrong, but because that kind of language \... simply does not persuade anybody\".
In a 2008 essay, he defended programmers\' right to issue work under proprietary licenses: \"I think that if a programmer wants to write a program and sell it, it\'s neither my business nor anyone else\'s but his customer\'s what the terms of sale are.\" In the same essay he described his own strong emotional response to proprietary software and negative experiences working as a software developer writing proprietary software.
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# Eric S. Raymond
## Political beliefs and activism {#political_beliefs_and_activism}
Raymond is a member of the Libertarian Party and a gun rights advocate. He has endorsed the open source firearms organization Defense Distributed, calling them \"friends of freedom\" and writing \"I approve of any development that makes it more difficult for governments and criminals to monopolize the use of force. As 3D printers become less expensive and more ubiquitous, this could be a major step in the right direction.\"
In 2015, Raymond accused the Ada Initiative and other women in tech groups of attempting to entrap male open source leaders and accuse them of rape, saying \"Try to avoid even being alone, ever, because there is a chance that a \'women in tech\' advocacy group is going to try to collect your scalp\".
Raymond has claimed that \"Gays experimented with unfettered promiscuity in the 1970s and got AIDS as a consequence\", and that \"Police who react to a random black male behaving suspiciously who might be in the critical age range as though he is an near-imminent lethal threat, are being rational, not racist\". A progressive campaign, \"The Great Slate\", was successful in raising funds for candidates in part by asking for contributions from tech workers in return for not posting similar quotes by Raymond. Matasano Security employee and Great Slate fundraiser Thomas Ptacek said, \"I\'ve been torturing Twitter with lurid Eric S. Raymond quotes for years. Every time I do, 20 people beg me to stop.\" It is estimated that, as of March 2018, over \$30,000 has been raised in this way.
## Religious beliefs {#religious_beliefs}
Raymond describes himself as neo-pagan
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# Edmund Stoiber
**Edmund Rüdiger Stoiber** (born 28 September 1941) is a German politician who served as the 16th minister-president of the state of Bavaria between 1993 and 2007 and chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) between 1999 and 2007. In 2002, he ran for the office of Chancellor of Germany in the federal election, and in one of the narrowest elections in German history lost against Gerhard Schröder. On 18 January 2007, he announced that he would step down as minister-president and as party chairman by 30 September, after having been under fire in his own party for weeks.
## Early life {#early_life}
Stoiber was born in Oberaudorf in the district of Rosenheim in Bavaria. Prior to entering politics in 1974 and serving in the Bavarian Parliament, he was a lawyer and worked at the University of Regensburg.
## Education and profession {#education_and_profession}
Stoiber attended the Ignaz-Günther-Gymnasium in Rosenheim, where he received his *Abitur* (high school diploma) in 1961, although he had to repeat one year for failing Latin. His military service was with the 1st Gebirgsdivision (mountain infantry division) in Mittenwald and Bad Reichenhall and was cut short due to a knee injury. Stoiber then studied political science and (from the fall of 1962) law at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. In 1967, he passed the state law exam and then worked at the University of Regensburg in criminal law and Eastern European law. He received a doctorate in jurisprudence, and then in 1971 passed the second state examination with distinction.
In 1971, Stoiber joined the Bavarian State Ministry of Development and Environment.
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# Edmund Stoiber
## Political career {#political_career}
thumb\|upright=1.2\|Stoiber in 1981
In 1978, Stoiber was elected secretary general of the CSU, a post he held until 1982/83. In this capacity, he served as campaign manager of Franz-Josef Strauss, the first Bavarian leader to run for the chancellorship, in the 1980 national elections. From 1982 to 1986 he served as deputy to the Bavarian secretary of the state and then, in the position of State Minister, led the State Chancellery from 1982 to 1988. From 1988 to 1993 he served as State Minister of the Interior.
### Minister-President of Bavaria, 1993--2007 {#minister_president_of_bavaria_19932007}
In May 1993, the Landtag of Bavaria, the state\'s parliament, elected Stoiber as Minister-President succeeding Max Streibl. He came to power amid a political crisis involving a sex scandal, surrounding a contender for the state premiership. Upon taking office, he nominated Strauss\' daughter Monika Hohlmeier as State Minister for Education and Cultural Affairs.
In his capacity as Minister-President, Stoiber served as President of the Bundesrat in 1995/96. In 1998, he also succeeded Theo Waigel as chairman of the CSU.
During Stoiber\'s 14 years leading Bavaria, the state solidified its position as one of Germany\'s richest. Already by 1998, under his leadership, the state had privatized more than \$3 billion worth of state-owned businesses and used that money to invest in new infrastructure and provide venture capital for new companies. He was widely regarded a central figure in building one of Europe\'s most powerful regional economies, attracting thousands of hi-tech, engineering and media companies and reducing unemployment to half the national average.
### Candidate for Chancellor, 2002 {#candidate_for_chancellor_2002}
In 2002, Stoiber politically outmaneuvered CDU chairwoman, Angela Merkel, and was declared the CDU/CSU\'s candidate for the office of chancellor by practically the entire leadership of the CSU\'s sister party CDU, challenging Gerhard Schröder. At that time, Merkel had generally been seen as a transitional chair and was strongly opposed by the CDU\'s male leaders, often called the party\'s \"crown princess\".
In the run up to the 2002 national elections, the CSU/CDU held a huge lead in the opinion polls and Stoiber famously remarked that \"\... this election is like a football match where it\'s the second half and my team is ahead by 2--0.\" However, on election day things had changed. The SPD had mounted a huge comeback, and the CDU/CSU was narrowly defeated (though both the SPD and CDU/CSU had 38.5% of the vote, the SPD was ahead by a small 6,000 vote margin, winning 251 seats to the CDU/CSU\'s 248). The election was one of modern Germany\'s closest votes.
Gerhard Schröder was re-elected as chancellor by the parliament in a coalition with the Greens, who had increased their vote share marginally. Many commentators faulted Stoiber\'s reaction to the floods in eastern Germany, in the run-up to the election, as a contributory factor in his party\'s poor electoral result and defeat. In addition, Schröder distinguished himself from his opponent by taking an active stance against the upcoming United States-led Iraq War. His extensive campaigning on this stance was widely seen as swinging the election to the SPD in the weeks running up to the election.
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# Edmund Stoiber
## Political career {#political_career}
### Later political career {#later_political_career}
Stoiber subsequently led the CSU to an absolute majority in the 2003 Bavarian state elections, for the third time in a row, winning this time 60.7% of the votes and a two-thirds majority in the Landtag. This was the widest margin ever achieved by a German party in any state.
Between 2003 and 2004, Stoiber served as co-chair (alongside Franz Müntefering) of the First Commission on the modernization of the federal state (*Föderalismuskommission I*), which had been established to reform the division of powers between federal and state authorities in Germany. In February 2004, he became a candidate of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder for the presidency of the European Commission but he decided not to run for this office.
Stoiber had ambitions to run again for the chancellorship, but Merkel secured the nomination, and in November 2005 she won the general election. He was slated to join Merkel\'s first grand coalition cabinet as Economics minister. However, on 1 November 2005, he announced his decision to stay in Bavaria, due to personnel changes on the SPD side of the coalition (Franz Müntefering resigned as SPD chairman) and an unsatisfactory apportionment of competences between himself and designated Science minister Annette Schavan. Stoiber also resigned his seat in the 16th Bundestag, being a member from 18 October to 8 November.
Subsequently, criticism grew in the CSU, where other politicians had to scale back their ambitions after Stoiber\'s decision to stay in Bavaria. On 18 January 2007, he announced his decision to stand down from the posts of minister-president and party chairman by 30 September. Günther Beckstein, then Bavarian state minister of the interior, succeeded him as minister-president and Erwin Huber as party chairman, defeating Horst Seehofer at a convention at 18 September 2007 with 58,1% of the votes. Both Beckstein and Huber resigned after the 2008 state elections, in which the CSU vote dropped to 43,4% and the party had to form a coalition with another party for the first time since 1966.
## Life after politics {#life_after_politics}
Stoiber was first appointed in 2007 as a special adviser to European Commission President José Manuel Barroso to chair the \"High level group on administrative burdens\", made up of national experts, NGOs, business and industry organizations. Quickly nicknamed the \"Stoiber Group\", it produced a report in July 2014 with several proposals on streamlining the regulatory process. Stoiber was re-appointed in December 2014 by Jean-Claude Juncker to the same role, from which he resigned after one year in late 2015.
Since his retirement from German politics in 2007, Stoiber has worked as a lawyer and held paid and unpaid positions, including:
- Bundesliga Foundation, Member of the Board of Trustees
- Commerzbank, Member of the Central Advisory Board
- Deloitte Germany, chairman of the Advisory Board (since 2009)
- Donner & Reuschel, Member of the Advisory Board
- FC Bayern Munich, Member of the Supervisory Board of the stock corporation and Chairman of the Advisory Board of the club.
- German-Russian Raw Materials Forum, Member of the Presidium
- Hanns Seidel Foundation, Member
- Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Member of the Honorary Senate
- Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich, Member of the Board of Trustees
- Munich Security Conference, Member of the Advisory Council
- Nürnberger Beteiligungs-Aktiengesellschaft, Member of the Supervisory Board
- ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Member of the advisory board (since 2011)
Stoiber was a CSU delegate to the Federal Convention for the purpose of electing the President of Germany in 2017.
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# Edmund Stoiber
## Political positions {#political_positions}
### Foreign policy {#foreign_policy}
thumb\|upright=1.2\|Stoiber and Vladimir Putin in 2000 In his capacity as Minister-President, Stoiber made 58 foreign trips, including to China (1995, 2003), Israel (2001), Egypt (2001), India (2004, 2007) and South Korea (2007).
In 2002, Stoiber publicly expressed support for the United States in their policy toward Iraq. During his election campaign, he made clear his opposition to war, and his support for the introduction of weapons inspectors to Iraq without preconditions as a way of avoiding war, and he criticized Schröder for harming the German-American alliance by not calling President George W. Bush and discussing the issue privately. He also attacked German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer for his criticism of the U.S. position.
Stoiber is known for backing Vladimir Putin and there have been comparisons to Gerhard Schröder. One author called Stoiber a \"Moscow\'s Trojan Horse\". Putin is known to have given Stoiber \"extreme forms of flattery\" and privileges such as a private dinner at Putin\'s residence outside Moscow.
### European integration {#european_integration}
Stoiber has been said to be skeptical of Germany\'s decision to adopt the euro. In 1997, he joined the minister-presidents of two other German states, Kurt Biedenkopf and Gerhard Schröder, in making the case for a five-year delay in Europe\'s currency union. When the European Commission recommended that Greece be allowed to join the eurozone in 1998, he demanded that the country be barred from adopting the common currency for several years instead. He is a staunch opponent of Turkey\'s integration into the European Union, claiming that its non-Christian culture would dilute the Union.
At the same time, Stoiber has repeatedly insisted he is a \"good European\" who is keen, for instance, on forging an EU-wide foreign policy, replete with a single European army. Earlier, in 1993, he had told German newspapers: \"I want a simple confederation. That means the nation-states maintain their dominant role, at least as far as internal matters are concerned.\"
### Economic policy {#economic_policy}
While the conservative wing of the German political spectrum, primarily formed of the CDU and CSU, enjoys considerable support, this support tends to be less extended to Stoiber. He enjoys considerably more support in his home state of Bavaria than in the rest of Germany, where CDU chairwoman Angela Merkel is more popular. This has its reasons: Merkel supports a kind of fiscal conservatism, but a more liberal social policy. Stoiber, on the other hand, favors a more conservative approach to both fiscal and social matters, and while this ensures him the religious vote, strongest in Bavaria, it has weakened his support at the national level.
In 2005, Stoiber successfully lobbied Novartis, the Swiss pharmaceuticals group, to move the headquarters of its Sandoz subsidiary to Munich, making it one of Europe\'s highest-profile corporate relocations that year as well as a significant boost to Stoiber\'s attempts to build up Bavaria as a pharmaceuticals and biotechnology center.
During his time as Minister-President of Bavaria, Stoiber pushed for the construction of a roughly 40-kilometer high-speed magnetic-levitation link from Munich\'s main station to its airport, to be built by Transrapid International, a consortium including ThyssenKrupp and Munich-based Siemens. After he left office, the German federal government abandoned the plans in 2008 because of spiraling costs of as much as €3.4 billion.
### Domestic policy {#domestic_policy}
Stoiber, as a minister in the state of Bavaria, was widely known for advocating a reduction in the number of asylum seekers Germany accepts, something that prompted critics to label him xenophobic, anti-Turkish and anti-Islam. In the late 1990s, he criticized the incoming Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for saying that he would work hard in the interest of Germans *and* people living in Germany. Stoiber\'s remarks drew heavy criticism in the press.
When Germany\'s Federal Constitutional Court decided in 1995 that a Bavarian law requiring a crucifix to be hung in each of the state\'s 40,000 classrooms was unconstitutional, Stoiber said he would not order the removal of crucifixes \"for the time being\", and asserted that he was under no obligation to remove them in schools where parents unanimously opposed such action.
During his 2002 election campaign, Stoiber indicated he would not ban same-sex marriages---sanctioned by the Schröder government---a policy he had vehemently objected to when it was introduced.
### Media policy {#media_policy}
Stoiber has been a staunch advocate of changes in German law that would give more power to owners of private TV channels. In 1995, he publicly called for the abolition of Germany\'s public television service ARD and a streamlining of its regional services, adding that he and Minister-President Kurt Biedenkopf of Saxony would break the contract ARD has with regional governments if reforms were not undertaken. However, when European Commissioner for Competition Karel van Miert unveiled ideas for reforming the rules governing the financing of public service broadcasters in 1998, Stoiber led the way in rejecting moves to reform established practice.
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# Edmund Stoiber
## Controversies
### Comments on East Germany {#comments_on_east_germany}
During the run-up to the German general election in 2005, which was held ahead of schedule, Stoiber created controversy through a campaign speech held in the beginning of August 2005 in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. He said, \"I do not accept that the East \[of Germany\] will again decide who will be Germany\'s chancellor. It cannot be allowed that the frustrated determine Germany\'s fate.\" People in the new federal states of Germany (the former German Democratic Republic) were offended by Stoiber\'s remarks. While the CSU attempted to portray them as \"misinterpreted\", Stoiber created further controversy when he claimed that \"if it was like Bavaria everywhere, there wouldn\'t be any problems. But unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, we have everywhere some sections of the populace not as intelligent as in Bavaria.\" The tone of the comments was exacerbated by a perception by some within Germany of the state of Bavaria as \"arrogant\".
Many, including members of the CDU, attribute Stoiber\'s comments and behavior as a contributing factor to the CDU\'s losses in the 2005 general election. He was accused by many in the CDU/CSU of offering \"half-hearted\" support to Angela Merkel, with some even accusing him of being reluctant to support a female candidate from the East. (This also contrasted unfavorably with Merkel\'s robust support for his candidacy in the 2002 election.) He has insinuated that votes were lost because of the choice of a female candidate. He came under heavy fire for these comments from press and politicians alike, especially since he himself lost almost 10% of the Bavarian vote---a dubious feat in itself as Bavarians tend to consistently vote conservatively. Nonetheless, a poll has suggested over 9% may have voted differently if the conservative candidate was a man from the West, although this does not clearly show if such a candidate would have gained or lost votes for the conservatives.
### BayernLB activities {#bayernlb_activities}
When the Croatian National Bank turned down BayernLB\'s original bid to take over the local arm of Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International, this drew strong criticism from Stoiber, who said the decision was \"unacceptable\" and a \"severe strain\" for Bavaria\'s relations with Croatia. Croatia was seeking to join the European Union at the time. The central bank\'s board later reviewed and accepted BayernLB\'s offer of 1.6 billion euros. The investment in Hypo Group Alpe Adria was part of a series of ill-fated investments, which later forced BayernLB to take a 10 billion-euro bailout in the financial crisis.
### Alleged intentions for a coup {#alleged_intentions_for_a_coup}
In Wolfgang Schäuble\'s memoirs *Erinnerungen. Mein Leben in der Politik* ("Memories. My Life in Politics"), published posthumously in 2024, Schäuble claims that in 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis at the time, Stoiber tried to persuade him to overthrow Chancellor Angela Merkel, in order to become chancellor himself. Stoiber commented on that: "I have had as many personal and confidential conversations with few colleagues in my life from the 1980s until the last few years as with my long-standing and close colleague Wolfgang Schäuble. I have never commented on reports about it and of course that still applies to me today after his death.\"
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# Edmund Stoiber
## Personal life {#personal_life}
Stoiber is Roman Catholic. He is married to Karin Stoiber. They have three children: Constanze (born 1971, married *Hausmann*), Veronica (born 1977, married *Saß*), Dominic (born 1980) and five grandchildren: Johannes (1999), Benedikt (2001), Theresa Marie (2005), Ferdinand (2009) and another grandson (2011).
Stoiber is a keen football fan and operative. In his youth, he played for local football side BCF Wolfratshausen. Stoiber serves as Member of the Supervisory Board of FC Bayern München AG (the stock corporation that runs the professional football section) and Chairman of the Administrative Advisory Board of FC Bayern Munich e.V. (the club that owns the majority of the club corporation).
Before the 2002 election, FC Bayern general manager Uli Hoeneß expressed his support for Stoiber and the CSU. Football legend, former FC Bayern president and DFB vice president Franz Beckenbauer showed his support for Stoiber by letting him join the Germany national football team on their flight home from Japan after the 2002 FIFA World Cup.
## Honours and awards {#honours_and_awards}
thumb\|upright=1.2\|Stoiber during the conferment Order against the deadly seriousness, 2000
- 1984: Bavarian Order of Merit
- 1996: Karl Valentin Order
- 1996: Grand Order of King Dmitar Zvonimir
- 1999: Grand Cross of the Order of the Star of Romania
- 2000: Orden wider den tierischen Ernst
- 2002: Commander of the Legion of Honour
- 2003: Officer of the Ordre national du Québec
- 2004: Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
- 2005: *Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash* for Services to the Republic of Austria
- 2006: Grand Cross of Order of Merit of the Italian Republic
- 2007: Large Gold Medal of the province of Upper Austria
- 2007: Honorary degree awarded by the Sogang University
- 2008: Steiger Award
- 2009: Order of Merit of Baden-Württemberg
## Literature
- Michael Stiller: *Edmund Stoiber: der Kandidat.* Econ, München 2002, `{{ISBN|3-430-18786-9}}`{=mediawiki}.
- Jürgen Roth, Peter Köhler: *Edmund G. Stoiber: Weltstaatsmann und Freund des Volkes.* Eichborn, Frankfurt 2002, `{{ISBN|3-8218-3584-2}}`{=mediawiki}.
- Jule Philippi: Wer für alles offen ist, ist nicht ganz dicht. Weisheiten des Edmund Stoiber. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2007, `{{ISBN|978-3-499-62248-9}}`{=mediawiki}
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# Esperantujo
**Esperantujo** (`{{IPA|eo|esperanˈtujo|IPA}}`{=mediawiki}) or **Esperantio** (`{{IPA|eo|esperanˈtio|IPA}}`{=mediawiki}) is the community of speakers of the Esperanto language and their culture, as well as the places and institutions where the language is used. The term is used \"as if it were a country.\"
Although it does not occupy its own area of Earth\'s surface, it can be said to constitute the 120 countries which have their own national Esperanto association.
## Etymology and terminology {#etymology_and_terminology}
The word is formed analogously to country names. In Esperanto, the names of countries were traditionally formed from the ethnic name of their inhabitants plus the suffix *-ujo*. For example, \"France\" was *Francujo*, from *franco* (a Frenchman).
The term analogous to *Francujo* would be *Esperantistujo* (Esperantist-nation). However, that would convey the idea of a physical body of people, whereas using the name of the language as the basis of the word gives it the more abstract connotation of a cultural sphere.
Currently, names of nation states are often formed with the suffix *-io* (traditionally reserved for deriving country names from geographic features --- e.g. *Francio* instead of *Francujo*), and recently the form *Esperantio* has been used, among others, in the Pasporta Servo and the Esperanto Citizens\' Community.
## History
In 1908, Dr. Wilhelm Molly attempted to create an Esperanto state in the Prussian-Belgian condominium of Neutral Moresnet, known as \"Amikejo\" (place of friendship). What became of it is unclear, and Neutral Moresnet was annexed to Belgium in the Treaty of Versailles, 1919.
During the 1960s came a new effort of creating an Esperanto state, which this time was called the Republic of Rose Island. The state island stood in the Adriatic Sea near Italy.
In Europe, on 2 June 2001, a number of organizations (they prefer to call themselves establishments) founded the *Esperanta Civito*, which \"aims to be a subject of international law\" and \"aims to consolidate the relations between the Esperantists who feel themselves belonging to the diaspora language group which does not belong to any country\". *Esperanto Civito* always uses the name Esperantujo (introduced by Hector Hodler in 1908), which itself is defined according to their interpretation of *raumism*, and the meaning, therefore, may differ from the traditional Esperanto understanding of the word *Esperantujo*.
A language learning partner application called Amikumu was launched in 2017, allowing Esperanto speakers to find each other.
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# Esperantujo
## Geography
`{{see also|Pasporta Servo|Zamenhof-Esperanto object}}`{=mediawiki} Esperantujo includes any physical place where Esperanto speakers meet, such as Esperanto gatherings or virtual networks. Sometimes it is said that it is everywhere where Esperanto speakers are connected.
Although Esperantujo does not have its own official territory, a number of places around the world are owned by Esperanto organizations or are otherwise permanently connected to the Esperanto language and its community:
- Białystok, the birthplace of L. L. Zamenhof (the creator of Esperanto), and very much the place which inspired him to create an international auxiliary language and facilitate communication across language barriers.
- The German city Herzberg am Harz is home to the *Interkultura Centro Herzberg*, and, since 12 July 2006, advertises itself as \"Esperanto city\" (*links=no*, *Esperanto-Stadt*). There are bilingual signs and pointers, in both German and Esperanto.
- The Château de Grésillon (*links=no*) in France is owned by the non-profit organization \"Cultural House of Esperanto\" (*Kulturdomo de Esperanto*), which hosts various Esperanto events in the summer and during French school holidays.
- The Esperanto Museum and Collection of Planned Languages, a department of the Austrian National Library, is a museum for Esperanto and other constructed languages, located in Vienna.
- Zamenhof-Esperanto objects can be found all over the world. These are places and objects --- such as streets, memorials, public spaces, buildings, vehicles, or even geographic features --- that are named after, or otherwise linked to the language, its creator L. L. Zamenhof, or its community of speakers.
The countries with the most members of the World Esperanto Association are (in descending order): Brazil, Germany, Japan, France, the United States, China, Italy.
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# Esperantujo
## Politics
### Associations
`{{Main article|List of Esperanto organizations}}`{=mediawiki} `{{See also|Universal Esperanto Association|World Esperanto Youth Organization|Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda}}`{=mediawiki} There is no governmental system in Esperantujo because it is not a true state. However, there is a social hierarchy of associations:
- Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) is the principal association created in 1908, its central office is located in Rotterdam. The aim of the UEA is to promote the use of Esperanto, to strive for the solution of the language problem in international relations, to encourage all types of spiritual and material relations among people and *to nurture among its members a strong sense of solidarity, and to develop in them understanding and respect for other peoples*.
- Sometimes there are associations by continent, for example, the European Esperanto Union. On the same level there are UEA commissions dedicated to promoting the spread of Esperanto in Africa, America (North & South), Asia, the Middle East, and Oceania.
- In at least 120 countries in the world there are national associations: Brazilian Esperanto League, the German Esperanto Association, Japanese Esperanto Association, Esperanto-USA and Australian Esperanto Association are examples from all continents across the world. The goals are usually to help teach the language and use of Esperanto in the country.
- Finally, there are local associations or Esperanto clubs where volunteers or activists offer courses to learn the language or get to know more about the culture of Esperanto. Sometimes they teach Esperanto in universities or schools.
Also there are thematic associations worldwide, which are concerned with spirituality, hobbies, science or bringing together Esperantists who share common interests.
There is also a number of global organizations, such as Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT), or the World Esperanto Youth Organization (TEJO), which has 46 national sections.
### Foreign relations {#foreign_relations}
Universal Esperanto Association is not a governmental system; however, the association represents Esperanto worldwide. In addition to the United Nations and UNESCO, the UEA has consultative relationships with UNICEF and the Council of Europe and general cooperative relations with the Organization of American States. UEA officially collaborates with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) by means of an active connection to the ISO Committee on terminology (ISO/TC 37). The association is active for information on the European Union and other interstate and international organizations and conferences. UEA is a member of European Language Council, a joint forum of universities and linguistic associations to promote the knowledge of languages and cultures within and outside the European Union. Moreover, on 10 May 2011, the UEA and the International Information Centre for Terminology (Infoterm) signed an Agreement on Cooperation, its objectives are inter exchange information, support each other and help out for projects, meetings, publications in the field of terminology and by which the UEA become Associate Member of Infoterm.
### Political movement {#political_movement}
In 2003 there was a European political movement called Europe--Democracy--Esperanto created. Within it is found a European federation that brings together local associations whose statutes depends on the countries. The working language of the movement is Esperanto. The goal is \"to provide the European Union with the necessary tools to set up member rights democracy\". The international language is a tool to enable cross-border political and social dialogue and actively contribute to peace and understanding between peoples. The original idea in the first ballot was mainly to spread the existence and the use of Esperanto to the general public. However, in France voices have grown steadily: 25067 (2004) 28944 (2009) and 33115 (2014). In this country there are a number of movements which support the issue: France Équité, Europe-Liberté, and Politicat.
### Symbols
The flag of Esperanto is called *Verda Flago* (Green Flag). It consists of:
- a rectangular shape, officially with a 2:3 ratio.
- a green field, where the green color symbolizes hope. There is no indication that any \"official\" color was ever chosen. The shade used varies in different sources, yet the color `{{Color|#009900|009900}}`{=mediawiki} is most often used.
- a white, square canton (upper hoist quarter), measuring exactly half the hoist, where the white color symbolizes peace and neutrality.
- in the canton, a green five-pointed star known as *Verda Stelo* (Green Star), which symbolizes the five continents.
The anthem is called *La Espero* since 1891: it is a poem written by L. L. Zamenhof. The song is usually sung to the triumphal march composed by Félicien Menu de Ménil in 1909.
The Jubilee symbol represents the language internally, while the flag represents the Esperanto movement.`{{Dubious|date=September 2020|reason=Statement is oddly general for such a decentralized movement.}}`{=mediawiki} It contains the Latin letter E (Esperanto) and the Cyrillic letter Э (Эсперанто) symbolizing the unification of West and East. The Jubilee symbol has been controversial, with some Esperantists derisively calling it \"the melon.\"
In addition, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, the initiator of the language, is often used as a symbol. Sometimes he is even called \"Uncle Zam\", referring to the cartoon incarnation of American Uncle Sam.
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# Esperantujo
## Population
### Education
`{{See also|International League of Esperanto Teachers|Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology}}`{=mediawiki} In addition to textbooks, including the *Fundamento de Esperanto* by Zamenhof, the Assimil-methods and the video-methods such as Muzzy in Gondoland of the BBC and *Pasporto al la tuta mondo*, there are many courses for learning online. Moreover, some universities teach Esperanto, and the Higher Foreign Language training (University Eötvös Loránd) delivers certificates in accordance with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). More than 1600 people have such a certificate around the world: in 2014 around 470 at the level of B1, 510 at the level of B2 and 700 for C1. The International League of Esperanto Teachers (ILEI) is also working to publish learning materials for teachers.
The University of Esperanto offers video lectures in Esperanto, for specialties like Confronting War, Informational Technologies and Astronomy. Courses are also held during the World Esperanto Congress in the framework of the Internacia Kongresa Universitato (IKU). After that, UEA uploads the related documents on its website.
Science is an appropriate department for works in Esperanto. For example, the Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology (KAEST) occurs in November every year since 1998 in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Personal initiatives are also common: Doctor of mathematics Ulrich Matthias created a document about the foundations of Linear Algebra and the American group of Maine (USA) wrote a guidebook to learn the programming language Python.
In general, Esperanto is used as a lingua franca in some websites aiming teaching of other languages, such as German, Slovak, Swahili, Wolof or Toki Pona.
### Media
Since 1889 when *La Esperantisto* appeared, and soon other magazines in Esperanto throughout many countries in the world. Some of them are information media of Esperanto associations (*Esperanto*, *Sennaciulo* and *Kontakto*). Online Esperanto magazines like *Libera Folio*, launched in 2003, offer independent view of the Esperanto movement, aiming to soberly and critically shed light on current development. Most of the magazines deal with current events; one of such magazines is *Monato*, which is read in more than 60 countries. Its articles are written by correspondents from 40 countries, which know the local situation very well. Other most popular Esperanto newspapers are *La Ondo de Esperanto*, *Beletra Almanako*, *Literatura Foiro*, and *Heroldo de Esperanto*. Often national associations magazines are also published in order to inform about the movement in the country, such as *Le Monde de l\'espéranto* of Espéranto-France. There are also scientific journals, such as *Scienca Revuo* of Internacia Scienca Asocio Esperantista (ISAE).
*Muzaiko* is a radio that has broadcast an all-day international program of songs, interviews and current events in Esperanto since 2011. The latest two can be downloaded as podcasts. Besides Muzaiko, these other stations offer an hour of Esperanto-language broadcasting of various topics: *Radio Libertaire*, *Polskie Radio*, *Vatican Radio*, *Varsovia Vento,*Radio Verda and *Kern.punkto*.
### Internet
Spread of the Internet has enabled more efficient communication among Esperanto speakers and slightly replaced slower media such as mail. Many massively used websites such as Facebook or Google offer Esperanto interface. On 15 December 2009, on the occasion of the jubilee of 150th birthday of L. L. Zamenhof, Google additionally made visible the Esperanto flag as a part of their Google Doodles. Media as Twitter, Telegram, Reddit or Ipernity also contain a significant number of people in this community. In addition, content-providers such as WordPress and YouTube also enable bloggers write in Esperanto. Esperanto versions of programs such as the office suite LibreOffice and Mozilla Firefox browser, or the educational program about programming Scratch are also available. Additionally, online games like Minecraft offer complete Esperanto interface.
Monero, an anonymous cryptocurrency, was named after the Esperanto word for \"coin\" and its official wallet is available in Esperanto. The same applies to Monerujo (\"Monero container\").
### Sport
Although Esperantujo is not a country, there is an Esperanto football team, which has existed since 2014 and participates in matches during World Esperanto Congresses. The team is part of the N.F.-Board and not of FIFA, and have played against the teams of Armenian-originating Argentine Community in 2014 and the team from Western Sahara in 2015.
### Esperanto speakers and Esperantists {#esperanto_speakers_and_esperantists}
Initially, Esperanto speakers learned the language as it was described by L. L. Zamenhof. In 1905, the *Fundamento de Esperanto* put together the first Esperanto textbook, an exercise book and a universal dictionary.
The \"Declaration about the essence of Esperantism\" (1905) defines an \"Esperantist\" to be anyone who speaks and uses Esperanto. \"Esperantism\" was defined to be a movement to promote the widespread use of Esperanto as a supplement to mother tongues in international and inter-ethnic contexts. As the word \"esperantist\" is linked with this \"esperantism\" (the Esperanto movement) and as -ists and -isms are linked with ideologies, today many people who speak Esperanto prefer to be called \"Esperanto speaker\".
The monthly magazine *La Ondo de Esperanto* every year since 1998 proclaims an \'Esperantist of the year\', who remarkably contributed to the spreading of the language during the year.
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# Esperantujo
## Economy
### Businesses
Publishing and selling books, the so-called book services, is the main market and is often the first expenditure of many Esperanto associations. Some companies are already well known: for example Vinilkosmo, which publishes and makes popular Esperanto music since 1990. Then there are initiatives such as the job-seeking website *Eklaboru*, created by Chuck Smith, for job offers and candidates within Esperanto associations or Esperanto meetings.
### Currency
In 1907, René de Saussure proposed the spesmilo ⟨₷⟩ as an international currency. It had some use before the First World War.
In 1942 a currency called the *stelo* (\"star\"; plural, *steloj*) was created. It was used at meetings of the *Universala Ligo* and in Esperanto environments such as the annual Universal Congress. Over the years it slowly became unusable and at the official closing of the Universala Ligo in the 1990s, the remaining *steloj* coins were handed over to the UEA. They can be bought at the UEA\'s book service as souvenirs.
The current *steloj* are made of plastic; they are used in a number of meetings, especially among young people. The currency is maintained by Stelaro, which calculates the rates, keeps the stock, and opened branches in various e-meetings. Currently, there are *stelo*-coins of 1 ★, 3 ★ and 10 ★. The exchange rate at 31 December 2014 was 1 EUR = 4.189 ★.
## Culture
### Architectural heritage {#architectural_heritage}
There exist Zamenhof-Esperanto objects (ZEOs), scattered in numerous countries around the world, which are the things named in honor of L. L. Zamenhof or Esperanto: monuments, street names, places and so on. There also exists a UEA-committee for ZEOs.
In addition, in several countries there are also sites dedicated to Esperanto: meetup places, workshops, seminars, festivals, Esperanto houses. These places provide attractions for Esperantists. Here are two: the Castle of Grésilion in France and the Department of Planned Languages and Esperanto Museum in Vienna (Austria).
### Cultural heritage {#cultural_heritage}
`{{main article|Esperanto literature}}`{=mediawiki} Esperanto literary heritage is the richest and the most diverse of any constructed language. There are over 25,000 Esperanto books (originals and translations) as well as over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines.
There are also a number of movies which have been published in Esperanto. Moreover, Esperanto itself was used in numerous movies.
### Celebrations
Many public holidays recognized by Esperanto speakers are celebrated internationally, having gained full acceptance by organizations such as UN and UNESCO, and are also publicly observed in select countries that are UN members. This is largely a byproduct of the influence the Esperanto community once had on organizations that worked in the field of international relations (including the United Nations) in the mid-20th century. Here are the celebrations proposed as international holidays by the UEA since 2010:
Date Name Meaning, purpose, anniversary
---------------------------- ----------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------
February 21 International Mother Language Day Saving cultural diversity and multilingualism
last full week of February Week of International Friendship Strengthening mutual contacts and sense.
April 14 Memorial Day of all Pioneers Anniversary of the death of L. L. Zamenhof (1917).
July 26 Esperanto Day Anniversary of the appearance of *Unua Libro* (1887).
September 21 International Day of Peace (UN) Not to fight, to stop wars and bring peace
September 26 European Day of Languages (Council of Europe) Inspire the learning of languages across Europe.
December 15 Zamenhof Day Birthday of L. L. Zamenhof (1859). Usual trade of Esperanto-books.
### Cultural events {#cultural_events}
Every year numerous meetings of Esperanto speakers in different topics around the world take place. They mobilize Esperanto-speakers which share the same will about a specific topic. The main example is the Universal Congress of Esperanto (UK), a week-long summer conference organized annually by the UEA. Other events:
- SAT-Kongreso, annually organized by Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda;
- International Youth Congress of Esperanto (IJK), official annual congress of TEJO;
- Internacia Infana Kongreseto (IIK), arrangement for children between 6 and 16 years that occur simultaneously with and close to the Universal Congress of Esperanto;
- Somera Esperanto-Studado (SES), the largest international Esperanto meeting aimed at learning of Esperanto.
Next to these globally comprising meetings there are also local events such as New Year\'s Gathering (NR) or Esperanto Youth Week (JES), which occur during the last days of December and first days of January. These meetings seem to have been successful during the last 20 years.
Due to the fact that there are a lot of Esperanto meetings around the globe, there are websites which aim to list and share them. Eventa Servo provides an up-to-date list of online meetings and in-person events happening each week. Eventoj.hu describes events with a list and dates, and contains an archive until 1996
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# List of explorations
This is a list of some of the most important explorations of State Societies, in chronological order:
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Exploration | When | Who (explorer) |
+=========================================================================================================================================================================+=====================+=======================================================================================================+
| Northwest African coast (West Africa) | about 500 BC | Hanno the Navigator |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The Mediterranean Sea | 5th century BC | Himilco the Navigator |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Around western Europe to Thule Island | about 330 BC | Pytheas of Marseilles |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Greenland, Iceland, and Faroes | 900 | Gunnbjörn Ulfsson |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Americas (North America) | 999 | Leif Ericson |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brazil (South America) - *controversial* | c\. 14th century CE | Abu Bakr II |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Sahelian kingdoms | 1351--1354 | Ibn Battuta |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Great permanent wind wheel of Volta do Mar, the North Atlantic Gyre. Recognition of the Sargasso Sea, Madeira, Azores and West African coast. Cape Verde. | 1427--1460 | Several navigators: Portuguese or serving Portugal, most under the sponsorship of Henry the Navigator |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Congo River, Angola and Namibia | 1482--1485 | Diogo Cão |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| South Africa. Connected the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean. South Atlantic *Volta do Mar* winds. | 1482--1485 | Bartolomeu Dias |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Caribbean, Venezuela (South America) and Central America. Use and development of the North Atlantic routes. | 1493--1502 | Christopher Columbus |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Atlantic Ocean (outer routes) and Indian Ocean, sea route to India (Europe to Asia) | 1497--1499 | Vasco da Gama |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brazil, South Atlantic Volta do Mar, Indian Ocean, Madagascar, gate of the Red Sea (Bab-el-Mandeb Strait); India. Voyage that united Europe, Americas, Africa and Asia. | 1500--1501 | Pedro Álvares Cabral and Diogo Dias, among others |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Timor, Moluccas (Australasia - Pacific Ocean) | 1512--1513 | António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Circumnavigation of the globe. Connection from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean (Americas to Asia). | 1519--1522 | Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Sebastián Elcano |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Mexico | 1519--1521 | Hernán Cortés |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and east of the Inca Empire | 1525--1527 | Aleixo Garcia |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Traveled across the Southwest of North America (completely) | 1528 | Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Peru, Inca Empire and Ecuador | 1531--1534 | Francisco Pizarro |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Ecuador and Brazil. Length of the Amazon River. | 1531--1534 | Francisco de Orellana |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Canada, Saint Lawrence River | 1534--1542 | Jacques Cartier |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Colombia, Conquest of the Muisca | 1536--1537 | Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Pacific Ocean\'s Volta do Mar (Asia to the Americas) | 1564--1565 | Andrés de Urdaneta |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Galápagos Islands, Rapa Nui | c\. 1480 | Tupaq Inka Yupanki. 1594--1597.\ |
| | | Rediscovered by the Spanish. |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| North, Canada (Hudson Bay) | 1574--1631 | Henry Hudson |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| North | 1594--1597 | Willem Barents |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Siberia and Pacific coast | 1649--1641 | Ivan Yuryevich Moskvitin |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Oceania | 1642--1643 | Abel Tasman |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Brazil (circumnavigation), Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru. Connected the River Plate Basin to the Andes and to the mouth of the Amazon River. | 1648--1651 | António Raposo Tavares |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Oceania | 1768--1779 | James Cook |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| North Pacific, western Alaska, Far East Eurasian Coast | 1771 | Moric Benovsky |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Hawaiian Islands | By c. 800 | Hawaiʻiloa (mythical) |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Central America and Latin America | 1799--1803 | Alexander von Humboldt |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Northwest Plateau of North America | 1804--1806 | Lewis and Clark Expedition |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| The North Magnetic Pole | 1831-06-01 | James Clark Ross |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Australia | c\. 1640 | Makassar People before. Explored by Abel Tasman
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# Endometrium
The **endometrium** is the inner epithelial layer, along with its mucous membrane, of the mammalian uterus. It has a basal layer and a functional layer: the basal layer contains stem cells which regenerate the functional layer. The functional layer thickens and then is shed during menstruation in humans and some other mammals, including other apes, Old World monkeys, some species of bat, the elephant shrew and the Cairo spiny mouse. In most other mammals, the endometrium is reabsorbed in the estrous cycle. During pregnancy, the glands and blood vessels in the endometrium further increase in size and number. Vascular spaces fuse and become interconnected, forming the placenta, which supplies oxygen and nutrition to the embryo and fetus. The speculated presence of an endometrial microbiota has been argued against.
## Structure
The endometrium consists of a single layer of columnar epithelium plus the stroma on which it rests. The stroma is a layer of connective tissue that varies in thickness according to hormonal influences. In the uterus, simple tubular glands reach from the endometrial surface through to the base of the stroma, which also carries a rich blood supply provided by the spiral arteries. In women of reproductive age, two layers of endometrium can be distinguished. These two layers occur only in the endometrium lining the cavity of the uterus, and not in the lining of the fallopian tubes where a potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy may occur nearby.
- The *functional layer* is adjacent to the uterine cavity. This layer is built up after the end of menstruation during the first part of the previous menstrual cycle. Proliferation is induced by estrogen (follicular phase of menstrual cycle), and later changes in this layer are engendered by progesterone from the corpus luteum (luteal phase). It is adapted to provide an optimum environment for the implantation and growth of the embryo. This layer is completely shed during menstruation.
- The *basal layer*, adjacent to the myometrium and below the functional layer, is not shed at any time during the menstrual cycle. It contains stem cells that regenerate the functional layer, which develops on top of it.
In the absence of progesterone, the arteries supplying blood to the functional layer constrict, so that cells in that layer become ischaemic and die, leading to menstruation.
It is possible to identify the phase of the menstrual cycle by reference to either the ovarian cycle or the uterine cycle by observing microscopic differences at each phase---for example in the ovarian cycle:
Phase Days Thickness Epithelium
------------------ -------- -------------- ------------------------------------------------------
Menstrual phase 1--5 Thin Absent
Follicular phase 5--14 Intermediate Columnar
Luteal phase 15--27 Thick Columnar. Also visible are arcuate vessels of uterus
Ischemic phase 27--28 Columnar. Also visible are arcuate vessels of uterus
### Gene and protein expression {#gene_and_protein_expression}
About 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and some 70% of these genes are expressed in the normal endometrium. Just over 100 of these genes are more specifically expressed in the endometrium with only a handful genes being highly endometrium specific. The corresponding specific proteins are expressed in the glandular and stromal cells of the endometrial mucosa. The expression of many of these proteins vary depending on the menstrual cycle, for example the progesterone receptor and thyrotropin-releasing hormone both expressed in the proliferative phase, and PAEP expressed in the secretory phase. Other proteins such as the HOX11 protein that is required for female fertility, is expressed in endometrial stroma cells throughout the menstrual cycle. Certain specific proteins such as the estrogen receptor are also expressed in other types of female tissue types, such as the cervix, fallopian tubes, ovaries and breast.
### Microbiome speculation {#microbiome_speculation}
The uterus and endometrium was for a long time thought to be sterile. The cervical plug of mucosa was seen to prevent the entry of any microorganisms ascending from the vagina. In the 1980s this view was challenged when it was shown that uterine infections could arise from weaknesses in the barrier of the cervical plug. Organisms from the vaginal microbiota could enter the uterus during uterine contractions in the menstrual cycle. Further studies sought to identify microbiota specific to the uterus which would be of help in identifying cases of unsuccessful IVF and miscarriages. Their findings were seen to be unreliable due to the possibility of cross-contamination in the sampling procedures used. The well-documented presence of *Lactobacillus* species, for example, was easily explained by an increase in the vaginal population being able to seep into the cervical mucous. Another study highlighted the flaws of the earlier studies including cross-contamination. It was also argued that the evidence from studies using germ-free offspring of axenic animals (germ-free) clearly showed the sterility of the uterus. The authors concluded that in light of these findings there was no existence of a microbiome.
The normal dominance of Lactobacilli in the vagina is seen as a marker for vaginal health. However, in the uterus this much lower population is seen as invasive in a closed environment that is highly regulated by female sex hormones, and that could have unwanted consequences. In studies of endometriosis *Lactobacillus* is not the dominant type and there are higher levels of *Streptococcus* and *Staphylococcus* species. Half of the cases of bacterial vaginitis showed a polymicrobial biofilm attached to the endometrium.
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# Endometrium
## Function
The endometrium is the innermost lining layer of the uterus, and functions to prevent adhesions between the opposed walls of the myometrium, thereby maintaining the patency of the uterine cavity. During the menstrual cycle or estrous cycle, the endometrium grows to a thick, blood vessel-rich, glandular tissue layer. This represents an optimal environment for the implantation of a blastocyst upon its arrival in the uterus. The endometrium is central, echogenic (detectable using ultrasound scanners), and has an average thickness of 6.7 mm.
During pregnancy, the glands and blood vessels in the endometrium further increase in size and number. Vascular spaces fuse and become interconnected, forming the placenta, which supplies oxygen and nutrition to the embryo and fetus.
### Cycle
The functional layer of the endometrial lining undergoes cyclic regeneration from stem cells in the basal layer. Humans, apes, and some other species display the menstrual cycle, whereas most other mammals are subject to an estrous cycle. In both cases, the endometrium initially proliferates under the influence of estrogen. However, once ovulation occurs, the ovary (specifically the corpus luteum) will produce much larger amounts of progesterone. This changes the proliferative pattern of the endometrium to a secretory lining. Eventually, the secretory lining provides a hospitable environment for one or more blastocysts.
Upon fertilization, the egg may implant into the uterine wall and provide feedback to the body with human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). hCG provides continued feedback throughout pregnancy by maintaining the corpus luteum, which will continue its role of releasing progesterone and estrogen. In case of implantation, the endometrial lining remains as *decidua*. The decidua becomes part of the placenta; it provides support and protection for the gestation.
Without implantation of a fertilized egg, the endometrial lining is either reabsorbed (estrous cycle) or shed (menstrual cycle). In the latter case, the process of shedding involves the breaking down of the lining, the tearing of small connective blood vessels, and the loss of the tissue and blood that had constituted it through the vagina. The entire process occurs over a period of several days. Menstruation may be accompanied by a series of uterine contractions; these help expel the menstrual endometrium.
If there is inadequate stimulation of the lining, due to lack of hormones, the endometrium remains thin and inactive. In humans, this will result in amenorrhea, or the absence of a menstrual period. After menopause, the lining is often described as being atrophic. In contrast, endometrium that is chronically exposed to estrogens, but not to progesterone, may become hyperplastic. Long-term use of oral contraceptives with highly potent progestins can also induce endometrial atrophy.
In humans, the cycle of building and shedding the endometrial lining lasts an average of 28 days. The endometrium develops at different rates in different mammals. Various factors including the seasons, climate, and stress can affect its development. The endometrium itself produces certain hormones at different stages of the cycle and this affects other parts of the reproductive system.
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# Endometrium
## Diseases related with endometrium {#diseases_related_with_endometrium}
Chorionic tissue can result in marked endometrial changes, known as an Arias-Stella reaction, that have an appearance similar to cancer. Historically, this change was diagnosed as endometrial cancer and it is important only in so far as it should not be misdiagnosed as cancer.
- Adenomyosis is the growth of the endometrium into the muscle layer of the uterus (the myometrium).
- Endometriosis is the growth of tissue similar to the endometrium, outside the uterus.
- Endometrial hyperplasia
- Endometrial cancer is the most common cancer of the human female genital tract.
- Asherman\'s syndrome, also known as intrauterine adhesions, occurs when the basal layer of the endometrium is damaged by instrumentation (e.g., D&C) or infection (e.g., endometrial tuberculosis) resulting in endometrial sclerosis and adhesion formation partially or completely obliterating the uterine cavity.
Thin endometrium may be defined as an endometrial thickness of less than 8 mm. It usually occurs after menopause. Treatments that can improve endometrial thickness include Vitamin E, L-arginine and sildenafil citrate.
Gene expression profiling using cDNA microarray can be used for the diagnosis of endometrial disorders. The European Menopause and Andropause Society (EMAS) released Guidelines with detailed information to assess the endometrium.
### Embryo transfer {#embryo_transfer}
An endometrial thickness (EMT) of less than 7 mm decreases the pregnancy rate in in vitro fertilization by an odds ratio of approximately 0.4 compared to an EMT of over 7 mm. However, such low thickness rarely occurs, and any routine use of this parameter is regarded as not justified. The optimal endometrial thickness is 10mm. Nevertheless, in human a perfect synchrony is not necessary; if the endometrium is not ready to receive the embryo an ectopic pregnancy may occur. This consist of the implantation of the blast outside the uterus, which can be extremely dangerous. Observation of the endometrium by transvaginal ultrasonography is used when administering fertility medication, such as in in vitro fertilization. At the time of embryo transfer, it is favorable to have an endometrium of a thickness of between 7 and 14 mm with a *triple-line* configuration, which means that the endometrium contains a hyperechoic (usually displayed as light) line in the middle surrounded by two more hypoechoic (darker) lines. A *triple-line* endometrium reflects the separation of the basal layer and the functional layer, and is also observed in the periovulatory period secondary to rising estradiol levels, and disappears after ovulation.
Endometrial thickness is also associated with live births in IVF. The live birth rate in a normal endometrium is halved when the thickness is \<5mm.
## Endometrial protection {#endometrial_protection}
Estrogens stimulate endometrial proliferation and carcinogenesis. Conversely, progestogens inhibit endometrial proliferation and carcinogenesis caused by estrogens and stimulate differentiation of the endometrium into decidua, which is termed endometrial transformation or decidualization. This is mediated by the progestogenic and functional antiestrogenic effects of progestogens in this tissue. These effects of progestogens and their protection against endometrial hyperplasia and endometrial cancer caused by estrogens is referred to as *endometrial protection*. As a result of endometrial protection, endometrial cells can undergo epithelial-mesenchymal transition and be detected in menstrual fluid.
## Endometrial receptivity {#endometrial_receptivity}
Endometrial receptivity is a crucial factor in achieving successful embryo implantation in assisted reproduction treatments. It refers to the ability of the endometrium to accept an embryo during a specific time window, known as the \"implantation window.\" The synchronization between endometrial development and the embryo is essential to ensure a successful pregnancy.
Currently, there are three main tests that help evaluate endometrial receptivity and optimize fertility treatments:
**ERA (Endometrial Receptivity Analysis):**
This genetic test analyzes the expression of specific genes in the endometrium to identify whether it is in a receptive, pre-receptive or post-receptive phase, allowing the ideal moment for embryo transfer to be personalized.
**EMMA (Endometrial Microbiome Metagenomic Analysis)** and **ALICE (Analysis of Infectious Chronic Endometritis):**
Perform a test on the intrauterine microflora, using a small sample of the endometrium, in order to determine the presence of microorganisms that may promote or harm embryo implantation.
## Additional images {#additional_images}
`Image:Endometrial adenocarcinoma (1).jpg|Endometrioid adenocarcinoma from biopsy. H&E stain.`\
`Image:Endometrium_ocp_use2.jpg|Micrograph of decidualized endometrium due to exogenous ``progesterone``. ``H&E stain``.`\
`Image:Endometrium_ocp_use1.jpg|Micrograph of decidualized endometrium due to exogenous progesterone. H&E stain.`\
`Image:Endometrial stromal condensation high mag.jpg|Micrograph showing endometrial stromal condensation, a finding seen in ``menses``
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# Empirical research
thumb\|right\|upright=1.2\|A scientist gathering data for her research **Empirical research** is research using empirical evidence. It is also a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct and indirect observation or experience. Empiricism values some research more than other kinds. Empirical evidence (the record of one\'s direct observations or experiences) can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively. Quantifying the evidence or making sense of it in qualitative form, a researcher can answer empirical questions, which should be clearly defined and answerable with the evidence collected (usually called data). Research design varies by field and by the question being investigated. Many researchers combine qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis to better answer questions that cannot be studied in laboratory settings, particularly in the social sciences and in education.
In some fields, quantitative research may begin with a research question (e.g., \"Does listening to vocal music during the learning of a word list have an effect on later memory for these words?\") which is tested through experimentation. Usually, the researcher has a certain theory regarding the topic under investigation. Based on this theory, statements or hypotheses will be proposed (e.g., \"Listening to vocal music has a negative effect on learning a word list.\"). From these hypotheses, predictions about specific events are derived (e.g., \"People who study a word list while listening to vocal music will remember fewer words on a later memory test than people who study a word list in silence.\"). These predictions can then be tested with a suitable experiment. Depending on the outcomes of the experiment, the theory on which the hypotheses and predictions were based will be supported or not, or may need to be modified and then subjected to further testing.
## History
The experimental method has evolved over the ages, with many scientists contributing to its foundation and development. In ancient times, Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle, relied on observation and rational inference in their studies. Aristotle, for example, rejected exclusive reliance on logical deduction, emphasizing the importance of observation in understanding nature.
During the Middle Ages, Muslim scientists significantly advanced the experimental method. Jabir ibn Hayyan, known as the father of chemistry, introduced experimental methodology into chemistry and developed chemical processes such as crystallization, calcination, and distillation. He also discovered important acids like sulfuric and nitric acid, expanding the possibilities of chemical experiments. The famous optics scientist Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham) was among the first to rely on experimentation in studying light and vision. In his book *Book of Optics*, he employed a scientific method based on observation, experimentation, and mathematical proof, making him a pioneer of the modern scientific method.
These scientific approaches were transmitted to Europe through translations, influencing the development of modern scientific methodology. European scientists, such as Francis Bacon, were inspired by the works of Muslim scholars in refining the experimental method. The researcher Robert Briffault, in his book *Making of Humanity*, states:
*\"It was under their successors at Oxford School (that is, successors to the Muslims of Spain) that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic Sciences. Neither Roger Bacon nor later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of apostles of Muslim Science and Method to Christian Europe\".*
## Terminology
The term *empirical* was originally used to refer to certain ancient Greek practitioners of medicine who rejected adherence to the dogmatic doctrines of the day, preferring instead to rely on the observation of phenomena as perceived in experience. Later *empiricism* referred to a theory of knowledge in philosophy which adheres to the principle that knowledge arises from experience and evidence gathered specifically using the senses. In scientific use, the term *empirical* refers to the gathering of data using only evidence that is observable by the senses or in some cases using calibrated scientific instruments. What early philosophers described as empiricist and empirical research have in common is the dependence on observable data to formulate and test theories and come to conclusions.
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# Empirical research
## Usage
The researcher attempts to describe accurately the interaction between the instrument (or the human senses) and the entity being observed. If instrumentation is involved, the researcher is expected to calibrate his/her instrument by applying it to known standard objects and documenting the results before applying it to unknown objects. In other words, it describes the research that has not taken place before and their results.
In practice, the accumulation of evidence for or against any particular theory involves planned research designs for the collection of empirical data, and academic rigor plays a large part of judging the merits of research design. Several typologies for such designs have been suggested, one of the most popular of which comes from Campbell and Stanley. They are responsible for popularizing the widely cited distinction among pre-experimental, experimental, and quasi-experimental designs and are staunch advocates of the central role of randomized experiments in educational research.
### Scientific research {#scientific_research}
Accurate analysis of data using standardized statistical methods in scientific studies is critical to determining the validity of empirical research. Statistical formulas such as regression, uncertainty coefficient, t-test, chi square, and various types of ANOVA (analyses of variance) are fundamental to forming logical, valid conclusions. If empirical data reach significance under the appropriate statistical formula, the research hypothesis is supported. If not, the null hypothesis is supported (or, more accurately, not rejected), meaning no effect of the independent variable(s) was observed on the dependent variable(s).
The result of empirical research using statistical hypothesis testing is never *proof*. It can only *support* a hypothesis, *reject* it, or do neither. These methods yield only probabilities. Among scientific researchers, empirical *evidence* (as distinct from empirical *research*) refers to objective evidence that appears the same regardless of the observer. For example, a thermometer will not display different temperatures for each individual who observes it. Temperature, as measured by an accurate, well calibrated thermometer, is empirical evidence. By contrast, non-empirical evidence is subjective, depending on the observer. Following the previous example, observer A might truthfully report that a room is warm, while observer B might truthfully report that the same room is cool, though both observe the same reading on the thermometer. The use of empirical evidence negates this effect of personal (i.e., subjective) experience or time. `{{confusing|section|date=September 2024}}`{=mediawiki} The varying perception of empiricism and rationalism shows concern with the limit to which there is dependency on experience of sense as an effort of gaining knowledge. According to rationalism, there are a number of different ways in which sense experience is gained independently for the knowledge and concepts. According to empiricism, sense experience is considered as the main source of every piece of knowledge and the concepts. In general, rationalists are known for the development of their own views following two different way. First, the key argument can be placed that there are cases in which the content of knowledge or concepts end up outstripping the information. This outstripped information is provided by the sense experience (Hjørland, 2010, 2). Second, there is construction of accounts as to how reasoning helps in the provision of addition knowledge about a specific or broader scope. Empiricists are known to be presenting complementary senses related to thought.
First, there is development of accounts of how there is provision of information by experience that is cited by rationalists. This is insofar for having it in the initial place. At times, empiricists tend to be opting skepticism as an option of rationalism. If experience is not helpful in the provision of knowledge or concept cited by rationalists, then they do not exist (Pearce, 2010, 35). Second, empiricists have a tendency of attacking the accounts of rationalists, while considering reasoning to be an important source of knowledge or concepts.
The overall disagreement between empiricists and rationalists shows major concerns about how knowledge is gained with respect to the sources of knowledge and concepts. In some of the cases, disagreement on the point of gaining knowledge results in the provision of conflicting responses to other aspects as well. There might be a disagreement in the overall feature of warrant, while limiting the knowledge and thought. Empiricists are known for sharing the view that there is no existence of innate knowledge and rather that is derivation of knowledge out of experience. These experiences are either reasoned using the mind or sensed through the five senses human possess (Bernard, 2011, 5). On the other hand, rationalists are known to be sharing the view that there is existence of innate knowledge and this is different for the objects of innate knowledge being chosen.
In order to follow rationalism, there must be adoption of one of the three claims related to the theory that are deduction or intuition, innate knowledge, and innate concept. The more there is removal of concept from mental operations and experience, there can be performance over experience with increased plausibility in being innate. Further ahead, empiricism in context with a specific subject provides a rejection of the corresponding version related to innate knowledge and deduction or intuition (Weiskopf, 2008, 16). Insofar as there is acknowledgement of concepts and knowledge within the area of subject, the knowledge has major dependence on experience through human senses.
## Empirical cycle {#empirical_cycle}
A.D. de Groot\'s empirical cycle:
1. Observation: The observation of a phenomenon and inquiry concerning its causes.
2. Induction: The formulation of hypotheses - generalized explanations for the phenomenon.
3. Deduction: The formulation of experiments that will test the hypotheses (i.e. confirm them if true, refute them if false).
4. Testing: The procedures by which the hypotheses are tested and data are collected.
5. Evaluation: The interpretation of the data and the formulation of a theory - an abductive argument that presents the results of the experiment as the most reasonable explanation for the phenomenon
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# Engineering statistics
**Engineering statistics** combines engineering and statistics using scientific methods for analyzing data. Engineering statistics involves data concerning manufacturing processes such as: component dimensions, tolerances, type of material, and fabrication process control. There are many methods used in engineering analysis and they are often displayed as histograms to give a visual of the data as opposed to being just numerical. Examples of methods are:
1. Design of Experiments (DOE) is a methodology for formulating scientific and engineering problems using statistical models. The protocol specifies a randomization procedure for the experiment and specifies the primary data-analysis, particularly in hypothesis testing. In a secondary analysis, the statistical analyst further examines the data to suggest other questions and to help plan future experiments. In engineering applications, the goal is often to optimize a process or product, rather than to subject a scientific hypothesis to test of its predictive adequacy. The use of optimal (or near optimal) designs reduces the cost of experimentation.
2. Quality control and process control use statistics as a tool to manage conformance to specifications of manufacturing processes and their products.
3. Time and methods engineering use statistics to study repetitive operations in manufacturing in order to set standards and find optimum (in some sense) manufacturing procedures.
4. Reliability engineering which measures the ability of a system to perform for its intended function (and time) and has tools for improving performance.
5. Probabilistic design involving the use of probability in product and system design
6. System identification uses statistical methods to build mathematical models of dynamical systems from measured data. System identification also includes the optimal design of experiments for efficiently generating informative data for fitting such models.
## History
Engineering statistics dates back to 1000 B.C. when the Abacus was developed as means to calculate numerical data. In the 1600s, the development of information processing to systematically analyze and process data began. In 1654, the Slide Rule technique was developed by [Robert Bissaker](https://www.britannica.com/science/slide-rule#ref81001) for advanced data calculations. In 1833, a British mathematician named Charles Babbage designed the idea of an automatic computer which inspired developers at Harvard University and IBM to design the first mechanical automatic-sequence-controlled calculator called MARK I. The integration of computers and calculators into the industry brought about a more efficient means of analyzing data and the beginning of engineering statistics.
## Examples
### Factorial Experimental Design {#factorial_experimental_design}
A factorial experiment is one where, contrary to the standard experimental philosophy of changing only one independent variable and holding everything else constant, multiple independent variables are tested at the same time. With this design, statistical engineers can see both the direct effects of one independent variable (main effect), as well as potential interaction effects that arise when multiple independent variables provide a different result when together than either would on its own.
### Six Sigma {#six_sigma}
Six Sigma is a set of techniques to improve the reliability of a manufacturing process. Ideally, all products will have the exact same specifications equivalent to what was desired, but countless imperfections of real-world manufacturing makes this impossible. The as-built specifications of a product are assumed to be centered around a mean, with each individual product deviating some amount away from that mean in a normal distribution. The goal of Six Sigma is to ensure that the acceptable specification limits are six standard deviations away from the mean of the distribution; in other words, that each step of the manufacturing process has at most a 0.00034% chance of producing a defect
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# Ericaceae
The **Ericaceae** (`{{IPAc-en|ˌ|ɛr|ɪ|ˈ|k|eɪ|s|i|.|aɪ|,_|-|iː}}`{=mediawiki}) are a family of flowering plants, commonly known as the **heath** or **heather family**, found most commonly in acidic and infertile growing conditions. The family is large, with about 4,250 known species spread across 124 genera, making it the 14th most species-rich family of flowering plants. The many well known and economically important members of the Ericaceae include the cranberry, blueberry, huckleberry, rhododendron (including azaleas), and various common heaths and heathers (*Erica*, *Cassiope*, *Daboecia*, and *Calluna* for example).
## Description
The Ericaceae contain a morphologically diverse range of taxa, including herbs, dwarf shrubs, shrubs, and trees. Their leaves are usually evergreen, alternate or whorled, simple and without stipules. Their flowers are hermaphrodite and show considerable variability. The petals are often fused (sympetalous) with shapes ranging from narrowly tubular to funnelform or widely urn-shaped. The corollas are usually radially symmetrical (actinomorphic) and urn-shaped, but many flowers of the genus *Rhododendron* are somewhat bilaterally symmetrical (zygomorphic). Anthers open by pores.
## Taxonomy
Michel Adanson used the term Vaccinia to describe a similar family, but *\[\[Antoine Laurent de Jussieu\]\]* first used the term Ericaceae. The name comes from the type genus *Erica*, which appears to be derived from the Greek word `{{transliteration|grc|ereíkē}}`{=mediawiki} (*ἐρείκη\]\]*). The exact meaning is difficult to interpret, but some sources show it as meaning \'heather\'. The name may have been used informally to refer to the plants before Linnaean times, and simply been formalised when Linnaeus described *Erica* in 1753, and then again when Jussieu described the Ericaceae in 1789.
Historically, the Ericaceae included both subfamilies and tribes. In 1971, Stevens, who outlined the history from 1876 and in some instances 1839, recognised six subfamilies (Rhododendroideae, Ericoideae, Vaccinioideae, Pyroloideae, Monotropoideae, and Wittsteinioideae), and further subdivided four of the subfamilies into tribes, the Rhododendroideae having seven tribes (Bejarieae, Rhodoreae, Cladothamneae, Epigaeae, Phyllodoceae, and Diplarcheae). Within tribe Rhodoreae, five genera were described, *Rhododendron* L. (including *Azalea* L. pro parte), *Therorhodion* Small, *Ledum* L., *Tsusiophyllum* Max., *Menziesia* J. E. Smith, that were eventually transferred into *Rhododendron*, along with Diplarche from the monogeneric tribe Diplarcheae.
In 2002, systematic research resulted in the inclusion of the formerly recognised families Empetraceae, Epacridaceae, Monotropaceae, Prionotaceae, and Pyrolaceae into the Ericaceae based on a combination of molecular, morphological, anatomical, and embryological data, analysed within a phylogenetic framework. The move significantly increased the morphological and geographical range found within the group. One possible classification of the resulting family includes 9 subfamilies, 126 genera, and about 4,000 species:
- Enkianthoideae Kron, Judd & Anderberg (one genus, 16 species)
- Pyroloideae Kosteltsky (4 genera, 40 species)
- Monotropoideae Arnott (10 genera, 15 species)
- Arbutoideae Niedenzu (up to six genera, about 80 species)
- Cassiopoideae Kron & Judd (one genus, 12 species)
- Ericoideae Link (19 genera, 1790 species)
- Harrimanelloideae Kron & Judd (one species)
- Epacridoideae Arn. (=Styphelioideae Sweet) (35 genera, 545 species)
- Vaccinioideae Arnott (50 genera, 1580 species)
### Genera
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# Ericaceae
## Distribution and ecology {#distribution_and_ecology}
The Ericaceae have a nearly worldwide distribution. They are absent from continental Antarctica, parts of the high Arctic, central Greenland, northern and central Australia, and much of the lowland tropics and neotropics.
The family is largely composed of plants that can tolerate acidic, infertile, shady conditions. Due to their tolerance of acidic conditions, this plant family is also typical of peat bogs and blanket bogs; examples include *Rhododendron groenlandicum* and species in the genus *Kalmia*. In eastern North America, members of this family often grow in association with an oak canopy, in a habitat known as an oak-heath forest. Plants in Ericaceae, especially species in *Vaccinium*, rely on buzz pollination for successful pollination to occur.
The majority of ornamental species from *Rhododendron* are native to East Asia, but most varieties cultivated today are hybrids. Most rhododendrons grown in the United States are cultivated in the Pacific Northwest. The United States is the top producer of both blueberries and cranberries, with the state of Maine growing the majority of lowbush blueberry. The wide distribution of genera within Ericaceae has led to situations in which distinct American and European plants share the same common name, e.g. blueberry (*Vaccinium corymbosum* in North America and *V.* *myrtillus* in Europe) and cranberry (*V.* *macrocarpon* in America and *V.* *oxycoccos* in Europe).
### Mycorrhizal relationships {#mycorrhizal_relationships}
Like other stress-tolerant plants, many Ericaceae have mycorrhizal fungi to assist with extracting nutrients from infertile soils, as well as evergreen foliage to conserve absorbed nutrients. This trait is not found in the Clethraceae and Cyrillaceae, the two families most closely related to the Ericaceae. Most Ericaceae (excluding the Monotropoideae, and some Epacridoideae) form a distinctive accumulation of mycorrhizae, in which fungi grow in and around the roots and provide the plant with nutrients. The Pyroloideae are mixotrophic and gain sugars from the mycorrhizae, as well as nutrients.
The cultivation of blueberries, cranberries, and wintergreen for their fruit and oils relies especially on these unique relationships with fungi, as a healthy mycorrhizal network in the soil helps the plants to resist environmental stresses that might otherwise damage crop yield. Ericoid mycorrhizae are responsible for a high rate of uptake of nitrogen, which causes naturally low levels of free nitrogen in ericoid soils. These mycorrhizal fungi may also increase the tolerance of Ericaceae to heavy metals in soil, and may cause plants to grow faster by producing phytohormones.
### Heathlands
In many parts of the world, a \"heath\" or \"heathland\" is an environment characterised by an open dwarf-shrub community found on low-quality acidic soils, generally dominated by plants in Ericaceae. Heathlands are a broadly anthropogenic habitat, requiring regular grazing or burning to prevent succession. Heaths are particularly abundant`{{Snd}}`{=mediawiki}and constitute important cultural elements`{{Snd}}`{=mediawiki}in Norway, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, Portugal, and other countries in Central and Western Europe. The most common examples of plants in Ericaceae which dominate heathlands are *Calluna vulgaris*, *Erica cineria*, *Erica tetralix*, and *Vaccinium myrtillus.*
In heathland, plants in Ericaceae serve as host plants to the butterfly *Plebejus argus*. Other insects, such as *Saturnia pavonia*, *Myrmeleotettix maculatus*, *Metrioptera brachyptera*, and *Picromerus bidens* are closely associated with heathland environments. Reptiles thrive in heaths due to an abundance of sunlight and prey, and birds hunt the insects and reptiles which are present.
Some evidence suggests eutrophic rainwater can convert ericoid heaths with species such as *Erica tetralix* to grasslands. Nitrogen is particularly suspect in this regard, and may be causing measurable changes to the distribution and abundance of some ericaceous species
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# Egoism
**Egoism** is a philosophy concerned with the role of the self, or `{{linktext|ego}}`{=mediawiki}, as the motivation and goal of one\'s own action. Different theories of egoism encompass a range of disparate ideas and can generally be categorized into descriptive or normative forms. That is, they may be interested in either describing that people *do* act in self-interest or prescribing that they *should*. Other definitions of egoism may instead emphasise action according to one\'s will rather than one\'s self-interest, and furthermore posit that this is a truer sense of egoism.
The *New Catholic Encyclopedia* states of egoism that it \"incorporates in itself certain basic truths: it is natural for man to love himself; he should moreover do so, since each one is ultimately responsible for himself; pleasure, the development of one\'s potentialities, and the acquisition of power are normally desirable.\" The **moral censure of self-interest** is a common subject of critique in egoist philosophy, with such judgments being examined as means of control and the result of power relations. Egoism may also reject the idea that insight into one\'s internal motivation can arrive extrinsically, such as from psychology or sociology, though, for example, this is not present in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche.
## Overview
The term egoism is derived from the French `{{wikt-lang|fr|égoïsme}}`{=mediawiki}, from the Latin `{{wikt-lang|la|ego}}`{=mediawiki} (first person singular personal pronoun; \"I\") with the French `{{wikt-lang|fr|-ïsme}}`{=mediawiki} (\"-ism\").
### Descriptive theories {#descriptive_theories}
The descriptive variants of egoism are concerned with self-regard as a factual description of human motivation and, in its furthest application, that all human motivation stems from the desires and interest of the ego. In these theories, action which is self-regarding may be simply termed *egoistic*.
The position that people *tend* to act in their own self-interest is called default egoism, whereas psychological egoism is the position that *all* motivations are rooted in an ultimately self-serving psyche. That is, in its strong form, that even seemingly altruistic actions are only disguised as such and are always self-serving. Its weaker form instead holds that, even if altruistic motivation is possible, the willed action necessarily becomes egoistic in serving one\'s own will. In contrast to this and philosophical egoism, biological egoism (also called evolutionary egoism) describes motivations rooted solely in reproductive self-interest (i.e. reproductive fitness). Furthermore, selfish gene theory holds that it is the self-interest of genetic information that conditions human behaviour.
### Normative theories {#normative_theories}
Theories which hold egoism to be normative stipulate that the ego ought to promote its own interests above other values. Where this ought is held to be a pragmatic judgment it is termed rational egoism and where it is held to be a moral judgment it is termed ethical egoism. The *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* states that \"ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts, such as rules or character traits\" but that such variants are uncommon. Furthermore, conditional egoism is a consequentialist form of ethical egoism which holds that egoism is morally right if it leads to morally acceptable ends. John F. Welsh, in his work *Max Stirner\'s Dialectical Egoism: A New Interpretation*, coins the term dialectical egoism to describe an interpretation of the egoist philosophy of Max Stirner as being fundamentally dialectical.`{{npsn|date=August 2020}}`{=mediawiki}
Normative egoism, as in the case of Stirner, need not reject that some modes of behavior are to be valued above others---such as Stirner\'s affirmation that non-restriction and autonomy are to be most highly valued. Contrary theories, however, may just as easily favour egoistic domination of others.
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# Egoism
## Theoreticians
### Stirner
### Nietzsche
The philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche has been linked to forms of both descriptive and normative egoism. Nietzsche, in attacking the widely held moral abhorrence for egoistic action, seeks to free higher human beings from their belief that this morality is good for them. He rejects Christian and Kantian ethics as merely the disguised egoism of slave morality.
In his *On the Genealogy of Morals*, Friedrich Nietzsche traces the origins of master--slave morality to fundamentally egoistic value judgments. In the aristocratic valuation, excellence and virtue come as a form of superiority over the common masses, which the priestly valuation, in *ressentiment* of power, seeks to invert---where the powerless and pitiable become the moral ideal. This upholding of unegoistic actions is therefore seen as stemming from a desire to reject the superiority or excellency of others. He holds that all normative systems which operate in the role often associated with morality favor the interests of some people, often, though not necessarily, at the expense of others.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche also states *in the same book* that there is no \'doer\' of any acts, be they selfish or not: `{{quote frame|...there is no "being" behind doing, effecting, becoming; "the doer" is merely a fiction added to the deed—the deed is everything.(§13)|author=[[Friedrich Nietzsche]]|source=''On the Genealogy of Morals''}}`{=mediawiki}
Jonas Monte of Brigham Young University argues that Nietzsche doubted if any \'I\' existed in the first place, which the former defined as \"a conscious Ego who commands mental states\". `{{related|[[Cogito, ergo sum#Use of "I"]]}}`{=mediawiki}
### Other theoreticians {#other_theoreticians}
- Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevskii, a Russian literary critic and philosopher of nihilism and rational egoism
- Aleister Crowley, who popularized the expression \"Do what thou wilt\"
- Arthur Desmond as Ragnar Redbeard (possibly, unproved)
- Thomas Hobbes, who is attributed as an early proponent of psychological egoism
- John Henry Mackay, a British-German egoist anarchist
- Bernard de Mandeville, whose materialism has been retroactively described as form of egoism
- Friedrich Nietzsche, whose concept of will to power has both descriptive and prescriptive interpretations
- Dmitry Ivanovich Pisarev, a Russian literary critic and philosopher of nihilism and rational egoism
- Ayn Rand, who supported an egoistic model of capitalist self-incentive and selfishness
- Max Stirner, whose views were described by John F. Welsh as \"dialectical egoism\"
- Benjamin Tucker, an American egoist anarchist
- James L. Walker, who independently formulated an egoist philosophy before himself discovering the work of Stirner
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# Egoism
## Relation to altruism {#relation_to_altruism}
In 1851, French philosopher Auguste Comte coined the term altruism (*altruisme\]\]*; `{{etymology|it|altrui}}`{=mediawiki}, `{{etymology|la|alteri|others}}`{=mediawiki}) as an antonym for egoism. In this sense, altruism defined Comte\'s position that all self-regard must be replaced with only the regard for others.
While Friedrich Nietzsche does not view altruism as a suitable antonym for egoism, Comte instead states that only two human motivations exist, egoistic and altruistic, and that the two cannot be mediated; that is, one must always predominate the other. For Comte, the total subordination of the self to altruism is a necessary condition to both social and personal benefit. Nietzsche, rather than rejecting the practice of altruism, warns that despite there being neither much altruism nor equality in the world, there is almost universal endorsement of their value and, notoriously, even by those who are its worst enemies in practice. Egoist philosophy commonly views the subordination of the self to altruism as either a form of domination that limits freedom, an unethical or irrational principle, or an extension of some egoistic root cause.
In evolutionary theory, biological altruism is the observed occurrence of an organism acting to the benefit of others at the cost of its own reproductive fitness. While biological egoism does grant that an organism may act to the benefit of others, it describes only such when in accordance with reproductive self-interest. Kin altruism and selfish gene theory are examples of this division. On biological altruism, the *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* states: \"Contrary to what is often thought, an evolutionary approach to human behaviour does not imply that humans are likely to be motivated by self-interest alone. One strategy by which 'selfish genes' may increase their future representation is by causing humans to be *non*-selfish, in the psychological sense.\" This is a central topic within contemporary discourse of psychological egoism.
Philosophies of personal identity such as open individualism have implications for egoism and altruism. Daniel Kolak argues that closed individualism, the idea that one\'s identity consists of a line stretching across time and that a future self exists, is incoherent. Kolak instead argues that personal identity is an illusion, and the \"self\" doesn\'t actually exist, similar to the idea of anattā in Buddhist philosophy. Thus, it could be argued that egoism is incoherent, since there is no \"self\" in the first place. Similar arguments have been made by Derek Parfit in the book *Reasons and Persons* with ideas such as the teletransportation paradox.
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# Egoism
## Relation to nihilism {#relation_to_nihilism}
The history of egoist thought has often overlapped with that of nihilism. For example, Max Stirner\'s rejection of absolutes and abstract concepts often places him among the first philosophical nihilists. The popular description of Stirner as a moral nihilist, however, may fail to encapsulate certain subtleties of his ethical thought. The *Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy* states, \"Stirner is clearly committed to the non-nihilistic view that certain kinds of character and modes of behaviour (namely autonomous individuals and actions) are to be valued above all others. His conception of morality is, in this respect, a narrow one, and his rejection of the legitimacy of moral claims is not to be confused with a denial of the propriety of all normative or ethical judgement.\" Stirner\'s nihilism may instead be understood as cosmic nihilism. Likewise, both normative and descriptive theories of egoism further developed under Russian nihilism, shortly giving birth to rational egoism. Nihilist philosophers Dmitry Pisarev and Nikolay Chernyshevsky were influential in this regard, compounding such forms of egoism with hard determinism.
Max Stirner\'s philosophy strongly rejects modernity and is highly critical of the increasing dogmatism and oppressive social institutions that embody it. In order that it might be surpassed, egoist principles are upheld as a necessary advancement beyond the modern world. The *Stanford Encyclopedia* states that Stirner\'s historical analyses serve to \"undermine historical narratives which portray the modern development of humankind as the progressive realisation of freedom, but also to support an account of individuals in the modern world as increasingly oppressed\". This critique of humanist discourses especially has linked Stirner to more contemporary poststructuralist thought.
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# Egoism
## Political egoism {#political_egoism}
Since normative egoism rejects the moral obligation to subordinate the ego to society-at-large or to a ruling class, it may be predisposed to certain political implications. The *Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy* states: `{{Blockquote|text=Egoists ironically can be read as moral and political egalitarians glorifying the dignity of each and every person to pursue life as they see fit. Mistakes in securing the proper means and appropriate ends will be made by individuals, but if they are morally responsible for their actions they not only will bear the consequences but also the opportunity for adapting and learning.<ref name=":1" />}}`{=mediawiki}
In contrast with this however, such an ethic may not morally obligate against the egoistic exercise of power over others. On these grounds, Friedrich Nietzsche criticizes egalitarian morality and political projects as unconducive to the development of human excellence. Max Stirner\'s own conception, the union of egoists as detailed in his work *The Ego and Its Own*, saw a proposed form of societal relations whereby limitations on egoistic action are rejected. When posthumously adopted by the anarchist movement, this became the foundation for egoist anarchism.
Stirner\'s variant of property theory is similarly dialectical, where the concept of ownership is only that personal distinction made between what is one\'s property and what is not. Consequentially, it is the exercise of control over property which constitutes the nonabstract possession of it. In contrast to this, Ayn Rand incorporates capitalist property rights into her egoist theory.
### Revolutionary politics {#revolutionary_politics}
Egoist philosopher Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevskii was the dominant intellectual figure behind the 1860--1917 revolutionary movement in Russia, which resulted in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II eight years before his death in 1889. Dmitry Pisarev was a similarly radical influence within the movement, though he did not personally advocate political revolution.
Philosophical egoism has also found wide appeal among anarchist revolutionaries and thinkers, such as John Henry Mackay, Benjamin Tucker, Émile Armand, Han Ryner Gérard de Lacaze-Duthiers, Renzo Novatore, Miguel Giménez Igualada, and Lev Chernyi. Though he did not involve in any revolutionary movements himself, the entire school of individualist anarchism owes much of its intellectual heritage to Max Stirner.
Egoist philosophy may be misrepresented as a principally revolutionary field of thought. However, neither Hobbesian nor Nietzschean theories of egoism approve of political revolution. Anarchism and revolutionary socialism were also strongly rejected by Ayn Rand and her followers.
### Fascism
The philosophies of both Nietzsche and Stirner were heavily appropriated (or possibly expropriated) by fascist and proto-fascist ideologies. Nietzsche in particular has infamously been represented as a predecessor to Nazism and a substantial academic effort was necessary to disassociate his ideas from their aforementioned appropriation
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# Eric Hoffer
**Eric Hoffer** (July 25, 1902 -- May 21, 1983) was an American philosopher and social critic. A conservative moderate with an atypical working-class background, Hoffer authored ten books over his career and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in February 1983. His first book, *The True Believer* (1951), was widely recognized as a classic, receiving critical acclaim from both scholars and laymen, although Hoffer believed that *The Ordeal of Change* (1963) was his finest work. The Eric Hoffer Book Award is an international literary prize established in his honor. The University of California, Berkeley awards an annual literary prize named jointly for Hoffer.
## Early life {#early_life}
Many elements of Hoffer\'s early life are unverified, but in autobiographical statements, Hoffer claimed to have been born in 1902 in The Bronx, New York City, New York, to Knut and Elsa (Goebel) Hoffer. His parents were immigrants from Alsace, then part of Imperial Germany. By age five, Hoffer could already read in both English and his parents\' native German. When he was five, his mother fell down the stairs with him in her arms. He later recalled, \"I lost my sight at the age of seven. Two years before, my mother and I fell down a flight of stairs. She did not recover and died in that second year after the fall. I lost my sight and, for a time, my memory.\" Hoffer spoke with a pronounced German accent all his life, and spoke the language fluently. He was raised by a live-in relative or servant, a German immigrant named Martha. His eyesight inexplicably returned when he was 15. Fearing he might lose it again, he seized on the opportunity to read as much as he could. His recovery proved permanent, but Hoffer never abandoned his reading habit.
Hoffer was a young man when he also lost his father. The cabinetmaker\'s union paid for Knut Hoffer\'s funeral and gave Hoffer about \$300 insurance money. He took a bus to Los Angeles and spent the next 10 years wandering, as he remembered, \"up and down the land, dodging hunger and grieving over the world.\" Hoffer eventually landed on Skid Row, reading, occasionally writing, and working at odd jobs.
In 1931, he considered suicide by drinking a solution of oxalic acid, but he could not bring himself to do it. He left Skid Row and became a migrant worker, following the harvests in California. He acquired a library card where he worked, dividing his time \"between the books and the brothels.\" He also prospected for gold in the mountains. Snowed in for the winter, he read the *Essays* by Michel de Montaigne. Montaigne impressed Hoffer deeply, and Hoffer often made reference to him. He also developed a respect for America\'s underclass, which he said was \"lumpy with talent.\"
## Career
He wrote a novel, *Four Years in Young Hank\'s Life,* and a novella, *Chance and Mr. Kunze,* both partly autobiographical. He also penned a long article based on his experiences in a federal work camp, \"Tramps and Pioneers.\" It was never published, but a truncated version appeared in *Harper\'s Magazine* after he became well known.
Hoffer tried to enlist in the U.S. Army at age 40 during World War II, but he was rejected due to a hernia. Instead, he began work as a longshoreman on the docks of San Francisco in 1943. At the same time, he began to write seriously.
Hoffer left the docks in 1964, and shortly after became an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He later retired from public life in 1970. \"I\'m going to crawl back into my hole where I started,\" he said. \"I don\'t want to be a public person or anybody\'s spokesman\... Any man can ride a train. Only a wise man knows when to get off.\" In 1970, he endowed the Lili Fabilli and Eric Hoffer Laconic Essay Prize for students, faculty, and staff at the University of California, Berkeley.
Hoffer called himself an atheist but had sympathetic views of religion and described it as a positive force.
He died at his home in San Francisco in 1983 at the age of 80.
## Working-class roots {#working_class_roots}
Hoffer was influenced by his modest roots and working-class surroundings, seeing in it vast human potential. In a letter to Margaret Anderson in 1941, he wrote: \"My writing is done in railroad yards while waiting for a freight, in the fields while waiting for a truck, and at noon after lunch. Towns are too distracting.\" He once remarked, \"my writing grows out of my life just as a branch from a tree.\" When he was called an intellectual, he insisted that he simply was a longshoreman. Hoffer has been dubbed by some authors a \"longshoreman philosopher.\"
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# Eric Hoffer
## Personal life {#personal_life}
Hoffer, who was an only child, never married. He fathered a child with Lili Fabilli Osborne, named Eric Osborne, who was born in 1955 and raised by Lili Osborne and her husband, Selden Osborne. Lili Fabilli Osborne had become acquainted with Hoffer through her husband, a fellow longshoreman and acquaintance of Hoffer\'s. Despite this, Selden Osborne and Hoffer remained on good terms.
Hoffer referred to Eric Osborne as his son or godson. Lili Fabilli Osborne died in 2010 at the age of 93. Prior to her death, Osborne was the executor of Hoffer\'s estate, and vigorously controlled the rights to his intellectual property.
In his 2012 book *Eric Hoffer: The Longshoreman Philosopher,* journalist Tom Bethell revealed doubts about Hoffer\'s account of his early life. Although Hoffer claimed his parents were from Alsace-Lorraine, Hoffer himself spoke with a pronounced Bavarian accent. He claimed to have been born and raised in the Bronx but had no Bronx accent. His lover and executor Lili Fabilli stated that she always thought Hoffer was an immigrant. Her son, Eric Fabilli, said that Hoffer\'s life might have been comparable to that of B. Traven and considered hiring a genealogist to investigate Hoffer\'s early life, to which Hoffer reportedly replied, \"Are you *sure* you want to know?\" Pescadero land-owner Joe Gladstone, a family friend of the Fabillis who also knew Hoffer, said of Hoffer\'s account of his early life: \"I don\'t believe a word of it.\" To this day, no one ever has claimed to have known Hoffer in his youth, and no records apparently exist of his parents, nor indeed of Hoffer himself until he was about forty, when his name appeared in a census.
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# Eric Hoffer
## Books and opinions {#books_and_opinions}
### *The True Believer* {#the_true_believer}
Hoffer came to public attention with the 1951 publication of his first book, *The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements*, which consists of a preface and 125 sections, which are divided into 18 chapters. Hoffer analyzes the phenomenon of \"mass movements,\" a general term that he applies to revolutionary parties, nationalistic movements, and religious movements. He summarizes his thesis in §113: \"A movement is pioneered by men of words, materialized by fanatics and consolidated by men of actions.\"
Hoffer argues that fanatical and extremist cultural movements, whether religious, social, or national, arise when large numbers of frustrated people, believing their own individual lives to be worthless or spoiled, join a movement demanding radical change. But the real attraction for this population is an escape from the self, not a realization of individual hopes: \"A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.\"
Hoffer consequently argues that the appeal of mass movements is interchangeable: in the Germany of the 1920s and the 1930s, for example, the Communists and National Socialists were ostensibly enemies, but sometimes enlisted each other\'s members, since they competed for the same kind of marginalized, angry, frustrated people. For the \"true believer,\" Hoffer argues that particular beliefs are less important than escaping from the burden of the autonomous self.
Harvard historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. said of *The True Believer*: \"This brilliant and original inquiry into the nature of mass movements is a genuine contribution to our social thought.\"
### Later works {#later_works}
Subsequent to the publication of *The True Believer* (1951), Eric Hoffer touched upon Asia and American interventionism in several of his essays. In \"The Awakening of Asia\" (1954), published in *The Reporter* and later his book *The Ordeal of Change* (1963), Hoffer discusses the reasons for unrest on the continent. In particular, he argues that the root cause of social discontent in Asia was not government corruption, \"communist agitation,\" or the legacy of European colonial \"oppression and exploitation,\" but rather that a \"craving for pride\" was the central problem in Asia, suggesting a problem that could not be relieved through typical American intervention.
During the Vietnam War, despite his objections to the antiwar movement and acceptance of the notion that the war was somehow necessary to prevent a third world war, Hoffer remained skeptical concerning American interventionism, specifically the intelligence with which the war was being conducted in Southeast Asia. After the United States became more involved in the war, Hoffer wished to avoid defeat in Vietnam because of his fear that such a defeat would transform American society for ill, opening the door to those who would preach a stab-in-the-back myth and allow for the rise of an American version of Hitler.
In *The Temper of Our Time* (1967), Hoffer implies that the United States as a rule should avoid interventions in the first place: \"the better part of statesmanship might be to know clearly and precisely what not to do, and leave action to the improvisation of chance.\" In fact, Hoffer indicates that \"it might be wise to wait for enemies to defeat themselves,\" as they might fall upon each other with the United States out of the picture. The view was somewhat borne out with the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and Chinese-Vietnamese War of the late 1970s.
## Papers
Hoffer\'s papers, including 131 of the notebooks he carried in his pockets, were acquired in 2000 by the Hoover Institution Archives. The papers fill 75 ft of shelf space. Because Hoffer cultivated an aphoristic style, the unpublished notebooks (dated from 1949 to 1977) contain very significant work. Although available for scholarly study since at least 2003, little of their contents has been published. A selection of fifty aphorisms, focusing on the development of unrealized human talents through the creative process, appeared in the July 2005 issue of *Harper\'s Magazine*.
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# Eric Hoffer
## Published works {#published_works}
: 1951 *The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature of Mass Movements*. `{{ISBN|0-06-050591-5}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1955 *The Passionate State of Mind, and Other Aphorisms*. `{{ISBN|1-933435-09-7}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1963 *The Ordeal of Change*. `{{ISBN|1-933435-10-0}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1967 *The Temper of Our Time*. `{{ISBN|978-1-933435-22-0}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1968 *Nature and The City*
: 1969 *Working and Thinking on the Waterfront: A Journal, June 1958 to May 1959*
: 1971 *First Things, Last Things*
: 1973 *Reflections on the Human Condition*. `{{ISBN|1-933435-14-3}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1976 *In Our Time*
: 1979 *Before the Sabbath*
: 1982 *Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer*. `{{ISBN|0-06-014984-1}}`{=mediawiki}
: 1983 *Truth Imagined*. `{{ISBN|1-933435-01-1}}`{=mediawiki}
## Interviews
- *Conversations with Eric Hoffer*, twelve-part television interview by James Day of KQED, San Francisco, 1963.
- \"Eric Hoffer: The Passionate State of Mind\" with Eric Sevareid, CBS, September 19, 1967 (re-broadcast on November 14, due to popular demand).
- \"The Savage Heart: A Conversation with Eric Hoffer,\" with Eric Sevareid, CBS, January 28, 1969
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# European Council
The **European Council** (informally **EUCO**) is a collegiate body (directorial system) and a symbolic collective head of state, that defines the overall political direction and general priorities of the European Union (EU). It is composed of the heads of state or of government of the EU member states, the president of the European Council, and the president of the European Commission. The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also takes part in its meetings.
Established as an informal summit in 1975, the European Council was formalised as an institution in 2009 upon the commencement of the Treaty of Lisbon. Its current president is António Costa, former prime minister of Portugal.
## Scope
While the European Council has no legislative power, it is a strategic (and crisis-solving) body that provides the union with general political directions and priorities, and acts as a collective presidency. The European Commission remains the sole initiator of legislation, but the European Council provides a guide to legislative policy and has been called \"the law-maker-in-chief\".
The meetings of the European Council, still commonly referred to as EU summits, are chaired by its president and take place at least twice every six months; usually in the Europa building in Brussels. Decisions of the European Council are taken by consensus, except where the Treaties provide otherwise.
## History
The European Council officially gained the status of an EU institution after the Treaty of Lisbon in 2007, distinct from the Council of the European Union (Council of Ministers). Before that, the first summits of EU heads of state or government were held in February and July 1961 (in Paris and Bonn respectively). They were informal summits of the leaders of the European Community, and were started due to then-French President Charles de Gaulle\'s resentment at the domination of supranational institutions (notably the European Commission) over the integration process, but petered out. The first influential summit held, after the departure of de Gaulle, was the Hague summit of 1969, which reached an agreement on the admittance of the United Kingdom into the Community and initiated foreign policy cooperation (the European Political Cooperation) taking integration beyond economics.
The summits were only formalised in the period between 1974 and 1988. At the December summit in Paris in 1974, following a proposal from then-French president Valéry Giscard d\'Estaing, it was agreed that more high-level, political input was needed following the \"empty chair crisis\" and economic problems. The inaugural *European Council*, as it became known, was held in Dublin on 10 and 11 March 1975 during Ireland\'s first Presidency of the Council of Ministers. In 1987, it was included in the treaties for the first time (the Single European Act) and had a defined role for the first time in the Maastricht Treaty. At first only a minimum of two meetings per year were required, which resulted in an average of three meetings per year being held for the 1975--1995 period. Since 1996, the number of meetings were required to be minimum four per year. For the latest 2008--2014 period, this minimum was well exceeded, by an average of seven meetings being held per year. The seat of the Council was formalised in 2002, basing it in Brussels. Three types of European Councils exist: Informal, Scheduled and Extraordinary. While the informal meetings are also scheduled 1½ years in advance, they differ from the scheduled ordinary meetings by not ending with official *Council conclusions*, as they instead end by more broad political *Statements* on some cherry-picked policy matters. The extraordinary meetings always end with official *Council conclusions* but differ from the scheduled meetings by not being scheduled more than a year in advance, as for example in 2001 when the European Council gathered to lead the European Union\'s response to the 11 September attacks.
Some meetings of the European Council---and, before the European Council was formalised, meetings of the heads of government---are seen by some as turning points in the history of the European Union. For example:
- 1969, *The Hague*: Foreign policy and enlargement.
- 1974, *Paris*: Creation of the council.
- 1985, *Milan*: Initiate IGC leading to the Single European Act.
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- 1991, *Maastricht*: Agreement on the Maastricht Treaty.
- 1992, *Edinburgh*: Agreement (by treaty provision) to retain at Strasbourg the plenary seat of the European Parliament.
- 1993, *Copenhagen*: Leading to the definition of the Copenhagen Criteria.
- 1997, *Amsterdam*: Agreement on the Amsterdam Treaty.
- 1998, *Brussels*: Selected member states to adopt the euro.
- 1999; *Cologne*: Declaration on military forces.
- 1999, *Tampere*: Institutional reform
- 2000, *Lisbon*: Lisbon Strategy
- 2002, *Copenhagen*: Agreement for May 2004 enlargement.
- 2007, *Lisbon*: Agreement on the Lisbon Treaty.
- 2009, *Brussels*: Appointment of first president and merged High Representative.
- 2010, European Financial Stability Facility
As such, the European Council had already existed before it gained the status as an institution of the European Union with the entering into force of the Treaty of Lisbon, but even after it had been mentioned in the treaties (since the Single European Act) it could only take political decisions, not formal legal acts. However, when necessary, the Heads of State or Government could also meet as the Council of Ministers and take formal decisions in that role. Sometimes, this was even compulsory, e.g. Article 214(2) of the Treaty establishing the European Community provided (before it was amended by the Treaty of Lisbon) that \'the Council, meeting *in the composition of Heads of State or Government* and acting by a qualified majority, shall nominate the person it intends to appoint as President of the Commission\' (emphasis added); the same rule applied in some monetary policy provisions introduced by the Maastricht Treaty (e.g. Article 109j TEC). In that case, what was politically part of a European Council meeting was legally a meeting of the Council of Ministers. When the European Council, already introduced into the treaties by the Single European Act, became an institution by virtue of the Treaty of Lisbon, this was no longer necessary, and the \"Council \[of the European Union\] meeting in the composition of the Heads of State or Government\", was replaced in these instances by the European Council now taking formal legally binding decisions in these cases (Article 15 of the Treaty on European Union).
The Treaty of Lisbon made the European Council a formal institution distinct from the (ordinary) Council of the EU, and created the present longer term and full-time presidency. As an outgrowth of the Council of the EU, the European Council had previously followed the same Presidency, rotating between each member state. While the Council of the EU retains that system, the European Council established, with no change in powers, a system of appointing an individual (without them being a national leader) for a two-and-a-half-year term---which can be renewed for the same person only once. Following the ratification of the treaty in December 2009, the European Council elected the then-Prime Minister of Belgium Herman Van Rompuy as its first permanent president; he resigned the prime ministerial position.
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# European Council
## Powers and functions {#powers_and_functions}
The European Council is an official institution of the EU, described in the Lisbon Treaty as a body which \"*shall provide the Union with the necessary impetus for its development*\". Essentially it defines the EU\'s policy agenda and has thus been considered to be the motor of European integration. Beyond the need to provide \"impetus\", the council has developed further roles: to \"settle issues outstanding from discussions at a lower level\", to lead in foreign policy --- acting externally as a \"collective Head of State\", \"formal ratification of important documents\" and \"involvement in the negotiation of the treaty changes\".
Since the institution is composed of national leaders, it gathers the executive power of the member states and has thus a great influence in high-profile policy areas as for example foreign policy. It also exercises powers of appointment, such as appointment of its own President, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and the President of the European Central Bank. It proposes, to the European Parliament, a candidate for President of the European Commission. Moreover, the European Council influences police and justice planning, the composition of the commission, matters relating to the organisation of the rotating Council presidency, the suspension of membership rights, and changing the voting systems through the Passerelle Clause. Although the European Council has no direct legislative power, under the \"emergency brake\" procedure, a state outvoted in the Council of Ministers may refer contentious legislation to the European Council. However, the state may still be outvoted in the European Council. Hence with powers over the supranational executive of the EU, in addition to its other powers, the European Council has been described by some as the Union\'s \"supreme political authority\".
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# European Council
## Composition
The European Council consists of the heads of state or government of the member states, alongside its own President and the Commission President (both non-voting). The meetings used to be regularly attended by the national foreign minister as well, and the Commission President likewise accompanied by another member of the commission. However, since the Treaty of Lisbon, this has been discontinued, as the size of the body had become somewhat large following successive accessions of new Member States to the Union. Meetings can also include other invitees, such as the President of the European Central Bank, as required. The Secretary-General of the Council attends, and is responsible for organisational matters, including minutes. The President of the European Parliament also attends to give an opening speech outlining the European Parliament\'s position before talks begin.
Additionally, the negotiations involve a large number of other people working behind the scenes. Most of those people, however, are not allowed to the conference room, except for two delegates per state to relay messages. At the push of a button members can also call for advice from a Permanent Representative via the \"Antici Group\" in an adjacent room. The group is composed of diplomats and assistants who convey information and requests. Interpreters are also required for meetings as members are permitted to speak in their own languages.
As the composition is not precisely defined, some states which have a considerable division of executive power can find it difficult to decide who should attend the meetings. While an MEP, Alexander Stubb argued that there was no need for the President of Finland to attend Council meetings with or instead of the Prime Minister of Finland (who was head of European foreign policy). In 2008, having become Finnish Foreign Minister, Stubb was forced out of the Finnish delegation to the emergency council meeting on the Georgian crisis because the President wanted to attend the high-profile summit as well as the Prime Minister (only two people from each country could attend the meetings). This was despite Stubb being Chair-in-Office of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe at the time which was heavily involved in the crisis. Problems also occurred in Poland where the President of Poland and the Prime Minister of Poland were of different parties and had a different foreign policy response to the crisis. A similar situation arose in Romania between President Traian Băsescu and Prime Minister Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu in 2007--2008 and again in 2012 with Prime Minister Victor Ponta, who both opposed the president.
### Eurozone summits {#eurozone_summits}
A number of ad hoc meetings of heads of state or government of the member states of the euro area were held in 2010 and 2011 to discuss the Sovereign Debt crisis. It was agreed in October 2011 that they should meet regularly twice a year (with extra meetings if needed). This will normally be at the end of a European Council meeting and according to the same format (chaired by the President of the European Council and including the President of the Commission), but usually restricted to the (currently 20) heads of state or government of the member states of the eurozone.
### President
The President of the European Council is elected by its members through a qualified majority vote for a once-renewable term of two and a half years. Article 15 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) identifies his duties. It is the Heads of State or Government who vote for this office. The President must report to the European Parliament after each European Council meeting. The post was created by the Treaty of Lisbon and was subject to a debate over its exact role. Prior to Lisbon, the Presidency rotated in accordance with the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. The role of that President-in-Office was in no sense (other than protocol) equivalent to an office of a head of state, merely a *primus inter pares* (first among equals) role among other European heads of government. The President-in-Office was primarily responsible for preparing and chairing the Council meetings, and had no executive powers other than the task of representing the Union externally. Now the leader of the Council Presidency country can still act as president when the permanent president is absent.
### Members
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# European Council
## Composition
### Political alliances {#political_alliances}
Almost all members of the European Council are members of a political party at the national level. Most of them are also members of political alliances at the European level such as European political parties and political groups of the European Parliament.
These alliances frequently hold pre-meetings with their European Council members, prior to their meetings. However, the members of the European Council represent their member states rather than political alliances, and decisions are generally made along national lines, though ideological alignment can colour political agreements and appointments (such as the president of the European Council).
The charts below outline the number of leaders affiliated to each alliance and their total voting weight. The map indicates the political group of the member representing each individual country.
\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|ind|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|ind|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|[[Party of European Socialists|PES]]|{{EUPP data|color|PES}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|PES|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|PES|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|PES|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|[[Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party|ALDE]]|{{EUPP data|color|ALDE}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|ALDE|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|ALDE|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|ALDE|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|[[European Conservatives and Reformists Party|ECR]]|{{EUPP data|color|ECR}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|ECR|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|ECR|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|ECR|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|[[European Free Alliance|EFA]]|{{EUPP data|color|EFA}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|EFA|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|EFA|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|EFA|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|[[Patriots.eu|P.eu]]|{{EUPP data|color|Patriots}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|Patriots|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|Patriots|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|Patriots|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} `{{bar pixel|{{Abbr|Una.|Unaffiliated}}|{{party color|Non-Inscrits}}|{{#expr: 10 * {{EUPP data|seat share|none|EUCO}} }}`{=mediawiki}\|\|`{{mono|{{EUPP data|seats|none|EUCO}} ({{EUPP data|seat share|none|EUCO}}%)}}`{=mediawiki}}} }}
### Members timeline {#members_timeline}
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# European Council
## Seat and meetings {#seat_and_meetings}
The European Council is required by Article 15.3 TEU to meet at least twice every six months, but convenes more frequently in practice. Despite efforts to contain business, meetings typically last for at least two days, and run long into the night.
Until 2002, the venue for European Council summits was the member state that held the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union. However, European leaders agreed during ratification of the Nice Treaty to forego this arrangement at such a time as the total membership of the European Union surpassed 18 member states. An advanced implementation of this agreement occurred in 2002, with certain states agreeing to waive their right to host meetings, favouring Brussels as the location. Following the growth of the EU to 25 member states, with the 2004 enlargement, all subsequent official summits of the European Council have been in Brussels, with the exception of punctuated ad hoc meetings, such as the 2017 informal European Council in Malta. The logistical, environmental, financial and security arrangements of hosting large summits are usually cited as the primary factors in the decision by EU leaders to move towards a permanent seat for the European Council. Additionally, some scholars argue that the move, when coupled with the formalisation of the European Council in the Lisbon Treaty, represents an institutionalisation of an ad hoc EU organ that had its origins in Luxembourg compromise, with national leaders reasserting their dominance as the EU\'s \"supreme political authority\".
Originally, both the European Council and the Council of the European Union utilised the Justus Lipsius building as their Brussels venue. In order to make room for additional meeting space a number of renovations were made, including the conversion of an underground carpark into additional press briefing rooms. However, in 2004 leaders decided the logistical problems created by the outdated facilities warranted the construction of a new purpose built seat able to cope with the nearly 6,000 meetings, working groups, and summits per year. This resulted in the Europa building, which opened its doors in 2017. The focal point of the new building, the distinctive multi-storey \"lantern-shaped\" structure in which the main meeting room is located, is utilised in both the European Council\'s and Council of the European Union\'s official logos
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# European Strategic Programme on Research in Information Technology
**European Strategic Programme on Research in Information Technology** (**ESPRIT**) was a series of integrated programmes of information technology research and development projects and industrial technology transfer measures. It was a European Union initiative managed by the Directorate General for Industry (DG III) of the European Commission.
## Programmes
Five ESPRIT programmes (ESPRIT 0 to ESPRIT 4) ran consecutively from 1983 to 1998. ESPRIT 4 was succeeded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme in 1999.
## Projects
Some of the projects and products supported by ESPRIT were: `{{Expand list|date=May 2016}}`{=mediawiki}
- BBC Domesday Project, a partnership between Acorn Computers Ltd, Philips, Logica and the BBC with some funding from the European Commission\'s ESPRIT programme, to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It is frequently cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.
- CGAL, the Computational Geometry Algorithms Library (CGAL) is a software library that aims to provide easy access to efficient and reliable algorithms in computational geometry. While primarily written in C++, Python bindings are also available. The original funding for the project came from the ESPRIT project.
- Eurocoop & Eurocode: ESPRIT III projects to develop systems for supporting distributed collaborative working.
- Open Document Architecture, a free and open international standard document file format maintained by the ITU-T to replace all proprietary document file formats. In 1985 ESPRIT financed a pilot implementation of the ODA concept, involving, among others, Bull corporation, Olivetti, ICL and Siemens AG.
- Paradise: A sub-project of the ESPRIT I project, COSINE which established a pan-European computer-based network infrastructure that enabled research workers to communicate with each other using OSI. Paradise implemented a distributed X.500 directory across the academic community.
- Password: Part of the ESPRIT III VALUE project, developed secure applications based on the X.509 standard for use in the academic community.
- ProCoS I Project (1989--1991), ProCoS II Project (1992--1995), and ProCoS-WG Working Group (1994--1997) on Provably Correct Systems, under ESPRIT II.
- REDO Project (1989--1992) on software maintenance, under ESPRIT II.
- RAISE, Rigorous Approach to Industrial Software Engineering, was developed as part of the European ESPRIT II LaCoS project in the 1990s, led by Dines Bjørner.
- REMORA methodology is an event-driven approach for designing information systems, developed by Colette Rolland. This methodology integrates behavioral and temporal aspects with concepts for modelling the structural aspects of an information system. In the ESPRIT I project TODOS, which has led to the development of an integrated environment for the design of office information systems (OISs),
- SAMPA: The Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (SAMPA) is a computer-readable phonetic script originally developed in the late 1980s.
- SCOPES: The Systematic Concurrent design of Products, Equipments and Control Systems project was a 3-year project launched in July, 1992, with the aim of specifying integrated computer-aided (CAD) tools for design and control of flexible assembly lines.
- SIP (Advanced Algorithms and Architectures for Speech and Image Processing), a partnership between Thomson-CSF, AEG, CSELT and ENSPS (ESPRIT P26), to develop the algorithmic and architectural techniques required for recognizing and understanding spoken or visual signals and to demonstrate these techniques in suitable applications.
- StatLog: \"ESPRIT project 5170. Comparative testing and evaluation of statistical and logical learning algorithms on large-scale applications to classification, prediction and control\"\"Machine Learning, Neural and Statistical Classification\",
Editors: D. Michie, D.J. Spiegelhalter, C.C. Taylor February 17, 1994 page 4, footnote 2, retrieved 12/12/2015 \"The above book (originally published in 1994 by Ellis Horwood) is now out of print. The copyright now resides with the editors who have decided to make the material freely available on the web.\" <http://www1.maths.leeds.ac.uk/~charles/statlog/>
- SUNDIAL (Speech UNderstanding DIALgue) started in September 1988 with Logica Ltd. as prime contractor, together with Erlangen University, CSELT, Daimler-Benz, Capgemini, Politecnico di Torino. Followed the Esprit P.26 to implement and evaluate dialogue systems to be used in telephone industry. The final results were 4 prototypes in 4 languages, involving speech and understanding technologies, and some criteria for evaluation were also reported.
- ISO 14649 (1999 onward): A standard for STEP-NC for CNC control developed by ESPRIT and Intelligent Manufacturing System.
- Transputers: \"ESPRIT Project P1085\" to develop a high performance multi-processor computer and a package of software applications to demonstrate its performance.
- Web for Schools, an ESPRIT IV project that introduced the World Wide Web in secondary schools in Europe. Teachers created more than 70 international collaborative educational projects that resulted in an exponential growth of teacher communities and educational activities using the World Wide Web
- AGENT: A project led by IGN-France aiming at developing an operational automated map generalisation software based on multi-agent system paradigm
| 792 |
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# E-commerce
**E-commerce** (**electronic commerce**) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. E-commerce is the largest sector of the electronics industry and is in turn driven by the technological advances of the semiconductor industry.
## Defining e-commerce {#defining_e_commerce}
The term was coined and first employed by Robert Jacobson, Principal Consultant to the California State Assembly\'s Utilities & Commerce Committee, in the title and text of California\'s Electronic Commerce Act, carried by the late Committee Chairwoman Gwen Moore (D-L.A.) and enacted in 1984.
E-commerce typically uses the web for at least a part of a transaction\'s life cycle although it may also use other technologies such as e-mail. Typical e-commerce transactions include the purchase of products (such as books from Amazon) or services (such as music downloads in the form of digital distribution such as the iTunes Store). There are three areas of e-commerce: online retailing, electronic markets, and online auctions. E-commerce is supported by electronic business. The existence value of e-commerce is to allow consumers to shop online and pay online through the Internet, saving the time and space of customers and enterprises, greatly improving transaction efficiency, especially for busy office workers, and also saving a lot of valuable time.
E-commerce businesses may also employ some or all of the following:
- Online shopping for retail sales direct to consumers via web sites and mobile apps, conversational commerce via live chat, chatbots, and voice assistants.
- Providing or participating in online marketplaces, which process third-party business-to-consumer (B2C) or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales;
- Business-to-business (B2B) buying and selling.
- Gathering and using demographic data through web contacts and social media.
- B2B electronic data interchange.
- Marketing to prospective and established customers by e-mail or fax (for example, with newsletters).
- Engaging in pretail for launching new products and services.
- Online financial exchanges for currency exchanges or trading purposes.
There are five essential categories of E-commerce:
- Business to Business
- Business to Consumer
- Business to Government
- Consumer to Business
- Consumer to Consumer
## Forms
Contemporary electronic commerce can be classified into two categories. The first category is business based on types of goods sold (involves everything from ordering \"digital\" content for immediate online consumption, to ordering conventional goods and services, to \"meta\" services to facilitate other types of electronic commerce). The second category is based on the nature of the participant (B2B, B2C, C2B and C2C).
On the institutional level, big corporations and financial institutions use the internet to exchange financial data to facilitate domestic and international business. Data integrity and security are pressing issues for electronic commerce.
Aside from traditional e-commerce, the terms m-Commerce (mobile commerce) as well (around 2013) t-Commerce have also been used.
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# E-commerce
## Governmental regulation {#governmental_regulation}
In the United States, California\'s Electronic Commerce Act (1984), enacted by the Legislature, the more recent California Privacy Rights Act (2020), enacted through a popular election proposition and to control specifically how electronic commerce may be conducted in California. In the US in its entirety, electronic commerce activities are regulated more broadly by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). These activities include the use of commercial e-mails, online advertising and consumer privacy. The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 establishes national standards for direct marketing over e-mail. The Federal Trade Commission Act regulates all forms of advertising, including online advertising, and states that advertising must be truthful and non-deceptive. Using its authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which prohibits unfair or deceptive practices, the FTC has brought a number of cases to enforce the promises in corporate privacy statements, including promises about the security of consumers\' personal information. As a result, any corporate privacy policy related to e-commerce activity may be subject to enforcement by the FTC.
The Ryan Haight Online Pharmacy Consumer Protection Act of 2008, which came into law in 2008, amends the Controlled Substances Act to address online pharmacies.
Conflict of laws in cyberspace is a major hurdle for harmonization of legal framework for e-commerce around the world. In order to give a uniformity to e-commerce law around the world, many countries adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce (1996).
**Internationally** there is the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN), which was formed in 1991 from an informal network of government customer fair trade organisations. The purpose was stated as being to find ways of co-operating on tackling consumer problems connected with cross-border transactions in both goods and services, and to help ensure exchanges of information among the participants for mutual benefit and understanding. From this came Econsumer.gov, an ICPEN initiative since April 2001. It is a portal to report complaints about online and related transactions with foreign companies.
There is also **Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation**. APEC was established in 1989 with the vision of achieving stability, security and prosperity for the region through free and open trade and investment. APEC has an Electronic Commerce Steering Group as well as working on common privacy regulations throughout the APEC region.
In **Australia**, trade is covered under Australian Treasury Guidelines for electronic commerce and the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission regulates and offers advice on how to deal with businesses online, and offers specific advice on what happens if things go wrong.
The **European Union** undertook an extensive enquiry into e-commerce in 2015--16 which observed significant growth in the development of e-commerce, along with some developments which raised concerns, such as increased use of selective distribution systems, which allow manufacturers to control routes to market, and \"increased use of contractual restrictions to better control product distribution\". The European Commission felt that some emerging practices might be justified if they could improve the quality of product distribution, but \"others may unduly prevent consumers from benefiting from greater product choice and lower prices in e-commerce and therefore warrant Commission action\" in order to promote compliance with EU competition rules.
In **the United Kingdom**, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) was formerly the regulating authority for most aspects of the EU\'s Payment Services Directive (PSD), until its replacement in 2013 by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. The UK implemented the PSD through the Payment Services Regulations 2009 (PSRs), which came into effect on 1 November 2009. The PSR affects firms providing payment services and their customers. These firms include banks, non-bank credit card issuers and non-bank merchant acquirers, e-money issuers, etc. The PSRs created a new class of regulated firms known as payment institutions (PIs), who are subject to prudential requirements. Article 87 of the PSD requires the European Commission to report on the implementation and impact of the PSD by 1 November 2012.
In **India**, the Information Technology Act 2000 governs the basic applicability of e-commerce.
In **China**, the Telecommunications Regulations of the People\'s Republic of China (promulgated on 25 September 2000), stipulated the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) as the government department regulating all telecommunications related activities, including electronic commerce. On the same day, the Administrative Measures on Internet Information Services were released, the first administrative regulations to address profit-generating activities conducted through the Internet, and lay the foundation for future regulations governing e-commerce in China. On 28 August 2004, the eleventh session of the tenth NPC Standing Committee adopted an Electronic Signature Law, which regulates data message, electronic signature authentication and legal liability issues. It is considered the first law in China\'s e-commerce legislation. It was a milestone in the course of improving China\'s electronic commerce legislation, and also marks the entering of China\'s rapid development stage for electronic commerce legislation.
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# E-commerce
## Global trends {#global_trends}
E-commerce has become an important tool for small and large businesses worldwide, not only to sell to customers, but also to engage them.
Cross-border e-Commerce is also an essential field for e-Commerce businesses. It has responded to the trend of globalization. It shows that numerous firms have opened up new businesses, expanded new markets, and overcome trade barriers; more and more enterprises have started exploring the cross-border cooperation field. In addition, compared with traditional cross-border trade, the information on cross-border e-commerce is more concealed. In the era of globalization, cross-border e-commerce for inter-firm companies means the activities, interactions, or social relations of two or more e-commerce enterprises. However, the success of cross-border e-commerce promotes the development of small and medium-sized firms, and it has finally become a new transaction mode. It has helped the companies solve financial problems and realize the reasonable allocation of resources field. SMEs ( small and medium enterprises) can also precisely match the demand and supply in the market, having the industrial chain majorization and creating more revenues for companies.
In 2012, e-commerce sales topped \$1 trillion for the first time in history.
Mobile devices are playing an increasing role in the mix of e-commerce, this is also commonly called mobile commerce, or m-commerce. In 2014, one estimate saw purchases made on mobile devices making up 25% of the market by 2017.
For traditional businesses, one research stated that information technology and cross-border e-commerce is a good opportunity for the rapid development and growth of enterprises. Many companies have invested an enormous volume of investment in mobile applications. The DeLone and McLean Model stated that three perspectives contribute to a successful e-business: information system quality, service quality and users\' satisfaction. There is no limit of time and space, there are more opportunities to reach out to customers around the world, and to cut down unnecessary intermediate links, thereby reducing the cost price, and can benefit from one on one large customer data analysis, to achieve a high degree of personal customization strategic plan, in order to fully enhance the core competitiveness of the products in the company.
Modern 3D graphics technologies, such as Facebook 3D Posts, are considered by some social media marketers and advertisers as a preferable way to promote consumer goods than static photos, and some brands like Sony are already paving the way for augmented reality commerce. Wayfair now lets you inspect a 3D version of its furniture in a home setting before buying.
### China
Among emerging economies, China\'s e-commerce presence continues to expand every year. With 668 million Internet users as of 2014, China\'s online shopping sales reached \$253 billion in the first half of 2015, accounting for 10% of total Chinese consumer retail sales in that period. The Chinese retailers have been able to help consumers feel more comfortable shopping online. e-commerce transactions between China and other countries increased 32% to 2.3 trillion yuan (\$375.8 billion) in 2012 and accounted for 9.6% of China\'s total international trade. In 2013, Alibaba had an e-commerce market share of 80% in China. In 2014, Alibaba still dominated the B2B marketplace in China with a market share of 44.82%, followed by several other companies including Made-in-China.com at 3.21%, and GlobalSources.com at 2.98%, with the total transaction value of China\'s B2B market exceeding 4.5 billion yuan.
China is also the largest e-commerce market in the world by value of sales, with an estimated `{{USD|899 billion}}`{=mediawiki} in 2016. It accounted for 42.4% of worldwide retail e-commerce in that year, the most of any country. Research shows that Chinese consumer motivations are different enough from Western audiences to require unique e-commerce app designs instead of simply porting Western apps into the Chinese market.
The expansion of e-commerce in China has resulted in the development of Taobao villages, clusters of e-commerce businesses operating in rural areas. Because Taobao villages have increased the incomes or rural people and entrepreneurship in rural China, Taobao villages have become a component of rural revitalization strategies.
In 2015, the State Council promoted the Internet Plus initiative, a five-year plan to integrate traditional manufacturing and service industries with big data, cloud computing, and Internet of things technology. The State Council provided support for Internet Plus through policy support in area including cross-border e-commerce and rural e-commerce.
In 2019, the city of Hangzhou established a pilot program artificial intelligence-based Internet Court to adjudicate disputes related to e-commerce and internet-related intellectual property claims.
### Europe
In 2010, the United Kingdom had the highest per capita e-commerce spending in the world. As of 2013, the Czech Republic was the European country where e-commerce delivers the biggest contribution to the enterprises\' total revenue. Almost a quarter (24%) of the country\'s total turnover is generated via the online channel.
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# E-commerce
## Global trends {#global_trends}
### Arab states {#arab_states}
The rate of growth of the number of internet users in the Arab countries has been rapid -- 13.1% in 2015. A significant portion of the e-commerce market in the Middle East comprises people in the 30--34 year age group. Egypt has the largest number of internet users in the region, followed by Saudi Arabia and Morocco; these constitute 3/4th of the region\'s share. Yet, internet penetration is low: 35% in Egypt and 65% in Saudi Arabia.
The Gulf Cooperation Council countries have a rapidly growing market and are characterized by a population that becomes wealthier (Yuldashev). As such, retailers have launched Arabic-language websites as a means to target this population. Secondly, there are predictions of increased mobile purchases and an expanding internet audience (Yuldashev). The growth and development of the two aspects make the GCC countries become larger players in the electronic commerce market with time progress. Specifically, research shows that the e-commerce market is expected to grow to over \$20 billion by 2020 among these GCC countries (Yuldashev). The e-commerce market has also gained much popularity among western countries, and in particular Europe and the U.S. These countries have been highly characterized by consumer-packaged goods (CPG) (Geisler, 34). However, trends show that there are future signs of a reverse. Similar to the GCC countries, there has been increased purchase of goods and services in online channels rather than offline channels. Activist investors are trying hard to consolidate and slash their overall cost and the governments in western countries continue to impose more regulation on CPG manufacturers (Geisler, 36). In these senses, CPG investors are being forced to adapt to e-commerce as it is effective as well as a means for them to thrive.
The future trends in the GCC countries will be similar to that of the western countries. Despite the forces that push business to adapt e-commerce as a means to sell goods and products, the manner in which customers make purchases is similar in countries from these two regions. For instance, there has been an increased usage of smartphones which comes in conjunction with an increase in the overall internet audience from the regions. Yuldashev writes that consumers are scaling up to more modern technology that allows for mobile marketing. However, the percentage of smartphone and internet users who make online purchases is expected to vary in the first few years. It will be independent on the willingness of the people to adopt this new trend (The Statistics Portal). For example, UAE has the greatest smartphone penetration of 73.8 per cent and has 91.9 per cent of its population has access to the internet. On the other hand, smartphone penetration in Europe has been reported to be at 64.7 per cent (The Statistics Portal). Regardless, the disparity in percentage between these regions is expected to level out in future because e-commerce technology is expected to grow to allow for more users.
The e-commerce business within these two regions will result in competition. Government bodies at the country level will enhance their measures and strategies to ensure sustainability and consumer protection (Krings, et al.). These increased measures will raise the environmental and social standards in the countries, factors that will determine the success of the e-commerce market in these countries. For example, an adoption of tough sanctions will make it difficult for companies to enter the e-commerce market while lenient sanctions will allow ease of companies. As such, the future trends between GCC countries and the Western countries will be independent of these sanctions (Krings, et al.). These countries need to make rational conclusions in coming up with effective sanctions.
### India
India has an Internet user base of about 460 million as of December 2017. Despite being the third largest user base in the world, the penetration of the Internet is low compared to markets like the United States, United Kingdom or France but is growing at a much faster rate, adding around six million new entrants every month. In India, cash on delivery is the most preferred payment method, accumulating 75% of the e-retail activities. The India retail market is expected to rise from 2.5% in 2016 to 5% in 2020.
### Brazil
In 2013, Brazil\'s e-commerce was growing quickly with retail e-commerce sales expected to grow at a double-digit pace through 2014. By 2016, eMarketer expected retail e-commerce sales in Brazil to reach \$17.3 billion.
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# E-commerce
## Logistics
Logistics in e-commerce mainly concerns fulfillment. Online markets and retailers have to find the best possible way to fill orders and deliver products. Small companies usually control their own logistic operation because they do not have the ability to hire an outside company. Most large companies hire a fulfillment service that takes care of a company\'s logistic needs. The optimization of logistics processes that contains long-term investment in an efficient storage infrastructure system and adoption of inventory management strategies is crucial to prioritize customer satisfaction throughout the entire process, from order placement to final delivery.
## Impacts
### Impact on markets and retailers {#impact_on_markets_and_retailers}
E-commerce markets are growing at noticeable rates. The online market is expected to grow by 56% in 2015--2020. In 2017, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 2.3 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 4.891 trillion US dollars in 2021. Traditional markets are only expected 2% growth during the same time. Brick and mortar retailers are struggling because of online retailer\'s ability to offer lower prices and higher efficiency. Many larger retailers are able to maintain a presence offline and online by linking physical and online offerings.
E-commerce allows customers to overcome geographical barriers and allows them to purchase products anytime and from anywhere. Online and traditional markets have different strategies for conducting business. Traditional retailers offer fewer assortment of products because of shelf space where, online retailers often hold no inventory but send customer orders directly to the manufacturer. The pricing strategies are also different for traditional and online retailers. Traditional retailers base their prices on store traffic and the cost to keep inventory. Online retailers base prices on the speed of delivery.
There are two ways for marketers to conduct business through e-commerce: fully online or online along with a brick and mortar store. Online marketers can offer lower prices, greater product selection, and high efficiency rates. Many customers prefer online markets if the products can be delivered quickly at relatively low price. However, online retailers cannot offer the physical experience that traditional retailers can. It can be difficult to judge the quality of a product without the physical experience, which may cause customers to experience product or seller uncertainty. Another issue regarding the online market is concerns about the security of online transactions. Many customers remain loyal to well-known retailers because of this issue.
Security is a primary problem for e-commerce in developed and developing countries. E-commerce security is protecting businesses\' websites and customers from unauthorized access, use, alteration, or destruction. The type of threats include: malicious codes, unwanted programs (ad ware, spyware), phishing, hacking, and cyber vandalism. E-commerce websites use different tools to avert security threats. These tools include firewalls, encryption software, digital certificates, and passwords.
### Impact on supply chain management {#impact_on_supply_chain_management}
For a long time, companies had been troubled by the gap between the benefits which supply chain technology has and the solutions to deliver those benefits. However, the emergence of e-commerce has provided a more practical and effective way of delivering the benefits of the new supply chain technologies.
E-commerce has the capability to integrate all inter-company and intra-company functions, meaning that the three flows (physical flow, financial flow and information flow) of the supply chain could be also affected by e-commerce. The affections on physical flows improved the way of product and inventory movement level for companies. For the information flows, e-commerce optimized the capacity of information processing than companies used to have, and for the financial flows, e-commerce allows companies to have more efficient payment and settlement solutions.
In addition, e-commerce has a more sophisticated level of impact on supply chains: Firstly, the performance gap will be eliminated since companies can identify gaps between different levels of supply chains by electronic means of solutions; Secondly, as a result of e-commerce emergence, new capabilities such implementing ERP systems, like SAP ERP, Xero, or Megaventory, have helped companies to manage operations with customers and suppliers. Yet these new capabilities are still not fully exploited. Thirdly, technology companies would keep investing on new e-commerce software solutions as they are expecting investment return. Fourthly, e-commerce would help to solve many aspects of issues that companies may feel difficult to cope with, such as political barriers or cross-country changes. Finally, e-commerce provides companies a more efficient and effective way to collaborate with each other within the supply chain.
### Impact on employment {#impact_on_employment}
E-commerce helps create new job opportunities due to information related services, software app and digital products. It also causes job losses. The areas with the greatest predicted job-loss are retail, postal, and travel agencies. The development of e-commerce will create jobs that require highly skilled workers to manage large amounts of information, customer demands, and production processes. In contrast, people with poor technical skills cannot enjoy the wages welfare. On the other hand, because e-commerce requires sufficient stocks that could be delivered to customers in time, the warehouse becomes an important element. Warehouse needs more staff to manage, supervise and organize, thus the condition of warehouse environment will be concerned by employees.
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# E-commerce
## Impacts
### Impact on customers {#impact_on_customers}
E-commerce brings convenience for customers as they do not have to leave home and only need to browse websites online, especially for buying products which are not sold in nearby shops. It could help customers buy a wider range of products and save customers\' time. Consumers also gain power through online shopping. They are able to research products and compare prices among retailers. Thanks to the practice of user-generated ratings and reviews from companies like Bazaarvoice, Trustpilot, and Yelp, customers can also see what other people think of a product, and decide before buying if they want to spend money on it. Also, online shopping often provides sales promotion or discounts code, thus it is more price effective for customers. Moreover, e-commerce provides products\' detailed information; even the in-store staff cannot offer such detailed explanation. Customers can also review and track the order history online.
E-commerce technologies cut transaction costs by allowing both manufactures and consumers to skip through the intermediaries. This is achieved through by extending the search area best price deals and by group purchase. The success of e-commerce in urban and regional levels depend on how the local firms and consumers have adopted to e-commerce.
However, e-commerce lacks human interaction for customers, especially who prefer face-to-face connection. Customers are also concerned with the security of online transactions and tend to remain loyal to well-known retailers. In recent years, clothing retailers such as Tommy Hilfiger have started adding Virtual Fit platforms to their e-commerce sites to reduce the risk of customers buying the wrong sized clothes, although these vary greatly in their fit for purpose. When the customer regret the purchase of a product, it involves returning goods and refunding process. This process is inconvenient as customers need to pack and post the goods. If the products are expensive, large or fragile, it refers to safety issues.
### Impact on the environment {#impact_on_the_environment}
In 2018, E-commerce generated 1.3 e6ST of container cardboard in North America, an increase from 1.1 e6ST) in 2017. Only 35 percent of North American cardboard manufacturing capacity is from recycled content. The recycling rate in Europe is 80 percent and Asia is 93 percent. Amazon, the largest user of boxes, has a strategy to cut back on packing material and has reduced packaging material used by 19 percent by weight since 2016. Amazon is requiring retailers to manufacture their product packaging in a way that does not require additional shipping packaging. Amazon also has an 85-person team researching ways to reduce and improve their packaging and shipping materials.
Accelerated movement of packages around the world includes accelerated movement of living things, with all its attendant risks. Weeds, pests, and diseases all sometimes travel in packages of seeds. Some of these packages are part of brushing manipulation of e-commerce reviews.
### Impact on traditional retail {#impact_on_traditional_retail}
E-commerce has been cited as a major force for the failure of major U.S. retailers in a trend frequently referred to as a \"retail apocalypse.\" The rise of e-commerce outlets like Amazon has made it harder for traditional retailers to attract customers to their stores and forced companies to change their sales strategies. Many companies have turned to sales promotions and increased digital efforts to lure shoppers while shutting down brick-and-mortar locations. The trend has forced some traditional retailers to shutter its brick and mortar operations.
## E-commerce during COVID-19 {#e_commerce_during_covid_19}
In March 2020, global retail website traffic hit 14.3 billion visits signifying an unprecedented growth of e-commerce during the lockdown of 2020. Later studies show that online sales increased by 25% and online grocery shopping increased by over 100% during the crisis in the United States. Meanwhile, as many as 29% of surveyed shoppers state that they will never go back to shopping in person again; in the UK, 43% of consumers state that they expect to keep on shopping the same way even after the lockdown is over.
Retail sales of e-commerce shows that COVID-19 has a significant impact on e-commerce and its sales are expected to reach \$6.5 trillion by 2023.
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# E-commerce
## Business application {#business_application}
Some common applications related to electronic commerce are:
## Timeline
A timeline for the development of e-commerce:
- 1971 or 1972: The ARPANET is used to arrange a cannabis sale between students at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, later described as \"the seminal act of e-commerce\" in John Markoff\'s book *What the Dormouse Said*.
- 1979: Michael Aldrich demonstrates the first online shopping system.
- 1981: Thomson Holidays UK is the first business-to-business (B2B) online shopping system to be installed.
- 1982: Minitel was introduced nationwide in France by France Télécom and used for online ordering.
- 1983: California State Assembly holds first hearing on \"electronic commerce\" in Volcano, California. Testifying are CPUC, MCI Mail, Prodigy, CompuServe, Volcano Telephone, and Pacific Telesis. (Not permitted to testify is Quantum Technology, later to become AOL.) California\'s Electronic Commerce Act was passed in 1984.
- 1983: Karen Earle Lile (AKA Karen Bean) and Kendall Ross Bean create e-commerce service in San Francisco Bay Area. Buyers and sellers of pianos connect through a database created by Piano Finders on a Kaypro personal computer using DOS interface. Pianos for sale are listed on a Bulletin board system. Buyers print list of pianos for sale by a dot matrix printer. Customer service happened through a Piano Advice Hotline listed in the San Francisco Chronicle classified ads and money transferred by a bank wire transfer when a sale was completed.
- 1984: Gateshead SIS/Tesco is first B2C online shopping system and Mrs Snowball, 72, is the first online home shopper
- 1984: In April 1984, CompuServe launches the Electronic Mall in the US and Canada. It is the first comprehensive electronic commerce service.
- 1989: In May 1989, Sequoia Data Corp. introduced Compumarket, the first internet based system for e-commerce. Sellers and buyers could post items for sale and buyers could search the database and make purchases with a credit card.
- 1990: Tim Berners-Lee writes the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, using a NeXT computer.
- 1992: Book Stacks Unlimited in Cleveland opens a commercial sales website (www.books.com) selling books online with credit card processing.
- 1993: Paget Press releases edition No. 3 of the first app store, The Electronic AppWrapper
- 1994: Netscape releases the Navigator browser in October under the code name Mozilla. Netscape 1.0 is introduced in late 1994 with SSL encryption that made transactions secure.
- 1994: Ipswitch IMail Server becomes the first software available online for sale and immediate download via a partnership between Ipswitch, Inc. and OpenMarket.
- 1994: \"Ten Summoner\'s Tales\" by Sting becomes the first secure online purchase through NetMarket.
- 1995: The US National Science Foundation lifts its former strict prohibition of commercial enterprise on the Internet.
- 1995: Thursday 27 April 1995, the purchase of a book by Paul Stanfield, product manager for CompuServe UK, from W H Smith\'s shop within CompuServe\'s UK Shopping Centre is the UK\'s first national online shopping service secure transaction. The shopping service at launch featured W H Smith, Tesco, Virgin Megastores/Our Price, Great Universal Stores (GUS), Interflora, Dixons Retail, Past Times, PC World (retailer) and Innovations.
- 1995: Amazon is launched by Jeff Bezos.
- 1995: eBay is founded by computer programmer Pierre Omidyar as AuctionWeb. It is the first online auction site supporting person-to-person transactions.
- 1995: The first commercial-free 24-hour, internet-only radio stations, Radio HK and NetRadio start broadcasting.
- 1996: The use of Excalibur BBS with replicated \"storefronts\" was an early implementation of electronic commerce started by a group of SysOps in Australia and replicated to global partner sites.
- 1998: Electronic postal stamps can be purchased and downloaded for printing from the Web.
- 1999: Alibaba Group is established in China. Business.com sold for US\$7.5 million to eCompanies, which was purchased in 1997 for US\$149,000. The peer-to-peer filesharing software Napster launches. ATG Stores launches to sell decorative items for the home online.
- 1999: Global e-commerce reaches \$150 billion
- 2000: The dot-com bust.
- 2001: eBay has the largest userbase of any e-commerce site.
- 2001: Alibaba.com achieved profitability in December 2001.
- 2002: eBay acquires PayPal for \$1.5 billion. Niche retail companies Wayfair and NetShops are founded with the concept of selling products through several targeted domains, rather than a central portal.
- 2003: Amazon posts first yearly profit.
- 2004: DHgate.com, China\'s first online B2B transaction platform, is established, forcing other B2B sites to move away from the \"yellow pages\" model.
- 2007: Business.com acquired by R.H. Donnelley for \$345 million.
- 2014: US e-commerce and online retail sales projected to reach \$294 billion, an increase of 12 percent over 2013 and 9% of all retail sales. Alibaba Group has the largest Initial public offering ever, worth \$25 billion.
- 2015: Amazon accounts for more than half of all e-commerce growth, selling almost 500 Million SKU\'s in the US.
- 2016: The Government of India launches the BHIM UPI digital payment interface. In the year 2020 it has 2 billion digital payment transactions.
- 2017: Retail e-commerce sales across the world reaches \$2.304 trillion, which was a 24.8 percent increase than previous year.
- 2017: Global e-commerce transactions generate `{{US$|29.267 trillion|long=no}}`{=mediawiki}, including `{{US$|25.516 trillion|long=no}}`{=mediawiki} for business-to-business (B2B) transactions and `{{US$|3.851 trillion|long=no}}`{=mediawiki} for business-to-consumer (B2C) sales
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# Evolutionarily stable strategy
An **evolutionarily stable strategy** (**ESS**) is a strategy (or set of strategies) that is *impermeable* when adopted by a population in adaptation to a specific environment, that is to say it cannot be displaced by an alternative strategy (or set of strategies) which may be novel or initially rare. Introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in 1972/3, it is an important concept in behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, mathematical game theory and economics, with applications in other fields such as anthropology, philosophy and political science.
In game-theoretical terms, an ESS is an equilibrium refinement of the Nash equilibrium, being a Nash equilibrium that is also \"evolutionarily stable.\" Thus, once fixed in a population, natural selection alone is sufficient to prevent alternative (mutant) strategies from replacing it (although this does not preclude the possibility that a better strategy, or set of strategies, will emerge in response to selective pressures resulting from environmental change).
## History
Evolutionarily stable strategies were defined and introduced by John Maynard Smith and George R. Price in a 1973 *Nature* paper. Such was the time taken in peer-reviewing the paper for *Nature* that this was preceded by a 1972 essay by Maynard Smith in a book of essays titled *On Evolution*. The 1972 essay is sometimes cited instead of the 1973 paper, but university libraries are much more likely to have copies of *Nature*. Papers in *Nature* are usually short; in 1974, Maynard Smith published a longer paper in the *Journal of Theoretical Biology*. Maynard Smith explains further in his 1982 book *Evolution and the Theory of Games*. Sometimes these are cited instead. In fact, the ESS has become so central to game theory that often no citation is given, as the reader is assumed to be familiar with it.
Maynard Smith mathematically formalised a verbal argument made by Price, which he read while peer-reviewing Price\'s paper. When Maynard Smith realized that the somewhat disorganised Price was not ready to revise his article for publication, he offered to add Price as co-author.
The concept was derived from R. H. MacArthur and W. D. Hamilton\'s work on sex ratios, derived from Fisher\'s principle, especially Hamilton\'s (1967) concept of an unbeatable strategy. Maynard Smith was jointly awarded the 1999 Crafoord Prize for his development of the concept of evolutionarily stable strategies and the application of game theory to the evolution of behaviour.
Uses of ESS:
- The ESS was a major element used to analyze evolution in Richard Dawkins\' bestselling 1976 book *The Selfish Gene*.
- The ESS was first used in the social sciences by Robert Axelrod in his 1984 book *The Evolution of Cooperation*. Since then, it has been widely used in the social sciences, including anthropology, economics, philosophy, and political science.
- In the social sciences, the primary interest is not in an ESS as the end of biological evolution, but as an end point in cultural evolution or individual learning.
- In evolutionary psychology, ESS is used primarily as a model for human biological evolution.
## Motivation
The Nash equilibrium is the traditional solution concept in game theory. It depends on the cognitive abilities of the players. It is assumed that players are aware of the structure of the game and consciously try to predict the moves of their opponents and to maximize their own payoffs. In addition, it is presumed that all the players know this (see common knowledge). These assumptions are then used to explain why players choose Nash equilibrium strategies.
Evolutionarily stable strategies are motivated entirely differently. Here, it is presumed that the players\' strategies are biologically encoded and heritable. Individuals have no control over their strategy and need not be aware of the game. They reproduce and are subject to the forces of natural selection, with the payoffs of the game representing reproductive success (biological fitness). It is imagined that alternative strategies of the game occasionally occur, via a process like mutation. To be an ESS, a strategy must be resistant to these alternatives.
Given the radically different motivating assumptions, it may come as a surprise that ESSes and Nash equilibria often coincide. In fact, every ESS corresponds to a Nash equilibrium, but some Nash equilibria are not ESSes.
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# Evolutionarily stable strategy
## Nash equilibrium {#nash_equilibrium}
An ESS is a refined or modified form of a Nash equilibrium. (See the next section for examples which contrast the two.) In a Nash equilibrium, if all players adopt their respective parts, no player can *benefit* by switching to any alternative strategy. In a two player game, it is a strategy pair. Let E(*S*,*T*) represent the payoff for playing strategy *S* against strategy *T*. The strategy pair (*S*, *S*) is a Nash equilibrium in a two player game if and only if for both players, for any strategy *T*:
: E(*S*,*S*) ≥ E(*T*,*S*)
In this definition, a strategy *T*≠*S* can be a neutral alternative to *S* (scoring equally well, but not better). A Nash equilibrium is presumed to be stable even if *T* scores equally, on the assumption that there is no long-term incentive for players to adopt *T* instead of *S*. This fact represents the point of departure of the ESS.
Maynard Smith and Price specify two conditions for a strategy *S* to be an ESS. For all *T*≠*S*, either
1. E(*S*,*S*) \> E(*T*,*S*), **or**
2. E(*S*,*S*) = E(*T*,*S*) and E(*S*,*T*) \> E(*T*,*T*)
The first condition is sometimes called a *strict* Nash equilibrium. The second is sometimes called \"Maynard Smith\'s second condition\". The second condition means that although strategy *T* is neutral with respect to the payoff against strategy *S*, the population of players who continue to play strategy *S* has an advantage when playing against *T*.
There is also an alternative, stronger definition of ESS, due to Thomas. This places a different emphasis on the role of the Nash equilibrium concept in the ESS concept. Following the terminology given in the first definition above, this definition requires that for all *T*≠*S*
1. E(*S*,*S*) ≥ E(*T*,*S*), **and**
2. E(*S*,*T*) \> E(*T*,*T*)
In this formulation, the first condition specifies that the strategy is a Nash equilibrium, and the second specifies that Maynard Smith\'s second condition is met. Note that the two definitions are not precisely equivalent: for example, each pure strategy in the coordination game below is an ESS by the first definition but not the second.
In words, this definition looks like this: The payoff of the first player when both players play strategy S is higher than (or equal to) the payoff of the first player when he changes to another strategy T and the second player keeps his strategy S *and* the payoff of the first player when only his opponent changes his strategy to T is higher than his payoff in case that both of players change their strategies to T.
This formulation more clearly highlights the role of the Nash equilibrium condition in the ESS. It also allows for a natural definition of related concepts such as a weak ESS or an evolutionarily stable set.
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# Evolutionarily stable strategy
## Nash equilibrium {#nash_equilibrium}
### Examples of differences between Nash equilibria and ESSes {#examples_of_differences_between_nash_equilibria_and_esses}
----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{{Payoff matrix \| Name = Prisoner\'s Dilemma 2L = Cooperate \| 2R = Defect \| 1U = Cooperate \| UL = 3, 3 \| UR = 1, 4 \| 1D = Defect \| DL = 4, 1 \| DR = 2, 2 }} {{Payoff matrix \| Name = Harm thy neighbor 2L = A \| 2R = B \| 1U = A \| UL = 2, 2 \| UR = 1, 2 \| 1D = B \| DL = 2, 1 \| DR = 2, 2 }}
----------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In most simple games, the ESSes and Nash equilibria coincide perfectly. For instance, in the prisoner\'s dilemma there is only one Nash equilibrium, and its strategy (*Defect*) is also an ESS.
Some games may have Nash equilibria that are not ESSes. For example, in harm thy neighbor (whose payoff matrix is shown here) both (*A*, *A*) and (*B*, *B*) are Nash equilibria, since players cannot do better by switching away from either. However, only *B* is an ESS (and a strong Nash). *A* is not an ESS, so *B* can neutrally invade a population of *A* strategists and predominate, because *B* scores higher against *B* than *A* does against *B*. This dynamic is captured by Maynard Smith\'s second condition, since E(*A*, *A*) = E(*B*, *A*), but it is not the case that E(*A*,*B*) \> E(*B*,*B*).
----------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{{Payoff matrix \| Name = Harm everyone 2L = C \| 2R = D \| 1U = C \| UL = 2, 2 \| UR = 1, 2 \| 1D = D \| DL = 2, 1 \| DR = 0, 0 }} {{Payoff matrix \| Name = Chicken 2L = Swerve \| 2R = Stay \| 1U = Swerve \| UL = 0,0 \| UR = −1,+1 \| 1D = Stay \| DL = +1,−1 \| DR = −20,−20 }}
----------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nash equilibria with equally scoring alternatives can be ESSes. For example, in the game *Harm everyone*, *C* is an ESS because it satisfies Maynard Smith\'s second condition. *D* strategists may temporarily invade a population of *C* strategists by scoring equally well against *C*, but they pay a price when they begin to play against each other; *C* scores better against *D* than does *D*. So here although E(*C*, *C*) = E(*D*, *C*), it is also the case that E(*C*,*D*) \> E(*D*,*D*). As a result, *C* is an ESS.
Even if a game has pure strategy Nash equilibria, it might be that none of those pure strategies are ESS. Consider the Game of chicken. There are two pure strategy Nash equilibria in this game (*Swerve*, *Stay*) and (*Stay*, *Swerve*). However, in the absence of an uncorrelated asymmetry, neither *Swerve* nor *Stay* are ESSes. There is a third Nash equilibrium, a mixed strategy which is an ESS for this game (see Hawk-dove game and Best response for explanation).
This last example points to an important difference between Nash equilibria and ESS. Nash equilibria are defined on *strategy sets* (a specification of a strategy for each player), while ESS are defined in terms of strategies themselves. The equilibria defined by ESS must always be symmetric, and thus have fewer equilibrium points.
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# Evolutionarily stable strategy
## Vs. evolutionarily stable state {#vs._evolutionarily_stable_state}
In population biology, the two concepts of an *evolutionarily stable strategy* (ESS) and an *evolutionarily stable state* are closely linked but describe different situations.
In an evolutionarily stable *strategy,* if all the members of a population adopt it, no mutant strategy can invade. Once virtually all members of the population use this strategy, there is no \'rational\' alternative. ESS is part of classical game theory.
In an evolutionarily stable *state,* a population\'s genetic composition is restored by selection after a disturbance, if the disturbance is not too large. An evolutionarily stable state is a dynamic property of a population that returns to using a strategy, or mix of strategies, if it is perturbed from that initial state. It is part of population genetics, dynamical system, or evolutionary game theory. This is now called convergent stability.
B. Thomas (1984) applies the term ESS to an individual strategy which may be mixed, and evolutionarily stable population state to a population mixture of pure strategies which may be formally equivalent to the mixed ESS.
Whether a population is evolutionarily stable does not relate to its genetic diversity: it can be genetically monomorphic or polymorphic.
## Stochastic ESS {#stochastic_ess}
In the classic definition of an ESS, no mutant strategy can invade. In finite populations, any mutant could in principle invade, albeit at low probability, implying that no ESS can exist. In an infinite population, an ESS can instead be defined as a strategy which, should it become invaded by a new mutant strategy with probability p, would be able to counterinvade from a single starting individual with probability \>p, as illustrated by the evolution of bet-hedging.
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# Evolutionarily stable strategy
## Prisoner\'s dilemma {#prisoners_dilemma}
A common model of altruism and social cooperation is the Prisoner\'s dilemma. Here a group of players would collectively be better off if they could play *Cooperate*, but since *Defect* fares better each individual player has an incentive to play *Defect*. One solution to this problem is to introduce the possibility of retaliation by having individuals play the game repeatedly against the same player. In the so-called *iterated* Prisoner\'s dilemma, the same two individuals play the prisoner\'s dilemma over and over. While the Prisoner\'s dilemma has only two strategies (*Cooperate* and *Defect*), the iterated Prisoner\'s dilemma has a huge number of possible strategies. Since an individual can have different contingency plan for each history and the game may be repeated an indefinite number of times, there may in fact be an infinite number of such contingency plans.
Three simple contingency plans which have received substantial attention are *Always Defect*, *Always Cooperate*, and *Tit for Tat*. The first two strategies do the same thing regardless of the other player\'s actions, while the latter responds on the next round by doing what was done to it on the previous round---it responds to *Cooperate* with *Cooperate* and *Defect* with *Defect*.
If the entire population plays *Tit-for-Tat* and a mutant arises who plays *Always Defect*, *Tit-for-Tat* will outperform *Always Defect*. If the population of the mutant becomes too large --- the percentage of the mutant will be kept small. *Tit for Tat* is therefore an ESS, *with respect to **only** these two strategies*. On the other hand, an island of *Always Defect* players will be stable against the invasion of a few *Tit-for-Tat* players, but not against a large number of them. If we introduce *Always Cooperate*, a population of *Tit-for-Tat* is no longer an ESS. Since a population of *Tit-for-Tat* players always cooperates, the strategy *Always Cooperate* behaves identically in this population. As a result, a mutant who plays *Always Cooperate* will not be eliminated. However, even though a population of *Always Cooperate* and *Tit-for-Tat* can coexist, if there is a small percentage of the population that is *Always Defect*, the selective pressure is against *Always Cooperate*, and in favour of *Tit-for-Tat*. This is due to the lower payoffs of cooperating than those of defecting in case the opponent defects.
This demonstrates the difficulties in applying the formal definition of an ESS to games with large strategy spaces, and has motivated some to consider alternatives.
## Human behavior {#human_behavior}
The fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology attempt to explain animal and human behavior and social structures, largely in terms of evolutionarily stable strategies. Sociopathy (chronic antisocial or criminal behavior) may be a result of a combination of two such strategies.
Evolutionarily stable strategies were originally considered for biological evolution, but they can apply to other contexts. In fact, there are stable states for a large class of adaptive dynamics. As a result, they can be used to explain human behaviours that lack any genetic influences
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
**Elizabeth Barrett Browning** (née **Moulton-Barrett**; 6 March 1806 -- 29 June 1861) was an English poet of the Victorian era, popular in Britain and the United States during her lifetime and frequently anthologised after her death. Her work received renewed attention following the feminist scholarship of the 1970s and 1980s, and greater recognition of women writers in English. Born in County Durham, the eldest of 12 children, Elizabeth Barrett wrote poetry from the age of eleven. Her mother\'s collection of her poems forms one of the largest extant collections of juvenilia by any English writer. At 15, she became ill, suffering intense head and spinal pain for the rest of her life. Later in life, she also developed lung problems, possibly tuberculosis. She took laudanum for the pain from an early age, which is likely to have contributed to her frail health.
In the 1840s, Elizabeth was introduced to literary society through her distant cousin and patron John Kenyon. Her first adult collection of poems was published in 1838, and she wrote prolifically from 1841 to 1844, producing poetry, translation, and prose. She campaigned for the abolition of slavery, and her work helped influence reform in child labour legislation. Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate on the death of Wordsworth. Elizabeth\'s volume *Poems* (1844) brought her great success, attracting the admiration of the writer Robert Browning. Their correspondence, courtship, and marriage were carried out in secret, for fear of her father\'s disapproval. Following the wedding, she was indeed disinherited by her father. In 1846, the couple moved to Italy, where she lived for the rest of her life. Elizabeth died in Florence in 1861. A collection of her later poems was published by her husband shortly after her death.
They had a son, known as \"Pen\" (Robert Barrett, 1849--1912). Pen devoted himself to painting until his eyesight began to fail later in life. He also built a large collection of manuscripts and memorabilia of his parents, but because he died intestate, it was sold by public auction to various bidders and then scattered upon his death. The Armstrong Browning Library has recovered some of his collection, and it now houses the world\'s largest collection of Browning memorabilia. Elizabeth\'s work had a major influence on prominent writers of the day, including the American poets Edgar Allan Poe and Emily Dickinson. She is remembered for such poems as \"How Do I Love Thee?\" (Sonnet 43, 1845) and *Aurora Leigh*(1856).
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Life and career {#life_and_career}
### Family background {#family_background}
Elizabeth Barrett had both maternal and paternal family who profited from slavery. Her father\'s family had lived in the colony of Jamaica since 1655, though her father chose to raise his family in England, while his business enterprises remained in Jamaica. Their wealth derived primarily from the ownership of slave plantations in the British West Indies. Edward Barrett owned 10000 acre of land in the estates of Cinnamon Hill, Cornwall, Cambridge and Oxford in northern Jamaica.
Elizabeth\'s maternal grandfather owned sugar plantations, sugar cane mills, glassworks and merchant ships, which traded between Jamaica and Newcastle upon Tyne.
The family wished to hand down their name, stipulating that Barrett always should be held as a surname. In some cases, inheritance was given on condition that the name was used by the beneficiary; the British upper class had long encouraged this sort of name changing. Given this strong tradition, Elizabeth used \"Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett\" on legal documents, and before she was married, she often signed herself \"Elizabeth Barrett Barrett\" or \"EBB\" (initials which she was able to keep after her wedding).
### Early life {#early_life}
Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett was born on (it is supposed) 6 March 1806 in Coxhoe Hall, between the villages of Coxhoe and Kelloe in County Durham, England. Her parents were Edward Barrett Moulton-Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke. However, biographers have suggested that, when she was christened on 9 March, she was already three or four months old, and that this was concealed because her parents had married only on 14 May 1805.`{{Verification needed|date=September 2023}}`{=mediawiki} Although she had already been baptised by a family friend in that first week of her life, she was baptised again, more publicly, on 10 February 1808 at Kelloe parish church, at the same time as her younger brother, Edward (known as Bro). He had been born in June 1807, 15 months after Elizabeth\'s stated date of birth. A private christening might seem unlikely for a family of standing, and while Bro\'s birth was celebrated with a holiday on the family\'s Caribbean plantations, Elizabeth\'s was not.
Elizabeth was the eldest of 12 children (eight boys and four girls). Eleven lived to adulthood; one daughter died at the age of 3, when Elizabeth was 8. The children all had nicknames: Elizabeth was Ba. She rode her pony, went for family walks and picnics, socialised with other county families, and participated in home theatrical productions. Unlike her siblings, she immersed herself in books as often as she could get away from the social rituals of her family.
In 1809, the family moved to Hope End, a 500 acre estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Her father converted the Georgian house into stables and built a mansion of opulent Turkish design, which his wife described as something from the *Arabian Nights\' Entertainments*.
The interior\'s brass balustrades, mahogany doors inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and finely carved fireplaces were eventually complemented by lavish landscaping: ponds, grottos, kiosks, an ice house, a hothouse, and a subterranean passage from house to gardens. Her time at Hope End inspired her in later life to write *Aurora Leigh* (1856), her most ambitious work, which went through more than 20 editions by 1900, but none from 1905 to 1978.
She was educated at home and tutored by Daniel McSwiney with her oldest brother. She began writing verses at the age of four. During the Hope End period, she was an intensely studious, precocious child. She claimed that she was reading novels at age 6, having been entranced by Pope\'s translations of Homer at age 8, studying Greek at age 10, and writing her own Homeric epic *The Battle of Marathon: A Poem* at age 11.
In 1820, Mr Barrett privately published *The Battle of Marathon*, an epic-style poem, but all copies remained within the family. Her mother compiled the child\'s poetry into collections of \"Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett\". Her father called her the \"Poet Laureate of Hope End\" and encouraged her work. The result is one of the larger collections of juvenilia of any English writer. Mary Russell Mitford described the young Elizabeth at this time as having \"a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam.\"
At about this time, Elizabeth began to battle an illness, which the medical science of the time was unable to diagnose. All three sisters came down with the syndrome, but it lasted only with Elizabeth. She had intense head and spinal pain with loss of mobility. Various biographies link this to a riding accident at the time (she fell while trying to dismount a horse), but there is no evidence to support the link. Sent to recover at the Gloucester spa, she was treated -- in the absence of symptoms supporting another diagnosis -- for a spinal problem. This illness continued for the rest of her life, and it is believed to be unrelated to the lung disease that she developed in 1837.
She began to take opiates for the pain, laudanum (an opium concoction) followed by morphine, then commonly prescribed. She became dependent on them for much of her adulthood; the use from an early age may well have contributed to her frail health. Biographers such as Alethea Hayter have suggested this dependency have contributed to the wild vividness of her imagination and the poetry that it produced.
By 1821, she had read Mary Wollstonecraft\'s *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (1792), and she become a passionate supporter of Wollstonecraft\'s political ideas. The child\'s intellectual fascination with the classics and metaphysics was reflected in a religious intensity that she later described as \"not the deep persuasion of the mild Christian but the wild visions of an enthusiast.\" The Barretts attended services at the nearest Dissenting chapel, and Edward was active in Bible and missionary societies.
Elizabeth\'s mother died in 1828, and is buried at St Michael\'s Church, Ledbury, next to her daughter Mary. Sarah Graham-Clarke, Elizabeth\'s aunt, helped to care for the children, and she had clashes with Elizabeth\'s strong will. In 1831, Elizabeth\'s grandmother, Elizabeth Moulton, died. Following lawsuits and the abolition of slavery, Mr Barrett incurred great financial and investment losses that forced him to sell Hope End. Although the family was never poor, the place was seized and sold to satisfy creditors. Always secretive in his financial dealings, he would not discuss his situation, and the family was haunted by the idea that they might have to move to Jamaica.
From 1833 to 1835, she was living with her family at Belle Vue in Sidmouth. The site has now been renamed Cedar Shade and redeveloped. A blue plaque at the entrance to the site attests to its previous existence. In 1838, some years after the sale of Hope End, the family settled at 50 Wimpole Street, Marylebone, London.
During 1837--1838, the poet was struck with illness again, with symptoms today suggesting tuberculous ulceration of the lungs. The same year, at her physician\'s insistence, she moved from London to Torquay on the Devonshire coast. Her former home now forms part of the Regina Hotel. Two tragedies then struck. In February 1840, her brother Samuel died of a fever in Jamaica, then her favourite brother Edward (Bro) was drowned in a sailing accident in Torquay in July. These events had a serious effect on her already fragile health. She felt guilty as her father had disapproved of Edward\'s trip to Torquay. She wrote to Mitford: \"That was a very near escape from madness, absolute hopeless madness\". The family returned to Wimpole Street in 1841.
### Success
At Wimpole Street, Elizabeth spent most of her time in her upstairs room. Her health began to improve, but she saw few people other than her immediate family. One of those was John Kenyon, a wealthy friend and distant cousin of the family and patron of the arts. She received comfort from a spaniel named Flush, a gift from Mary Mitford. (Virginia Woolf later fictionalised the life of the dog, making him the protagonist of her 1933 novel *Flush: A Biography*).
From 1841 to 1844, Elizabeth was prolific in poetry, translation, and prose. The poem *The Cry of the Children*, published in 1843 in *Blackwood\'s*, condemned child labour and helped bring about child-labour reforms by raising support for Lord Shaftesbury\'s Ten Hours Bill (1844). About the same time, she contributed critical prose pieces to Richard Henry Horne\'s *A New Spirit of the Age*, including a laudatory essay on Thomas Carlyle.
In 1844, she published the two-volume *Poems*, which included \"A Drama of Exile\", \"A Vision of Poets\", and \"Lady Geraldine\'s Courtship\", and two substantial critical essays for 1842 issues of *The Athenaeum*. A self-proclaimed \"adorer of Carlyle\", she sent a copy to him as \"a tribute of admiration & respect\", which began a correspondence between them. \"Since she was not burdened with any domestic duties expected of her sisters, Barrett Browning could now devote herself entirely to the life of the mind, cultivating an enormous correspondence, reading widely\". Her prolific output made her a rival to Tennyson as a candidate for poet laureate in 1850 on the death of Wordsworth.
A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque now commemorates Elizabeth at 50 Wimpole Street.
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Life and career {#life_and_career}
### Robert Browning and Italy {#robert_browning_and_italy}
Her 1844 volume *Poems* made her one of the more popular writers in the country and inspired Robert Browning to write to her. He wrote \"I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,\" praising their \"fresh strange music, the affluent language, the exquisite pathos and true new brave thought.\"
Kenyon arranged for Browning to meet Elizabeth on 20 May 1845, in her rooms, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature. Elizabeth had produced a large amount of work, but Browning had a great influence on her subsequent writing as did she on his: Two of Barrett\'s most famous pieces were written after she met Browning, *Sonnets from the Portuguese* and *Aurora Leigh*. Robert\'s *Men and Women* is also a product of that time.
Some critics state that her activity was, in some ways, in decay before she met Browning: \"Until her relationship with Robert Browning began in 1845, Barrett\'s willingness to engage in public discourse about social issues and about aesthetic issues in poetry, which had been so strong in her youth, gradually diminished, as did her physical health. As an intellectual presence and a physical being, she was becoming a shadow of herself.\"
The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were made secretly as she knew her father would disapprove. After a private marriage at St Marylebone Parish Church, they honeymooned in Paris and then moved to Italy in September 1846, which became their home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth\'s loyal lady\'s maid Elizabeth Wilson witnessed the marriage and accompanied the couple to Italy.
Mr Barrett disinherited Elizabeth as he did each of his children who married. Elizabeth had foreseen her father\'s anger but had not anticipated her brothers\' rejection. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy. The Brownings were well respected and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger, and in 1849, at the age of 43, between four miscarriages, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son later married, but had no legitimate children.
At her husband\'s insistence, Elizabeth\'s second edition of *Poems* included her love sonnets; as a result, her popularity increased (as did critical regard), and her artistic position was confirmed. During the years of her marriage, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction.
The couple came to know a wide circle of artists and writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, sculptor Harriet Hosmer (who, she wrote, seemed to be the \"perfectly emancipated female\") and Harriet Beecher Stowe. In 1849, she met Margaret Fuller; Carlyle in 1851; French novelist George Sand in 1852, whom she had long admired. Among her intimate friends in Florence was the writer Isa Blagden, whom she encouraged to write novels. They met Alfred Tennyson in Paris, and John Forster, Samuel Rogers and the Carlyles in London, later befriending Charles Kingsley and John Ruskin.
### Decline and death {#decline_and_death}
After the death of an old friend, G. B. Hunter, and then of her father, Barrett Browning\'s health started to deteriorate. The Brownings moved from Florence to Siena, residing at the *Villa Alberti*. Engrossed in Italian politics, she issued a small volume of political poems titled *Poems before Congress* (1860) \"most of which were written to express her sympathy with the Italian cause after the outbreak of fighting in 1859\". They caused a furore in Britain, and the conservative magazines *Blackwood\'s* and the *Saturday Review* labelled her a fanatic. She dedicated this book to her husband. Her last work was *A Musical Instrument*, published posthumously.
Barrett Browning\'s sister Henrietta died in November 1860. The couple spent the winter of 1860--1861 in Rome where Barrett Browning\'s health deteriorated, and they returned to Florence in early June 1861. She became gradually weaker, using morphine to ease her pain. She died on 29 June 1861 in her husband\'s arms. Browning said that she died \"smilingly, happily, and with a face like a girl\'s\...Her last word was\...\'Beautiful\' \". She was buried in the Protestant English Cemetery of Florence. \"On Monday July 1 the shops in the area around Casa Guidi were closed, while Elizabeth was mourned with unusual demonstrations.\" The nature of her illness is still unclear. Some modern scientists speculate her illness may have been hypokalemic periodic paralysis, a genetic disorder that causes weakness and many of the other symptoms she described.
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Life and career {#life_and_career}
### Publications
Barrett Browning\'s first known poem \"On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man\" was written at the age of 6 or 8. The manuscript, which protests against impressment, is currently in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; the exact date is controversial because the \"2\" in the date 1812 is written over something else that is scratched out.
Her first independent publication was \"Stanzas Excited by Reflections on the Present State of Greece\" in *The New Monthly Magazine* of May 1821; followed two months later by \"Thoughts Awakened by Contemplating a Piece of the Palm which Grows on the Summit of the Acropolis at Athens\".
Her first collection of poems, *An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems,* was published in 1826 and reflected her passion for Byron and Greek politics. Its publication drew the attention of Hugh Stuart Boyd, a blind scholar of the Greek language, and of Uvedale Price, another Greek scholar, with whom she maintained sustained correspondence. Among other neighbours was Mrs James Martin from Colwall, with whom she corresponded throughout her life. Later, at Boyd\'s suggestion, she translated Aeschylus\' *Prometheus Bound* (published in 1833; retranslated in 1850). During their friendship, Barrett studied Greek literature, including Homer, Pindar and Aristophanes.
Elizabeth opposed slavery and published two poems highlighting the barbarity of the institution and her support for the abolitionist cause: \"The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim\'s Point\" and \"A Curse for a Nation\". The first depicts an enslaved woman whipped, raped, and made pregnant cursing her enslavers. Elizabeth declared herself glad that the slaves were \"virtually free\" when the Slavery Abolition Act passed in the British Parliament despite the fact that her father believed that abolition would ruin his business.
The date of publication of these poems is in dispute, but her position on slavery in the poems is clear and may have led to a rift between Elizabeth and her father. She wrote to John Ruskin in 1855 \"I belong to a family of West Indian slaveholders, and if I believed in curses, I should be afraid\". Her father and uncle were unaffected by the Baptist War (1831--1832) and continued to own slaves until passage of the Slavery Abolition Act.
In London, John Kenyon introduced Elizabeth to literary figures including William Wordsworth, Mary Russell Mitford, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alfred Tennyson and Thomas Carlyle. Elizabeth continued to write, contributing \"The Romaunt of Margaret\", \"The Romaunt of the Page\", \"The Poet\'s Vow\" and other pieces to various periodicals. She corresponded with other writers, including Mary Russell Mitford, who became a close friend and who supported Elizabeth\'s literary ambitions.
In 1838 *The Seraphim and Other Poems* appeared, the first volume of Elizabeth\'s mature poetry to appear under her own name.
*Sonnets from the Portuguese* was published in 1850. There is debate about the origin of the title. Some say it refers to the series of sonnets of the 16th-century Portuguese poet Luís de Camões. However, \"my little Portuguese\" was a pet name that Browning had adopted for Elizabeth and this may have some connection.
The verse-novel *Aurora Leigh*, her most ambitious and perhaps the most popular of her longer poems, appeared in 1856. It is the story of a female writer making her way in life, balancing work and love, and based on Elizabeth\'s own experiences. *Aurora Leigh* was an important influence on Susan B. Anthony\'s thinking about the traditional roles of women, with regard to marriage versus independent individuality. The *North American Review* praised Elizabeth\'s poem: \"Mrs. Browning\'s poems are, in all respects, the utterance of a woman --- of a woman of great learning, rich experience, and powerful genius, uniting to her woman\'s nature the strength which is sometimes thought peculiar to a man.\"
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Spiritual influence {#spiritual_influence}
Much of Barrett Browning\'s work carries a religious theme. She had read and studied such works as Milton\'s *Paradise Lost* and Dante\'s *Inferno*. She says in her writing, \"We want the sense of the saturation of Christ\'s blood upon the souls of our poets, that it may cry through them in answer to the ceaseless wail of the Sphinx of our humanity, expounding agony into renovation. Something of this has been perceived in art when its glory was at the fullest. Something of a yearning after this may be seen among the Greek Christian poets, something which would have been much with a stronger faculty\". She believed that \"Christ\'s religion is essentially poetry -- poetry glorified\". She explored the religious aspect in many of her poems, especially in her early work, such as the sonnets.
She was interested in theological debate, had learned Hebrew and read the Hebrew Bible. Her seminal *Aurora Leigh*, for example, features religious imagery and allusion to the apocalypse. The critic Cynthia Scheinberg notes that female characters in *Aurora Leigh* and her earlier work \"The Virgin Mary to the Child Jesus\" allude to Miriam, sister and caregiver to Moses. These allusions to Miriam in both poems mirror the way in which Barrett Browning herself drew from Jewish history, while distancing herself from it, in order to maintain the cultural norms of a Christian woman poet of the Victorian Age.
In the correspondence Barrett Browning kept with the Reverend William Merry from 1843 to 1844 on predestination and salvation by works, she identifies herself as a Congregationalist: \"I am not a Baptist --- but a Congregational Christian, --- in the holding of my private opinions.\"
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Barrett Browning Institute {#barrett_browning_institute}
In 1892, Ledbury, Herefordshire, held a design competition to build an Institute in honour of Barrett Browning. Brightwen Binyon beat 44 other designs. It was based on the timber-framed Market House, which was opposite the site, and was completed in 1896. However, Nikolaus Pevsner was not impressed by its style. It was used as a public library from 1938 to 2021, when new library facilities were provided for the town, and is now the headquarters of the Ledbury Poetry Festival. It has been Grade II-listed since 2007.
## Critical reception {#critical_reception}
Barrett Browning was widely popular in the United Kingdom and the United States during her lifetime. Edgar Allan Poe was inspired by her poem *Lady Geraldine\'s Courtship* and specifically borrowed the poem\'s metre for his poem *The Raven*. Poe had reviewed Barrett Browning\'s work in the January 1845 issue of the *Broadway Journal*, writing that \"her poetic inspiration is the highest -- we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself.\" In return, she praised *The Raven*, and Poe dedicated his 1845 collection *The Raven and Other Poems* to her, referring to her as \"the noblest of her sex\".
Barrett Browning\'s poetry greatly influenced Emily Dickinson, who admired her as a woman of achievement. Her popularity in the United States and Britain was advanced by her stands against social injustice, including slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italians from their foreign rulers, and child labour.
Lilian Whiting published a biography of Barrett Browning (1899), which describes her as \"the most philosophical poet\" and depicts her life as \"a Gospel of applied Christianity\". To Whiting, the term \"art for art\'s sake\" did not apply to Barrett Browning\'s work, as each poem, distinctively purposeful, was borne of a more \"honest vision\". In this critical analysis, Whiting portrays Barrett Browning as a poet who uses knowledge of Classical literature with an \"intuitive gift of spiritual divination\". In *Elizabeth Barrett Browning*, Angela Leighton suggests that the portrayal of Barrett Browning as the \"pious iconography of womanhood\" has distracted us from her poetic achievements. Leighton cites the 1931 play by Rudolf Besier *The Barretts of Wimpole Street* as evidence that 20th-century literary criticism of Barrett Browning\'s work has suffered more as a result of her popularity than poetic ineptitude. The play was popularized by actress Katharine Cornell, for whom it became a signature role. It was an enormous success, both artistically and commercially, and was revived several times and adapted twice into movies. Sampson, however, considers the play to have been the most damaging cause of false myths about Elizabeth, and particularly the relationship with her, allegedly \'tyrannical\', father.
Throughout the 20th century, literary criticism of Barrett Browning\'s poetry remained sparse until her poems were discovered by the women\'s movement. She once described herself as being inclined to reject several women\'s rights principles, suggesting in letters to Mary Russell Mitford and her husband that she believed that there was an inferiority of intellect in women. In *Aurora Leigh*, however, she created a strong and independent woman who embraces both work and love. Leighton writes that because Elizabeth participates in the literary world, where voice and diction are dominated by perceived masculine superiority, she \"is defined only in mysterious opposition to everything that distinguishes the male subject who writes\...\" A five-volume scholarly edition of her works was published in 2010, the first in over a century.
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# Elizabeth Barrett Browning
## Works (collections) {#works_collections}
- 1820: *The Battle of Marathon: A Poem*. Privately printed
- 1826: *An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems*. London: James Duncan
- 1833: *Prometheus Bound, Translated from the Greek of Aeschylus, and Miscellaneous Poems*. London: A.J. Valpy
- 1838: *The Seraphim, and Other Poems*. London: Saunders and Otley
- 1844: *Poems* (UK) / *A Drama of Exile, and other Poems* (US). London: Edward Moxon. New York: Henry G. Langley
- 1850: *Poems* (\"New Edition\", 2 vols.) Revision of 1844 edition adding *Sonnets from the Portuguese* and others. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1851: *Casa Guidi Windows*. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1853: *Poems* (3d ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1854: *Two Poems*: \"A Plea for the Ragged Schools of London\" (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning) and \"The Twins\" (by Robert Browning). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1856: *Poems* (4th ed.). London: Chapman & Hall
- 1856: *Aurora Leigh*. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1860: *Poems Before Congress*. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1862: *Last Poems*. London: Chapman & Hall
### Posthumous publications {#posthumous_publications}
- 1863: *The Greek Christian Poets and the English Poets*. London: Chapman & Hall
- 1877: *The Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,* 1826--1833, ed. Richard Herne Shepherd. London: Bartholomew Robson
- 1877: *Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning Addressed to Richard Hengist Horne, with comments on contemporaries,* 2 vols., ed. S.R.T. Mayer. London: Richard Bentley & Son
- 1897: *Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,* 2 vols., ed. Frederic G. Kenyon. London:Smith, Elder,& Co.
- 1899: *Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett 1845--1846,* 2 vol., ed Robert W. Barrett Browning. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- 1914: *New Poems by Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning,* ed. Frederic G Kenyon. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- 1929: *Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Letters to Her Sister, 1846--1859,* ed. Leonard Huxley. London: John Murray
- 1935: *Twenty-Two Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning to Henrietta and Arabella Moulton Barrett*. New York: United Feature Syndicate
- 1939: *Letters from Elizabeth Barrett to B.R. Haydon,* ed. Martha Hale Shackford. New York: Oxford University Press
- 1954: *Elizabeth Barrett to Miss Mitford,* ed. Betty Miller. London: John Murray
- 1955: *Unpublished Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Hugh Stuart Boyd,* ed. Barbara P. McCarthy. New Heaven, Conn.: Yale University Press
- 1958: *Letters of the Brownings to George Barrett,* ed. Paul Landis with Ronald E. Freeman. Urbana: University of Illinois Press
- 1974: *Elizabeth Barrett Browning\'s Letters to Mrs. David Ogilvy,* 1849--1861, ed. P. Heydon and P. Kelley. New York: Quadrangle, New York Times Book Co., and Browning Institute
- 1984: [*The Brownings\' Correspondence*](https://www.browningscorrespondence.com/), ed. Phillip Kelley, Ronald Hudson, and Scott Lewis
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# Enlil
**Enlil**, later known as **Elil** and **Ellil**, is an ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms.`{{snf|Coleman|Davidson|2015|page=108}}`{=mediawiki} He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon,`{{snf|Kramer|1983|pages=115–121}}`{=mediawiki} but he was later worshipped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and Hurrians. Enlil\'s primary center of worship was the Ekur temple in the city of Nippur, which was believed to have been built by Enlil himself and was regarded as the \"mooring-rope\" of heaven and earth. He is also sometimes referred to in Sumerian texts as **Nunamnir**. According to one Sumerian hymn, Enlil himself was so holy that not even the other gods could look upon him. Enlil rose to prominence during the twenty-fourth century BC with the rise of Nippur. His cult fell into decline after Nippur was sacked by the Elamites in 1230 BC and he was eventually supplanted as the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon by the Babylonian national god Marduk.
Enlil plays a vital role in the ancient near eastern cosmology; he separates An (heaven) from Ki (earth), thus making the world habitable for humans. In the Sumerian flood myth Eridu Genesis, Enlil rewards Ziusudra with immortality for having survived the flood and, in the Babylonian flood myth, Enlil is the cause of the flood himself, having sent the flood to exterminate the human race, who made too much noise and prevented him from sleeping; the cuneiform tablets of Atra-Hasis report on this connections in a comparatively well-preserved state. The myth of *Enlil and Ninlil* is about Enlil\'s serial seduction of the goddess Ninlil in various guises, resulting in the conception of the moon-god Nanna and the Underworld deities Nergal, Ninazu, and Enbilulu. Enlil was regarded as the inventor of the mattock and the patron of agriculture. Enlil also features prominently in several myths involving his son Ninurta, including *Anzû and the Tablet of Destinies* and *Lugale*.
## Etymology
Enlil\'s name comes from ancient Sumerian EN (𒂗), meaning \"lord\" and LÍL (𒆤), the meaning of which is contentious, and which has sometimes been interpreted as meaning winds as a weather phenomenon (making Enlil a weather and sky god, \"Lord Wind\" or \"Lord Storm\"), or alternatively as signifying a spirit or phantom whose presence may be felt as stirring of the air, or possibly as representing a partial Semitic loanword rather than a Sumerian word at all. Enlil\'s name is not a genitive construction,`{{snf|van der Toorn|Becking|Willem|1999|page=356}}`{=mediawiki} suggesting that Enlil was seen as the personification of LÍL rather than merely the cause of LÍL.`{{snf|van der Toorn|Becking|Willem|1999|page=356}}`{=mediawiki}
Piotr Steinkeller has written that the meaning of LÍL may not actually be a clue to a specific divine domain of Enlil\'s, whether storms, spirits, or otherwise, since Enlil may have been \"a typical universal god \[\...\] without any specific domain.\"
Piotr Steinkeller and Piotr Michalowski have doubts about the Sumerian origin of Enlil. They have questioned the true meaning of the name, and identified Enlil with the Eblaite word *I-li-lu*. As noted by Manfred Krebernik and M. P. Streck; Enlil being referred to as *Kur-gal* (the Great Mountain) in Sumerian texts suggests he might have originated in eastern Mesopotamia.
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# Enlil
## Worship
Enlil was the patron god of the Sumerian city-state of Nippur`{{snf|Hallo|1996|pages=231–234}}`{=mediawiki} and his main center of worship was the Ekur temple located there.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|pages=74 and 76}}`{=mediawiki} The name of the temple literally means \"Mountain House\" in ancient Sumerian.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=74}}`{=mediawiki} The Ekur was believed to have been built and established by Enlil himself.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=74}}`{=mediawiki} It was believed to be the \"mooring-rope\" of heaven and earth,`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=74}}`{=mediawiki} meaning that it was seen as \"a channel of communication between earth and heaven\".`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=53}}`{=mediawiki} A hymn written during the reign of Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, describes the E-kur in great detail, stating that its gates were carved with scenes of Imdugud, a lesser deity sometimes shown as a giant bird, slaying a lion and an eagle snatching up a sinner.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=74}}`{=mediawiki}
The Sumerians believed that the sole purpose of humanity\'s existence was to serve the gods. They thought that a god\'s statue was a physical embodiment of the god himself. As such, cult statues were given constant care and attention and a set of priests were assigned to tend to them. People worshipped Enlil by offering food and other human necessities to him. The food, which was ritually laid out before the god\'s cult statue in the form of a feast, was believed to be Enlil\'s daily meal, but, after the ritual, it would be distributed among his priests. These priests were also responsible for changing the cult statue\'s clothing.
The Sumerians envisioned Enlil as a benevolent, fatherly deity, who watches over humanity and cares for their well-being. One Sumerian hymn describes Enlil as so glorious that even the other gods could not look upon him.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki} The same hymn also states that, without Enlil, civilization could not exist. Enlil\'s epithets include titles such as \"the Great Mountain\" and \"King of the Foreign Lands\".`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil is also sometimes described as a \"raging storm\", a \"wild bull\", and a \"merchant\".`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki} The Mesopotamians envisioned him as a creator, a father, a king, and the supreme lord of the universe.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki} He was also known as \"Nunamnir\"`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki} and is referred to in at least one text as the \"East Wind and North Wind\".`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=76}}`{=mediawiki}
Kings regarded Enlil as a model ruler and sought to emulate his example.`{{snf|Grottanelli|Mander|2005|page=5,162a}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil was said to be supremely just and intolerant towards evil. Rulers from all over Sumer would travel to Enlil\'s temple in Nippur to be legitimized.`{{snf|Littleton|2005|pages=480–482}}`{=mediawiki} They would return Enlil\'s favor by devoting lands and precious objects to his temple as offerings.`{{snf|Littleton|2005|page=482}}`{=mediawiki} Nippur was the only Sumerian city-state that never built a palace; this was intended to symbolize the city\'s importance as the center of the cult of Enlil by showing that Enlil himself was the city\'s king. Even during the Babylonian Period, when Marduk had superseded Enlil as the supreme god, Babylonian kings still traveled to the holy city of Nippur to seek recognition of their right to rule.`{{snf|Littleton|2005|page=482}}`{=mediawiki}
Enlil first rose to prominence during the twenty-fourth century BC, when the importance of the god An began to wane.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=58}}`{=mediawiki} During this time period, Enlil and An are frequently invoked together in inscriptions.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=58}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil remained the supreme god in Mesopotamia throughout the Amorite Period,`{{snf|Schneider|2011|pages=58–59}}`{=mediawiki} with Amorite monarchs proclaiming Enlil as the source of their legitimacy.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|pages=58–59}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil\'s importance began to wane after the Babylonian king Hammurabi conquered Sumer.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=59}}`{=mediawiki} The Babylonians worshipped Enlil under the name \"Elil\"`{{snf|Coleman|Davidson|2015|page=108}}`{=mediawiki} and the Hurrians syncretized him with their own god Kumarbi.`{{snf|Coleman|Davidson|2015|page=108}}`{=mediawiki} In one Hurrian ritual, Enlil and Apantu are invoked as \"the father and mother of Išḫara\". Enlil is also invoked alongside Ninlil as a member of \"the mighty and firmly established gods\".
During the Kassite Period (c. 1592--1155 BC), Nippur briefly managed to regain influence in the region and Enlil rose to prominence once again.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=59}}`{=mediawiki} From around 1300 BC onwards, Enlil was syncretized with the Assyrian national god Aššur,`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=38}}`{=mediawiki} who was the most important deity in the Assyrian pantheon.`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=37}}`{=mediawiki} Then, in 1230 BC, the Elamites attacked Nippur and the city fell into decline, taking the cult of Enlil along with it.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=59}}`{=mediawiki} Approximately one hundred years later, Enlil\'s role as the head of the pantheon was given to Marduk, the national god of the Babylonians.`{{snf|Schneider|2011|page=59}}`{=mediawiki}
## Iconography
Enlil was represented by the symbol of a horned cap, which consisted of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. Such crowns were an important symbol of divinity;`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} gods had been shown wearing them ever since the third millennium BC. The horned cap remained consistent in form and meaning from the earliest days of Sumerian prehistory up until the time of the Persian conquest and beyond.
The Sumerians had a complex numerological system, in which certain numbers were believed to hold special ritual significance. Within this system, Enlil was associated with the number fifty, which was considered sacred to him.`{{snf|Röllig|1971|pages=499–500}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil was part of a triad of deities, which also included An and Enki. These three deities together were the embodiment of all the fixed stars in the night sky. An was identified with all the stars of the equatorial sky, Enlil with those of the northern sky, and Enki with those of the southern sky. The path of Enlil\'s celestial orbit was a continuous, symmetrical circle around the north celestial pole, but those of An and Enki were believed to intersect at various points. Enlil was associated with the constellation Boötes.
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# Enlil
## Mythology
### Origins myths {#origins_myths}
The main source of information about Sumerian creation mythology is the prologue to the epic poem *Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld* (ETCSL [1.8.1.4](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr1814.htm)),`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=30–33}}`{=mediawiki} which briefly describes the process of creation: originally, there was only Nammu, the primeval sea. Then, Nammu gave birth to An, the sky, and Ki, the earth.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=37–40}}`{=mediawiki} An and Ki mated with each other, causing Ki to give birth to Enlil.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=37–40}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil separated An from Ki and carried off the earth as his domain, while An carried off the sky.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=37–41}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil marries his mother, Ki, and from this union all the plant and animal life on earth is produced.
*Enlil and Ninlil* (ETCSL [1.2.1](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section1/tr121.htm)) is a nearly complete 152-line Sumerian poem describing the affair between Enlil and the goddess Ninlil.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=43}}`{=mediawiki}`{{snf|Jacobsen|1946|pages=128–152}}`{=mediawiki} First, Ninlil\'s mother Nunbarshegunu instructs Ninlil to go bathe in the river.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=44}}`{=mediawiki} Ninlil goes to the river, where Enlil seduces her and impregnates her with their son, the moon-god Nanna.`{{snf|Jacobsen|1946|pages=128–152}}`{=mediawiki} Because of this, Enlil is banished to Kur, the Sumerian underworld.`{{snf|Jacobsen|1946|pages=128–152}}`{=mediawiki} Ninlil follows Enlil to the underworld, where he impersonates the \"man of the gate\".`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=44–45}}`{=mediawiki} Ninlil demands to know where Enlil has gone, but Enlil, still impersonating the gatekeeper, refuses to answer.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=44–45}}`{=mediawiki} He then seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Nergal, the god of death.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=45}}`{=mediawiki} The same scenario repeats, only this time Enlil instead impersonates the \"man of the river of the nether world, the man-devouring river\"; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with the god Ninazu.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=46}}`{=mediawiki} Finally, Enlil impersonates the \"man of the boat\"; once again, he seduces Ninlil and impregnates her with Enbilulu, the \"inspector of the canals\".`{{snf|Black|Cunningham|Robson|2006|page=106}}`{=mediawiki}
The story of Enlil\'s courtship with Ninlil is primarily a genealogical myth invented to explain the origins of the moon-god Nanna, as well as the various gods of the Underworld,`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=43}}`{=mediawiki} but it is also, to some extent, a coming-of-age story describing Enlil and Ninlil\'s emergence from adolescence into adulthood. The story also explains Ninlil\'s role as Enlil\'s consort; in the poem, Ninlil declares, \"As Enlil is your master, so am I also your mistress!\" The story is also historically significant because, if the current interpretation of it is correct, it is the oldest known myth in which a god changes shape.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=43}}`{=mediawiki}
### Flood myth {#flood_myth}
In the Sumerian version of the flood story (ETCSL [1.7.4](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.7.4#)), the causes of the flood are unclear because the portion of the tablet recording the beginning of the story has been destroyed.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=97}}`{=mediawiki} Somehow, a mortal known as Ziusudra manages to survive the flood, likely through the help of the god Enki.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=97–98}}`{=mediawiki} The tablet begins in the middle of the description of the flood.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=97–98}}`{=mediawiki} The flood lasts for seven days and seven nights before it subsides.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} Then, Utu, the god of the Sun, emerges.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} Ziusudra opens a window in the side of the boat and falls down prostrate before the god.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} Next, he sacrifices an ox and a sheep in honor of Utu.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} At this point, the text breaks off again.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki} When it picks back up, Enlil and An are in the midst of declaring Ziusudra immortal as an honor for having managed to survive the flood. The remaining portion of the tablet after this point is destroyed.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=98}}`{=mediawiki}
In the later Akkadian version of the flood story, recorded in the *Epic of Gilgamesh*, Enlil actually causes the flood,`{{snf|Dalley|1989|page=109}}`{=mediawiki} seeking to annihilate every living thing on earth because the humans, who are vastly overpopulated, make too much noise and prevent him from sleeping.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=109–111}}`{=mediawiki} In this version of the story, the hero is Utnapishtim,`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=109–110}}`{=mediawiki} who is warned ahead of time by Ea, the Babylonian equivalent of Enki, that the flood is coming.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=110–111}}`{=mediawiki} The flood lasts for seven days; when it ends, Ishtar, who had mourned the destruction of humanity,`{{snf|Dalley|1989|page=113}}`{=mediawiki} promises Utnapishtim that Enlil will never cause a flood again.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=114–115}}`{=mediawiki} When Enlil sees that Utnapishtim and his family have survived, he is outraged,`{{snf|Dalley|1989|page=115}}`{=mediawiki} but his son Ninurta speaks up in favor of humanity, arguing that, instead of causing floods, Enlil should simply ensure that humans never become overpopulated by reducing their numbers using wild animals and famines.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=115–116}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil goes into the boat; Utnapishtim and his wife bow before him.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|pages=115–116}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil, now appeased, grants Utnapishtim immortality as a reward for his loyalty to the gods.`{{snf|Dalley|1989|page=116}}`{=mediawiki}
### Chief god and arbitrator {#chief_god_and_arbitrator}
A nearly complete 108-line poem from the Early Dynastic Period (c. 2900--2350 BC) describes Enlil\'s invention of the mattock,`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=51–53}}`{=mediawiki} a key agricultural pick, hoe, ax, or digging tool of the Sumerians.`{{snf|Hooke|2004|page=}}`{=mediawiki} In the poem, Enlil conjures the mattock into existence and decrees its fate.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=52}}`{=mediawiki} The mattock is described as gloriously beautiful; it is made of pure gold and its head is carved from lapis lazuli.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=52}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil gives the tool over to the humans, who use it to build cities,`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=53}}`{=mediawiki} subjugate their people,`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=53}}`{=mediawiki} and pull up weeds.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=53}}`{=mediawiki} Enlil was believed to aid in the growth of plants.`{{snf|Hooke|2004|page=}}`{=mediawiki}
The Sumerian poem *Enlil Chooses the Farmer--God* (ETCSL [5.3.3](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section5/tr533.htm)) describes how Enlil, hoping \"to establish abundance and prosperity\", creates two gods Emesh and Enten, a shepherd and a farmer, respectively.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|pages=49–50}}`{=mediawiki} The two gods argue and Emesh lays claim to Enten\'s position.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=50}}`{=mediawiki} They take the dispute before Enlil, who rules in favor of Enten;`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=51}}`{=mediawiki} the two gods rejoice and reconcile.`{{snf|Kramer|1961|page=51}}`{=mediawiki}
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# Enlil
## Mythology
### Ninurta myths {#ninurta_myths}
In the Sumerian poem *Lugale* (ETCSL [1.6.2](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.6.2#)), Enlil gives advice to his son, the god Ninurta, advising him on a strategy to slay the demon Asag.`{{snf|Penglase|1994|page=68}}`{=mediawiki} This advice is relayed to Ninurta by way of Sharur, his enchanted talking mace, which had been sent by Ninurta to the realm of the gods to seek counsel from Enlil directly.`{{snf|Penglase|1994|page=68}}`{=mediawiki}
In the Old, Middle, and Late Babylonian myth of *Anzû and the Tablet of Destinies*, the Anzû, a giant, monstrous bird,`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=9}}`{=mediawiki} betrays Enlil and steals the Tablet of Destinies,`{{snf|Leick|1991|pages=9–10}}`{=mediawiki} a sacred clay tablet belonging to Enlil that grants him his authority,`{{snf|Black|Green|1992|page=173}}`{=mediawiki} while Enlil is preparing for a bath.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} The rivers dry up and the gods are stripped of their powers.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} The gods send Adad, Girra, and Shara to defeat the Anzû,`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} but all of them fail.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} Finally, Ea proposes that the gods should send Ninurta, Enlil\'s son.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} Ninurta successfully defeats the Anzû and returns the Tablet of Destinies to his father.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki} As a reward, Ninurta is granted a prominent seat on the council of the gods.`{{snf|Leick|1991|page=10}}`{=mediawiki}
### War of the gods {#war_of_the_gods}
A badly damaged text from the Neo-Assyrian Period (911--612 BC) describes Marduk leading his army of Anunnaki into the sacred city of Nippur and causing a disturbance. The disturbance causes a flood, which forces the resident gods of Nippur under the leadership of Enlil to take shelter in the Eshumesha temple to Ninurta. Enlil is enraged at Marduk\'s transgression and orders the gods of Eshumesha to take Marduk and the other Anunnaki as prisoners. The Anunnaki are captured, but Marduk appoints his front-runner Mushteshirhablim to lead a revolt against the gods of Eshumesha and sends his messenger Neretagmil to alert Nabu, the god of literacy. When the Eshumesha gods hear Nabu speak, they come out of their temple to search for him. Marduk defeats the Eshumesha gods and takes 360 of them as prisoners of war, including Enlil himself. Enlil protests that the Eshumesha gods are innocent, so Marduk puts them on trial before the Anunnaki. The text ends with a warning from Damkianna (another name for Ninhursag) to the gods and to humanity, pleading them not to repeat the war between the Anunnaki and the gods of Eshumesha
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# Glossary of country dance terms
An alphabetic list of modern country dance terminology:
{{defn\| A figure in which ladies dance first with each other in the center of the set and then with the gentlemen on the sides. In its simplest form, two ladies begin in `{{gli|second corner}}`{=mediawiki} positions (nearer the head on the women\'s line and nearer the foot on the men\'s line). The ladies pass each other by right hand and turn with the gentlemen by left hand, approximately once around, to end with the ladies in each other\'s place and the gentlemen where they began. The figure can be extended to more couples in a ring, as long as the dancers in the ring are alternating between gentlemen and ladies. If the gentlemen turn the ladies only by left hand, that is an **open ladies\' chain**; if they also place their right hands on the ladies\' backs during the turn, that is a **closed ladies\' chain**. In English country dance, both closed and open ladies\' chains are to be found, and the gentlemen make a short `{{gli|cast}}`{=mediawiki} up or down the set to meet the ladies; in contra dance, only the closed ladies\' chain is done, and the gentlemen sidestep to meet the ladies. The **men\'s chain** is a simple gender reversal, but is a much rarer figure
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# Ecosystem
}} `{{pp-vandalism|small=yes}}`{=mediawiki} `{{Multiple image
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| image1 = Blue Linckia Starfish.JPG
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| alt1 = [[Coral reef]]s are a highly [[Productivity (ecology)|productive]] [[marine ecosystem]].
| image2 = HohRiverTrail 7322.jpg
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| footer = Left: [[Coral reef]] ecosystems are highly [[Productivity (ecology)|productive]] marine systems.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hatcher|first=Bruce Gordon|year=1990|title=Coral reef primary productivity. A hierarchy of pattern and process|journal=Trends in Ecology and Evolution|volume=5|issue=5|pages=149–155|doi=10.1016/0169-5347(90)90221-X|pmid=21232343|bibcode=1990TEcoE...5..149H }}</ref> Right: [[Temperate rainforest]], a [[terrestrial ecosystem]].
}}`{=mediawiki} `{{TopicTOC-Biology}}`{=mediawiki}
An **ecosystem** (or **ecological system**) is a system formed by organisms in interaction with their environment. The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
Ecosystems are controlled by external and internal factors. External factors---including climate---control the ecosystem\'s structure, but are not influenced by it. By contrast, internal factors control and are controlled by ecosystem processes; these include decomposition, the types of species present, root competition, shading, disturbance, and succession. While external factors generally determine which resource inputs an ecosystem has, their availability within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors. Ecosystems are dynamic, subject to periodic disturbances and always in the process of recovering from past disturbances. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain close to its equilibrium state, is termed its resistance. Its capacity to absorb disturbance and reorganize, while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, is termed its ecological resilience.
Ecosystems can be studied through a variety of approaches---theoretical studies, studies monitoring specific ecosystems over long periods of time, those that look at differences between ecosystems to elucidate how they work and direct manipulative experimentation. Biomes are general classes or categories of ecosystems. However, there is no clear distinction between biomes and ecosystems. Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy. Biotic factors are living things; such as plants, while abiotic are non-living components; such as soil. Plants allow energy to enter the system through photosynthesis, building up plant tissue. Animals play an important role in the movement of matter and energy through the system, by feeding on plants and one another. They also influence the quantity of plant and microbial biomass present. By breaking down dead organic matter, decomposers release carbon back to the atmosphere and facilitate nutrient cycling by converting nutrients stored in dead biomass back to a form that can be readily used by plants and microbes.
Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend, and may be part of. Ecosystem goods include the \"tangible, material products\" of ecosystem processes such as water, food, fuel, construction material, and medicinal plants. Ecosystem services, on the other hand, are generally \"improvements in the condition or location of things of value\". These include things like the maintenance of hydrological cycles, cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the atmosphere, crop pollination and even things like beauty, inspiration and opportunities for research. Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species and invasive species. These threats can lead to abrupt transformation of the ecosystem or to gradual disruption of biotic processes and degradation of abiotic conditions of the ecosystem. Once the original ecosystem has lost its defining features, it is considered \"collapsed\". Ecosystem restoration can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
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# Ecosystem
## Definition
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the abiotic pools (or physical environment) with which they interact. The biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows.
\"Ecosystem processes\" are the transfers of energy and materials from one pool to another. Ecosystem processes are known to \"take place at a wide range of scales\". Therefore, the correct scale of study depends on the question asked.
### Origin and development of the term {#origin_and_development_of_the_term}
The term \"ecosystem\" was first used in 1935 in a publication by British ecologist Arthur Tansley. The term was coined by Arthur Roy Clapham, who came up with the word at Tansley\'s request. Tansley devised the concept to draw attention to the importance of transfers of materials between organisms and their environment. He later refined the term, describing it as \"The whole system, \... including not only the organism-complex, but also the whole complex of physical factors forming what we call the environment\". Tansley regarded ecosystems not simply as natural units, but as \"mental isolates\". Tansley later defined the spatial extent of ecosystems using the term \"ecotope\".
G. Evelyn Hutchinson, a limnologist who was a contemporary of Tansley\'s, combined Charles Elton\'s ideas about trophic ecology with those of Russian geochemist Vladimir Vernadsky. As a result, he suggested that mineral nutrient availability in a lake limited algal production. This would, in turn, limit the abundance of animals that feed on algae. Raymond Lindeman took these ideas further to suggest that the flow of energy through a lake was the primary driver of the ecosystem. Hutchinson\'s students, brothers Howard T. Odum and Eugene P. Odum, further developed a \"systems approach\" to the study of ecosystems. This allowed them to study the flow of energy and material through ecological systems.
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# Ecosystem
## Processes
### External and internal factors {#external_and_internal_factors}
Ecosystems are controlled by both external and internal factors. External factors, also called state factors, control the overall structure of an ecosystem and the way things work within it, but are not themselves influenced by the ecosystem. On broad geographic scales, climate is the factor that \"most strongly determines ecosystem processes and structure\". Climate determines the biome in which the ecosystem is embedded. Rainfall patterns and seasonal temperatures influence photosynthesis and thereby determine the amount of energy available to the ecosystem.
Parent material determines the nature of the soil in an ecosystem, and influences the supply of mineral nutrients. Topography also controls ecosystem processes by affecting things like microclimate, soil development and the movement of water through a system. For example, ecosystems can be quite different if situated in a small depression on the landscape, versus one present on an adjacent steep hillside.
Other external factors that play an important role in ecosystem functioning include time and potential biota, the organisms that are present in a region and could potentially occupy a particular site. Ecosystems in similar environments that are located in different parts of the world can end up doing things very differently simply because they have different pools of species present. The introduction of non-native species can cause substantial shifts in ecosystem function.
Unlike external factors, internal factors in ecosystems not only control ecosystem processes but are also controlled by them. While the resource inputs are generally controlled by external processes like climate and parent material, the availability of these resources within the ecosystem is controlled by internal factors like decomposition, root competition or shading. Other factors like disturbance, succession or the types of species present are also internal factors.
### Primary production {#primary_production}
upright=1.8\|thumb\|Global oceanic and terrestrial phototroph abundance, from September 1997 to August 2000. As an estimate of autotroph biomass, it is only a rough indicator of primary production potential and not an actual estimate of it. *Main article: Primary production* Primary production is the production of organic matter from inorganic carbon sources. This mainly occurs through photosynthesis. The energy incorporated through this process supports life on earth, while the carbon makes up much of the organic matter in living and dead biomass, soil carbon and fossil fuels. It also drives the carbon cycle, which influences global climate via the greenhouse effect.
Through the process of photosynthesis, plants capture energy from light and use it to combine carbon dioxide and water to produce carbohydrates and oxygen. The photosynthesis carried out by all the plants in an ecosystem is called the gross primary production (GPP). About half of the gross GPP is respired by plants in order to provide the energy that supports their growth and maintenance. The remainder, that portion of GPP that is not used up by respiration, is known as the net primary production (NPP). Total photosynthesis is limited by a range of environmental factors. These include the amount of light available, the amount of leaf area a plant has to capture light (shading by other plants is a major limitation of photosynthesis), the rate at which carbon dioxide can be supplied to the chloroplasts to support photosynthesis, the availability of water, and the availability of suitable temperatures for carrying out photosynthesis.
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# Ecosystem
## Processes
### Energy flow {#energy_flow}
Energy and carbon enter ecosystems through photosynthesis, are incorporated into living tissue, transferred to other organisms that feed on the living and dead plant matter, and eventually released through respiration. The carbon and energy incorporated into plant tissues (net primary production) is either consumed by animals while the plant is alive, or it remains uneaten when the plant tissue dies and becomes detritus. In terrestrial ecosystems, the vast majority of the net primary production ends up being broken down by decomposers. The remainder is consumed by animals while still alive and enters the plant-based trophic system. After plants and animals die, the organic matter contained in them enters the detritus-based trophic system.
Ecosystem respiration is the sum of respiration by all living organisms (plants, animals, and decomposers) in the ecosystem. Net ecosystem production is the difference between gross primary production (GPP) and ecosystem respiration. In the absence of disturbance, net ecosystem production is equivalent to the net carbon accumulation in the ecosystem.
Energy can also be released from an ecosystem through disturbances such as wildfire or transferred to other ecosystems (e.g., from a forest to a stream to a lake) by erosion.
In aquatic systems, the proportion of plant biomass that gets consumed by herbivores is much higher than in terrestrial systems. In trophic systems, photosynthetic organisms are the primary producers. The organisms that consume their tissues are called primary consumers or secondary producers---herbivores. Organisms which feed on microbes (bacteria and fungi) are termed microbivores. Animals that feed on primary consumers---carnivores---are secondary consumers. Each of these constitutes a trophic level.
The sequence of consumption---from plant to herbivore, to carnivore---forms a food chain. Real systems are much more complex than this---organisms will generally feed on more than one form of food, and may feed at more than one trophic level. Carnivores may capture some prey that is part of a plant-based trophic system and others that are part of a detritus-based trophic system (a bird that feeds both on herbivorous grasshoppers and earthworms, which consume detritus). Real systems, with all these complexities, form food webs rather than food chains which present a number of common, non random properties in the topology of their network.
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# Ecosystem
## Processes
### Decomposition
thumb\|upright=3.0\|Sequence of a decomposing pig carcass over time The carbon and nutrients in dead organic matter are broken down by a group of processes known as decomposition. This releases nutrients that can then be re-used for plant and microbial production and returns carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (or water) where it can be used for photosynthesis. In the absence of decomposition, the dead organic matter would accumulate in an ecosystem, and nutrients and atmospheric carbon dioxide would be depleted.
Decomposition processes can be separated into three categories---leaching, fragmentation and chemical alteration of dead material. As water moves through dead organic matter, it dissolves and carries with it the water-soluble components. These are then taken up by organisms in the soil, react with mineral soil, or are transported beyond the confines of the ecosystem (and are considered lost to it). Newly shed leaves and newly dead animals have high concentrations of water-soluble components and include sugars, amino acids and mineral nutrients. Leaching is more important in wet environments and less important in dry ones.
Fragmentation processes break organic material into smaller pieces, exposing new surfaces for colonization by microbes. Freshly shed leaf litter may be inaccessible due to an outer layer of cuticle or bark, and cell contents are protected by a cell wall. Newly dead animals may be covered by an exoskeleton. Fragmentation processes, which break through these protective layers, accelerate the rate of microbial decomposition. Animals fragment detritus as they hunt for food, as does passage through the gut. Freeze-thaw cycles and cycles of wetting and drying also fragment dead material.
The chemical alteration of the dead organic matter is primarily achieved through bacterial and fungal action. Fungal hyphae produce enzymes that can break through the tough outer structures surrounding dead plant material. They also produce enzymes that break down lignin, which allows them access to both cell contents and the nitrogen in the lignin. Fungi can transfer carbon and nitrogen through their hyphal networks and thus, unlike bacteria, are not dependent solely on locally available resources.
#### Decomposition rates {#decomposition_rates}
Decomposition rates vary among ecosystems. The rate of decomposition is governed by three sets of factors---the physical environment (temperature, moisture, and soil properties), the quantity and quality of the dead material available to decomposers, and the nature of the microbial community itself. Temperature controls the rate of microbial respiration; the higher the temperature, the faster the microbial decomposition occurs. Temperature also affects soil moisture, which affects decomposition. Freeze-thaw cycles also affect decomposition---freezing temperatures kill soil microorganisms, which allows leaching to play a more important role in moving nutrients around. This can be especially important as the soil thaws in the spring, creating a pulse of nutrients that become available.
Decomposition rates are low under very wet or very dry conditions. Decomposition rates are highest in wet, moist conditions with adequate levels of oxygen. Wet soils tend to become deficient in oxygen (this is especially true in wetlands), which slows microbial growth. In dry soils, decomposition slows as well, but bacteria continue to grow (albeit at a slower rate) even after soils become too dry to support plant growth.
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# Ecosystem
## Processes
### Dynamics and resilience {#dynamics_and_resilience}
Ecosystems are dynamic entities. They are subject to periodic disturbances and are always in the process of recovering from past disturbances. When a perturbation occurs, an ecosystem responds by moving away from its initial state. The tendency of an ecosystem to remain close to its equilibrium state, despite that disturbance, is termed its resistance. The capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks is termed its ecological resilience. Resilience thinking also includes humanity as an integral part of the biosphere where we are dependent on ecosystem services for our survival and must build and maintain their natural capacities to withstand shocks and disturbances. Time plays a central role over a wide range, for example, in the slow development of soil from bare rock and the faster recovery of a community from disturbance.
Disturbance also plays an important role in ecological processes. F. Stuart Chapin and coauthors define disturbance as \"a relatively discrete event in time that removes plant biomass\". This can range from herbivore outbreaks, treefalls, fires, hurricanes, floods, glacial advances, to volcanic eruptions. Such disturbances can cause large changes in plant, animal and microbe populations, as well as soil organic matter content. Disturbance is followed by succession, a \"directional change in ecosystem structure and functioning resulting from biotically driven changes in resource supply.\"
The frequency and severity of disturbance determine the way it affects ecosystem function. A major disturbance like a volcanic eruption or glacial advance and retreat leave behind soils that lack plants, animals or organic matter. Ecosystems that experience such disturbances undergo primary succession. A less severe disturbance like forest fires, hurricanes or cultivation result in secondary succession and a faster recovery. More severe and more frequent disturbance result in longer recovery times.
From one year to another, ecosystems experience variation in their biotic and abiotic environments. A drought, a colder than usual winter, and a pest outbreak all are short-term variability in environmental conditions. Animal populations vary from year to year, building up during resource-rich periods and crashing as they overshoot their food supply. Longer-term changes also shape ecosystem processes. For example, the forests of eastern North America still show legacies of cultivation which ceased in 1850 when large areas were reverted to forests. Another example is the methane production in eastern Siberian lakes that is controlled by organic matter which accumulated during the Pleistocene.
thumb\|upright=4.1\|center\|`{{center|1=A [[freshwater]] lake in [[Gran Canaria]], an [[island]] of the [[Canary Islands]]. Clear boundaries make lakes convenient to study using an [[ecosystem approach]].}}`{=mediawiki}
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# Ecosystem
## Processes
### Nutrient cycling {#nutrient_cycling}
thumb\|right\|upright=1.8\|Biological nitrogen cycling Ecosystems continually exchange energy and carbon with the wider environment. Mineral nutrients, on the other hand, are mostly cycled back and forth between plants, animals, microbes and the soil. Most nitrogen enters ecosystems through biological nitrogen fixation, is deposited through precipitation, dust, gases or is applied as fertilizer. Most terrestrial ecosystems are nitrogen-limited in the short term making nitrogen cycling an important control on ecosystem production. Over the long term, phosphorus availability can also be critical.
Macronutrients which are required by all plants in large quantities include the primary nutrients (which are most limiting as they are used in largest amounts): Nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Secondary major nutrients (less often limiting) include: Calcium, magnesium, sulfur. Micronutrients required by all plants in small quantities include boron, chloride, copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, zinc. Finally, there are also beneficial nutrients which may be required by certain plants or by plants under specific environmental conditions: aluminum, cobalt, iodine, nickel, selenium, silicon, sodium, vanadium.
Until modern times, nitrogen fixation was the major source of nitrogen for ecosystems. Nitrogen-fixing bacteria either live symbiotically with plants or live freely in the soil. The energetic cost is high for plants that support nitrogen-fixing symbionts---as much as 25% of gross primary production when measured in controlled conditions. Many members of the legume plant family support nitrogen-fixing symbionts. Some cyanobacteria are also capable of nitrogen fixation. These are phototrophs, which carry out photosynthesis. Like other nitrogen-fixing bacteria, they can either be free-living or have symbiotic relationships with plants. Other sources of nitrogen include acid deposition produced through the combustion of fossil fuels, ammonia gas which evaporates from agricultural fields which have had fertilizers applied to them, and dust. Anthropogenic nitrogen inputs account for about 80% of all nitrogen fluxes in ecosystems.
When plant tissues are shed or are eaten, the nitrogen in those tissues becomes available to animals and microbes. Microbial decomposition releases nitrogen compounds from dead organic matter in the soil, where plants, fungi, and bacteria compete for it. Some soil bacteria use organic nitrogen-containing compounds as a source of carbon, and release ammonium ions into the soil. This process is known as nitrogen mineralization. Others convert ammonium to nitrite and nitrate ions, a process known as nitrification. Nitric oxide and nitrous oxide are also produced during nitrification. Under nitrogen-rich and oxygen-poor conditions, nitrates and nitrites are converted to nitrogen gas, a process known as denitrification.
Mycorrhizal fungi which are symbiotic with plant roots, use carbohydrates supplied by the plants and in return transfer phosphorus and nitrogen compounds back to the plant roots. This is an important pathway of organic nitrogen transfer from dead organic matter to plants. This mechanism may contribute to more than 70 Tg of annually assimilated plant nitrogen, thereby playing a critical role in global nutrient cycling and ecosystem function.
Phosphorus enters ecosystems through weathering. As ecosystems age this supply diminishes, making phosphorus-limitation more common in older landscapes (especially in the tropics). Calcium and sulfur are also produced by weathering, but acid deposition is an important source of sulfur in many ecosystems. Although magnesium and manganese are produced by weathering, exchanges between soil organic matter and living cells account for a significant portion of ecosystem fluxes. Potassium is primarily cycled between living cells and soil organic matter.
### Function and biodiversity {#function_and_biodiversity}
Biodiversity plays an important role in ecosystem functioning. Ecosystem processes are driven by the species in an ecosystem, the nature of the individual species, and the relative abundance of organisms among these species. Ecosystem processes are the net effect of the actions of individual organisms as they interact with their environment. Ecological theory suggests that in order to coexist, species must have some level of limiting similarity---they must be different from one another in some fundamental way, otherwise, one species would competitively exclude the other. Despite this, the cumulative effect of additional species in an ecosystem is not linear: additional species may enhance nitrogen retention, for example. However, beyond some level of species richness, additional species may have little additive effect unless they differ substantially from species already present. This is the case for example for exotic species.
The addition (or loss) of species that are ecologically similar to those already present in an ecosystem tends to only have a small effect on ecosystem function. Ecologically distinct species, on the other hand, have a much larger effect. Similarly, dominant species have a large effect on ecosystem function, while rare species tend to have a small effect. Keystone species tend to have an effect on ecosystem function that is disproportionate to their abundance in an ecosystem.
An ecosystem engineer is any organism that creates, significantly modifies, maintains or destroys a habitat.
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# Ecosystem
## Study approaches {#study_approaches}
### Ecosystem ecology {#ecosystem_ecology}
Ecosystem ecology is the \"study of the interactions between organisms and their environment as an integrated system\". The size of ecosystems can range up to ten orders of magnitude, from the surface layers of rocks to the surface of the planet.
The Hubbard Brook Ecosystem Study started in 1963 to study the White Mountains in New Hampshire. It was the first successful attempt to study an entire watershed as an ecosystem. The study used stream chemistry as a means of monitoring ecosystem properties, and developed a detailed biogeochemical model of the ecosystem. Long-term research at the site led to the discovery of acid rain in North America in 1972. Researchers documented the depletion of soil cations (especially calcium) over the next several decades.
Ecosystems can be studied through a variety of approaches---theoretical studies, studies monitoring specific ecosystems over long periods of time, those that look at differences between ecosystems to elucidate how they work and direct manipulative experimentation. Studies can be carried out at a variety of scales, ranging from whole-ecosystem studies to studying microcosms or mesocosms (simplified representations of ecosystems). American ecologist Stephen R. Carpenter has argued that microcosm experiments can be \"irrelevant and diversionary\" if they are not carried out in conjunction with field studies done at the ecosystem scale. In such cases, microcosm experiments may fail to accurately predict ecosystem-level dynamics.
### Classifications
Biomes are general classes or categories of ecosystems. However, there is no clear distinction between biomes and ecosystems. Biomes are always defined at a very general level. Ecosystems can be described at levels that range from very general (in which case the names are sometimes the same as those of biomes) to very specific, such as \"wet coastal needle-leafed forests\".
Biomes vary due to global variations in climate. Biomes are often defined by their structure: at a general level, for example, tropical forests, temperate grasslands, and arctic tundra. There can be any degree of subcategories among ecosystem types that comprise a biome, e.g., needle-leafed boreal forests or wet tropical forests. Although ecosystems are most commonly categorized by their structure and geography, there are also other ways to categorize and classify ecosystems such as by their level of human impact (see anthropogenic biome), or by their integration with social processes or technological processes or their novelty (e.g. novel ecosystem). Each of these taxonomies of ecosystems tends to emphasize different structural or functional properties. None of these is the \"best\" classification.
Ecosystem classifications are specific kinds of ecological classifications that consider all four elements of the definition of ecosystems: a biotic component, an abiotic complex, the interactions between and within them, and the physical space they occupy. Different approaches to ecological classifications have been developed in terrestrial, freshwater and marine disciplines, and a function-based typology has been proposed to leverage the strengths of these different approaches into a unified system.
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# Ecosystem
## Human interactions with ecosystems {#human_interactions_with_ecosystems}
Human activities are important in almost all ecosystems. Although humans exist and operate within ecosystems, their cumulative effects are large enough to influence external factors like climate.
### Ecosystem goods and services {#ecosystem_goods_and_services}
*Main article: Ecosystem services, Ecological goods and services* `{{See also|Ecosystem valuation|Ecological yield}}`{=mediawiki} Ecosystems provide a variety of goods and services upon which people depend. Ecosystem goods include the \"tangible, material products\" of ecosystem processes such as water, food, fuel, construction material, and medicinal plants. They also include less tangible items like tourism and recreation, and genes from wild plants and animals that can be used to improve domestic species.
Ecosystem services, on the other hand, are generally \"improvements in the condition or location of things of value\". These include things like the maintenance of hydrological cycles, cleaning air and water, the maintenance of oxygen in the atmosphere, crop pollination and even things like beauty, inspiration and opportunities for research. While material from the ecosystem had traditionally been recognized as being the basis for things of economic value, ecosystem services tend to be taken for granted.
The *Millennium Ecosystem Assessment* is an international synthesis by over 1000 of the world\'s leading biological scientists that analyzes the state of the Earth\'s ecosystems and provides summaries and guidelines for decision-makers. The report identified four major categories of ecosystem services: provisioning, regulating, cultural and supporting services. It concludes that human activity is having a significant and escalating impact on the biodiversity of the world ecosystems, reducing both their resilience and biocapacity. The report refers to natural systems as humanity\'s \"life-support system\", providing essential ecosystem services. The assessment measures 24 ecosystem services and concludes that only four have shown improvement over the last 50 years, 15 are in serious decline, and five are in a precarious condition.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) is an intergovernmental organization established to improve the interface between science and policy on issues of biodiversity and ecosystem services. It is intended to serve a similar role to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Ecosystem services are limited and also threatened by human activities. To help inform decision-makers, many ecosystem services are being assigned economic values, often based on the cost of replacement with anthropogenic alternatives. The ongoing challenge of prescribing economic value to nature, for example through biodiversity banking, is prompting transdisciplinary shifts in how we recognize and manage the environment, social responsibility, business opportunities, and our future as a species.
### Degradation and decline {#degradation_and_decline}
As human population and per capita consumption grow, so do the resource demands imposed on ecosystems and the effects of the human ecological footprint. Natural resources are vulnerable and limited. The environmental impacts of anthropogenic actions are becoming more apparent. Problems for all ecosystems include: environmental pollution, climate change and biodiversity loss. For terrestrial ecosystems further threats include air pollution, soil degradation, and deforestation. For aquatic ecosystems threats also include unsustainable exploitation of marine resources (for example overfishing), marine pollution, microplastics pollution, the effects of climate change on oceans (e.g. warming and acidification), and building on coastal areas.
Many ecosystems become degraded through human impacts, such as soil loss, air and water pollution, habitat fragmentation, water diversion, fire suppression, and introduced species and invasive species.
These threats can lead to abrupt transformation of the ecosystem or to gradual disruption of biotic processes and degradation of abiotic conditions of the ecosystem. Once the original ecosystem has lost its defining features, it is considered *collapsed* (see also IUCN Red List of Ecosystems). Ecosystem collapse could be reversible and in this way differs from species extinction. Quantitative assessments of the risk of collapse are used as measures of conservation status and trends.
### Management
When natural resource management is applied to whole ecosystems, rather than single species, it is termed ecosystem management. Although definitions of ecosystem management abound, there is a common set of principles which underlie these definitions: A fundamental principle is the long-term sustainability of the production of goods and services by the ecosystem; \"intergenerational sustainability \[is\] a precondition for management, not an afterthought\". While ecosystem management can be used as part of a plan for wilderness conservation, it can also be used in intensively managed ecosystems (see, for example, agroecosystem and close to nature forestry).
### Restoration and sustainable development {#restoration_and_sustainable_development}
Integrated conservation and development projects (ICDPs) aim to address conservation and human livelihood (sustainable development) concerns in developing countries together, rather than separately as was often done in the past
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# Epimenides paradox
The **Epimenides paradox** reveals a problem with self-reference in logic. It is named after the Cretan philosopher Epimenides of Knossos (alive circa 600 BC) who is credited with the original statement. A typical description of the problem is given in the book *Gödel, Escher, Bach*, by Douglas Hofstadter:
A paradox of self-reference arises when one considers whether it is possible for Epimenides to have spoken the truth.
## Mythology of lying Cretans {#mythology_of_lying_cretans}
According to Ptolemaeus Chennus, Thetis and Medea had once argued in Thessaly over which was the most beautiful; they appointed the Cretan Idomeneus as the judge, who gave the victory to Thetis. In her anger, Medea called all Cretans liars, and cursed them to never say the truth.
## Logical paradox {#logical_paradox}
Thomas Fowler (1869) states the paradox as follows: \"Epimenides the Cretan says, \'that all the Cretans are liars,\' but Epimenides is himself a Cretan; therefore he is himself a liar. But if he is a liar, what he says is untrue, and consequently, the Cretans are veracious; but Epimenides is a Cretan, and therefore what he says is true; saying the Cretans are liars, Epimenides is himself a liar, and what he says is untrue. Thus we may go on alternately proving that Epimenides and the Cretans are truthful and untruthful.\"
If we assume the statement is false and that Epimenides is lying about all Cretans being liars, then there must exist at least one Cretan who is honest. This does not lead to a contradiction since it is not required that this Cretan be Epimenides. This means that Epimenides can say the false statement that all Cretans are liars while knowing at least one honest Cretan and lying about this particular Cretan. Hence, from the assumption that the statement is false, it does not follow that the statement is true. So we can avoid a paradox as seeing the statement \"all Cretans are liars\" as a false statement, which is made by a lying Cretan, Epimenides. The mistake made by Thomas Fowler (and many other people) above is to think that the negation of \"all Cretans are liars\" is \"all Cretans are honest\" (a paradox) when in fact the negation is \"there exists a Cretan who is honest\", or \"not all Cretans are liars\". The Epimenides paradox can be slightly modified as to not allow the kind of solution described above, as it was in the first paradox of Eubulides but instead leading to a non-avoidable self-contradiction. Paradoxical versions of the Epimenides problem are closely related to a class of more difficult logical problems, including the liar paradox, Socratic paradox and the Burali-Forti paradox, all of which have self-reference in common with Epimenides. The Epimenides paradox is usually classified as a variation on the liar paradox, and sometimes the two are not distinguished. The study of self-reference led to important developments in logic and mathematics in the twentieth century.
In other words, it is not a paradox once one realizes \"All Cretans are liars\" being untrue only means \"Not all Cretans are liars\" instead of the assumption that \"All Cretans are honest\".
Perhaps better put, for \"All Cretans are liars\" to be a true statement, it does not mean that all Cretans must lie all the time. In fact, Cretans could tell the truth quite often, but still all be liars in the sense that liars are people prone to deception for dishonest gain. Considering that \"All Cretans are liars\" has been seen as a paradox only since the 19th century, this seems to resolve the alleged paradox. If \'all Cretans are continuous liars\' is actually true, then asking a Cretan if they are honest would always elicit the dishonest answer \'yes\'. So arguably the original proposition is not so much paradoxical as invalid.
A contextual reading of the contradiction may also provide an answer to the paradox. The original phrase, \"The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!\" asserts not an intrinsic paradox, but rather an opinion of the Cretans from Epimenides. A stereotyping of his people not intended to be an absolute statement about the people as a whole. Rather it is a claim made about their position regarding their religious beliefs and socio-cultural attitudes. Within the context of his poem the phrase is specific to a certain belief, a context that Callimachus repeats in his poem regarding Zeus. Further, a more poignant answer to the paradox is simply that to be a *liar* is to state falsehoods, nothing in the statement asserts everything said is false, but rather they\'re \"always\" lying. This is not an absolute statement of fact and thus we cannot conclude there\'s a true contradiction made by Epimenides with this statement.
## Origin of the phrase {#origin_of_the_phrase}
Epimenides was a 6th-century BC philosopher and religious prophet who, against the general sentiment of Crete, proposed that Zeus was immortal, as in the following poem: `{{Quotation|They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one<br>The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!<br>But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,<br>For in thee we live and move and have our being.|Epimenides|Cretica}}`{=mediawiki}
Denying the immortality of Zeus, then, was the lie of the Cretans.
The phrase \"Cretans, always liars\" was quoted by the poet Callimachus in his *Hymn to Zeus*, with the same theological intent as Epimenides:
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# Epimenides paradox
## Emergence as a logical contradiction {#emergence_as_a_logical_contradiction}
The logical inconsistency of a Cretan asserting all Cretans are always liars may not have occurred to Epimenides, nor to Callimachus, who both used the phrase to emphasize their point, without irony, perhaps meaning that all Cretans lie routinely, but not exclusively.
In the 1st century AD, the quote is mentioned by the author of the Epistle to Titus as having been spoken truly by \"one of their own prophets.\"
Clement of Alexandria, in the late 2nd century AD, fails to indicate that the concept of logical paradox is an issue:
During the early 4th century, Saint Augustine restates the closely related liar paradox in *Against the Academicians* (III.13.29), but without mentioning Epimenides.
In the Middle Ages, many forms of the liar paradox were studied under the heading of insolubilia, but these were not explicitly associated with Epimenides.
Finally, in 1740, the second volume of Pierre Bayle\'s *Dictionnaire Historique et Critique* explicitly connects Epimenides with the paradox, though Bayle labels the paradox a \"sophisme\"
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# Economic and monetary union
An **economic and monetary union** (**EMU**) is a type of trade bloc that features a combination of a common market, customs union, and monetary union. Established via a trade pact, an EMU constitutes the sixth of seven stages in the process of economic integration. An EMU agreement usually combines a customs union with a common market. A typical EMU establishes free trade and a common external tariff throughout its jurisdiction. It is also designed to protect freedom in the movement of goods, services, and people. This arrangement is distinct from a monetary union (e.g., the Latin Monetary Union), which does not usually involve a common market. As with the economic and monetary union established among the 27 member states of the European Union (EU), an EMU may affect different parts of its jurisdiction in different ways. Some areas are subject to separate customs regulations from other areas subject to the EMU. These various arrangements may be established in a formal agreement, or they may exist on a *de facto* basis. For example, not all EU member states use the Euro established by its currency union, and not all EU member states are part of the Schengen Area. Some EU members participate in both unions, and some in neither.
Territories of the United States, Australian External Territories and New Zealand territories each share a currency and, for the most part, the market of their respective mainland states. However, they are generally not part of the same customs territories.
## History
Several countries initially attempted to form an EMU at the Hague Summit in 1969. Afterward, a \"draft plan\" was announced. During this time, the main member presiding over this decision was Pierre Werner, Prime Minister of Luxembourg. The decision to form the Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU) was accepted in `{{nowrap|December 1991,}}`{=mediawiki} which later became part of the Maastricht Treaty (the Treaty on European Union).
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# Economic and monetary union
## Processes in the European EMU {#processes_in_the_european_emu}
The EMU involves four main activities.
The first responsibility is to be in charge of implementing effective monetary policy for the euro area with price stability. There is a group of economists whose only role is studying how to improve the monetary policy while maintaining price stability. They conduct research, and their results are presented to the leaders of the EMU. Thereafter, the role of the leaders is to find a suitable way to implement the economists\' work into their country\'s policies. Maintaining price stability is a long-term goal for all states in the EU, due to the effects it might have on the Euro as a currency.
Secondly, the EMU must coordinate economic and fiscal policies in EU countries. They must find an equilibrium between the implementation of monetary and fiscal policies. They will advise countries to have greater coordination, even if that means having countries tightly coupled with looser monetary and tighter fiscal policy. Not coordinating the monetary market could result in risking an unpredictable situation. The EMU also deliberates on a mixed policy option, which has been shown to be beneficial in some empirical studies.
Thirdly, the EMU ensures that the single market runs smoothly. The member countries respect the decisions made by the EMU and ensure that their actions will be in favor of a stable market.
Finally, regulations of the EMU aid in supervising and monitoring financial institutions. There is an imperative need for all members of the EMU to act in unison. Therefore, the EMU has to have institutions supervising all the member states to protect the main aim of the EMU.
### Roles of national governments {#roles_of_national_governments}
The economic roles of nations within the EMU are to:
- control fiscal policy that concerns government budgets
- control tax policies that determine how income is raised
- control structural policies that determine pension systems, labor, and capital-market regulations
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# Economic and monetary union
## List of economic and monetary unions {#list_of_economic_and_monetary_unions}
- Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union (EMU) (1999/2002) with the Euro for the Eurozone members
- *de facto* the sovereign states in the OECS Eastern Caribbean Currency Union with the East Caribbean dollar in the CSME (2006)
- *de facto* Switzerland--Liechtenstein
### Proposed
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Community | Currency | Region | Target date | Notes |
+==============================================================+===========================+================+=============+=========================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================+
| Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) | Central African CFA franc | Africa | | Not yet functioning common market |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) | West African CFA franc | Africa | | Not yet functioning common market |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) | Khaleeji | Middle East | | Possibly gold backed, but postponed due to the 2008 financial crisis. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| East African Community (EAC) | East African shilling | Africa | 2015 | To be used by the future East African Federation |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Caribbean Single Market and Economy (as part of the CARICOM) | | Latin America\ | 2015 | To supplement the OECS Eastern Caribbean Currency Union |
| | | /Caribbean | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Southern African Customs Union (SACU) | South African Rand | Africa | 2015 | *de facto* for the CMA member when the SADC economic union is established |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Southern African Development Community (SADC) | South African Rand\ | Africa | 2016 | To supplement or succeed the CMA and Southern Africa Customs Union |
| | (interim proposal) | | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation | | South Asia | 2016 | |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) | Latino | Latin America\ | 2019 | |
| | | /Caribbean | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) | | Africa | | To supplement the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) | | Africa | 2020 | To succeed UEMOA and WAMZ |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| African Economic Community | | Africa | 2028 | See African Monetary Union |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Union State of Russia and Belarus | Russian ruble | Europe | | |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Arab League | Arab Dinar | Arab states | | Arab Dinar has been proposed ever since the creation of the Arab Monetary Fund, expected for serious plans of doing so, after the creation of the proposed Arab Union. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Eurasian Economic Union | Altyn | Eurasia | 2025 | Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev had first proposed, in 2009, the creation of a common noncash currency called \"yevraz\" for the Eurasian Economic Community. It would have reportedly helped insulate the countries from the global economic crisis. In 2012, the idea of the new joint currency found support from Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev and by 2014 proposals were drafted in Eurasian Commission documents for the establishment of a Eurasian Central Bank and a common currency to be called the altyn which is to be introduced by 2025. |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+---------------------------+----------------+-------------+-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
### Previous EMUs {#previous_emus}
- Monetary union of the Belgium--Luxembourg Economic Union (1922--2002), superseded by the European EMU
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# Euphoria (programming language)
**Euphoria** is a programming language created by Robert Craig of Rapid Deployment Software in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Initially developed (though not publicly released) on the Atari ST, the first commercial release was for MS-DOS as proprietary software. In 2006, with the release of version 3, Euphoria became open-source software. The openEuphoria Group continues to administer and develop the project. In December 2010, the openEuphoria Group released version 4 of openEuphoria along with a new identity and mascot for the project. OpenEuphoria is currently available for Windows, Linux, macOS and three flavors of \*BSD.
Euphoria is a general-purpose high-level imperative-procedural interpreted language. A translator generates C source code and the GNU compiler collection (GCC) and Open Watcom compilers are supported. Alternatively, Euphoria programs may be bound with the interpreter to create stand-alone executables. A number of graphical user interface (GUI) libraries are supported including Win32lib and wrappers for wxWidgets, GTK+ and IUP. Euphoria has a simple built-in database and wrappers for a variety of other databases.
## Overview
The Euphoria language is a general purpose procedural language that focuses on simplicity, legibility, rapid development and performance via several means.
- *Simplicity* -- It uses just four built-in data types (see below) and implements automatic garbage collection.
- *Legibility* -- The syntax favors simple English keywords over the use of punctuation to delineate constructs.
- *Rapid development* -- An interpreter encourages prototyping and incremental development.
- *Performance* -- An efficient reference-counting garbage collector correctly handles cyclic references.
## History
Developed as a personal project to invent a programming language from scratch, Euphoria was created by Robert Craig on an Atari Mega-ST. Many design ideas for the language came from Craig\'s Master\'s thesis in computer science at the University of Toronto. Craig\'s thesis was heavily influenced by the work of John Backus on functional programming (FP) languages.
Craig ported his original Atari implementation to MS-DOS and Euphoria was first released, version 1.0, in July 1993 under a proprietary licence. The original Atari implementation is described by Craig as \"primitive\" and has not been publicly released. Euphoria continued to be developed and released by Craig via his company Rapid Deployment Software (RDS) and website rapideuphoria.com. In October 2006 RDS released version 3 of Euphoria and announced that henceforth Euphoria would be freely distributed under an open-source software licence.
RDS continued to develop Euphoria, culminating with the release of version 3.1.1 in August, 2007. Subsequently, RDS ceased unilateral development of Euphoria and the openEuphoria Group took over ongoing development. The openEuphoria Group released version 4 in December, 2010 along with a new logo and mascot for the openEuphoria project.
Version 3.1.1 remains an important milestone release, being the last version of Euphoria which supports the DOS platform.
Euphoria is an acronym for *End-User Programming with Hierarchical Objects for Robust Interpreted Applications* although there is some suspicion that this is a backronym.`{{according to whom|date=August 2013}}`{=mediawiki}
The Euphoria interpreter was originally written in C. With the release of version 2.5 in November 2004 the Euphoria interpreter was split into two parts: a front-end parser, and a back-end interpreter. The front-end is now written in Euphoria (and used with the Euphoria-to-C translator and the Binder). The main back-end and run time library are written in C.
## Features
Euphoria was conceived and developed with the following design goals and features:
- Ease of learning and with consistent high-level constructs (more so than, for example, the BASIC language)
- Implementation of flat-form 32-bit memory to avoid complex memory management and size-addressing limits
- Debugging support and run-time error-handling
- Subscript and type checking
- Loose and strict variable typing
- Programming via objects as types (user-defined or otherwise)
- Interpreted, with automatic memory management and garbage collection
- Heterogeneous collection types (sequences)
- DOS graphics library (Euphoria language versions up to and including 3.1.1)
- Debugger
- Integrated database system
- Low-level memory handling
- Straightforward wrapping of (or access to) C libraries
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# Euphoria (programming language)
## Execution modes {#execution_modes}
- Interpreter
- C translator (E2C) for standalone executables or dynamic linking
- Bytecode compiler and interpreter (shrouder)
- The Binder binds the Euphoria source code to the interpreter to create an executable.
- A read--eval--print loop (REPL) version is on the openEuphoria roadmap.
## Use
Euphoria is designed to readily facilitate handling of dynamic sets of data of varying types and is particularly useful for string and image processing. Euphoria has been used in artificial intelligence experiments, the study of mathematics, for teaching programming, and to implement fonts involving thousands of characters. A large part of the Euphoria interpreter is written in Euphoria.
## Data types {#data_types}
Euphoria has two basic data types:
: Atom -- A number, implemented as a 31-bit signed integer or a 64-bit IEEE floating-point. Euphoria dynamically changes between integer and floating point representation according to the current value.
: Sequence -- A vector (array) with zero or more elements. Each element may be an *atom* or another *sequence*. The number of elements in a sequence is not fixed (i.e., the size of the vector/array does not have to be declared). The program may add or remove elements as needed during run-time. Memory allocation-deallocation is automatically handled by reference counting. Individual elements are referenced using an index value enclosed in square brackets. The first element in a sequence has an index of one \[1\]. Elements inside embedded sequences are referenced by additional bracked index values, thus X\[3\]\[2\] refers to the second element contained in the sequence that is the third element of X. Each element of a sequence is an *object* type (see below).
Euphoria has two additional data types predefined:
: Integer -- An *atom*, restricted to 31-bit signed integer values in the range `{{val|-1073741824}}`{=mediawiki} to `{{val|1073741823}}`{=mediawiki} (`{{tmath|-2^{30} }}`{=mediawiki} to `{{tmath|2^{30}-1}}`{=mediawiki}). *Integer* data types are more efficient than the *atom* data types, but cannot contain the same range of values. Characters are stored as integers, e.g., coding ASCII-\'A\' is exactly the same as coding 65.
: Object -- A generic datatype which may contain any of the above (i.e., *atom*, *sequence* or *integer*) and which may be changed to another type during run-time.
There is no character string data type. Strings are represented by a *sequence* of *integer* values. However, because literal strings are so commonly used in programming, Euphoria interprets double-quote enclosed characters as a sequence of integers. Thus
`"ABC"`
is seen as if the coder had written:
`{'A', 'B', 'C'}`
which is the same as:
`{65, 66, 67}`
## Hello, World! {#hello_world}
`puts(1, "Hello, World!\n")`
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# Euphoria (programming language)
## Examples
Program comments start with a double hyphen `--` and go through the end of line.
The following code looks for an old item in a group of items. If found, it removes it by concatenating all the elements before it with all the elements after it. Note that the first element in a sequence has the index one \[1\] and that \$ refers to the length (i.e., total number of elements) of the sequence.
`global function`` delete_item( ``object`` old, ``sequence`` group )`\
` ``integer`` pos`\
` ``-- Code begins --`\
` pos = ``find``( old, group )`\
` ``if`` pos > 0 ``then`\
` group = group[1 .. pos-1] & group[pos+1 .. $]`\
` ``end if`\
` return`` group`\
`end function`
The following modification to the above example replaces an old item with a new item. As the variables *old* and *new* have been defined as objects, they could be *atoms* or *sequences*. Type checking is not needed as the function will work with any sequence of data of any type and needs no external libraries.
`global function`` replace_item( ``object`` old, ``object`` new, ``sequence`` group )`\
` ``integer`` pos`\
` ``-- Code begins --`\
` pos = ``find``( old, group )`\
` ``if`` pos > 0 ``then`\
` group[pos] = new`\
` ``end if`\
` return`` group`\
`end function`
Furthermore, no pointers are involved and subscripts are automatically checked. Thus the function cannot access memory out-of-bounds. There is no need to allocate or deallocate memory explicitly and no chance of a memory leak.
The line
`group = group[1 .. pos-1] & group[pos+1 .. $]`
shows some of the *sequence* handling facilities. A *sequence* may contain a set of any types, and this can be sliced (to take a subset of the data in a *sequence*) and concatenated in expressions with no need for special functions.
## Parameter passing {#parameter_passing}
Arguments to routines are always passed by value; there is no pass-by-reference facility. However, parameters are allowed to be modified *locally* (i.e., within the callee) which is implemented very efficiently as sequences have automatic copy-on-write semantics. In other words, when you pass a sequence to a routine, initially only a reference to it is passed, but at the point the routine modifies this sequence parameter the sequence is copied and the routine updates only a copy of the original.
## Comparable languages {#comparable_languages}
- Lua
- [Phix](http://phix.x10
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# Endocarditis
**Endocarditis** is an inflammation of the inner layer of the heart, the endocardium. It usually involves the heart valves. Other structures that may be involved include the interventricular septum, the chordae tendineae, the mural endocardium, or the surfaces of intracardiac devices. Endocarditis is characterized by lesions, known as *vegetations*, which are masses of platelets, fibrin, microcolonies of microorganisms, and scant inflammatory cells. In the subacute form of infective endocarditis, a vegetation may also include a center of granulomatous tissue, which may fibrose or calcify.
There are several ways to classify endocarditis. The simplest classification is based on cause: either *infective* or *non-infective*, depending on whether a microorganism is the source of the inflammation or not. Regardless, the diagnosis of endocarditis is based on clinical features, investigations such as an echocardiogram, and blood cultures demonstrating the presence of endocarditis-causing microorganisms.
Signs and symptoms include fever, chills, sweating, malaise, weakness, anorexia, weight loss, splenomegaly, flu-like feeling, cardiac murmur, heart failure, petechia (red spots on the skin), Osler\'s nodes (subcutaneous nodules found on hands and feet), Janeway lesions (nodular lesions on palms and soles), and Roth\'s spots (retinal hemorrhages).
## Infective endocarditis {#infective_endocarditis}
Infective endocarditis is an infection of the inner surface of the heart, usually the valves. Symptoms may include fever, small areas of bleeding into the skin, heart murmur, feeling tired, and low red blood cells. Complications may include valvular insufficiency, heart failure, stroke, and kidney failure.
The cause is typically a bacterial infection and less commonly a fungal infection. Risk factors include valvular heart disease including rheumatic disease, congenital heart disease, artificial valves, hemodialysis, intravenous drug use, and electronic pacemakers. The bacteria most commonly involved are streptococci or staphylococci.
The diagnosis of infective endocarditis relies on the Duke criteria, which were originally described in 1994 and modified in 2000. Clinical features and microbiological examinations are the first steps to diagnose an infective endocarditis. The imaging is also crucial. Echocardiography is the cornerstone of imaging modality in the diagnosis of infective endocarditis. Alternative imaging modalities as computer tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography/computer tomography (PET/CT) with \[\[Fluorodeoxyglucose (18F)\|2-\[18F\]fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG)\]\] are playing an increasing role in the diagnosis and management of infective endocarditis.
The usefulness of antibiotics following dental procedures has changed over time. Prevention is recommended in patients at high risk. Treatment is generally with intravenous antibiotics. The choice of antibiotics is based on the blood cultures. Occasionally heart surgery is required. Populations at high risk of infective endocarditis include patients with previous infective endocarditis, patients with surgical or transcatheter prosthetic valves or post-cardiac valve repair, and patients with untreated CHD and surgically corrected congenital heart disease.
The number of people affected is about 5 per 100,000 per year. Rates, however, vary between regions of the world. Males are affected more often than females. The risk of death among those infected is about 25%. Without treatment it is almost universally fatal.
## Non-infective endocarditis {#non_infective_endocarditis}
Nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis (NBTE) is most commonly found on previously undamaged valves. As opposed to infective endocarditis, the vegetations in NBTE are small, sterile, and tend to aggregate along the edges of the valve or the cusps. Also unlike infective endocarditis, NBTE does not cause an inflammation response from the body. NBTE usually occurs during a hypercoagulable state such as system-wide bacterial infection, or pregnancy, though it is also sometimes seen in patients with venous catheters. NBTE may also occur in patients with cancer, particularly mucinous adenocarcinoma where Trousseau syndrome can be encountered. Typically NBTE does not cause many problems on its own, but parts of the vegetations may break off and embolize to the heart or brain, or they may serve as a focus where bacteria can lodge, thus causing infective endocarditis.
Another form of sterile endocarditis is termed Libman--Sacks endocarditis; this form occurs more often in patients with lupus erythematosus and is thought to be due to the deposition of immune complexes. Like NBTE, Libman-Sacks endocarditis involves small vegetations, while infective endocarditis is composed of large vegetations. These immune complexes precipitate an inflammation reaction, which helps to differentiate it from NBTE. Also unlike NBTE, Libman-Sacks endocarditis does not seem to have a preferred location of deposition and may form on the undersurfaces of the valves or even on the endocardium
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# Ectopia (medicine)
An **ectopia** (`{{IPAc-en|ɛ|k|ˈ|t|oʊ|p|i|ə}}`{=mediawiki}) is a displacement or malposition of an organ or other body part, which is then referred to as **ectopic** (`{{IPAc-en|ɛ|k|ˈ|t|ɒ|p|ɪ|k}}`{=mediawiki}).
## Examples
- Ectopic ACTH syndrome, also known as small-cell carcinoma.
- Ectopic calcification, a pathologic deposition of calcium salts in tissues or bone growth in soft tissues
- Cerebellar tonsillar ectopia, aka Chiari malformation, a herniation of the brain through the foramen magnum, which may be congenital or caused by trauma
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# Entorhinal cortex
The **entorhinal cortex** (**EC**) is an area of the brain\'s allocortex, located in the medial temporal lobe, whose functions include being a widespread network hub for memory, navigation, and the perception of time. The EC is the main interface between the hippocampus and neocortex. The EC-hippocampus system plays an important role in declarative (autobiographical/episodic/semantic) memories and in particular spatial memories including memory formation, memory consolidation, and memory optimization in sleep. The EC is also responsible for the pre-processing (familiarity) of the input signals in the reflex nictitating membrane response of classical trace conditioning; the association of impulses from the eye and the ear occurs in the entorhinal cortex.
## Anatomy
The entorhinal cortex is a portion of the rostral parahippocampal gyrus.
### Structure
It is usually divided into medial and lateral regions with three bands with distinct properties and connectivity running perpendicular across the whole area. A distinguishing characteristic of the EC is the lack of cell bodies where layer IV should be; this layer is called the *Lamina dissecans*.
### Connections
The superficial layers -- layers II and III -- of EC project to the dentate gyrus and hippocampus: Layer II projects primarily to dentate gyrus and hippocampal region CA3; layer III projects primarily to hippocampal region CA1 and the subiculum. These layers receive input from other cortical areas, especially associational, perirhinal, and parahippocampal cortices, as well as prefrontal cortex. EC as a whole, therefore, receives highly processed input from every sensory modality, as well as input relating to ongoing cognitive processes, though it should be stressed that, within EC, this information remains at least partially segregated.
The deep layers, especially layer V, receive one of the three main outputs of the hippocampus and, in turn, reciprocate connections from other cortical areas that project to superficial EC.
### Brodmann\'s areas {#brodmanns_areas}
- Brodmann area 28 is known as the \"area entorhinalis\"
- Brodmann area 34 is known as the \"area entorhinalis dorsalis\"
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# Entorhinal cortex
## Function
### Neuron information processing {#neuron_information_processing}
In 2005, it was discovered that entorhinal cortex contains a neural map of the spatial environment in rats. In 2014, John O\'Keefe, May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, partly because of this discovery.
In rodents, neurons in the lateral entorhinal cortex exhibit little spatial selectivity, whereas neurons of the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC), exhibit multiple \"place fields\" that are arranged in a hexagonal pattern, and are, therefore, called \"grid cells\". These fields and spacing between fields increase from the dorso-lateral MEA to the ventro-medial MEA.
The same group of researchers has found speed cells in the medial entorhinal cortex of rats. The speed of movement is translated from proprioceptive information and is represented as firing rates in these cells. The cells are known to fire in correlation to future speed of the rodent.
Recently, a general theory has been proposed to elucidate the function of the reelin positive cells in the layer II of the entorhinal cortex. According to this concept, these cells would be generally organized into 1-dimensional ring attractors, and in the *medial* (in humans: *posteromedial*) portion, would function as grid cells (anatomically: stellate cells) while in *lateral* (in humans: *anterolateral*) portion, where they appear as fan cells, would enable the encoding of new episodic memories. This concept is underscored by the fact that fan cells of the entorhinal cortex are indispensable for the formation of episodic-like memories in rodents.
Single-unit recording of neurons in humans playing video games find path cells in the EC, the activity of which indicates whether a person is taking a clockwise or counterclockwise path. Such EC \"direction\" path cells show this directional activity irrespective of the location of where a person experiences themselves, which contrasts them to place cells in the hippocampus, which are activated by specific locations.
EC neurons process general information such as directional activity in the environment, which contrasts to that of the hippocampal neurons, which usually encode information about specific places. This suggests that EC encodes general properties about current contexts that are then used by hippocampus to create unique representations from combinations of these properties.
Research generally highlights a useful distinction in which the medial entorhinal cortex (MEC) mainly supports processing of space, whereas the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC) mainly supports the processing of time.
The MEC exhibits a strong \~8 Hz rhythmic neural activity known as theta. Alterations in the neural activity across the brain region results in an observed \"traveling wave\" phenomena across the MEC long-axis, similar to that of the hippocampus, due to asymmetric theta oscillations. The underlying cause of these phase shifts and their waveform changes is unknown.
Individual variation in the volume of EC is linked to taste perception. People with a larger EC in the left hemisphere found quinine, the source of bitterness in tonic water, less bitter.
## Clinical significance {#clinical_significance}
### Alzheimer\'s disease {#alzheimers_disease}
The entorhinal cortex is the first area of the brain to be affected in Alzheimer\'s disease; in year 2013, a functional magnetic resonance imaging study has localised the area to the lateral entorhinal cortex. Lopez *et al.* have shown, in a multimodal study, that there are differences in the volume of the left entorhinal cortex between progressing (to Alzheimer\'s disease) and stable mild cognitive impairment patients. These authors also found that the volume of the left entorhinal cortex inversely correlates with the level of alpha band phase synchronization between the right anterior cingulate and temporo-occipital regions.
In 2012, neuroscientists at UCLA conducted an experiment using a virtual taxi video game connected to seven epilepsy patients with electrodes already implanted in their brains, allowing the researchers to monitor neuronal activity whenever memories were being formed. As the researchers stimulated the nerve fibers of each of the patients\' entorhinal cortex as they were learning, they were then able to better navigate themselves through various routes and recognize landmarks more quickly. This signified an improvement in the patients\' spatial memory.
## Research
**Effect of aerobic exercise**
A study on young subjects found aerobic fitness to be positively correlated with entorhinal cortex volume, indicating that aerobic exercise may have a positive effect on the medial temporal lobe memory system (which includes the entorhinal cortex).
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# Entorhinal cortex
## In other animals {#in_other_animals}
In rodents, the EC is located at the caudal end of the temporal lobe. The rodent entorhinal cortex shows a modular organization, with different properties and connections in different areas.
In primates it is located at the rostral`{{Broken anchor|date=2025-03-24|bot=User:Cewbot/log/20201008/configuration|target_link=Anatomical terms of location#Cranial and caudal|reason= The anchor (Cranial and caudal) [[Special:Diff/1175671216|has been deleted]].|diff_id=1175671216}}`{=mediawiki} end of the temporal lobe and stretches dorsolaterally.
## Additional images {#additional_images}
[`File:Entorhinal`](File:Entorhinal)` - DK ATLAS.png|Entorhinal cortex, shown in the right cerebral hemisphere
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# Evolutionism
**Evolutionism** is a term used (often derogatorily) to denote the theory of evolution. Its exact meaning has changed over time as the study of evolution has progressed. In the 19th century, it was used to describe the belief that organisms deliberately improved themselves through progressive inherited change (orthogenesis). The teleological belief went on to include cultural evolution and social evolution. In the 1970s, the term \"Neo-Evolutionism\" was used to describe the idea that \"human beings sought to preserve a familiar style of life unless change was forced on them by factors that were beyond their control.\"
The term is most often used by creationists to describe adherence to the scientific consensus on evolution as equivalent to a secular religion. The term is very seldom used within the scientific community, since the scientific position on evolution is accepted by the overwhelming majority of scientists. Because evolutionary biology is the default scientific position, it is assumed that \"scientists\" or \"biologists\" are \"evolutionists\" unless specifically noted otherwise. In the creation--evolution controversy, creationists often call those who accept the validity of the modern evolutionary synthesis \"evolutionists\" and the theory itself \"evolutionism\".
## 19th-century teleological use {#th_century_teleological_use}
Before its use to describe biological evolution, the term \"evolution\" was originally used to refer to any orderly sequence of events with the outcome somehow contained at the start. The first five editions of Darwin\'s in *Origin of Species* used the word \"evolved\", but the word \"evolution\" was only used in its sixth edition in 1872. By then, Herbert Spencer had developed the concept theory that organisms strive to evolve due to an internal \"driving force\" (orthogenesis) in 1862. Edward B. Tylor and Lewis H Morgan brought the term \"evolution\" to anthropology though they tended toward the older pre-Spencerian definition helping to form the concept of unilineal (social) evolution used during the later part of what Trigger calls the Antiquarianism-Imperial Synthesis period (c1770-c1900). The term evolutionism subsequently came to be used for the now discredited theory that evolution contained a deliberate component, rather than the selection of beneficial traits from random variation by differential survival.
## Modern use by creationists {#modern_use_by_creationists}
The term *evolution* is widely used, but the term *evolutionism* is not used in the scientific community to refer to evolutionary biology as it is redundant and anachronistic.
However, the term has been used by creationists in discussing the creation--evolution controversy. For example, the Institute for Creation Research, in order to imply placement of evolution in the category of \'religions\', including atheism, fascism, humanism and occultism, commonly uses the words *evolutionism* and *evolutionist* to describe the consensus of mainstream science and the scientists subscribing to it, thus implying through language that the issue is a matter of religious belief. The BioLogos Foundation, an organization that promotes the idea of theistic evolution, uses the term \"evolutionism\" to describe \"the atheistic worldview that so often accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution in public discourse.\" It views this as a subset of scientism
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# Entscheidungsproblem
In mathematics and computer science, the `{{lang for|de|'''Entscheidungsproblem'''|decision problem|paren=left}}`{=mediawiki}; `{{IPA|de|ɛntˈʃaɪ̯dʊŋspʁoˌbleːm|pron}}`{=mediawiki}) is a challenge posed by David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann in 1928. It asks for an algorithm that considers an inputted statement and answers \"yes\" or \"no\" according to whether it is universally valid, i.e., valid in every structure. Such an algorithm was proven to be impossible by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing in 1936.
## Completeness theorem {#completeness_theorem}
By the completeness theorem of first-order logic, a statement is universally valid if and only if it can be deduced using logical rules and axioms, so the **Entscheidungsproblem** can also be viewed as asking for an algorithm to decide whether a given statement is provable using the rules of logic.
In 1936, Alonzo Church and Alan Turing published independent papers showing that a general solution to the **Entscheidungsproblem** is impossible, assuming that the intuitive notion of \"effectively calculable\" is captured by the functions computable by a Turing machine (or equivalently, by those expressible in the lambda calculus). This assumption is now known as the Church--Turing thesis.
## History
The origin of the *Entscheidungsproblem* goes back to Gottfried Leibniz, who in the seventeenth century, after having constructed a successful mechanical calculating machine, dreamt of building a machine that could manipulate symbols in order to determine the truth values of mathematical statements. He realized that the first step would have to be a clean formal language, and much of his subsequent work was directed toward that goal. In 1928, David Hilbert and Wilhelm Ackermann posed the question in the form outlined above.
In continuation of his \"program\", Hilbert posed three questions at an international conference in 1928, the third of which became known as \"Hilbert\'s *Entscheidungsproblem*\". In 1929, Moses Schönfinkel published one paper on special cases of the decision problem, that was prepared by Paul Bernays.
As late as 1930, Hilbert believed that there would be no such thing as an unsolvable problem.
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# Entscheidungsproblem
## Negative answer {#negative_answer}
Before the question could be answered, the notion of \"algorithm\" had to be formally defined. This was done by Alonzo Church in 1935 with the concept of \"effective calculability\" based on his λ-calculus, and by Alan Turing the next year with his concept of Turing machines. Turing immediately recognized that these are equivalent models of computation.
A negative answer to the *Entscheidungsproblem* was then given by Alonzo Church in 1935--36 (**Church\'s theorem** ) and independently shortly thereafter by Alan Turing in 1936 (Turing\'s proof). Church proved that there is no computable function which decides, for two given λ-calculus expressions, whether they are equivalent or not. He relied heavily on earlier work by Stephen Kleene. Turing reduced the question of the existence of an \'algorithm\' or \'general method\' able to solve the *Entscheidungsproblem* to the question of the existence of a \'general method\' which decides whether any given Turing machine halts or not (the halting problem). If \'algorithm\' is understood as meaning a method that can be represented as a Turing machine, and with the answer to the latter question negative (in general), the question about the existence of an algorithm for the *Entscheidungsproblem* also must be negative (in general). In his 1936 paper, Turing says: \"Corresponding to each computing machine \'it\' we construct a formula \'Un(it)\' and we show that, if there is a general method for determining whether \'Un(it)\' is provable, then there is a general method for determining whether \'it\' ever prints 0\".
The work of both Church and Turing was heavily influenced by Kurt Gödel\'s earlier work on his incompleteness theorem, especially by the method of assigning numbers (a Gödel numbering) to logical formulas in order to reduce logic to arithmetic.
The **Entscheidungsproblem** is related to Hilbert\'s tenth problem, which asks for an algorithm to decide whether Diophantine equations have a solution. The non-existence of such an algorithm, established by the work of Yuri Matiyasevich, Julia Robinson, Martin Davis, and Hilary Putnam, with the final piece of the proof in 1970, also implies a negative answer to the *Entscheidungsproblem*.
## Generalizations
Using the deduction theorem, the Entscheidungsproblem encompasses the more general problem of deciding whether a given first-order sentence is entailed by a given finite set of sentences, but validity in first-order theories with infinitely many axioms cannot be directly reduced to the Entscheidungsproblem. Such more general decision problems are of practical interest. Some first-order theories are algorithmically decidable; examples of this include Presburger arithmetic, real closed fields, and static type systems of many programming languages. On the other hand, the first-order theory of the natural numbers with addition and multiplication expressed by Peano\'s axioms cannot be decided with an algorithm.
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# Entscheidungsproblem
## Fragments
By default, the citations in the section are from Pratt-Hartmann (2023).
The classical *Entscheidungsproblem* asks that, given a first-order formula, whether it is true in all models. The finitary problem asks whether it is true in all finite models. Trakhtenbrot\'s theorem shows that this is also undecidable.
Some notations: $\rm{Sat} (\Phi)$ means the problem of deciding whether there exists a model for a set of logical formulas $\Phi$. $\rm{FinSat} (\Phi)$ is the same problem, but for *finite* models. The $\rm{Sat}$-problem for a logical fragment is called decidable if there exists a program that can decide, for each $\Phi$ finite set of logical formulas in the fragment, whether $\rm{Sat} (\Phi)$ or not.
There is a hierarchy of decidabilities. On the top are the undecidable problems. Below it are the decidable problems. Furthermore, the decidable problems can be divided into a complexity hierarchy.
### Aristotelian and relational {#aristotelian_and_relational}
Aristotelian logic considers 4 kinds of sentences: \"All p are q\", \"All p are not q\", \"Some p is q\", \"Some p is not q\". We can formalize these kinds of sentences as a fragment of first-order logic$$\forall x, p(x) \to \pm q(x), \quad \exists x, p(x) \wedge \pm q(x)$$where $p, q$ are atomic predicates, and $+q := q, \; -q := \neg q$. Given a finite set of Aristotelean logic formulas, it is NLOGSPACE-complete to decide its $\rm{Sat}$. It is also NLOGSPACE-complete to decide $\rm{Sat}$ for a slight extension (Theorem 2.7)$$\forall x, \pm p(x) \to \pm q(x), \quad \exists x, \pm p(x) \wedge \pm q(x)$$Relational logic extends Aristotelean logic by allowing a relational predicate. For example, \"Everybody loves somebody\" can be written as $\forall x, \rm{body}(x), \exists y, \rm{body}(y) \wedge \rm{love}(x, y)$. Generally, we have 8 kinds of sentences$$\begin{aligned}
\forall x, p(x) \to (\forall y, q(x) \to \pm r(x, y)), &\quad \forall x, p(x) \to (\exists y, q(x) \wedge \pm r(x, y)) \\
\exists x, p(x) \wedge (\forall y, q(x) \to \pm r(x, y)), &\quad \exists x, p(x) \wedge (\exists y, q(x) \wedge \pm r(x, y))
\end{aligned}$$It is NLOGSPACE-complete to decide its $\rm{Sat}$ (Theorem 2.15). Relational logic can be extended to 32 kinds of sentences by allowing $\pm p, \pm q$, but this extension is EXPTIME-complete (Theorem 2.24).
### Arity
The first-order logic fragment where the only variable names are $x, y$ is NEXPTIME-complete (Theorem 3.18). With $x, y, z$, it is co-RE-complete to decide its $\rm{Sat}$, and RE-complete to decide $\rm{FinSat}$ (Theorem 3.15), thus undecidable.
The monadic predicate calculus is the fragment where each formula contains only 1-ary predicates and no function symbols. Its $\rm{Sat}$ is NEXPTIME-complete (Theorem 3.22).
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# Entscheidungsproblem
## Fragments
### Quantifier prefix {#quantifier_prefix}
Any first-order formula has a prenex normal form. For each possible quantifier prefix to the prenex normal form, we have a fragment of first-order logic. For example, the Bernays--Schönfinkel class, $[\exists^*\forall^*]_=$, is the class of first-order formulas with quantifier prefix $\exists\cdots\exists\forall\cdots \forall$, equality symbols, and no function symbols.
For example, Turing\'s 1936 paper (p. 263) observed that since the halting problem for each Turing machine is equivalent to a first-order logical formula of form $\forall \exists \forall \exists^6$, the problem $\rm{Sat}(\forall \exists \forall \exists^6)$ is undecidable.
The precise boundaries are known, sharply:
- $\rm{Sat}(\forall \exists \forall)$ and $\rm{Sat}([\forall \exists \forall]_{=} )$are co-RE-complete, and the $\rm{FinSat}$ problems are RE-complete (Theorem 5.2).
- Same for $\forall^3 \exists$ (Theorem 5.3).
- $\exists^* \forall^2 \exists^*$ is decidable, proved independently by Gödel, Schütte, and Kalmár.
- $[\forall^2 \exists]_=$ is undecidable.
- For any $n \geq 0$, both $\rm{Sat}(\exists^n \forall^*)$ and $\rm{Sat}([\exists^n \forall^*]_=)$ are NEXPTIME-complete (Theorem 5.1).
- This implies that $\rm{Sat}( [\exists^*\forall^*]_= )$ is decidable, a result first published by Bernays and Schönfinkel.
- For any $n \geq 0, m \geq 2$, $\rm{Sat}(\exists^n \forall \exists^m )$ is EXPTIME-complete (Section 5.4.1).
- For any $n \geq 0$, $\rm{Sat}([\exists^n \forall \exists^*]_=)$ is NEXPTIME-complete (Section 5.4.2).
- This implies that $\rm{Sat}(\exists^*\forall^*\exists^*)$ is decidable, a result first published by Ackermann.
- For any $n \geq 0$, $\rm{Sat}(\exists^n \forall \exists)$ and $\rm{Sat}([\exists^n \forall \exists]_=)$ are PSPACE-complete (Section 5.4.3).
Börger et al. (2001) describes the level of computational complexity for every possible fragment with every possible combination of quantifier prefix, functional arity, predicate arity, and equality/no-equality.
## Practical decision procedures {#practical_decision_procedures}
Having practical decision procedures for classes of logical formulas is of considerable interest for program verification and circuit verification. Pure Boolean logical formulas are usually decided using SAT-solving techniques based on the DPLL algorithm.
For more general decision problems of first-order theories, conjunctive formulas over linear real or rational arithmetic can be decided using the simplex algorithm, formulas in linear integer arithmetic (Presburger arithmetic) can be decided using Cooper\'s algorithm or William Pugh\'s Omega test. Formulas with negations, conjunctions and disjunctions combine the difficulties of satisfiability testing with that of decision of conjunctions; they are generally decided nowadays using SMT-solving techniques, which combine SAT-solving with decision procedures for conjunctions and propagation techniques. Real polynomial arithmetic, also known as the theory of real closed fields, is decidable; this is the Tarski--Seidenberg theorem, which has been implemented in computers by using the cylindrical algebraic decomposition
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# Einhard
**Einhard** (also **Eginhard** or **Einhart**; *E(g)inhardus*; c. 775 -- 14 March 840) was a Frankish scholar and courtier. Einhard was a dedicated servant of Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious; his main work is a biography of Charlemagne, the *Vita Karoli Magni*, \"one of the most precious literary bequests of the early Middle Ages\".
## Public life {#public_life}
Einhard was from the eastern German-speaking part of the Frankish Kingdom. Born into a family of landowners of some importance, his parents sent him to be educated by the monks of Fulda, one of the most impressive centers of learning in the Frank lands. Perhaps due to his small stature, which restricted his riding and sword-fighting ability, Einhard concentrated his energies on scholarship, especially the mastering of Latin. He was accepted into the hugely wealthy court of Charlemagne around 791 or 792. Charlemagne actively sought to amass scholarly men around him and established a royal school led by the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin. Einhard was evidently a talented builder and construction manager, because Charlemagne put him in charge of the completion of several palace complexes including Aachen and Ingelheim. Despite the fact that Einhard was on intimate terms with Charlemagne, he never achieved office in his reign. In 814, on Charlemagne\'s death, his son Louis the Pious made Einhard his private secretary. Einhard retired from court during the time of the disputes between Louis and his sons in the spring of 830.
He died at Seligenstadt in 840.
## Private life {#private_life}
Einhard was married to Emma, of whom little is known. There is a possibility that their marriage bore a son, Vussin. Their marriage also appears to have been exceptionally liberal for the period, with Emma being as active as Einhard, if not more so, in the handling of their property. It is said that in the later years of their marriage Emma and Einhard abstained from sexual relations, choosing instead to focus their attentions on their many religious commitments. Though he was undoubtedly devoted to her, Einhard wrote nothing of his wife until after her death on 13 December 835, when he wrote to a friend that he was reminded of her loss in 'every day, in every action, in every undertaking, in all the administration of the house and household, in everything needing to be decided upon and sorted out in my religious and earthly responsibilities'.
## Religious beliefs {#religious_beliefs}
Einhard made numerous references to himself as a \"sinner\" according to his strong Christian faith. He erected churches at both of his estates in Michelstadt and Mulinheim. In Michelstadt, he also saw fit to build a basilica completed in 827 and then sent a servant, Ratleic, to Rome with an end to find relics for the new building. Once in Rome, Ratleic robbed a catacomb of the bones of the Martyrs Marcellinus and Peter and had them translated to Michelstadt. Once there, the relics made it known they were unhappy with their new tomb and thus had to be moved again to Mulinheim. Once established there, they proved to be miracle workers. Although unsure as to why these saints should choose such a \"sinner\" as their patron, Einhard nonetheless set about ensuring they continued to receive a resting place fitting of their honour. Between 831 and 834 he founded a Benedictine Monastery and, after the death of his wife, served as its Abbot until his own death in 840.
## Local lore {#local_lore}
Local lore from Seligenstadt portrays Einhard as the lover of Emma, one of Charlemagne\'s daughters, and has the couple elope from court. Charlemagne found them at Seligenstadt (then called Obermühlheim) and forgave them. This account is used to explain the name \"Seligenstadt\" by folk etymology. Einhard and his wife were originally buried in one sarcophagus in the choir of the church in Seligenstadt, but in 1810 the sarcophagus was presented by the Grand Duke of Hesse to the count of Erbach, who claims descent from Einhard as the husband of Imma, the reputed daughter of Charlemagne. The count put it in the famous chapel of his castle at Erbach in the Odenwald.
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# Einhard
## Works
The most famous of Einhard\'s works is his biography of Charlemagne, the *Vita Karoli Magni*, \"The Life of Charlemagne\" (c. 817--836), which provides much direct information about Charlemagne\'s life and character, written sometime between 817 and 830. In composing this he relied heavily upon the Royal Frankish Annals. Einhard\'s literary model was the classical work of the Roman historian Suetonius, the *Lives of the Caesars*, though it is important to stress that the work is very much Einhard\'s own, that is to say he adapts the models and sources for his own purposes. His work was written as a praise of Charlemagne, whom he regarded as a foster-father (*nutritor*) and to whom he was a debtor \"in life and death\". The work thus contains an understandable degree of bias, Einhard taking care to exculpate Charlemagne in some matters, not mention others, and to gloss over certain issues which would be of embarrassment to Charlemagne, such as the morality of his daughters; by contrast, other issues are curiously not glossed over, like his concubines.
Einhard is also responsible for three other extant works: a collection of letters, *On the Translations and the Miracles of SS. Marcellinus and Petrus*, and *On the Adoration of the Cross*. The latter dates from c. 830 and was not rediscovered until 1885, when Ernst Dümmler identified a text in a manuscript in Vienna as the missing *Libellus de adoranda cruce*, which Einhard had dedicated to his pupil Lupus Servatus.
### Arch of Einhard {#arch_of_einhard}
The Arch of Einhard was a reliquary made by Einhard, which reproduced on a small scale a Roman triumphal arch that represented the victory of Christianity. It has not survived
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# Erasmus Alberus
**Erasmus Alberus** (c. 1500`{{snd}}`{=mediawiki}5 May 1553) was a German humanist, Lutheran reformer, and poet.
## Life
He was born in the village of Bruchenbrücken (now part of Friedberg, Hesse) about the year 1500. Although his father Tilemann Alber was a schoolmaster, his early education was neglected. Ultimately in 1518, he found his way to the University of Wittenberg, where he studied theology. He had the good fortune to attract the attention of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon, and subsequently became one of Luther\'s most active helpers in the Protestant Reformation.
Not only did he fight for the Protestant cause as a preacher and theologian, but he was almost the only member of Luther\'s party who was able to confront the Roman Catholics with the weapon of literary satire. In 1542 he published a prose satire to which Luther wrote the preface, *Der Barfusser Monche Eulenspiegel und Alkoran,* a parodic adaptation of the *Liber conformitatum* of the Franciscan Bartolommeo Rinonico of Pisa, in which the Franciscan order is held up to ridicule. This drew reactions from Catholic scholars such as Henricus Sedulius, who published the *Apologeticus aduersus Alcoranum Franciscanorum, pro Libro Conformitatum,* which criticized Alberus\' arguments in this satire.
Of higher literary value is the didactic and satirical *Buch von der Tugend und Weisheit* (1550), a collection of forty-nine fables in which Alberus embodies his views on the relations of Church and State. His satire is incisive, but in a scholarly and humanistic way; it does not appeal to popular passions with the fierce directness which enabled the master of Catholic satire, Thomas Murner, to inflict such telling blows.
Several of Alberus\'s hymns, all of which show the influence of his master Luther, have been retained in the German Protestant hymnal.
After Luther\'s death, Alberus was for a time a deacon in Wittenberg; he became involved, however, in the political conflicts of the time, and was in Magdeburg in 1550--1551, while that town was besieged by Maurice, Elector of Saxony. In 1552 he was appointed General Superintendent at Neubrandenburg in Mecklenburg, where he died on 5 May 1553.
## Translations
- *Alberus\' Thanksgiving Hymn: To You, O God, Our Thanks We Give*, translated by Nathaniel J. Biebert (Red Brick Parsonage, 2014)
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# Earley parser
In computer science, the **Earley parser** is an algorithm for parsing strings that belong to a given context-free language, though (depending on the variant) it may suffer problems with certain nullable grammars. The algorithm, named after its inventor Jay Earley, is a chart parser that uses dynamic programming; it is mainly used for parsing in computational linguistics. It was first introduced in his dissertation in 1968 (and later appeared in abbreviated, more legible form in a journal).
Earley parsers are appealing because they can parse all context-free languages, unlike LR parsers and LL parsers, which are more typically used in compilers but which can only handle restricted classes of languages. The Earley parser executes in cubic time in the general case ${O}(n^3)$, where *n* is the length of the parsed string, quadratic time for unambiguous grammars ${O}(n^2)$, and linear time for all deterministic context-free grammars. It performs particularly well when the rules are written left-recursively.
## Earley recogniser {#earley_recogniser}
The following algorithm describes the Earley recogniser. The recogniser can be modified to create a parse tree as it recognises, and in that way can be turned into a parser.
## The algorithm {#the_algorithm}
In the following descriptions, α, β, and γ represent any string of terminals/nonterminals (including the empty string), X and Y represent single nonterminals, and *a* represents a terminal symbol.
Earley\'s algorithm is a top-down dynamic programming algorithm. In the following, we use Earley\'s dot notation: given a production X → αβ, the notation X → α • β represents a condition in which α has already been parsed and β is expected.
Input position 0 is the position prior to input. Input position *n* is the position after accepting the *n*th token. (Informally, input positions can be thought of as locations at token boundaries.) For every input position, the parser generates a *state set*. Each state is a tuple (X → α • β, *i*), consisting of
- the production currently being matched (X → α β)
- the current position in that production (visually represented by the dot •)
- the position *i* in the input at which the matching of this production began: the *origin position*
(Earley\'s original algorithm included a look-ahead in the state; later research showed this to have little practical effect on the parsing efficiency, and it has subsequently been dropped from most implementations.)
A state is finished when its current position is the last position of the right side of the production, that is, when there is no symbol to the right of the dot • in the visual representation of the state.
The state set at input position *k* is called S(*k*). The parser is seeded with S(0) consisting of only the top-level rule. The parser then repeatedly executes three operations: *prediction*, *scanning*, and *completion*.
- *Prediction*: For every state in S(*k*) of the form (X → α • Y β, *j*) (where *j* is the origin position as above), add (Y → • γ, *k*) to S(*k*) for every production in the grammar with Y on the left-hand side (Y → γ).
- *Scanning*: If *a* is the next symbol in the input stream, for every state in S(*k*) of the form (X → α • *a* β, *j*), add (X → α *a* • β, *j*) to S(*k*+1).
- *Completion*: For every state in S(*k*) of the form (Y → γ •, *j*), find all states in S(*j*) of the form (X → α • Y β, *i*) and add (X → α Y • β, *i*) to S(*k*).
Duplicate states are not added to the state set, only new ones. These three operations are repeated until no new states can be added to the set. The set is generally implemented as a queue of states to process, with the operation to be performed depending on what kind of state it is.
The algorithm accepts if (X → γ •, 0) ends up in S(*n*), where (X → γ) is the top level-rule and *n* the input length, otherwise it rejects.
## Pseudocode
Adapted from Speech and Language Processing by Daniel Jurafsky and James H. Martin,
``` pascal
DECLARE ARRAY S;
function INIT(words)
S ← CREATE_ARRAY(LENGTH(words) + 1)
for k ← from 0 to LENGTH(words) do
S[k] ← EMPTY_ORDERED_SET
function EARLEY_PARSE(words, grammar)
INIT(words)
ADD_TO_SET((γ → •S, 0), S[0])
for k ← from 0 to LENGTH(words) do
for each state in S[k] do // S[k] can expand during this loop
if not FINISHED(state) then
if NEXT_ELEMENT_OF(state) is a nonterminal then
PREDICTOR(state, k, grammar) // non_terminal
else do
SCANNER(state, k, words) // terminal
else do
COMPLETER(state, k)
end
end
return chart
procedure PREDICTOR((A → α•Bβ, j), k, grammar)
for each (B → γ) in GRAMMAR_RULES_FOR(B, grammar) do
ADD_TO_SET((B → •γ, k), S[k])
end
procedure SCANNER((A → α•aβ, j), k, words)
if j < LENGTH(words) and a ⊂ PARTS_OF_SPEECH(words[k]) then
ADD_TO_SET((A → αa•β, j), S[k+1])
end
procedure COMPLETER((B → γ•, x), k)
for each (A → α•Bβ, j) in S[x] do
ADD_TO_SET((A → αB•β, j), S[k])
end
```
| 840 |
Earley parser
| 0 |
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