title: Fasting in Islam

text: In the Quran, the practice of fasting is mentioned. In Quran expresses situations in which a Muslim is allowed to abstain from fasting and introduces alternative solutions such as feeding needy people. Also, it is emphasized in verse that it is not necessary for people who are travelling or sick to be fasting. It can be postponed until "another equal number of days." According to verse , among other things, fasting may be used to make up for certain sins, such as Sacrificing an animal during a state of ""ihram"". The Quran verse also states that the Quran was revealed in the month of Ramadan. Another verse in the Quran states that it was revealed "on the Night of Power," where Muslims observe in one of the last 10 nights of Ramadan.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Fasting is primarily an exercise of devotion to willingly renounce oneself, for a definite period of time, from all bodily appetites in order to form spiritual discipline and self-control. Muslims are prohibited from eating or drinking from dawn (fajr) to dusk (maghrib) when the adhan is sounded. It is considered time to begin fasting when a person standing outside can tell a white thread from a black thread, i.e. the light of sun rise and the darkness of the night.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: "The intention (niyyah) means resolving to fast. It is essential to have the intention the night before, night by night, in Ramadaan." For fasting, the intention is necessary.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Throughout the duration of the fast itself, Muslims will abstain from certain provisions that the Quran has otherwise allowed; namely eating, drinking and sexual intercourse. This is in addition to the standard obligation already observed by Muslims of avoiding that which is not permissible under Quranic or shari'a law (e.g. ignorant and indecent speech, arguing and fighting and lustful thoughts). Without observing this standard obligation, sawm is rendered useless and is seen simply as an act of starvation. The fasting should be a motive to be more benevolent to the fellow-creatures. Charity to the poor and needy in this month is one of the most rewardable worships.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: If one is sick, pregnant, menstruating, nursing or travelling, one is considered exempt from fasting. Any fasts broken or missed due to sickness, pregnancy, menstruation nursing or travelling are not made up whenever the person is able before the next month of Ramadan. According to the Quran, for all other cases, not fasting is only permitted when the act is potentially dangerous to one's health – for example, those who are sick, elderly, or on a journey, and women who are menstruating, pregnant, or nursing are permitted to break the fast, but this must be made up by paying a Fidyah which is essentially the Iftar and Suhur for a fasting person who requires such financial help.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Muslim scholars have stated that observing the fast is forbidden for menstruating women. However, when a woman's period has ceased, she must bathe and continue fasting. Any fasts broken or missed due to menstruation must be made up whenever she can before the next month of Ramadan (not all muslims belief missing fasts due to menstruation must be made up). Women must fast at times when not menstruating, as the Quran indicates that all religious duties are ordained for both men and women. The reason for this is because the Quran refers to menstruation as "Say: It is a discomfort(Menstruation)" According to Nouman Ali Khan an Islamic speaker in the United States the reason for this prohibition is because of the pain associated with it. A Muslim woman may still do dhikr (remembrance of Allah) and make dua (supplication to Allah) during this time.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: During Ramadan, if one unintentionally breaks the fast by eating or drinking, then they must continue fasting for the rest of the day and the fast remains valid. For those who intentionally break the fast by eating or drinking, they have to make up for that and also repent. For breaking fast by having sexual intercourse, the consequences are:


title: Fasting in Islam

text: During voluntary fasts, if one unintentionally breaks the fast then they may continue for the rest of the day and the fast remains valid. If one intentionally breaks the fast there is no sin on them, because it is only voluntary.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: If an oath is given and circumstances dictate that it must be broken (or if the one giving the oath deliberately breaks it), one must offer expiation (kaffara) by freeing a slave, or feeding or clothing ten needy people with the average of what is needed for one's own family, or if neither of those can be done then a fast for three days is prescribed instead.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: In accordance with traditions handed down from Muhammad, Muslims eat a pre-dawn meal called suhur. All eating and drinking must be finished before the adhan for fajr, the pre-dawn call to prayer. Unlike the zuhr and maghrib prayer, which have clear astronomical definitions (afternoon and after-sunset), there are several definitions used in practice for the timing of "true dawn" ("al-fajr al-ṣādiq"), as mentioned in the hadith. These range from when the center of the sun is 12 to 21 degrees below the horizon which equates to about 40 to 60 minutes before civil dawn. There are no restrictions on the morning meal other than those of Islamic dietary laws. After completing the suhur, Muslims recite the fajr prayer. No food or beverage can be taken after suhur. Water can enter the mouth, but not be swallowed, during wudu.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: The meal eaten to end the fast is known as iftar. Muslims break the fast with dates and water after maghrib prayer, after which they might eat a more wholesome meal.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Fasting has been prescribed to all Muslims as a form of religious obligation for overcoming their lust and desires within a reasonable limit so that one can control oneself and prevent becoming a slave to their appetites. The Qur'an states that if humans cannot prevent themselves from desires then they cannot achieve salvation.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Muslims abstain from a permissible norm of daily life due to the command of Allah so it strengthens one's self-control and increases consciousness of the Lord. It is not prescribed as a punishment upon people or to inflict burdensome practices. It is a moral and spiritual training whose underlying idea is to teach moderation and spiritual discipline so that human temptations do not surpass the moral disciplines implemented in Islam. Furthermore, fasting is mandatory for only a definite period of time and does not promote total renunciation from the appetite of the flesh. Eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse become permissible for a human at the end of the fast. Therefore, Islamic fasting aims at promoting proper limits within its natural bounds.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Islamic fasting, as a time-restricted eating habit that inverts the normal human day-night-routine for the observants, can have deleterious health effects on sleep patterns and the general health. Fasting in Ramadan has been shown to alter the sleep patterns and the associated hormone production.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Statistical comparison of thousands of school children, part of whom were born without the month of Ramadan during pregnancy and part of whom where Ramadan coincided with the pregnancy, has revealed lower cognitive capability, and lower growth in adolescence if the mother observed Ramadan fasting during pregnancy. Children whose mother fasted during Ramadan also have a higher incidence of several chronic diseases, e.g. Type 2 Diabetes. (see the ruling regarding fasting pregnant women)


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Fasting is one of the alternatives proved to reduce the DPP-4 level and activate the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors and so, prevent osteoporosis. On the other hand, the circadian rhythm has a direct relationship with osteoporosis. This has been found by the biochemical markers, indicating that fasting at certain hours of the day, especially during those hours of the day which are recommended as part of the Muslim tradition (Islamic fasting), is very effective in reducing the effects of osteoporosis.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: The education departments of Berlin and the United Kingdom have tried to discourage students from fasting during Ramadan, as they claim that not eating or drinking can lead to concentration problems and bad grades. Ramadan fasting has also been associated with loss of workplace productivity by 35 to 50%.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Many of the purported health benefits associated with Ramadan fasting only take into account the abstinence from food while ignoring the lack of water intake, which can have a harmful impact even in healthy individuals. In many cultures, it is associated with heavy food and water intake during Suhur and Iftar times, which may do more harm than good.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Ramadan fasting is safe for healthy people provided that overall food and water intake is adequate, but those with medical conditions should seek medical advice if they encounter health problems before or during fasting. The fasting period is usually associated with modest weight loss, but weight can return afterwards.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: A review of the literature by an Iranian group suggested fasting during Ramadan might produce renal injury in patients with moderate (GFR <60 ml/min) or severe kidney disease but was not injurious to renal transplant patients with good function or most stone-forming patients. However, since sick and/or at-risk individuals are exempted from obligation of fasting, Ramadan fasting may be skipped instead.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Ramadan fasting can be potentially hazardous for pregnant women as it is associated with risks of inducing labour and causing gestational diabetes, although it does not appear to affect the child's weight. it is permissible to not fast if it threatens the woman's or the child's lives, however, in many instances pregnant women are normal before development of complications. Thus, it may be advisable for pregnant women to skip fasting and pay fidyah instead (if the women are able to pay, poor people may be exempted fully).


title: Fasting in Islam

text: It has to be taken to note, however, that if one is at risk of dehydration or other medical risks, which may lead to serious consequences, then it is permitted to break one's fast. It has been advised to span the water intake throughout the night (instead of drinking heavily at a single time) and not to overeat upon the breaking of fast as a solution of the usually reported excessive water and food intake on the sunset (excessive eating and drinking is actually prohibited in Islam). One can break their fast and substitute it on other months or pay fidyah if they are in an obvious risk of health concerns, breastfeeding or pregnant (fidyah in this case) or in a work requiring hard physical labor according to Muhammad Abduh.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: It is permissible to skip fasting for a healthy person upon obvious risk, even if he has not fallen on the risk yet, and the author of Al-Mughni (Ibn Qudamah) stated in his book that some scholars even permitted skipping fast upon very light harm such as toothache or bruises on skin and if a traveling person is permitted to skip fast even if he is able to, then these type of "sickness" should be permitted. This position is said to be held by Bukhari, 'Ata and the Zahiris.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Fasting in the month of Ramadan is considered Fard. Ibn Qudamah said that there is consensus of the Muslims that fasting is compulsory in the month of Ramadan.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: If someone swears or makes an oath, for example: "If I graduate with a good mark, I will fast for three days for Allah" then common belief dictates that one should fulfil this. This type of fasting is considered obligatory. Breaking such an oath is considered sinful.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: Although fasting is considered a pious act in Islam, there are times when fasting is considered prohibited or discouraged according to the majority of the sunni scholars:


title: Fasting in Islam

text: But there is Hadith about Al-Masih ad-Dajjal that proves that fast as prayers have to be estimated and done every 24 hours, this is the opinion of the Council of Senior Scholars in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: These concerns are because at polar latitudes, summer solstices feature the midnight sun and winter solstices have polar night. These natural phenomena occur because the earth's axis tilts toward the sun in summer and away from the sun in winter, causing the poles to be exposed to the sun's rays for six months each, non-stop. The reason most of the earliest Muslims did not experience these phenomena during Islam's early days is because they did not live in polar regions, but in the Subtropics, where the Sun can be directly overhead and does set at night.


title: Fasting in Islam

text: This results that fasting is a duty for Muslims only when days and nights are producing otherwise fasting is not necessary. So the Muslims of Svalbard in Norway have to fast only when days and nights are prominent by the sun. If Ramadan comes in June/December (when days and nights are not prominent by the sun in Svalbard) they may leave fasting and then complete their fasting in March/September (when days and nights are prominent by the sun in Svalbard, Norway). In Islamic law it is called Qada. God says in the Quran:


title: Four-minute mile

text: A four-minute mile is the completion of a mile run (1609 m) in four minutes or less. It was first achieved in 1954 by Roger Bannister, at age 25, in 3:59.4. As of April 2021, the "four-minute barrier" has been broken by 1,663 athletes, and is now a standard of professional middle distance runners in several cultures. In the 65 years since, the mile record has been lowered by almost 17 seconds, and currently stands at 3:43.13, by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco, at age 24, in 1999. Running a mile in four minutes translates to a speed of 15 miles per hour (24 km/h).


title: Four-minute mile

text: Breaking the four-minute barrier was first achieved on 6 May 1954 at Oxford University's Iffley Road Track, by British athlete Roger Bannister, with the help of fellow-runners Chris Chataway and Chris Brasher as pacemakers.


title: Four-minute mile

text: Two months later, during the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games hosted in Vancouver, B.C., two competing runners, Australia's John Landy and Bannister, ran the distance of one mile in under four minutes. The race's end is memorialised in a photo, and later a statue, of the two, with Landy looking over his left shoulder, just as Bannister is passing him on the right. Landy thus lost the race. The statue was placed in front of the Pacific National Exhibition entrance plaza.


title: Four-minute mile

text: New Zealand's John Walker, who with a 3:49.4 performance in August 1975 became the first man to run the mile under 3:50, ran 135 sub-four-minute miles during his career (during which he was the first person to run over 100 sub-four-minute miles), and American Steve Scott has run the most sub-four-minute miles, with 136. Algeria's Noureddine Morceli was the first under 3:45. Currently, the mile record is held by Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj, who ran a time of 3:43.13 in Rome in 1999.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 1964, America's Jim Ryun became the first high-school runner to break four minutes for the mile, running 3:59.0 as a junior and a then American record 3:55.3 as a senior in 1965. Tim Danielson (1966) and Marty Liquori (1967) also came in under four minutes, but Ryun's high-school record stood until Alan Webb ran 3:53.43 in 2001. Ten years later, in 2011, Lukas Verzbicas became the fifth high-schooler under four minutes. In 2015, Matthew Maton and Grant Fisher became the sixth and seventh high-schoolers to break four minutes, both running 3:59.38 about a month apart. Webb was the first high schooler to run sub-4 indoors, running 3:59.86 in early 2001. On 6 February 2016, Andrew Hunter significantly improved upon Webb's mark, running 3:58.25 on the same New York Armory track and 3:57.81 two weeks later. Hunter achieved the 4-minute mile mark outdoors later in the season at the Prefontaine Classic. At that same meet Michael Slagowski ran his second sub-4-minute of the season. Reed Brown dipped under the barrier on 1 June 2017, running the 4th fastest high school mile time ever recorded in a race: 3:59.30. In 2020, Leo Daschbach clocked 3:59.54 during the Quarantine Clasico, moving to ninth on the all time list.


title: Four-minute mile

text: Another illustration of the progression of performance in the men's mile is that, in 1994, forty years after Bannister's breaking of the barrier, the Irish runner Eamonn Coghlan became the first man over the age of 40 to run a sub-four-minute mile. Because Coghlan surpassed the mark indoors and before the IAAF validated indoor performances as being eligible for outdoor records, World Masters Athletics still had not recognised a sub-4-minute-mile performance as a record in the M40 division. Many elite athletes made the attempts to extend their careers beyond age 40 to challenge that mark. Over 18 years after Coghlan, that was finally achieved by UK's Anthony Whiteman, running 3:58.79 on 2 June 2012.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 1997, Daniel Komen of Kenya ran two miles in less than eight minutes, doubling up on Bannister's accomplishment. He did it again in February 1998, falling just 0.3 seconds behind his previous performance of 7:58.61. He is still the only individual to accomplish the feat.


title: Four-minute mile

text: The youngest runner to ever run a four-minute mile is Norwegian runner Jakob Ingebrigtsen, who ran 3:58.07 at the Prefontaine Classic in May 2017, when he was 16 years and 250 days old. However, indoor world champion Yomif Kejelcha of Ethiopia, born August 1st of 1997, ran 4:57.74 in an indoor 2000 m race on February 28, 2014, at age 16 years and 212 days. The run averages to a pace of 3:59.58 per mile for the 1.24-mile race.


title: Four-minute mile

text: The women's world record is currently at 4:12.33, set by Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands at the Diamond League meeting in Monaco on 12 July 2019. The previous women's world record, 4:12.56 set by Svetlana Masterkova of Russia on 14 August 1996 at Zürich, stood for almost 23 years: Masterkova became the first woman to run the mile in less than 4 minutes and 15 seconds.


title: Four-minute mile

text: Some (notably Olympic medallist Peter Radford) contend the first successful four-minute mile was run by James Parrott on 9 May 1770. He ran the 1-mile, west-to-east, length of Old Street to finish somewhere within the grounds/building of Shoreditch Church. Timing methods at this time were—after the invention of the chronometer by John Harrison—accurate enough to measure the four minutes correctly, and sporting authorities of the time accepted the claim as genuine. Old Street has a 11 foot downward fall, with intermittent gentle undulations. Neal Bascomb notes in "The Perfect Mile" that "even nineteenth-century historians cast a skeptical eye on the account."


title: Four-minute mile

text: On 10 October 1796, "The Sporting Magazine" reported that a young man called Weller, who was one of three brothers, "undertook for a wager of three guineas to run one mile on the Banbury Road, in four minutes, which he performed two seconds within the time." This is yet about 5 months' worth of typical rural labourer pay at the time. By the late 1700s, a mile could be routinely measured to within a few inches; watches, thanks to John Harrison, could measure 4 minutes to within 0.0009 sec (i.e. gain or lose 10 seconds a month), and after about 1750 the mass production of highly accurate watches was well underway.


title: Four-minute mile

text: It is also reputed that Glenn Cunningham achieved a four-minute mile in a workout in the 1920s. In addition to being unsubstantiated, a workout run would not count as a record.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 1955 Putnam & Co. Ltd. published Roger Bannister's account of the events in "First Four Minutes". This was later adapted as "The Four-Minute Mile" by Reader's Digest in 1958.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In the 17 November 1956 Season 2 Episode 26 Whole No. 65 of "Science Fiction Theatre" entitled "Three Minute Mile", a scientist (Marshall Thompson) attempts to create a super athlete (Martin Milner).


title: Four-minute mile

text: In the 1971 film "The Omega Man", protagonist Robert Neville, as played by Charlton Heston, claims to have run a mile in 3 minutes and 50 seconds.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 1988, the ABC and the BBC co-produced "The Four Minute Mile", a miniseries dramatization of the race to the four-minute mile, featuring Richard Huw as Bannister and Nique Needles as John Landy (who was simultaneously pursuing the milestone). It was written by David Williamson and directed by Jim Goddard.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 2004, Neal Bascomb wrote a book entitled "The Perfect Mile" about Roger Bannister, John Landy, and Wes Santee, portraying their individual attempts to break the four-minute mile and the context of the sport of mile racing. A second film version (entitled "Four Minutes") was made in 2005, starring Jamie Maclachlan as Bannister.


title: Four-minute mile

text: Also in 2004, a 50 pence coin was minted in the United Kingdom to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bannister running the four-minute mile. There were 9,032,500 minted in 2004. The coin was re-struck in 2019 as part of the '50 years of the 50p coin' set released by the Royal Mint, only for collector sets.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In 2005, ESPN released an tv adaptation of the event called “Four Minutes” featuring Jamie Maclachlan as Roger Bannister and Christopher Plummer as his wheelchair bound coach, Archie Mason.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In June 2011, the watch used to time the original event was donated by Jeffrey Archer to a charity auction for Oxford University Athletics Club; it sold for £97,250.


title: Four-minute mile

text: In July 2016, the BBC broadcast the documentary "Bannister: Everest on the Track, The Roger Bannister Story" with firsthand interviews from Bannister and various other figures on the first sub-4-minute mile.


title: Sberbank

text: PJSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. It was called Sberbank of Russia until 2015 (currently: Sber). Sberbank has operations in several European nations, primarily post-Soviet countries.


title: Sberbank

text: By 2022, the bank accounted for about a third of all bank assets in Russia. The bank's rise since 1990s is in part due to its close connections to the Russian government. it was the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe, and the third largest in Europe, ranked 60th in the world and first in central and Eastern Europe in "The Banker"s Top 1000 World Banks ranking. In the world ranking of public companies "Forbes" "Global 2000" Sberbank takes 51st place.


title: Sberbank

text: Sberbank's history goes back to Cancrin's financial reform of 1841, when a network of the first state-owned savings banks was created in Russian Empire. By the end of the 19th century, the network reached almost 4 thousand outlets with over 2 million depositors.


title: Sberbank

text: Since 1905, savings bank outlets became authorised to sell insurance. After 1910, savings banks started subsidising credit cooperation institutions and extending loans to small lenders. In 1915, savings bank outlets started accepting government securities for depositing.


title: Sberbank

text: After the October Revolution of 1917, the state savings banks system continued its activity and growth under the management of the Finance Ministry of the USSR as the State Labour Savings Banks System. From 1926, the saving bank outlets were used to pay wages to blue- and white-collar workers. The savings banks were used to distribute state lottery tickets and for the placement of state bonds with the population. The savings banks introduced wider services such as money transfers.


title: Sberbank

text: By late 1980s, the Soviet savings bank system had almost 80 thousand branches. As part of Perestroika reforms, in 1987 the savings bank outlets are reorganised into the Savings Bank of the USSR. Within the Savings bank of the USSR, separate savings banks were created in the Soviet Republics. Following the dissolution of the USSR, the former republican savings banks became state savings banks of the newly independent post-Soviet states.


title: Sberbank

text: In 1991, the Savings bank of the RSFSR has been reorganised into the Joint-Stock Commercial Savings Bank of the Russian Federation (Sberbank of Russia).


title: Sberbank

text: In post-Soviet Russia, Sberbank is the largest universal bank despite growing competition from private and other state-owned commercial banks. The bank has gradually expanded its international presence.


title: Sberbank

text: Since 2007, Sberbank is led by former economy minister Herman Gref who is a very close friend of Vladimir Putin.


title: Sberbank

text: In 2011, Sberbank acquired Volksbank International AG from its shareholders Österreichische Volksbanken AG, BPCE, DZ Bank and WGZ Bank. The deal included all Volksbank assets - banks in Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, except for Volksbank Romania. The agreed price was €585 to €645 million, depending on Volksbank business performance in 2011. Volksbank's total assets excluding Romania was €9.4 billion in June 2011. On 16 December 2013, Volksbank (Ukraine), which was a wholly owned subsidiary of Sberbank, changed its name to ().


title: Sberbank

text: In June 2012 Sberbank bought the Turkish DenizBank for Turkish lira 6,469 billion (about EUR 2,821 billion or US$3.504 billion) from the lender Dexia, which in 2011 was "partly nationalized by the governments of France, Belgium and Luxembourg". The deal included DenizBank subsidiaries in Turkey, Austria and Russia.


title: Sberbank

text: After the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia in 2014, the Obama administration imposed targeted sanctions on 12 September 2014, through the US Department of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) by adding Sberbank and other entities to the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications (SSI) List. This was done in concert with 31 July 2014 addition of Sberbank to the European Union sanctions list. Sanctions consist of access restriction to the EU and US capital markets. After announcement of the sanctions, and by the end of July, Sberbank's market value had dropped the most market value among the world's major lenders plus investors moved $22 billion from Sberbank's market capitalization. Still, during the following year Sberbank's share price grew back 89%. Sberbank together with other Russian banks filed claims with the highest EU court to lift the punitive economic measures.


title: Sberbank

text: On 27 August 2014, Switzerland imposed sanctions on Sberbank and other Russian financial institutions.


title: Sberbank

text: On 22 December 2015, the United States imposed additional sanctions on Sberbank and its subsidiaries.


title: Sberbank

text: On 17 October 2016, Ukraine imposed sanctions against Sberbank Russia, Sberbank Leasing, and their payment systems Kolibri (Hummingbird), formerly Blitz ().


title: Sberbank

text: On 15 March 2017, the president of Ukraine imposed sanctions on Sberbank (and other Russian state-owned banks operating in Ukraine: VTB Bank, BM Bank, Prominvestbank, and ()) as part of its continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the War in Donbas.


title: Sberbank

text: In December 2017, due to sanctions, Sberbank sold its Ukrainian subsidiary, VS Bank () to Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Tihipko.


title: Sberbank

text: As of May 2016, Sberbank dominated the card payments business in Russia with over 61% of the market. Sberbank's competitors in the card business are VTB Bank, Alfa-Bank, Tinkoff Bank, and Gazprombank which combined only had a 29% of the card business market.


title: Sberbank

text: On 24 February 2022, as a result of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, US president Joe Biden announced sanctions against additional Russian individuals and companies, including new restrictions on Sberbank's operations, after which Sberbank's stock lost more than half of its value.


title: Sberbank

text: On 28 February 2022, Sberbank Europe was facing bankruptcy as a consequence of the sanctions. Deutsche Börse suspended trading of Sberbank stock. Two days later, Sberbank Europe declared that it was leaving the European market.


title: Sberbank

text: Visa and Mastercard suspended their activities in Russia at the beginning of March 2022. Cards of these systems issued by Russian banks no longer worked outside of Russia, and all Visa cards issued outside of Russia no longer work within Russia.


title: Sberbank

text: In April 2022, Apple and Google removed Sberbank mobile apps from their stores. The Android application can be downloaded from the bank's website, but iPhone users did not have this option. In August, the SBOL application appeared in the App Store. It does not formally belong to Sber, but it fully reproduces the functionality of the removed application. A week later, this app was also removed from App Store.


title: Sberbank

text: In 2020, Sberbank undertook a rebranding. In addition to changing the logo and legalizing the reduction “Sber”, the company announced the transformation of the bank into an “ecosystem”.


title: Sberbank

text: Sberbank decided to become "more than a bank" and began to develop various services, mainly digital: online cinema (Okko), music (SberSound), food delivery (SberMarket), cloud storage (SberDisk), taxi (Citymobil).


title: Sberbank

text: Initially, the "ecosystem" was built in partnership with the large Internet holding Mail.ru Group, for which a joint venture O2O (online-to-offline) Holding was created with a capital of about 100 billion rubles. However, in the spring of 2021, the parties decided to end cooperation due to disagreements over management methods and corporate culture.


title: Sberbank

text: Another component of the "ecosystem" is pharmacies. Having launched an online service, Sber Eapteka (e-drugstore), Sber soon decided to expand the business and open pharmacies in its own branches. It is assumed that purchases there will be more profitable due to targeted packaging of drugs, as well as the production of its own generics.


title: Sberbank

text: In the summer of 2021, Sberbank announced the implementation of the Sabbatical practice. Employees are allowed to take unpaid leave of up to a year - with the retention of their jobs (although this requires the consent of the immediate supervisor). It is also allowed to work remotely for three months a year.


title: Sberbank

text: The majority shareholder of Sberbank is the Russian National Wealth Fund managed by the Government of Russia (until 2020 the Central Bank of the Russian Federation), owning 50%+1 voting share of Sberbank's voting shares. The rest of the shares are dispersed among portfolio, private and other investors.


title: Sberbank

text: The president and chief executive officer is Herman Gref, confirmed by the board of directors on 16 October 2007.


title: Sberbank

text: Sergei Gorkov joined Sberbank in November 2008 eventually becoming the head of the international operations and the senior vice chairman of the board from 10 October 2010, until 26 February 2016, when he left Sberbank to become the Chairman of Vnesheconombank (VEB). He greatly expanded Sberbank from operations in only two foreign countries, Kazakhstan (2006) and Ukraine (December 2007), to over twenty countries including Belarus (2009), Germany (2009), China (2010), India (September 2010), Switzerland (31 December 2011), Austria (acquisition of Volksbank International AG on 15 February 2012; changed name to Sberbank Europe AG on 1 November 2012, with locations in Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Ukraine, and Germany), Bosnia-Herzegovina (20 February 2013), Hungary (31 December 2011; 1 November 2013, as Sberbank Hungary Ltd), Croatia (February 2012), Czech Republic (20 February 2013), Slovenia (28 January 2013), Serbia (24 December 2012), Slovakia (15 February 2013), and Turkey (acquisition of DenizBank in September 2012). Following Gorkov's departure, Svetlana Alekseyevna Sagaydak () became the new Senior Vice Chairman of the Board.


title: Sberbank

text: The chairman of the supervisory board of Sberbank (since April 2021) is Anton Siluanov, Minister of Finance of Russia.


title: Sberbank

text: Formerly from 2003 to 2013 the head of RIA Novosti and from 2006 to 2016 its editor in chief, Svetlana Mironyuk is a vice-president and the head of marketing and communications since 1 February 2016.


title: Sberbank

text: In February 2022, Sverbank announced foundation of its own e-commerce holding, headed by its former top-manager Lev Khasis but in a week on Feb 22,2022 he left Sberbank.


title: Sberbank

text: As of 2015 the bank had about 16,500 offices with over 250,000 employees. According to own estimates, the bank had over 137 million retail clients and over 1.1 million corporate clients in its 22 countries of presence.


title: Sberbank

text: As of August 2015 it accounted for 28.6% of aggregate banking assets, calling itself "the circulatory system of the Russian economy","key lender to the Russian economy and the biggest receiver of deposits".


title: Sberbank

text: The 19 August 2021 Supreme Court of Ukraine ruling forbids the daughter of the Russian Sberbank in Ukraine to use the trademark "Sberbank" since it ruled that Oschadbank is the sole legal owner of the trademark "Sberbank" in Ukraine.


title: Sberbank

text: In November 2021, aiming to focus on priority markets, Sberbank Europe AG sold associated banks in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sberbank a.d. Banja LuKa and Sberbank BH d.d. Sarajevo), in Croatia (Sberbank d.d.), in Hungary (Sberbank Magyarorszag Zrt.), in Serbia (Sberbank Srbija a.d. Beograd) and in Slovenia (Sberbank banka d.d.) to Serbian MK Group for about 500 million Euros.


title: Sberbank

text: Sberbank sponsors sports and charity events in various regions of Russia, as well as educational projects including projects developing financial literacy.


title: Sberbank

text: Sberbank is the successor of Soviet Saving Banks (as it name implies), whose assets belonged to the state. During Russia's transition to a market economy in the 1990s, in which these assets were sold, Sberbank provided no guarantee for citizens' deposits. This resulted in a landslide depreciation, which in turn led to severe discontent among the Russian population. Since 1996, partial compensation for investors' losses has been offered. However, until 2003 this only applied to state-owned banks such as Sberbank, giving them an unfair advantage over fully private banks.


title: Sberbank

text: The law of 1995 assumed that in 2003 the repayment of debts to the population would begin, taking into account the real value of the ruble at the current moment. However, for 20 years, the start of payments was regularly postponed. As of 2022, the full repayment of the debt would cost the state almost 200 trillion rubles. In the fall of 2022, the government introduced a bill on a new delay - until 2026.


title: Sberbank

text: In the early 2000s, Sberbank was repeatedly blamed for poor service. In subsequent years, Sberbank introduced new services and improved the quality of some of its existing ones. By the mid-2010s, the bank was reportedly among the market leaders with regards to quality of client services, such as services for retail depositors, premium services and several others.


title: Sberbank

text: Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky accused numerous persons and entities of laundering stolen money in tax fraud in a in Russia. Owned by Denis Katsyv, Prevezon Holdings, represented by Natalia Vladimirovna Veselnitskaya and Louis Freeh, paid $6 million to resolve the claim without admitting any crime which subsequently led to all charges being dropped by the Justice Department in the summer of 2017.


title: Sberbank

text: In United States court, Sergey P. Poymanov (), a Voronezh-based businessman, sued Sberbank, several of its subsidiaries and executives, and a business rival for $750 million, claiming that a valuable granite gravel quarry he owned was illegally bankrupted and seized by the bank in a corporate raid in 2012. Sberbank says it took the quarry as collateral after Mr. Poymanov failed to repay a loan. Sberbank is retaining Marc Kasowitz for this court case.


title: Sberbank

text: In January 2017 Herman Gref, a bank chief executive, has personally commented on Poymanov case, referring to the latter as a "fraudster" and accusing him of not paying loands and debts, and that Poymanov is charged with a felony. He said that Poymanov "extracted" a lot of money out of the company and that he was offered with a restructuring of his loans but allegedly refused.


title: Sberbank

text: Poymanov was subsequently charged with a bunch of misdemeanors and arrested on May 24, 2017, by Russian police who then subjected him to harsh pretrial detention at a notoriously rough Moscow jail, Matrosskaya Tishina, which is the same jail where Magnitsky died. He was charged with alleged embezzlement of company's money amounting to almost 1 billion rubles (about $13 billion) as a part of Bankruptcy fraud.


title: Sberbank

text: In April 2014, several Ukrainian officials accused Sberbank of funding the 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine, including alleged terrorism. The bank denied any involvement in the financing of illegal activities on Ukrainian territory, which was later confirmed by an examination carried out by the National Bank of Ukraine.


title: Sberbank

text: "It is another instance of aggressive nationalism of neo-Nazi dogma that is gathering momentum in Ukraine and obviously enjoys support of official authorities of the country," the Russian foreign ministry stated.


title: Sberbank

text: 15 March 2017, the president of Ukraine imposed sanctions on Sberbank (and other Russian state-owned banks operating in Ukraine: VTB Bank, BM Bank, Prominvestbank, and ()) as part of its continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the War in Donbas. Since then, Sberbank's Ukrainian subsidiary, VS Bank (), has been put on sale. But it has been unsuccessfully trying to sell the asset after the National Bank of Ukraine blocked the sale of the bank due to a "failure to provide the necessary and sufficient documents to carry out checks on the investors in compliance with Ukrainian law." In 2017 Sberbank was reported to be waiting for approval from the National Bank of Ukraine to sell its Ukrainian subsidiaries. "Everything is prepared on our side. The question is whether we will be given a permission to sell or not by Ukrainian authorities," Herman Gref who is the chairman of Sberbank said on the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 2018. On 13 December 2017, Sberbank sold another subsidiary, VS Bank (), to a Ukrainian banker, former PrivatBank chairman Serhiy Tihipko.


title: Sberbank

text: In March 2019, the Troika Laundromat was exposed as an international money laundering network involving the Troika Dialog which is an investment bank that has been merged with the Sberbank's subsidiary Sberbank CIB.


title: Sberbank

text: In October 2019, it was revealed that analysts from cybersecurity firm DeviceLock had shared information about a large Sberbank data breach with the newspaper, the Kommersant. The personal information of up to 60 million Sberbank credit cards had been offered for sale on the black market. It was the largest data breach to have taken place in Russian banking.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: The Gothic alphabet is an alphabet used for writing the Gothic language. Ulfilas (or Wulfila) developed it in the 4th century AD for the purpose of translating the Bible.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: The alphabet essentially uses uncial forms of the Greek alphabet, with a few additional letters to express Gothic phonology:


title: Gothic alphabet

text: Ulfilas is thought to have consciously chosen to avoid the use of the older Runic alphabet for this purpose, as it was heavily connected with pagan beliefs and customs. Also, the Greek-based script probably helped to integrate the Gothic nation into the dominant Greco-Roman culture around the Black Sea.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: Below is a table of the Gothic alphabet. Two letters used in its transliteration are not used in current English: thorn "þ" (representing ), and hwair (representing ).


title: Gothic alphabet

text: As with the Greek alphabet, Gothic letters were also assigned numerical values. When used as numerals, letters were written either between two dots (•• = 12) or with an overline ( = 12). Two letters, (90) and (900), have no phonetic value.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: The letter names are recorded in a 9th-century manuscript of Alcuin (Codex Vindobonensis 795). Most of them seem to be Gothic forms of names also appearing in the rune poems. The names are given in their attested forms followed by the reconstructed Gothic forms and their meanings.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: Most of the letters have been taken over directly from the Greek alphabet, though a few have been created or modified from Latin and possibly (more controversially) Runic letters to express unique phonological features of Gothic. These are:


title: Gothic alphabet

text: Regarding the letters' numeric values, most correspond to those of the Greek numerals. Gothic takes the place of Ϝ (6), takes the place of ξ (60), that of Ο (70), and that of ψ (700).


title: Gothic alphabet

text: Diacritics and punctuation used in the Codex Argenteus include a trema placed on "i", transliterated as "ï", in general applied to express diaeresis, the interpunct (·) and colon (:) as well as overlines to indicate sigla (such as "xaus" for "xristaus") and numerals.


title: Gothic alphabet

text: The Unicode block for Gothic is U+10330– U+1034F in the "Supplementary Multilingual Plane". As older software that uses UCS-2 (the predecessor of UTF-16) assumes that all Unicode codepoints can be expressed as 16 bit numbers (U+FFFF or lower, the "Basic Multilingual Plane"), problems may be encountered using the Gothic alphabet Unicode range and others outside of the "Basic Multilingual Plane".


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: In food processing, fermentation is the conversion of carbohydrates to alcohol or organic acids using microorganisms—yeasts or bacteria—under anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions. Fermentation usually implies that the action of microorganisms is desired. The science of fermentation is known as zymology or zymurgy.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: The term "fermentation" sometimes refers specifically to the chemical conversion of sugars into ethanol, producing alcoholic drinks such as wine, beer, and cider. However, similar processes take place in the leavening of bread (CO produced by yeast activity), and in the preservation of sour foods with the production of lactic acid, such as in sauerkraut and yogurt.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Other widely consumed fermented foods include vinegar, olives, and cheese. More localised foods prepared by fermentation may also be based on beans, grain, vegetables, fruit, honey, dairy products, and fish.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Natural fermentation precedes human history. Since ancient times, humans have exploited the fermentation process. The earliest archaeological evidence of fermentation is 13,000-year-old residues of a beer, with the consistency of gruel, found in a cave near Haifa in Israel. Another early alcoholic drink, made from fruit, rice, and honey, dates from 7000 to 6600 BC, in the Neolithic Chinese village of Jiahu, and winemaking dates from ca. 6000 BC, in Georgia, in the Caucasus area. Seven-thousand-year-old jars containing the remains of wine, now on display at the University of Pennsylvania, were excavated in the Zagros Mountains in Iran. There is strong evidence that people were fermenting alcoholic drinks in Babylon ca. 3000 BC, ancient Egypt ca. 3150 BC, pre-Hispanic Mexico ca. 2000 BC, and Sudan ca. 1500 BC.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: When studying the fermentation of sugar to alcohol by yeast, Pasteur concluded that the fermentation was catalyzed by a vital force, called "ferments", within the yeast cells. The "ferments" were thought to function only within living organisms. "Alcoholic fermentation is an act correlated with the life and organization of the yeast cells, not with the death or putrefaction of the cells", he wrote.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Nevertheless, it was known that yeast extracts can ferment sugar even in the absence of living yeast cells. While studying this process in 1897, the German chemist and zymologist Eduard Buchner of Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, found that sugar was fermented even when there were no living yeast cells in the mixture, by an enzyme complex secreted by yeast that he termed "zymase". In 1907 he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research and discovery of "cell-free fermentation".


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Food fermentation is the conversion of sugars and other carbohydrates into alcohol or preservative organic acids and carbon dioxide. All three products have found human uses. The production of alcohol is made use of when fruit juices are converted to wine, when grains are made into beer, and when foods rich in starch, such as potatoes, are fermented and then distilled to make spirits such as gin and vodka. The production of carbon dioxide is used to leaven bread. The production of organic acids is exploited to preserve and flavor vegetables and dairy products.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Food fermentation serves five main purposes: to enrich the diet through development of a diversity of flavors, aromas, and textures in food substrates; to preserve substantial amounts of food through lactic acid, alcohol, acetic acid, and alkaline fermentations; to enrich food substrates with protein, essential amino acids, and vitamins; to eliminate antinutrients; and to reduce cooking time and the associated use of fuel.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Cheonggukjang, doenjang, fermented bean curd, miso, natto, soy sauce, stinky tofu, tempeh, oncom, soybean paste, Beijing mung bean milk, kinama, iru, thua nao


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Amazake, beer, bread, choujiu, gamju, injera, kvass, makgeolli, murri, ogi, rejuvelac, sake, sikhye, sourdough, sowans, rice wine, malt whisky, grain whisky, idli, dosa, Bangla (drink)


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Wine, vinegar, cider, perry, brandy, atchara, nata de coco, burong mangga, asinan, pickling, vişinată, chocolate, rakı, aragh sagi, chacha (brandy)


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Some kinds of cheese also, kefir, kumis (mare milk), shubat (camel milk), cultured milk products such as quark, filmjölk, crème fraîche, smetana, skyr, and yogurt


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Bagoong, faseekh, fish sauce, Garum, Hákarl, jeotgal, ngapi, padaek, pla ra, prahok, rakfisk, shrimp paste, surströmming, shidal


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Sterilization is an important factor to consider during the fermentation of foods. Failing to completely remove any microbes from equipment and storing vessels may result in the multiplication of harmful organisms within the ferment, potentially increasing the risks of food borne illnesses like botulism. However, botulism in vegetable ferments is only possible when not properly canned. The production of off smells and discoloration may be indications that harmful bacteria may have been introduced to the food.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: Alaska has witnessed a steady increase of cases of botulism since 1985. It has more cases of botulism than any other state in the United States of America. This is caused by the traditional Alaska Native practice of allowing animal products such as whole fish, fish heads, walrus, sea lion, and whale flippers, beaver tails, seal oil, and birds, to ferment for an extended period of time before being consumed. The risk is exacerbated when a plastic container is used for this purpose instead of the old-fashioned, traditional method, a grass-lined hole, as the "Clostridium botulinum" bacteria thrive in the anaerobic conditions created by the air-tight enclosure in plastic.


title: Fermentation in food processing

text: The World Health Organization has classified pickled foods as possibly carcinogenic, based on epidemiological studies. Other research found that fermented food contains a carcinogenic by-product, ethyl carbamate (urethane). "A 2009 review of the existing studies conducted across Asia concluded that regularly eating pickled vegetables roughly doubles a person's risk for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma."


title: Bôa

text: Bôa (stylized bôa) is an English alternative rock band formed in London in 1993 by drummer Ed Herten, keyboard player Paul Turrell, and guitarist/vocalist Steve Rodgers. The band progressed from a funk band to a rock band over the years, as bassist Alex Caird and multi-instrumentalist Ben Henderson joined the group, and Jasmine Rodgers was added as vocalist. They produced two major albums, "Twilight" (2001) and "Get There" (2005). Their track "Duvet" was the opening theme song to the anime television series "Serial Experiments Lain". The band was originally signed by Polystar in Japan and produced their first album "The Race of a Thousand Camels" (1998). However, the band decided to change labels and signed with Pioneer LDC (now called NBCUniversal Entertainment Japan) to produce their album "Twilight" (2001). Bôa's current lineup consists of Jasmine Rodgers (vocals), Steve Rodgers (vocals and guitar), Alex Caird (bass), and Lee Sullivan (drums and piano).


title: Bôa

text: Following their success with "Twilight", the band decided to create their own independent label called Bôa Recordings to produce. "Get There" was released on 1 February 2005. It took Bôa in a new direction, with more structure in lyrics and melody, as well as a more mellow, yet more harder-edged/indie rock format. It also had more acoustic elements than the first album.


title: Bôa

text: Originally a funk band, Bôa was formed in 1993 by drummer Ed Herten, keyboardist Paul Turrell, and Steve Rodgers on guitar and vocals.


title: Bôa

text: Alex Caird, who had played with Ed in another band Draggin' Bones, was soon recruited on bass guitar. Steve's younger sister, Jasmine Rodgers, was invited to sing the chorus part of one of their first songs called "Fran", and she soon became the lead singer of the group. Ben Henderson, who had played with Alex in the band Doctor Sky, was recruited shortly afterwards to play saxophone.


title: Bôa

text: Their first live performance was in January 1994 at the London Forum, supporting Steve and Jasmine's father, classic rock singer Paul Rodgers (of Free & Bad Company fame). In the summer of the same year, Ed Herten decided to leave the band to concentrate on his studies. The new drummer, Lee Sullivan, is the son of Terry Sullivan, the drummer in the band Renaissance. Lee brought a rockier feel to the group's sound which complemented a natural progression away from funk by the band and a migration from saxophone to guitar by Ben Henderson.


title: Bôa

text: Bôa honed their live performances with many gigs across the South of England such as the Glastonbury festival (1995). As a result of their Glastonbury performance, they were chosen as the focus of a TV documentary about the festival that was later distributed on the London show "Shift". In 1996, they accepted a recording contract with a Japanese Company, Polystar. They recorded three songs, "Twilight", "Deeply", and "Elephant" in London, with producer Darren Allison (Spiritualized, The Divine Comedy) at the Red Bus studios in London. They recorded further tracks for the album with producer Neil Walsh at the Monnow Valley Studios. Although the album was recorded and produced in England, Jasmine and Steve traveled to Japan in 1998 to promote the debut album "Race of the Thousand Camels", which was released only in that country.


title: Bôa

text: While signed with Polystar, the band released their first single in 1998, called "Duvet". It was a success in Japan, and became the opening theme of the anime series "Serial Experiments Lain". "Duvet" was also on the 1998 album "Race of a Thousand Camels" in Japan. Meanwhile, Boa was working with producer Stuart Epps on new material including an acoustic version of "Duvet" and the song "Drinking".


title: Bôa

text: In 2000, Polystar released both the "Tall Snake EP", and featured "Duvet" on the "20th Anniversary of Polystar Collection Vol.1 Female Vocal Love Songs" compilation. The "Tall Snake EP" was released in Japan featuring all three versions of "Duvet" and two songs ("Little Miss" and "Two Steps"). However, in 2000, Ben Henderson left the band to concentrate on his other band, Moth, with his wife, singer songwriter Tina Henderson, who together currently record and perform regularly at Steampunk festivals and events in the UK.


title: Bôa

text: Bôa began touring more extensively and used this time to gain inspiration for their next album. In 2000, Bôa performed a live concert at the Otakon convention and was well received by fans of the "Serial Experiments Lain" series. In September 2002, they held a live performance at the Hammersmith Apollo (London) and received strong accolades for their performance.


title: Bôa

text: In 2001, due to contractual disagreements with Polystar, the band changed labels and signed with Pioneer LDC (now known as Geneon Universal). "Race of a Thousand Camels" was retitled "Twilight" and released to a US audience in 2001 by Pioneer Music. "Twilight" consisted of songs from their original Japanese album plus other new tracks. They worked closely with Todd Culberhouse and toured in the US to promote the album. Halfway through the tour, Paul Turrell left the band to pursue other interests. However, the band went on to finish the tour and played at the Animefest in Dallas, Texas (Aug 2001).


title: Bôa

text: "Duvet" was remixed by DJ Wasei and in October 2003 was released on another "Lain" soundtrack titled "Serial Experiment Lain Soundtrack: Cyberia Mix". The band also released a video to go with the single which was reported to have been filmed on top of the roof of Lee Sullivan's flat.


title: Bôa

text: By 2003, the band decided to establish their own recording label, called Boa Recordings. They started recording their third successful album titled "Get There" and released it under their own label in 2004. The album was sold on the iTunes Store, and both their albums "Twilight" and "Get There" were sold by their official distributor CD Baby.


title: Bôa

text: In September 2004, Steve and Jasmine performed "Drinking" with their father, Paul Rodgers, at The Strat Pack. The Strat Pack was a concert featuring Joe Walsh, Gary Moore, Brian May, David Gilmour, and many more, marking the 50th Anniversary of the Fender Stratocaster guitar. The film was released in 2005.


title: Bôa

text: In 2012, the band started a JustGiving page and announced their support to raise money for AAR JAPAN, a charity that responded to the impact of the 2011 tsunami.


title: Bôa

text: On 5 January 2017, the band announced, on their official Facebook page, the death of former keyboard player Paul Turrell that had happened one day prior.


title: Bôa

text: In May 2017, an unreleased album was discovered on late keyboard player Paul Turrell's website titled "The Farm".


title: Bôa

text: In December 2018, a vinyl edition of Duvet was released exclusively for the Japanese market. This was a surprise to Bôa, who were not aware of the pressing of the record, shared the news on their official Facebook page and asked if fans bought the edition from Japan.


title: Pump organ

text: The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. The idea for the free reed was imported from China through Russia after 1750, and the first Western free-reed instrument was made in 1780 in Denmark.


title: Pump organ

text: More portable than pipe organs, free-reed organs were widely used in smaller churches and in private homes in the 19th century, but their volume and tonal range were limited. They generally had one or sometimes two manuals, with pedal-boards being rare. The finer pump organs had a wider range of tones, and the cabinets of those intended for churches and affluent homes were often excellent pieces of furniture. Several million free-reed organs and melodeons were made in the US and Canada between the 1850s and the 1920s, some of which were exported. The Cable Company, Estey Organ, and Mason & Hamlin were popular manufacturers.


title: Pump organ

text: Alongside the furniture-sized instruments of the west, smaller designs exist. The portable, hand-pumped harmonium or samvadini is a major instrument on the Indian subcontinent developed by Indians to meet local needs. The craftsmen created a harmonium that a single person could carry, with added microtones.


title: Pump organ

text: During the first half of the 18th century, a free-reed mouth organ called a sheng was brought to Russia. That instrument received attention due to its use by Johann Wilde. The instrument's free-reed was unknown in Europe at the time, and the concept quickly spread from Russia across Europe. Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723–1795), professor of physiology at Copenhagen, was credited with the first free-reed instrument made in the Western world, after winning the annual prize in 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. According to Curt Sachs, Kratzenstein suggested that the instrument be made, but that the first organ with free reeds was made by Abbé Georg Joseph Vogler in Darmstadt. The harmonium's design incorporates free reeds and derives from the earlier regal. A harmonium-like instrument was exhibited by Gabriel-Joseph Grenié (1756–1837) in 1810. He called it an "orgue expressif" (expressive organ), because his instrument was capable of greater expression, as well as of producing a crescendo and diminuendo. Alexandre Debain improved Grenié's instrument and gave it the name harmonium when he patented his version in 1840. There was concurrent development of similar instruments. Jacob Alexandre and his son Édouard introduced the orgue mélodium in 1844. Hector Berlioz included it in his Grand traité d'instrumentation et d'orchestration modernes, published in Paris by Schoenberger, [1843?] or [1844?], in an « Instruments nouveaux » section on pp. 290-92, and in the 1856 reprint, found on pp. 472-77 in Peter Bloom's critical edition published by Bärenreiter, Vol.24, in Kassel and New York, 2003. Berlioz also wrote about it in several subsequent journals (Bloom, p. 472, nn. 1 & 2). He used it in 1 work: L'enfance du Christ, Part 1, scene vi, where it is off stage. When he conducted it in Weimar on 21 February 1855, it was played by Franz Liszt (Bloom, p. 474, n. 3).A mechanic who had worked in the factory of Alexandre in Paris emigrated to the United States and conceived the idea of a suction bellows, instead of the ordinary bellows that forced the air outward through the reeds. Beginning in 1885, the firm of Mason & Hamlin, of Boston made their instruments with the suction bellows, and this method of construction soon superseded all others in America.


title: Pump organ

text: The term melodeon was applied to concert saloons in the Victorian American West because of the use of the reed instrument. The word became a common designation of that type of resort that offered entertainment to men.


title: Pump organ

text: Harmoniums reached the height of their popularity in the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were especially popular in small churches and chapels where a pipe organ would be too large or expensive; in the funeral-"in-absentia" scene from Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", the protagonist narrates that the church procured a "melodeum" (a conflation, likely intended by Twain for satirical effect, of the names "melodeon" and "harmonium") for the occasion. Harmoniums generally weigh less than similar sized pianos and are not easily damaged in transport, thus they were also popular throughout the colonies of the European powers in this period not only because it was easier to ship the instrument out to where it was needed, but it was also easier to transport overland in areas where good-quality roads and railways may have been non-existent. An added attraction of the harmonium in tropical regions was that the instrument held its tune regardless of heat and humidity, unlike the piano. This "export" market was sufficiently lucrative for manufacturers to produce harmoniums with cases impregnated with chemicals to prevent woodworm and other damaging organisms found in the tropics.


title: Pump organ

text: At the peak of the instruments' Western popularity around 1900, a wide variety of styles of harmoniums were being produced. These ranged from simple models with plain cases and only four or five stops (if any at all), up to large instruments with ornate cases, up to a dozen stops and other mechanisms such as couplers. Expensive harmoniums were often built to resemble pipe organs, with ranks of fake pipes attached to the top of the instrument. Small numbers of harmoniums were built with two manuals (keyboards). Some were even built with pedal keyboards, which required the use of an assistant to run the bellows or, for some of the later models, an electrical pump. These larger instruments were mainly intended for home use, such as allowing organists to practise on an instrument on the scale of a pipe organ, but without the physical size or volume of such an instrument. For missionaries, chaplains in the armed forces, travelling evangelist etc., reed organs that folded up into a container the size of a very large suitcase or small trunk were made; these had a short keyboard and few stops, but they were more than adequate for keeping hymn singers more or less on pitch.


title: Pump organ

text: The invention of the electronic organ in the mid-1930s spelled the end of the harmonium's success in the West, although its popularity as a household instrument had already declined in the 1920s as musical tastes changed . The Hammond organ could imitate the tonal quality and range of a pipe organ whilst retaining the compact dimensions and cost-effectiveness of the harmonium as well as reducing maintenance needs and allowing a greater number of stops and other features. By this time, harmoniums had reached high levels of mechanical complexity, not only through the demand for instruments with a greater tonal range, but also due to patent laws (especially in North America). It was common for manufacturers to patent the action mechanism used on their instruments, thus requiring any new manufacturer to develop their own version; as the number of manufacturers grew, this led to some instruments having hugely complex arrays of levers, cranks, rods and shafts, which made replacement with an electronic instrument even more attractive.


title: Pump organ

text: The last mass-producer of harmoniums in North America was the Estey company, which ceased manufacture in the mid-1950s; a couple of Italian companies continued into the 1970s. As the existing stock of instruments aged and spare parts became hard to find, more and more were either scrapped or sold. It was not uncommon for harmoniums to be "modernised" by having electric blowers fitted, often very unsympathetically. The majority of Western harmoniums today are in the hands of enthusiasts, though the instrument still remains popular in South Asia.


title: Pump organ

text: The acoustical effects described below are a result of the free-reed mechanism. Therefore, they are essentially identical for the Western and Indian harmoniums and the reed organ. In 1875, Hermann von Helmholtz published his seminal book, "On the Sensations of Tone", in which he used the harmonium extensively to test different tuning systems:


title: Pump organ

text: "Among musical instruments, the harmonium, on account of its uniformly sustained tone, the piercing character of its quality of tone, and its tolerably distinct combinational tones, is particularly sensitive to inaccuracies of intonation. And as its vibrators also admit of a delicate and durable tuning, it appeared to me peculiarly suitable for experiments on a more perfect system of tones."


title: Pump organ

text: Using two manuals and two differently tuned stop sets, he was able to simultaneously compare Pythagorean to just and to equal-tempered tunings and observe the degrees of inharmonicity inherent to the different temperaments. He subdivided the octave to 28 tones, to be able to perform modulations of 12 minor and 17 major keys in just intonation without going into harsh dissonance that is present with the standard octave division in this tuning. This arrangement was difficult to play on. Additional modified or novel instruments were used for experimental and educational purposes; notably, Bosanquet's "Generalized keyboard" was constructed in 1873 for use with a 53-tone scale. In practice, that harmonium was constructed with 84 keys, for convenience of fingering. Another famous reed organ that was evaluated was built by Poole.


title: Pump organ

text: Lord Rayleigh also used the harmonium to devise a method for indirectly measuring frequency accurately, using approximated known equal temperament intervals and their overtone beats. The harmonium had the advantage of providing clear overtones that enabled the reliable counting of beats by two listeners, one per note. However, Rayleigh acknowledged that maintaining constant pressure in the bellows is difficult and fluctuation of the pitch often occurs as a result.


title: Pump organ

text: In the generation of its tones, a reed organ is similar to an accordion or concertina, but not in its installation, as an accordion is held in both hands whereas a reed organ is usually positioned on the floor in a wooden casing (which might make it mistakable for a piano at the very first glimpse). Reed organs are operated either with pressure or with suction bellows. Pressure bellows permit a wider range to modify the volume, depending on whether the pedaling of the bellows is faster or slower. In North America and the United Kingdom, a reed organ with pressure bellows is referred to as a harmonium, whereas in continental Europe, any reed organ is called a harmonium regardless of whether it has pressure or suction bellows. As reed organs with pressure bellows were more difficult to produce and therefore more expensive, North American and British reed organs and melodeons generally use suction bellows and operate on vacuum.


title: Pump organ

text: Reed organ frequencies depend on the blowing pressure; the fundamental frequency "decreases" with medium pressure compared to low pressure, but it "increases" again at high pressures by several hertz for the bass notes measured. American reed organ measurements showed a sinusoidal oscillation with sharp pressure transitions when the reed bends above and below its frame. The fundamental itself is nearly the mechanical resonance frequency of the reed. The overtones of the instrument are harmonics of the fundamental, rather than inharmonic, although a weak inharmonic overtone (6.27"f") was reported too. The fundamental frequency comes from a transverse mode, whereas weaker higher transverse and torsional modes were measured too. Any torsional modes are excited because of a slight asymmetry in the reed's construction. During attack, it was shown that the reed produces most strongly the fundamental, along with a second transverse or torsional mode, which are transient.


title: Pump organ

text: Radiation patterns and coupling effects between the sound box and the reeds on the timbre appear not to have been studied to date.


title: Pump organ

text: The unusual reed-vibration physics have a direct effect on harmonium playing, as the control of its dynamics in playing is restricted and subtle. The free reed of the harmonium is riveted from a metal frame and is subjected to airflow, which is pumped from the bellows through the reservoir, pushing the reed and bringing it to self-exciting oscillation and to sound production in the direction of airflow. This particular aerodynamics is nonlinear in that the maximum displacement amplitude in which the reed can vibrate is limited by fluctuations in damping forces, so that the resultant sound pressure is rather constant. Additionally, there is a threshold pumping pressure, below which the reed vibration is minimal. Within those two thresholds, there is an exponential growth and decay in time of reed amplitudes .


title: Pump organ

text: The harmonium was considered by Curt Sachs to be an important instrument for music of Romanticism (1750s-1900), which "vibrated between two poles of expression" and "required the overwhelming power and strong accents of wind instruments".


title: Pump organ

text: Harmonium compositions are available by European and American composers of classical music. It was also used often in the folk music of the Appalachians and South of the United States.


title: Pump organ

text: Harmoniums played a significant part in the new rise of Nordic folk music, especially in Finland. In the late 1970s, a harmonium could be found in most schools where the bands met, and it became natural for the bands to include a harmonium in their setup. A typical folk band then—particularly in Western Finland—consisted of violin(s), double bass and harmonium. There was a practical limitation that prevented playing harmonium and accordion in the same band: harmoniums were tuned to 438 Hz, while accordions were tuned to 442 Hz. Some key harmonium players in the new rise of Nordic folk have been Timo Alakotila and Milla Viljamaa.


title: Pump organ

text: In the Netherlands, the introduction of the harmonium triggered a boom in religious house music. Its organ-like sound quality allowed Reformed families to sing psalms and hymns at home. A lot of new hymns were composed expressly for voice and harmonium, notably those by Johannes de Heer.


title: Pump organ

text: The harmonium repertoire includes many pieces written originally for the church organ, which may be played on a harmonium as well, because they have a small enough range and use fewer stops. For example, Bach's Fantasia in C major for organ BWV 570 is suitable for a four-octave harmonium.


title: Pump organ

text: Harmoniums have been used in western popular music since at least the 1960s. John Lennon played a Mannborg harmonium on the Beatles' hit single "We Can Work It Out", released in December 1965, and the band used the instrument on other songs recorded during the sessions for their "Rubber Soul" album. They also used the instrument on the famous "final chord" of "A Day in the Life", and on the song "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!", both released on the 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". The group's hit single "Hello, Goodbye" and the track "Your Mother Should Know" were both written using a harmonium.


title: Pump organ

text: Many other artists soon employed the instrument in their music, including; Pink Floyd on the title song "Chapter 24" of their first album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" in 1967, Elton John on his 1973 album "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player", 1976's "Blue Moves", the 1978 album "A Single Man", and 1995's "Made in England". German singer Nico was closely associated with the harmonium, using it as her main instrument, during the late 60s and 70s, on albums such as "The Marble Index", "Desertshore" and "The End...".


title: Pump organ

text: Donovan employed the harmonium on his 1968 album "The Hurdy Gurdy Man" where he played it in droning accompaniment on the song "Peregrine", and where it was also played on his song "Poor Cow" by John Cameron.


title: Pump organ

text: Robert Fripp of King Crimson played a pedal harmonium borrowed from lyricist Peter Sinfield on the title track that progressive rock band's 1971 album "Islands".


title: Pump organ

text: More recently Roger Hodgson from Supertramp used his harmonium on many of the group's songs including "Two of Us" from "Crisis? What Crisis?", "Fool's Overture" from "Even in the Quietest Moments...", the title track to their 1979 album "Breakfast in America" and "Lord Is It Mine". Hodgson also used a harmonium on "The Garden" from his 2000 solo album "Open the Door". Greg Weeks and Tori Amos have both used the instrument on their recordings and live performances.


title: Pump organ

text: The Damned singer Dave Vanian bought a harmonium for £49 and used it to compose "Curtain Call", the 17-minute closing track from their 1980 double LP The Black Album. In 1990, Depeche Mode used a harmonium on a version of their song "Enjoy The Silence". The Divine Comedy used a harmonium on "Neptune's Daughter" from their 1994 album "Promenade". Sara Bareilles used the harmonium on her 2012 song "Once Upon Another Time".


title: Pump organ

text: During the 1990s the Hindu and Sikh-based devotional music known as kirtan, a 7th-8th century Indian music, popularly emerged in the West. The harmonium is often played as the lead instrument by kirtan artists; notably Jai Uttal who was nominated for a Grammy award for new-age music in 2004, Snatam Kaur, and Krishna Das who was nominated for a Grammy award for new age music in 2012.


title: Pump organ

text: The harmonium arrived in India during the mid-19th century, possibly with missionaries or traders. The instrument quickly became popular there: it was portable, reliable and easy to learn.


title: Pump organ

text: The harmonium is popular to the present day, an important instrument in many genres of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi music. For example, it is a staple of vocal North Indian classical music and Sufi Muslim Qawwali concerts. It is commonly found in Indian homes. Though derived from the designs developed in France, the harmonium was developed further in India in unique ways, such as the addition of drone stops and a scale-changing mechanism. In Kolkata, Dwarkanath Ghose of the Dwarkin company modified the imported harmony flute and developed the hand-held harmonium, which has subsequently become an integral part of the Indian music scene.


title: Pump organ

text: Dwijendranath Tagore is credited with having used the imported instrument in 1860 in his private theatre, but it was probably a pedal-pumped instrument that was cumbersome or possibly some variation of the reed organ. Initially, it aroused curiosity, but gradually people started playing it, and Ghose took the initiative to modify it. It was in response to the Indian needs that the hand-held harmonium was introduced. All Indian musical instruments are played with the musician sitting on the floor or a stage, behind the instrument or holding it in his hands. In that era, Indian homes did not use tables and chairs. Also, in Western music, which is harmonically based, both a player's hands were needed to play the chords, thus assigning the bellows to the feet was the best solution; in Indian music, which is melodically based, only one hand was necessary to play the melody, and the other hand was free for the bellows.


title: Pump organ

text: The harmonium was widely accepted in Indian music, particularly Parsi and Marathi stage music, in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century, however, in the context of nationalist movements that sought to depict India as utterly separate from the West, the harmonium was portrayed as an unwanted foreigner. Technical concerns with the harmonium included its inability to produce slurs, gamaka (playing semi-tone between notes) and meend (slides between notes) which can be done in instruments like Sitar and Sarod, and the fact that, as a keyboard instrument, it is set to specific pitches. Unlike a stringed instrument, its pitches cannot be adjusted in the course of performance.


title: Pump organ

text: The inability to slide between notes prevents it from articulating the subtle inflections (such as andolan, gentle oscillation) so crucial to many ragas. Being set to specific pitches is a different musical concept than the Indian svara, which doesn't focus on specific pitches, but a range of pitches. The fixed pitches prevent it from articulating the subtle differences in intonational color between a given svara in two different ragas. For these reasons, it was banned from All India Radio from 1940 to 1971; a ban still stands on harmonium solos.


title: Pump organ

text: On the other hand, many of the harmonium's qualities suited it very well for the newly reformed classical music of the early 20th century: it is easy for amateurs to learn; it supports group singing and large voice classes; it provides a template for standardized raga grammar; it is loud enough to provide a drone in a concert hall. For these reasons, it has become the instrument of choice for accompanying most North Indian classical vocal genres, with top vocalists (e.g., Bhimsen Joshi) routinely using harmonium accompaniment in their concerts. However, it is still despised by some connoisseurs of Indian music, who prefer the sarangi as an accompanying instrument for khyal singing.


title: Pump organ

text: A popular usage is by followers of the Hindu and Sikh faiths, who use it to accompany their devotional songs (bhajan and kirtan) respectively. There is at least one harmonium in any gurdwara (Sikh temple) around the world. The harmonium is commonly accompanied by the tabla as well as a dholak. To Sikhs, the harmonium is known as the "vaja" or "baja". It is also referred to as a "peti" (literally, box) in some parts of North India and Maharashtra. The harmonium plays an integral part in Qawwali music. Almost all Qawwals use the harmonium as their sole musical accompaniment. It has received international exposure as the genre of Qawwali music has been popularized by renowned Pakistani musicians, including Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. There is some discussion of Indian harmonium makers producing reproductions of Western-style reed organs for the export trade.


title: Pump organ

text: Vidyadhar Oke has developed a 22-microtone harmonium, which can play 22 microtones as required in Indian classical music. The fundamental tone (Shadja) and the fifth (Pancham) are fixed, but the other ten notes have two microtones each, one higher and one lower. The higher microtone is selected by pulling out a knob below the key. In this way, the 22-shruti harmonium can be tuned for any particular raga by simply pulling out knobs wherever a higher shruti is required.


title: Pump organ

text: In 1954, Late Jogesh Chandra Biswas first modified the then-existing harmoniums, so it folds down into a much thinner space for easier maneuverability. Before that, if the instrument was boxed, it used to need two people to carry it, holding it from either side. This improvisation became a generic design in most harmoniums since then and was coined with the term "Folding Harmoniums".


title: Pump organ

text: In the view points of preservation of cultural properties, maintenance and restoration, the pump organs are often categorized into several types.


title: William Tell (musician)

text: William John Tell is a rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist for the piano-rock band Something Corporate. After leaving the band in 2004 for a solo career, William Tell was signed as a New Door Records solo artist. His first solo record, "You Can Hold Me Down," was released on March 13, 2007. Tell earned a J.D. degree from USC Gould School of Law in 2014.


title: William Tell (musician)

text: William John Tell learned to play guitar from his father (also named William Tell) at a young age and began writing his own songs as well. He met some of the members of Something Corporate through mutual friends and one night when they were all playing at the same nightclub, he was asked to temporarily fill in, as their rhythm guitarist Richard Hernandez had left to study abroad. On March 27, 2001, Tell permanently joined the Drive-Thru Records piano rock band Something Corporate.


title: William Tell (musician)

text: Tell witnessed the success of Something Corporate over the three years he played with them — through their EP "Audioboxer", released on October 2, 2001, to their full-length albums "Leaving Through the Window" (2002) and "North" (2003), as well as tours with bands like New Found Glory.


title: William Tell (musician)

text: During a break between touring for the band, Tell decided that he wanted to pursue his own solo career. On February 4, 2004, it was announced by the band that Tell had left. He returned home to California and began writing songs. His first song, titled "Radio Sound" (which later appeared on his debut album as "Sounds"), was about his mixed emotions dealing with leaving his friends and former band. Through the course of the next two years, Tell would continue writing and rewriting material, as well as recording. Brian Ireland, drummer for Something Corporate, would come in to help him during the recording process and also play shows as part of Tell's band. One of Tell's many performances was the Bamboozle Left festival in Pomona, California on October 14, 2006.


title: William Tell (musician)

text: In 2006, Tell was signed to Universal Records' subsidiary New Door Records as a solo artist and began putting the final touches to his debut album. He collaborated with another Something Corporate member, Andrew McMahon, for the track "Fairfax" on the record. During January 2007, Tell recorded a practice session for the website Rehearsals.com and on March 13, 2007, Tell released his 10-track solo debut album titled "You Can Hold Me Down" (named after one of the songs).


title: William Tell (musician)

text: In February 2012, Tell began dating former "The Hills" star and fashion designer Lauren Conrad. They became engaged in October 2013, and married on September 13, 2014, in California. Their son, Liam James Tell, was born on July 5, 2017. Their second child named Charlie Wolf was born October 8, 2019.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Guadalupe Island () is a volcanic island located off the west coast of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula and about southwest of the city of Ensenada in the state of Baja California, in the Pacific Ocean. The various volcanoes are extinct or dormant. In 2005 Guadalupe Island and its surrounding waters and islets were declared a biosphere reserve to restore its vegetation (decimated by feral goats) and to protect its population of marine mammals and birds. The island is a popular destination for great white shark cage diving. Guadalupe Island is inhabited only by scientists, military personnel operating a weather station, and a small group of seasonal fishermen. The island is mostly arid and has very little surface water.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The two other Mexican island groups in the Pacific Ocean that are not on the continental shelf are the Revillagigedo Islands and Rocas Alijos. Guadalupe Island and its islets are the westernmost region of Mexico.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The first known sighting of Guadalupe Island was in 1602 when a Spanish expedition headed by Sebastián Vizcaíno sailed by but did not land on the island. In the late 18th and 19th centuries the island was frequently visited by fur seal, otter, and elephant seal hunters. Goats were probably introduced by seal hunters in the early 1800s and quickly increased their numbers, nearly eradicating the indigenous vegetation.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The 2010 census recorded a population of 213 people on the island. In 2015, it was estimated to have fewer than 150 permanent residents. Guadalupe is part of Ensenada "delegación", one of the 24 "delegaciones" or subdivisions of Ensenada Municipality of the Mexican state of Baja California. Ensenada "delegación" and Chapultepec "delegación" together form the city of Ensenada, the municipal seat of the namesake municipality. The postal code of Guadalupe Island is 22997.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: "Campo Oeste" ("West Camp", also called "Campo Tepeyac", with 15 buildings) is a small community of abalone and lobster fishermen, located on the western coast, specifically on the north side of West Anchorage, a bay that provides protection from the strong winds and swells that whip the islands during winter. Generators provide electricity, and a military vessel brings of freshwater. The number of fishermen varies annually depending on the fishing season. Ten months of the year the 30 families of the fishing cooperative ""Abuloneros" and "Langosteros" of Guadalupe Island" are present.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Additional temporary fishing camps are "Campo Norte" ("North Camp", four buildings), "Campo Lima" ("Campo Corrals") (one building) and "Arroyitos" (four buildings).


title: Guadalupe Island

text: At the southern tip, on Melpómene Cove, there is a weather station staffed by a detachment from the Mexican Ministry of the Navy. The site is called "Campamento Sur" ("South Encampment").


title: Guadalupe Island

text: "Campo Bosque" was established as a temporary camp in 1999 in the cypress forest in the north. The camp houses members of the Cooperative Farming Society "Francisco Javier Maytorena, S.C. of R.L." and removes goats from the island and sells them in the State of Sonora, with permission of Secretariat of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) and the support of the Secretariat of the Navy.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: "Campo Pista" is located at the small airport, near the center of the island (, elevation: 592 m, direction: 05/23). Airport "Isla Guadalupe" (ICAO Code "MMGD") has a runway. At the end of the runway near threshold 5 is the wreckage of a Lockheed Model 18 Lodestar, which overshot the runway during landing. A North American B-25J-30/32 Mitchell, BMM-3501 (c/n 44-86712), bomber wrecked on the opposite end of the runway, after suffering serious damage in trying to take-off overloaded (). The B-25 wreckage was removed between October 2005 and June 2006.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Because Guadalupe Island is located within a biosphere reserve, anyone visiting the island must obtain a permit from the Mexican government; this means the communities on the island are closed towns.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Guadalupe Island has a rugged landscape composed of two shield volcanoes which formed on a now extinct mid-ocean ridge. They are overlain by lava flows and cinder cones that were emplaced along northwest-southeast and northeast-southwest trending fissure vents. The youngest shield volcano comprises the northern end of the island and may have formed during the Holocene epoch. A series of very fresh-looking alkali basalt flows along with trachyte domes in the northern shield volcano caldera represent the most recently formed rocks on Guadalupe Island.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The island measures north-south and up to east-west, with a total area of . It features a chain of high volcanic mountain ridges which rises to a height of at its northern end (Mount Augusta). Its smaller counterpart on the southern end is the El Picacho. The southern part of the island is mostly barren, but there are scattered stands of trees at higher elevations of the northern part of the island and in the Twin Canyon area on the northeast coast. The coast generally consists of rocky bluffs with detached rocks fronting some of them. Two high and prominent islets are within of the southwestern end of the island, separated from one another by a gap called Tuna Alley:


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The island has two major climate zones: a very arid, warm climate between elevation, with mean monthly temperature between and an arid, temperate climate above elevation.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Most precipitation occurs over the winter months with a strong influence of northwestern winds and cyclones.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Rainfall averages near sea level at the south end, but appears to be much more at the high north end. An estimate for the rainfall in the northern highlands is possible by way of taking "Pinus radiata" as an indicator, which is native to that area of the island. In other places where "Pinus radiata" is native, it grows best with about of rainfall but under some conditions can survive with as little as half that much. The effective moisture is much greater because of fog drip.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Guadalupe Island was a major destination for Russian and American fur hunters seeking the Guadalupe fur seal ("Arctocephalus townsendi") in the 18th and 19th centuries. Captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly reported in 1827 that a Sandwich Islands (Hawaiian Islands) brig "had spent several months there and collected three thousand sealskins". The northern elephant seal ("Mirounga angustirostris") was also ruthlessly hunted for the oil in its blubber.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Elephant seals were thought to be extinct by 1884 until a remnant population of eight individuals was discovered on Guadalupe Island in 1892 by a Smithsonian expedition, which promptly killed several of them for their collections. The elephant seals managed to survive, and were finally protected by the Mexican government in 1922.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Guadalupe shares the California chaparral and woodlands ecoregion with the Channel Islands of California in the United States, but the island was at one time practically denuded of all plants higher than a few centimeters by up to 100,000 feral goats.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Originally brought there in the 19th century by European whalers and sealers for provisions when stopping over, the population eventually eliminated most vegetation; the number of goats declined to a few thousand. Before this collapse, the main impact of the goat population was about the turn of the 19th/20th century. Naturalist A.W. Anthony wrote in 1901:


title: Guadalupe Island

text: "It is directly due to the despised Billy-goat that many interesting species of plants formerly abundant are now extinct, and also that one or more of the birds peculiar to the island has disappeared, and others are following rapidly."


title: Guadalupe Island

text: After the crash, the goat population once again grew, this time more slowly, until it had reached the new, lower carrying capacity at maybe 10,000–20,000 in modern times. The island had been a nature conservancy area since August 16, 1928, making it one of the oldest reserves in Mexico. Eradication of the goats was long envisioned, but logistical difficulties, such as island size and lack of suitable spots for landing and encamping hunters and material, prevented this. In 2002, the Mexican government (including SEMARNAT) and the conservation group "Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas" began eliminating the goats. In June 2005, after many years of false starts, the Mexican government had almost completed a round-up and evacuation of the remaining goat population. In 2007, the goat elimination program ended (10,000 feral goats were eliminated). Guadalupe Island was designated a biosphere reserve on April 25, 2005.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: French sea captain Auguste Duhaut-Cilly remarked on the tall trees on the north of Guadalupe Island as he sailed past on January 2, 1827. Of the large tree species on Guadalupe Island (Guadalupe palm, Guadalupe cypress, island oak, and Monterey pine), there were only old individuals left; California juniper had entirely disappeared. As the goats ate any seedlings that managed to germinate, no regeneration of trees was possible. Water, formerly plentiful as the common fogs condensed in the forests of the northern end of the island, today only occurs in a few scattered pools and springs. Because the springs were a critical emergency water supply for the human inhabitants, protective measures including goat fences were installed beginning in 2000, allowing new seedlings of many species to survive for the first time in 150 years. Seacology, a non-profit environmental group located in Berkeley, CA, provided funding to the Island Conservation & Ecology Group for the construction of ten fenced exclosures to keep goats out of the most sensitive areas of Guadalupe Island.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: In November 1850, U.S. Army Lt. George H. Derby passed the island on his expedition in the U.S. Transport Invincible. He described it thus: "This island is about 15 miles length and 5 in width. It is rocky + mountainous but capped with vegetation and is reputed to be thickly inhabited by wild goats of unusual size. Water is found upon the eastern shore and the Island is frequently visited by small vessels engaged in the capture of the sea elephant numbers of which animals are found upon its coast."


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Many islands or marine species that reside on or near Guadalupe also frequent the Channel Islands, and vice versa. In stark contrast to the rampant extinction of terrestrial life that happened at the same time, Guadalupe was the last refuge for the northern elephant seal ("Mirounga angustirostris") and the Guadalupe fur seal ("Arctocephalus townsendi") in the 1890s. The island has been a pinniped sanctuary since 1975.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: The movement of the cool, nutrient-rich water current promotes phytoplankton production and attracts both coastal and deep-water species, including great white sharks.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Guadalupe is considered one of the best spots in the world for sightings of the great white shark, possibly because of its large population of pinnipeds. The island has been recognised as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: A ninth habitat type, California juniper woodland and extending on the central plateau below the cypress forest, was entirely gone by 1906. What other endemic lifeforms underwent coextinction with it will forever remain unknown.


title: Guadalupe Island

text: Numerous taxa have gone extinct due to the habitat destruction by the feral goats, which in turn rendered the endemic fauna vulnerable to predation by introduced feral cats and adverse weather by depriving them of shelter.


title: Vagrancy

text: Vagrancy is the condition of homelessness without regular employment or income. Vagrants (also known as vagabonds, rogues, tramps or drifters) usually live in poverty and support themselves by begging, scavenging, petty theft, temporary work, or social security (where available). Historically, vagrancy in Western societies was associated with petty crime, begging and lawlessness, and punishable by law with forced labor, military service, imprisonment, or confinement to dedicated labor houses.


title: Vagrancy

text: Both "vagrant" and "vagabond" ultimately derive from the Latin word "", meaning "to wander". The term "vagabond" is derived from Latin "vagabundus". In Middle English, "vagabond" originally denoted a person without a home or employment.


title: Vagrancy

text: Vagrants have been historically characterised as outsiders in settled, ordered communities: embodiments of otherness, objects of scorn or mistrust, or worthy recipients of help and charity.


title: Vagrancy

text: Some ancient sources show vagrants as passive objects of pity, who deserve generosity and the gift of alms. Others show them as subversives, or outlaws, who make a parasitical living through theft, fear and threat.


title: Vagrancy

text: Some fairy tales of medieval Europe have beggars cast curses on anyone who was insulting or stingy toward them. In Tudor England, some of those who begged door-to-door for "milk, yeast, drink, pottage" were thought to be witches.


title: Vagrancy

text: Many world religions, both in history and today, have vagrant traditions or make reference to vagrants. In Christianity, Jesus is shown in the Bible as having compassion for beggars, prostitutes, and the disenfranchised. The Catholic Church also teaches compassion for people living in vagrancy. Vagrant lifestyles are seen in Christian movements, such as in the mendicant orders. Many still exist in places like Europe, Africa, and the Near East, as preserved by Gnosticism, Hesychasm, and various esoteric practices.


title: Vagrancy

text: In some East Asian and South Asian countries, the condition of vagrancy has long been historically associated with the religious life, as described in the religious literature of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, and Muslim Sufi traditions. Examples include sadhus, dervishes, bhikkhus, and the sramanic traditions generally.


title: Vagrancy

text: From 27 November 1891, a vagabond could be jailed. Vagabonds, beggars and procurers were imprisoned in vagrancy prisons: Hoogstraten; Merksplas; and Wortel (Flanders). There, the prisoners had to work for their living by working on the land or in the prison. If the prisoners had earned enough money, then they could leave the "colony" (as it was called). On 12 January 1993, the Belgian vagrancy law was repealed. At that time, 260 vagabonds still lived in the Wortel colony.


title: Vagrancy

text: In medieval times, vagabonds were controlled by an official called the "Stodderkonge" who was responsible for a town or district and expelled those without a permit. Their role eventually transferred to the police.