title: Victoria II

text: "GameSpot" said that there was much less micromanagement than in its predecessor. The reviewer stated: "Thanks to a friendlier interface and tutorials, Victoria II is a lot more playable and enjoyable than its predecessor."


title: Victoria II

text: "GameShark" was less enthusiastic. The reviewer said: "As a strategy game, Victoria II frustrates me. It is an orgy of detail for detail's sake, yet the information I really want never seems to be at hand. The decisions I make seem mostly inconsequential, changing the game only by a slow process of accretion. Modeling has overtaken game design. Watching Victoria II is hypnotic and frequently awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, you only occasionally might want to play it."


title: Victoria II

text: The release of "A House Divided" drew increased praise and averaged 76% on Metacritic, and "Heart of Darkness" further increased positive reviews, averaging 81%. "Gaming Nexus" gave the final product a verdict of 8.5 ("very good") and commented that "after some patching and a couple of expansions, "Victoria 2" is rounding into shape. It is still deep with a killer learning curve, but it is starting to feel like a fun game rather than a buggy spreadsheet."


title: Victoria II

text: In an Ask Me Anything thread on Reddit in October 2013, PDS manager Johan Andersson stated that they would consider making a sequel to "Victoria II", but that this would likely come after "Hearts of Iron IV".


title: Victoria II

text: In December 2015, a beta patch was made for "Victoria II", long after it was assumed that no further patches would be released. This prompted speculation that there could be refreshed interest in the "Victoria" series, although in a Reddit thread these rumours were played down by Paradox developers.


title: Victoria II

text: During an interview for the company's Paradox Podcast in February 2018, CEO Fredrik Wester mentioned "I'm not a firm believer that Victoria II is the most prioritised game to make a sequel out of", that he won't be the one making the decision either and that it would come "before 2025".


title: Imola

text: Imola (; or ) is a city and "comune" in the Metropolitan City of Bologna, located on the river Santerno, in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. The city is traditionally considered the western entrance to the historical region Romagna.


title: Imola

text: The city is best-known as the home of the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari which hosts the Formula One Emilia Romagna Grand Prix and formerly hosted the San Marino Grand Prix (the race was named after the independent nation of San Marino which is around 100 km to the south), and the deaths of Formula One drivers Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger at the circuit during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix. The death of Senna (three-times world champion) was an event that shocked the sporting world and led to heightened Formula One safety standards.


title: Imola

text: The city was anciently called "Forum Cornelii", after the Roman dictator L. Cornelius Sulla, who founded it about 82 BC. The city was an agricultural and trading centre, famous for its ceramics.


title: Imola

text: The name Imola was first used in the 7th century by the Lombards, who applied it to the fortress (the present Castellaccio, the construction of which is attributed to the Lombard Clefi), whence the name passed to the city itself. According to Paul the Deacon, Imola was in 412 the scene of the marriage of Ataulf, King of the Visigoths, to Galla Placidia, daughter of Emperor Theodosius the Great. In the Gothic War (535–552), and after the Lombard invasion, it was held alternately by the Byzantines and barbarians.


title: Imola

text: With the exarchate of Ravenna, it passed under papal authority. In the ninth century, Fausto Alidosi defended the city against the Saracens and Hungarians. In the tenth century, Troilo Nordiglio acquired great power. This and the following centuries witnessed incessant wars against the Ravennatese, the Faentines and the Bolognese, as well as the internecine struggles of the Castrimolesi (from "Castro Imolese", "castle of Imola") and the "Sancassianesi" (from San Cassiano). Amid these conflicts, the republican constitution of the city was created. In the contest between pope and emperor, Imola was generally Ghibelline, though it often returned to the popes (e.g. in 1248). Several times, powerful lords attempted to obtain the mastery of the city (Alidosi, 1292; Maghinardo Pagano, 1295). Pope Benedict XII turned the city and its territory over to Lippo II Alidosi with the title of pontifical vicar, the power remaining in the family Alidosi until 1424, when the condottiero , "capitano" for Filippo Maria Visconti, gained the supremacy (see also Wars in Lombardy). In 1426 the city was restored to the Holy See, and the legate (later Cardinal) Capranica inaugurated a new regime in public affairs.


title: Imola

text: Various condottieri later ruled in the city, such as the Visconti; several landmark fortresses remain from this period. In 1434, 1438, and 1470, Imola was conferred on the Sforza, who had become dukes of Milan (Lombardy). It was again brought under papal authority when it was bestowed as dowry on Caterina Sforza, the bride of Girolamo Riario, nephew of Pope Sixtus IV. Riario was invested with the Principality of Forlì and Imola. This proved advantageous to Imola, which was embellished with beautiful palaces and works of art (e.g. in the cathedral, the tomb of Girolamo, murdered in 1488 by conspirators of Forli). The rule of the Riarii, however, was brief, as Pope Alexander VI deprived the son of Girolamo, Ottaviano, of power, and on 25 November 1499, the city surrendered to Cesare Borgia. After his death, two factions, that of Galeazzo Riario and that of the Church, competed for control of the city. The ecclesiastical party was victorious, and in 1504 Imola submitted to Pope Julius II. The last trace of these contests was a bitter enmity between the Vaini and Sassatelli families.


title: Imola

text: In 1797, the revolutionary French forces established a provisional government at Imola. In 1799, it was occupied by the Austrians, and in 1800, it was united to the Cisalpine Republic. After that, it shared the fortunes of the Romagna region.


title: Imola

text: Other buildings include the Farsetti and the Communal palaces. In the latter is a fresco representing Clement VII and Charles V (1535) passing through the city. The public library was established in 1747 by the Conventual Padre Setti. In the 16th century, the Accademia degli Industriosi flourished.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: Resiniferatoxin (RTX) is a naturally occurring chemical found in resin spurge ("Euphorbia resinifera"), a cactus-like plant commonly found in Morocco, and in "Euphorbia poissonii" found in northern Nigeria. It is a potent functional analog of capsaicin, the active ingredient in chili peppers.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: Resiniferatoxin has a score of 16 billion Scoville heat units, making pure resiniferatoxin about 500 to 1000 times hotter than pure capsaicin. Resiniferatoxin activates transient vanilloid receptor 1 (TRPV1) in a subpopulation of primary afferent sensory neurons involved in nociception, the transmission of physiological pain. TRPV1 is an ion channel in the plasma membrane of sensory neurons and stimulation by resiniferatoxin causes this ion channel to become permeable to cations, especially calcium. The influx of cations causes the neuron to depolarize, transmitting signals similar to those that would be transmitted if the innervated tissue were being burned or damaged. This stimulation is followed by desensitization and analgesia, in part because the nerve endings die from calcium overload.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: A total synthesis of (+)-resiniferatoxin was completed by the Wender group at Stanford University in 1997. The process begins with a starting material of 1,4-pentadien-3-ol and consists of more than 25 significant steps. , this represented the only complete total synthesis of any member of the daphnane family of molecules.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: One of the main challenges in synthesizing a molecule such as resiniferatoxin is forming the three-ring backbone of the structure. The Wender group was able to form the first ring of the structure by first synthesizing Structure 1 in Figure 1. By reducing the ketone of Structure 1 followed by oxidizing the furan nucleus with m-CPBA and converting the resulting hydroxy group to an oxyacetate, Structure 2 can be obtained. Structure 2 contains the first ring of the three-ring structure of RTX. It reacts through an oxidopyrylium cycloaddition when heated with DBU in acetonitrile to form Structure 4 by way of Intermediate 3. Several steps of synthesis are required to form Structure 5 from Structure 4, with the main goal of positioning the allylic branch of the seven-membered ring in a "trans" conformation. Once this conformation is achieved, zirconocene-mediated cyclization of Structure 5 can occur, and oxidizing the resulting hydroxy group with TPAP will yield Structure 6. Structure 6 contains all three rings of the RTX backbone and can then be converted to resiniferatoxin through additional synthesis steps attaching the required functional groups.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: An alternative approach to synthesizing the three-ring backbone makes use of radical reactions to create the first and third rings in a single step, followed by the creation of the remaining ring. It has been proposed by the Inoue group of the University of Tokyo.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: At 16 billion Scoville units, Resiniferatoxin is rather toxic and can inflict chemical burns in tiny quantities. The primary action of resiniferatoxin is to activate sensory neurons responsible for the perception of pain. It is currently the most potent TRPV1 agonist known, with ~500x higher binding affinity for TRPV1 than capsaicin, the active ingredient in hot chili peppers such as those produced by "Capsicum annuum". For rats, LD50 through oral ingestion is 148.1 mg/kg. Animal experiments on rats suggest that, in humans, ingestion of 1.672 g may be fatal or cause serious damage to health. It causes severe burning pain in sub-microgram (less than 1/1,000,000th of a gram) quantities when ingested orally.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: Sorrento Therapeutics has been developing RTX as a means to provide pain relief for forms of advanced cancer.


title: Resiniferatoxin

text: The nerve desensitizing properties of RTX were once thought to be useful to treat overactive bladder (OAB) by preventing the bladder from transmitting "sensations of urgency" to the brain, similar to how they can prevent nerves from transmitting signals of pain; RTX has never received FDA approval for this use. RTX has also previously been investigated as a treatment for interstitial cystitis, rhinitis, and lifelong premature ejaculation (PE).


title: Louis Botha

text: Louis Botha (; 27 September 1862 – 27 August 1919) was a South African politician who was the first prime minister of the Union of South Africa – the forerunner of the modern South African state. A Boer war hero during the Second Boer War, he eventually fought to have South Africa become a British Dominion.


title: Louis Botha

text: Louis Botha was born in Greytown, Natal one of 13 children born to Louis Botha Senior (26 March 1827 – 5 July 1883) and Salomina Adriana van Rooyen (31 March 1829 – 9 January 1886). He briefly attended the school at Hermannsburg before his family relocated to the Orange Free State. The name Louis runs throughout the family, with every generation since General Louis Botha having the eldest son named Louis.


title: Louis Botha

text: Louis Botha led "Dinuzulu's Volunteers", a group of Boers that had supported Dinuzulu against Zibhebhu in 1884.


title: Louis Botha

text: Botha later became a member of the parliament of Transvaal in 1897, representing the district of Vryheid.


title: Louis Botha

text: In 1899, Louis Botha fought in the Second Boer War, initially joining the Krugersdorp Commando, continuing to fight under Lucas Meyer in Northern Natal, and later as a general commanding and leading Boer forces impressively at Colenso and Spion Kop. On the death of P. J. Joubert, he was made commander-in-chief of the Transvaal Boers, where he demonstrated his abilities again at Belfast-Dalmanutha. After the battle at the Tugela, Botha granted a twenty-four-hour armistice to General Buller to enable him to bury his dead.


title: Louis Botha

text: Winston Churchill revealed that General Botha was the man who captured him at the ambush of a British armoured train on 15 November 1899. also claims that Botha captured Churchill at train ambush 15 November 1899. Churchill was not aware of the man's identity until 1902, when Botha travelled to London seeking loans to assist his country's reconstruction, and the two met at a private luncheon. The incident is also mentioned in Arthur Conan Doyle's book, "The Great Boer War", published in 1902. However more recent sources claim that Field-Cornet Sarel Oosthuizen was in fact the Boer soldier who, at gunpoint, captured Churchill. Another version claims that the unit to capture Churchill was the Italian Volunteer Legion and its commander, Camillo Ricchiardi.


title: Louis Botha

text: After the fall of Pretoria in June 1900, Louis Botha led a concentrated guerrilla campaign against the British together with Koos de la Rey and Christiaan de Wet. The success of his measures was seen in the steady resistance offered by the Boers to the very close of the three-year war.


title: Louis Botha

text: Botha was prominent in efforts to achieve a peace with the British, representing the Boers at the peace negotiations in 1902, and was signatory to the Treaty of Vereeniging. In the period of reconstruction under British rule, Botha went to Europe with de Wet and de la Rey to raise funds to enable the Boers to resume their former avocations. Botha, who was still looked upon as the leader of the Boer people, took a prominent part in politics, advocating always measures which he considered as tending to the maintenance of peace and good order and the re-establishment of prosperity in the Transvaal. His war record made him prominent in the politics of Transvaal and he was a major player in the postwar reconstruction of that country, founding with Jan Smuts the Het Volk Party in the Transvaal Colony in 1904, which served as a springboard to campaign for responsible self-government for the colony.


title: Louis Botha

text: After the grant of self-government to the Transvaal on 6 December 1906 and the success of his Het Volk Party at the first elections in February 1907, Botha was called upon by Lord Selborne to form a government as Prime Minister on 4 March 1907, and in the spring of the same year he took part in the conference of colonial premiers held in London. During his visit to England on this occasion General Botha declared the wholehearted adhesion of the Transvaal to the British Empire, and his intention to work for the welfare of the country regardless of racial differences. The following year Botha participated in the National Convention (South Africa) which opened up the way for the passage of the South Africa Act of 1909 by the British parliament which in turn allowed for the formation of the Union of South Africa.


title: Louis Botha

text: When South Africa obtained dominion status in 1910, Botha became the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. In 1911, together with another Boer war hero, Jan Smuts, he formed the South African Party, or SAP. Widely viewed as too conciliatory with Britain, Botha faced revolts from within his own party and opposition from James Barry Munnik Hertzog's National Party. He was a South African Freemason.


title: Louis Botha

text: After the First World War started, he sent troops to take German South-West Africa, a move unpopular among Boers, which provoked the Boer Revolt.


title: Louis Botha

text: At Versailles on 1 June 1919, 17 years after the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging, General Botha, now a member of the British Empire Delegation, put his hand on Lord Milner's shoulder, and said "Seventeen years ago my friend and I made peace at Vereeniging – it was a bitter peace for us, bitter hard. We lost all for which we had fought – our independence, our flag, our country. But we turned our thoughts and efforts then to saving our people; and they, the victors, helped us. It was a hard peace for us to accept, but as I know it now, when time has shown us the truth, it was not unjust – it was a generous peace that the British people made with us, and that is why we stand with them today side by side in the cause which has brought us all together."


title: Louis Botha

text: At the end of the War he briefly led a British Military Mission to Poland during the Polish–Soviet War. He argued that the terms of the Versailles Treaty were too harsh on the Central Powers, but signed the treaty. Botha was unwell for most of 1919. He was plagued by fatigue and ill health that arose from his robust waistline.


title: Louis Botha

text: General Louis Botha died of heart failure at his home following an attack of Spanish influenza on 27 August 1919 in the early hours of the morning. He was 56. His wife Annie was at home and was joined by Engelenburg who had acted as a private secretary to Botha. Botha was laid to rest in the Heroes' Acre of the Church Street Cemetery in Pretoria.


title: Louis Botha

text: Of Botha, Winston Churchill wrote in "Great Contemporaries" "The three most famous generals I have known in my life won no great battles over a foreign foe. Yet their names, which all begin with a 'B', are household words. They are General Booth, General Botha and General Baden-Powell..."


title: Louis Botha

text: Sculptor Raffaello Romanelli won the competition to create the equestrian statue of Botha that stands in front of the South African Parliament building but died before completing it. His son Romano Romanelli was contracted to finish his father's work.


title: Louis Botha

text: Sculptor Coert Steynberg was commissioned to create the equestrian statue of Botha in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria. It was unveiled in 1946.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Tristan Harris () is an American technology ethicist. He is the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Early in his career, Harris worked as a design ethicist at Google. He received his baccalaureate degree from Stanford University, where he studied computer science.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris has appeared in the Netflix documentary "The Social Dilemma". The film features Harris and other former tech employees explaining how the design of social media platforms nurtures addiction to maximize profit and manipulates people's views, emotions, and behavior. The film also examines social media's effect on mental health, particularly of adolescents.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris was raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. He studied computer science at Stanford University while interning at Apple Inc. He then embarked on a master's degree at Stanford with a focus on Human–Computer Interaction, where he took a class from B. J. Fogg, who runs the Persuasive Technology Lab, before dropping out. At Stanford, Harris was classmates with one of Instagram's founders, Kevin Systrom, and helped create a demo app with the other founder, Mike Krieger.


title: Tristan Harris

text: In 2007, Harris launched a startup called Apture. Google acquired Apture in 2011, and Harris ended up working on Google Inbox.


title: Tristan Harris

text: In February 2013, while working at Google, Harris authored a presentation titled “A Call to Minimize Distraction & Respect Users’ Attention”, which he shared with coworkers. In that presentation, he suggested that Google, Apple and Facebook should "feel an enormous responsibility" to make sure humanity doesn't spend its days buried in a smartphone. The 141-slide deck was eventually viewed by tens of thousands of Google employees and sparked conversations about the company's responsibilities long after he left the company. Harris holds several patents from his previous work at Apple, Wikia, Apture, and Google.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris left Google in December 2015 to co-found the 501(c)3 nonprofit organization Time Well Spent, later called the Center for Humane Technology. Through his work at CHT, Harris hoped to re-align technology with humanity's best interest. He asserted that human minds can be hijacked and the choices they make are not as free as they think they are.


title: Tristan Harris

text: At CHT, Harris has advocated for understanding and minimizing the negative impacts of digital technologies. In 2017, he spoke on "60 Minutes" with Anderson Cooper about the addictive design of smartphone apps. At a 2019 presentation in San Francisco, he coined the phrase "human downgrading" to describe an interconnected system of mutually reinforcing harms—addiction, distraction, isolation, polarization, fake news—that weakens human capacity, in order to capture human attention.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris and other CHT team members were interviewed for the film "The Social Dilemma", distributed by Netflix. In it he says about the harms of social media, "Never before in history have 50 designers made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people" about the harms of social media.


title: Tristan Harris

text: CHT offers an online course on how to build humane and ethical technology, called "The Foundations of Humane Technology", which has received notable media coverage.


title: Tristan Harris

text: In recent years, Harris has expanded his focus from the attention economy to close the gap between the accelerating pace of technology and risks/externalities it creates, compared to the capacity of culture and its institutions to respond and adequately guard against them. Harris and CHT call this "The Wisdom Gap."


title: Tristan Harris

text: "The Atlantic" stated in their November 2016 issue that "Harris is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience." Since then, he has been named on "Time" 100 Next Leaders Shaping 2021, "Rolling Stone"’s 25 People Changing the Future, and "Fortune"’s 25 Ideas that Will Change the Future. He is also the co-host of the podcast, "Your Undivided Attention".


title: Tristan Harris

text: At the TEDTalk 2017 conference, Harris exposed how a handful of tech companies are able to manipulate billions of people to generate billions of dollars in ad revenue. He implored his peers to be more conscious and ethical in shaping the human spirit and human potential through technology. The foundation of his presentation was the Time Well Spent thesis. Time Well Spent was quickly adopted by tech industry giants Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Google through the addition of features designed to encourage users to monitor their time online.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris continued his advocacy for tech reform. In 2019, the "New York Times" published his op-ed, "Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology." In the same year, Harris's thoughts were featured on "Fortune"’s 25 Ideas that Will Shape the 2020s, alongside world leaders such as Melinda Gates and Malala Yousafzai.


title: Tristan Harris

text: Harris has testified before the United States Congress on multiple occasions. In 2019, Harris gave testimony at the United States Senate's hearing on "Optimizing for Engagement: Understanding the Use of Persuasive Technology on Internet Platforms". In 2020, he testified in the House hearing on "Americans at Risk: Manipulation and Deception in the Digital Age".


title: Tristan Harris

text: In 2021, Harris provided testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law on data privacy and how algorithms are able to influence people's choices and effectively change their minds. In his testimony, Harris encouraged lawmakers and social media designers to reset their criteria for success. According to Harris, "Instead of evaluating whether my fellow Facebook, Twitter and YouTube panelists have improved their content policies or hired more content moderators, we should ask what would collectively constitute a 'humane' Western digital democratic infrastructure that would strengthen our capacity to meet these threats."


title: Tristan Harris

text: In October 2022, Harris joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States co-chaired by former House Democratic Caucus Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: Franklin County is a county in the U.S. state of Ohio. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,323,807, making it the most populous county in Ohio. Most of its land area is taken up by its county seat, Columbus, the state capital and most populous city in Ohio. The county was established on April 30, 1803, less than two months after Ohio became a state, and was named after Benjamin Franklin. Franklin County originally extended north to Lake Erie before being subdivided into smaller counties. Franklin County is the central county of the Columbus, Ohio Metropolitan Statistical Area.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: Franklin County, particularly Columbus, has been a centerpiece for presidential and congressional politics, most notably the 2000 presidential election, the 2004 presidential election, and the 2006 midterm elections. Franklin County is home to one of the largest universities in the United States, Ohio State University, which has about 60,000 students on its main Columbus campus.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: It shares a name with Franklin County in Kentucky, where Frankfort is located. This makes it one of two pairs of capital cities in counties of the same name, along with Marion Counties in Indiana and Oregon.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: On March 30, 1803, the Ohio government authorized the creation of Franklin County. The county originally was part of Ross County. Residents named the county in honor of Benjamin Franklin. In 1816, Franklin County's Columbus became Ohio's state capital. Surveyors laid out the city in 1812, and officials incorporated it in 1816. Columbus was not Ohio's original capital, but the state legislature chose to move the state government there after its location for a short time at Chillicothe and at Zanesville. Columbus was chosen as the site for the new capital because of its central location within the state and access by way of major transportation routes (primarily rivers) at that time. The legislature chose it as Ohio's capital over a number of other competitors, including Franklinton, Dublin, Worthington, and Delaware.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: On May 5, 1802, a group of prospective settlers founded the Scioto Company at the home of Rev. Eber B. Clark in Granby, Connecticut, for the purpose of forming a settlement between the Muskingum River and Great Miami River in the Ohio Country. James Kilbourne was elected president and Josiah Topping secretary. On August 30, 1802, James Kilbourne and Nathaniel Little arrived at Colonel Thomas Worthington's home in Chillicothe. They tentatively reserved land along the Scioto River on the Pickaway Plains for their new settlement.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: On October 5, 1802, the Scioto Company met again in Granby and decided not to purchase the lands along the Scioto River on the Pickaway Plains, but rather to buy land farther north from Dr. Jonas Stanbery and his partner, an American Revolutionary War general, Jonathan Dayton. were purchased along the Whetstone River (now known as the Olentangy River) at $1.50 per acre. This land was part of the United States Military District surveyed by Israel Ludlow in 1797 and divided into townships square.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: Before the state legislature's decision in 1812, Columbus did not exist. The city was originally designed as the state's new capital, preparing itself for its role in Ohio's political, economic, and social life. In the years between the first ground-breaking and the actual movement of the capital in 1816, Columbus and Franklin County grew significantly. By 1813, workers had built a penitentiary, and by the following year, residents had established the first church, school, and newspaper in Columbus. Workers completed the Ohio Statehouse in 1861. Columbus and Franklin County grew quickly in population, with the city having 700 people by 1815. Columbus officially became the county seat in 1824. By 1834, the population of Columbus was 4,000 people, officially elevating it to "city" status.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the county has a total area of , of which is land and (2.1%) is water. The county is located in the Till Plains and the Appalachian Plateau land regions.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: The county is drained by the Olentangy River and the Scioto River. Major creeks in the county include Big Darby Creek, Big Walnut Creek, and Alum Creek. There are two large reservoirs in the county, Hoover Reservoir and Griggs Reservoir.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: As of the 2010 census, there were 1,163,414 people, 477,235 households, and 278,030 families living in the county. The population density was . There were 527,186 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the county was 69.2% white, 21.2% black or African American, 3.9% Asian, 0.2% American Indian, 0.1% Pacific islander, 2.3% from other races, and 3.0% from two or more races. Those of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 4.8% of the population. In terms of ancestry, 24.2% were German, 14.4% were Irish, 9.1% were English, 5.5% were Italian, and 5.0% were American.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: Of the 477,235 households, 31.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 39.0% were married couples living together, 14.4% had a female householder with no husband present, 41.7% were non-families, and 31.9% of all households were made up of individuals. The average household size was 2.38 and the average family size was 3.05. The median age was 33.4 years.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: The median income for a household in the county was $49,087 and the median income for a family was $62,372. Males had a median income of $45,920 versus $37,685 for females. The per capita income for the county was $26,909. About 12.1% of families and 17.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 23.0% of those under age 18 and 9.4% of those age 65 or over.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: According to the county's 2019 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the county are:


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: For most of the 20th century, Franklin County was a Republican bastion, as has long been the case with most of central Ohio. From 1896 to 1992, it went Republican all but five times. However, it has gone Democratic in every election since 1996, reflecting the Democratic trend in most other urban counties nationwide. Columbus and most of its northern and western suburbs lean Democratic, while the more blue-collar southern section of the county leans Republican. From 1996 to 2004, Democratic nominees carried the county by single digit margins, but it swung significantly in favor of Barack Obama in 2008. The county has swung towards Democrats in every subsequent Presidential election, with each candidate breaking the previous county record for both largest Democratic vote share and largest Democratic margin of victory in county history. Most recently, Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the county with 64.7 percent of the vote and a 31.4 percent margin of victory.


title: Franklin County, Ohio

text: In Congress, it is split between three districts. Most of Columbus itself is in the 3rd district, represented by Democrat Joyce Beatty. Most of the northern and eastern portions of the county are in the 12th district, represented by Republican Troy Balderson. The southern portion is in the 15th district, represented by Republican Mike Carey.


title: Brimful of Asha

text: "Brimful of Asha" is a song by British alternative rock band Cornershop from their third album, "When I Was Born for the 7th Time" (1997). The recording originally reached number 60 on the UK Singles Chart in 1997. After a remixed version by Norman Cook became a radio and critical success, the song was re-released and reached number one on the UK chart and number 16 on the US "Billboard" Modern Rock Tracks chart. The lyric is a tribute to Asha Bhosle.


title: Brimful of Asha

text: This song is based on the history of film culture in India. Since their beginnings, Indian films have relied heavily on song-and-dance numbers. The singing is almost always performed by background singers while the actors and actresses lip sync. Asha Bhosle is a playback singer who has sung over 12,000 songs and is referred to as "Sadi rani" (Punjabi for "our queen") at one point in the lyrics. In the slower, original album recording, playback singers Lata Mangeshkar (her elder sister) and Mohammed Rafi (one of the top male playback singers of the mid-century) are mentioned. The lyrics in the bridge contain a number of references to non-Indian music, including Georges Brassens' song "Les Amoureux des bancs publics", Jacques Dutronc, Marc Bolan, Argo Records and Trojan Records.


title: Brimful of Asha

text: British magazine "Music Week" rated the song five out of five, adding that "the Asian-rock outfit deliver their most compulsive slice of pop to date, mixing a Velvet Underground-style groove with a truly ticklesome lyric, strings and a top tune." A reviewer from "NME" commented, "... Sadly not a song about the joys of chain-smoking, but in fact a celebration of the Asian music and films of our Tjinder's youth. The cognoscenti of the youth revolution will no doubt have heard this already on either its previous release or the album, but this may be the record to take the 'Shop into the crazy Global Hypermarket of the Top Ten. Not because it's a marvellously infectious good-time dance pop number, but because it repeats the line, "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow"."


title: Brimful of Asha

text: The accompanying music video for the song was directed by Phil Harder and produced by Harder/Fuller Films. It was filmed in a house in Lewisham, London.


title: Brimful of Asha

text: DJ Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) was asked to remix "Brimful of Asha" by speeding it up and modulating the song to a higher key (halfway between B-flat and B, rather than in A). The remix saw major success as a number one single in February 1998.


title: Brimful of Asha

text: In 2003, "Q Magazine" ranked the Fatboy Slim remix at number 840 in their list of the "1001 Best Songs Ever". In October 2011, "NME" placed it at number 105 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years". In August 2010, "Pitchfork" placed the remix at number 113 in their list of "The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s". "NME" ranked the remix at number 2 in their list of "The 50 Best Remixes Ever", saying it "does what the truly great remixes do – render you unable to enjoy the original". The remix was included in "Pitchfork"s 2010 list of "25 Great Remixes" of the 1990s. The remix is featured prominently on the French children's TV channel Gulli, playing before each episode.


title: Bad breath

text: Bad breath, also known as halitosis, is a symptom in which a noticeably unpleasant breath odour is present. It can result in anxiety among those affected. It is also associated with depression and symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder.


title: Bad breath

text: The concerns of bad breath may be divided into genuine and non-genuine cases. Of those who have genuine bad breath, about 85% of cases come from inside the mouth. The remaining cases are believed to be due to disorders in the nose, sinuses, throat, lungs, esophagus, or stomach. Rarely, bad breath can be due to an underlying medical condition such as liver failure or ketoacidosis. Non-genuine cases occur when someone complains of having bad breath but other people cannot detect it. This is estimated to make up between 5% and 72% of cases.


title: Bad breath

text: The treatment depends on the underlying cause. Initial efforts may include tongue cleaning, mouthwash, and flossing. Tentative evidence supports the use of mouthwash containing chlorhexidine or cetylpyridinium chloride. While there is tentative evidence of benefit from the use of a tongue cleaner it is insufficient to draw clear conclusions. Treating underlying disease such as gum disease, tooth decay, tonsil stones, or gastroesophageal reflux disease may help. Counselling may be useful in those who falsely believe that they have bad breath.


title: Bad breath

text: Estimated rates of bad breath vary from 6% to 50% of the population. Concern about bad breath is the third most common reason people seek dental care, after tooth decay and gum disease. It is believed to become more common as people age. Bad breath is viewed as a social taboo and those affected may be stigmatized. People in the United States spend more than $1 billion per year on mouthwash to treat it.


title: Bad breath

text: Bad breath is when a noticeably unpleasant odour is believed to be present on the breath. It can result in anxiety among those affected. It is also associated with depression and symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder.


title: Bad breath

text: In about 90% of genuine halitosis cases, the origin of the odour is in the mouth itself. This is known as intra-oral halitosis, oral malodour or oral halitosis.


title: Bad breath

text: The most common causes are odour producing biofilm on the back of the tongue or other areas of the mouth due to poor oral hygiene. This biofilm results in the production of high levels of foul odours. The odours are produced mainly due to the breakdown of proteins into individual amino acids, followed by the further breakdown of certain amino acids to produce detectable foul gases. Volatile sulfur compounds are associated with oral malodour levels, and usually decrease following successful treatment. Other parts of the mouth may also contribute to the overall odour, but are not as common as the back of the tongue. These locations are, in order of descending prevalence, inter-dental and sub-gingival niches, faulty dental work, food-impaction areas in between the teeth, abscesses, and unclean dentures. Oral based lesions caused by viral infections like herpes simplex and HPV may also contribute to bad breath.


title: Bad breath

text: The intensity of bad breath may differ during the day, due to eating certain foods (such as garlic, onions, meat, fish, and cheese), smoking, and alcohol consumption. Since the mouth is exposed to less oxygen and is inactive during the night, the odour is usually worse upon awakening ("morning breath"). Bad breath may be transient, often disappearing following eating, drinking, tooth brushing, flossing, or rinsing with specialized mouthwash. Bad breath may also be persistent (chronic bad breath), which affects some 25% of the population in varying degrees.


title: Bad breath

text: The most common location for mouth-related halitosis is the tongue. Tongue bacteria produce malodourous compounds and fatty acids, and account for 80 to 90% of all cases of mouth-related bad breath. Large quantities of naturally occurring bacteria are often found on the posterior dorsum of the tongue, where they are relatively undisturbed by normal activity. This part of the tongue is relatively dry and poorly cleansed, and the convoluted microbial structure of the tongue dorsum provides an ideal habitat for anaerobic bacteria, which flourish under a continually-forming tongue coating of food debris, dead epithelial cells, postnasal drip and overlying bacteria, living and dead. When left on the tongue, the anaerobic respiration of such bacteria can yield either the putrescent smell of indole, skatole, polyamines, or the "rotten egg" smell of volatile sulfur compounds (VSCs) such as hydrogen sulfide, methyl mercaptan, allyl methyl sulfide, and dimethyl sulfide. The presence of halitosis-producing bacteria on the back of the tongue is not to be confused with tongue coating. Bacteria are invisible to the naked eye, and degrees of white tongue coating are present in most people with and without halitosis. A visible white tongue coating does not always equal the back of the tongue as an origin of halitosis, however a "white tongue" is thought to be a sign of halitosis. In oral medicine generally, a white tongue is considered a sign of several medical conditions. Patients with periodontal disease were shown to have sixfold prevalence of tongue coating compared with normal subjects. Halitosis patients were also shown to have significantly higher bacterial loads in this region compared to individuals without halitosis.


title: Bad breath

text: Gingival crevices are the small grooves between teeth and gums, and they are present in health, although they may become inflamed when gingivitis is present. The difference between a gingival crevice and periodontal pocket is that former is <3mm in depth and the latter is >3mm. Periodontal pockets usually accompany periodontal disease (gum disease). There is some controversy over the role of periodontal diseases in causing bad breath. However, advanced periodontal disease is a common cause of severe halitosis. People with uncontrolled diabetes are more prone to have multiple gingival and periodontal abscess. Their gums are evident with large pockets, where pus accumulation occurs. This nidus of infection can be a potential source for bad breath. Removal of the subgingival calculus (i.e. tartar or hard plaque) and friable tissue has been shown to improve mouth odour considerably. This is accomplished by subgingival scaling and root planing and irrigation with an antibiotic mouth rinse. The bacteria that cause gingivitis and periodontal disease (periodontopathogens) are invariably gram negative and capable of producing VSC. Methyl mercaptan is known to be the greatest contributing VSC in halitosis that is caused by periodontal disease and gingivitis. The level of VSC on breath has been shown to positively correlate with the depth of periodontal pocketing, the number of pockets, and whether the pockets bleed when examined with a dental probe. Indeed, VSC may themselves have been shown to contribute to the inflammation and tissue damage that is characteristic of periodontal disease. However, not all patients with periodontal disease have halitosis, and not all patients with halitosis have periodontal disease. Although patients with periodontal disease are more likely to develop halitosis than the general population, the halitosis symptom was shown to be more strongly associated with degree of tongue coating than with the severity of periodontal disease. Another possible symptom of periodontal disease is a bad taste, which does not necessarily accompany a malodour that is detectable by others.


title: Bad breath

text: In this occurrence, the air exiting the nostrils has a pungent odour that differs from the oral odour. Nasal odour may be due to sinus infections or foreign bodies.


title: Bad breath

text: Halitosis is often stated to be a symptom of chronic rhinosinusitis, however gold standard breath analysis techniques have not been applied. Theoretically, there are several possible mechanisms of both objective and subjective halitosis that may be involved.


title: Bad breath

text: There is disagreement as to the proportion of halitosis cases which are caused by conditions of the tonsils. Some claim that the tonsils are the most significant cause of halitosis after the mouth. According to one report, approximately 3% of halitosis cases were related to the tonsils. Conditions of the tonsils which may be associated with halitosis include chronic caseous tonsillitis (cheese-like material can be exuded from the tonsillar crypt orifi), tonsillolithiasis (tonsil stones), and less commonly peritonsillar abscess, actinomycosis, fungating malignancies, chondroid choristoma and inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor.


title: Bad breath

text: The lower esophageal sphincter, which is the valve between the stomach and the esophagus, may not close properly due to a hiatal hernia or GERD, allowing acid to enter the esophagus and gases to escape to the mouth. A Zenker's diverticulum may also result in halitosis due to aging food retained in the esophagus.


title: Bad breath

text: The stomach is considered by most researchers as a very uncommon source of bad breath. The esophagus is a closed and collapsed tube, and continuous flow of gas or putrid substances from the stomach indicates a health problem—such as reflux serious enough to be bringing up stomach contents or a fistula between the stomach and the esophagus—which will demonstrate more serious manifestations than just foul odour.


title: Bad breath

text: In the case of allyl methyl sulfide (the byproduct of garlic's digestion), odour does not come from the stomach, since it does not get metabolized there.


title: Bad breath

text: There are a few systemic (non-oral) medical conditions that may cause foul breath odour, but these are infrequent in the general population. Such conditions are:


title: Bad breath

text: Individuals affected by the above conditions often show additional, more diagnostically conclusive symptoms than bad breath alone.


title: Bad breath

text: One quarter of the people seeking professional advice on bad breath have an exaggerated concern of having bad breath, known as "halitophobia", delusional halitosis, or as a manifestation of olfactory reference syndrome. They are sure that they have bad breath, although many have not asked anyone for an objective opinion. Bad breath may severely affect the lives of some 0.5–1.0% of the adult population.


title: Bad breath

text: Scientists have long thought that smelling one's own breath odour is often difficult due to acclimatization, although many people with bad breath are able to detect it in others. Research has suggested that self-evaluation of halitosis is not easy because of preconceived notions of how bad we think it should be. Some people assume that they have bad breath because of bad taste (metallic, sour, fecal, etc.), however bad taste is considered a poor indicator.


title: Bad breath

text: One popular home method to determine the presence of bad breath is to lick the back of the wrist, let the saliva dry for a minute or two, and smell the result. This test results in overestimation, as concluded from research, and should be avoided. A better way would be to lightly scrape the posterior back of the tongue with a plastic disposable spoon and to smell the drying residue. Home tests that use a chemical reaction to test for the presence of polyamines and sulfur compounds on tongue swabs are now available, but there are few studies showing how well they actually detect the odour. Furthermore, since breath odour changes in intensity throughout the day depending on many factors, multiple testing sessions may be necessary.


title: Bad breath

text: If bad breath is persistent, and all other medical and dental factors have been ruled out, specialized testing and treatment is required. Hundreds of dental offices and commercial breath clinics now claim to diagnose and treat bad breath. They often use some of several laboratory methods for diagnosis of bad breath:


title: Bad breath

text: Although such instrumentation and examinations are widely used in breath clinics, the most important measurement of bad breath (the gold standard) is the actual sniffing and scoring of the level and type of the odour carried out by trained experts ("organoleptic measurements"). The level of odour is usually assessed on a six-point intensity scale.


title: Bad breath

text: The Miyazaki "et al." classification was originally described in 1999 in a Japanese scientific publication, and has since been adapted to reflect North American society, especially with regards halitophobia. The classification assumes three primary divisions of the halitosis symptom, namely genuine halitosis, pseudohalitosis and halitophobia. This classification has been suggested to be most widely used, but it has been criticized because it is overly simplistic and is largely of use only to dentists rather than other specialties.


title: Bad breath

text: The Tangerman and Winkel classification was suggested in Europe in 2002. This classification focuses only on those cases where there is genuine halitosis, and has therefore been criticized for being less clinically useful for dentistry when compared to the Miyazaki "et al." classification.


title: Bad breath

text: The same authors also suggested that halitosis can be divided according to the character of the odour into 3 groups:


title: Bad breath

text: Based on the strengths and weaknesses of previous attempts at classification, a cause based classification has been proposed:


title: Bad breath

text: Any halitosis symptom is potentially the sum of these types in any combination, superimposed on the physiologic odour present in all healthy individuals.


title: Bad breath

text: Approaches to improve bad breath may include physical or chemical means to decrease bacteria in the mouth, products to mask the smell, or chemicals to alter the odour creating molecules. Many different interventions have been suggested and trialed such as toothpastes, mouthwashes, lasers, tongue scraping, and mouth rinses. There is no strong evidence to indicate which interventions work and which are more effective. It is recommended that in those who use tobacco products stop. Evidence does not support the benefit of dietary changes or chewing gum.


title: Bad breath

text: Brushing the teeth may help. While there is evidence of tentative benefit from tongue cleaning it is insufficient to draw clear conclusions. A 2006 Cochrane review found tentative evidence that it might decrease levels of odour molecules. Flossing may be useful.


title: Bad breath

text: A 2008 systematic review found that antibacterial mouthrinses may help. Mouthwashes often contain antibacterial agents including cetylpyridinium chloride, chlorhexidine, zinc gluconate, zinc chloride, zinc lactate, hydrogen peroxide, chlorine dioxide, amine fluorides, stannous fluoride, hinokitiol, and essential oils. Listerine is one of the well-known mouthwash products composed of different essential oils. Other formulations containing herbal products and probiotics have also been proposed. Cetylpyridinium chloride and chlorhexidine can temporarily stain teeth.


title: Bad breath

text: If diseases outside of the mouth are believed to be contributing to the problem, treatment may result in improvements.


title: Bad breath

text: It is difficult for researchers to make estimates of the prevalence of halitosis in the general population for several reasons. Firstly, halitosis is subject to societal taboo and stigma, which may impact individual's willingness to take part in such studies or to report accurately their experience of the condition. Secondly, there is no universal agreement about what diagnostic criteria and what detection methods should be used to define which individuals have halitosis and which do not. Some studies rely on self reported estimation of halitosis, and there is contention as to whether this is a reliable predictor of actual halitosis or not. In reflection of these problems, reported epidemiological data are widely variable.


title: Bad breath

text: The earliest known mention of bad breath occurs in ancient Egypt, where detailed recipes for toothpaste are made before the Pyramids are built. The 1550 BC Ebers Papyrus describes tablets to cure bad breath based on incense, cinnamon, myrrh and honey. Hippocratic medicine advocated a mouthwash of red wine and spices to cure bad breath. Alcohol-containing mouthwashes are now thought to exacerbate bad breath as they dry the mouth, leading to increased microbial growth. The Hippocratic Corpus also describes a recipe based on marble powder for females with bad breath. The Ancient Roman physician Pliny wrote about methods to sweeten the breath.


title: Bad breath

text: Ancient Chinese emperors required visitors to chew clove before an audience. The Talmud describes bad breath as a disability, which could be grounds for legal breaking of a marriage license. Early Islamic theology stressed that the teeth and tongue should be cleaned with a siwak, a stick from the plant Salvadora persica tree. This traditional chewing stick is also called a Miswak, especially used in Saudi Arabia, an essentially is like a natural toothbrush made from twigs. During the Renaissance era, Laurent Joubert, doctor to King Henry III of France states bad breath is "caused by dangerous miasma that falls into the lungs and through the heart, causing severe damages".


title: Bad breath

text: In and "" (1919), the following recipe is offered: "[One] teaspoonful of the following mixture after each meal: One ounce chloride of soda, one ounce liquor of potassa, one and one-half ounces phosphate of soda, and three ounces of water."


title: Bad breath

text: In the present day, bad breath is one of the biggest social taboos. The general population places great importance on the avoidance of bad breath, illustrated by the annual $1 billion that consumers in the United States spend on deodorant-type mouth (oral) rinses, mints, and related over-the-counter products. Many of these practices are merely short term attempts at masking the odour. Some authors have suggested that there is an evolutionary basis to concern over bad breath. An instinctive aversion to unpleasant odours may function to detect spoiled food sources and other potentially invective or harmful substances. Body odours in general are thought to play an important role in mate selection in humans, and unpleasant odour may signal disease, and hence a potentially unwise choice of mate. Although reports of bad breath are found in the earliest medical writings known, the social stigma has likely changed over time, possibly partly due to sociocultural factors involving advertising pressures. As a result, the negative psychosocial aspects of halitosis may have worsened, and psychiatric conditions such as halitophobia are probably more common than historically. There have been rare reports of people committing suicide because of halitosis, whether there is genuine halitosis or not.


title: Bad breath

text: The word halitosis is derived from the Latin word "halitus", meaning 'breath', and the Greek suffix "-osis" meaning 'diseased' or 'a condition of'. With modern consumerism, there has been a complex interplay of advertising pressures and the existing evolutionary aversion to malodour. Contrary to the popular belief that Listerine coined the term "halitosis", its origins date to before the product's existence, being coined by physician Joseph William Howe in his 1874 book "The Breath, and the Diseases Which Give It a Fetid Odor", although it only became commonly used in the 1920s when a marketing campaign promoted Listerine as a solution for "chronic halitosis". The company was the first to manufacture mouth washes in the United States. According to Freakonomics:


title: Bad breath

text: According to traditional Ayurvedic medicine, chewing areca nut and betel leaf is a remedy for bad breath. In South Asia, it was a custom to chew areca or betel nut and betel leaf among lovers because of the breath-freshening and stimulant drug properties of the mixture. Both the nut and the leaf are mild stimulants and can be addictive with repeated use. The betel nut will also cause dental decay and red or black staining of teeth when chewed. Both areca nut and betel leaf chewing, however, can cause premalignant lesions such as leukoplakia and submucous fibrosis, and are recognized risk factors for oral and oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (oral cancer).


title: Bad breath

text: Practitioners and purveyors of alternative medicine sell a vast range of products that claim to be beneficial in treating halitosis, including dietary supplements, vitamins, and oral probiotics. Halitosis is often claimed to be a symptom of "candida hypersensitivity syndrome" or related diseases, and is claimed to be treatable with antifungal medications or alternative medications to treat fungal infections.


title: Bad breath

text: In 1996, the International Society for Breath Odor Research (ISBOR) was formed to promote multidisciplinary research on all aspects of breath odours.


title: Half-track

text: A half-track is a civilian or military vehicle with regular wheels at the front for steering and continuous tracks at the back to propel the vehicle and carry most of the load. The purpose of this combination is to produce a vehicle with the cross-country capabilities of a tank and the handling of a wheeled vehicle.


title: Half-track

text: The main advantage of half-tracks over wheeled vehicles is that the tracks reduce the pressure on any given area of the ground by spreading the vehicle's weight over a larger area, which gives it greater mobility over soft terrain like mud and snow, while they do not require the complex steering mechanisms of fully tracked vehicles, relying instead on their front wheels to direct the vehicle, augmented in some cases by track braking controlled by the steering wheel.


title: Half-track

text: It is not difficult for someone who can drive a car to drive a half-track, which is a great advantage over fully tracked vehicles, which require specialized training. Half-tracks thus facilitate moving personnel and equipment successfully across varying terrain.


title: Half-track

text: The main disadvantage is the increased maintenance to maintain track tension, and the reduced life span of tracks (up to 10,000 km) compared to tires (up to 80,000 km).


title: Half-track

text: The French engineer Adolphe Kégresse converted a number of cars from the personal car pool of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia to half-tracks in 1911. His system was named after him: the Kégresse track, which used a flexible belt rather than interlocking metal segments. He applied it to several vehicles in the imperial garage, including Rolls-Royce cars and Packard trucks. The Imperial Russian Army also fitted the system to a number of their Austin Armoured Cars. From 1916 onward, there was a Russian project by the Putilov Plant to produce military half-tracks (the Austin-Putilov model), along the same lines, using trucks and French track parts.


title: Half-track

text: After the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Soviet Union, Kégresse returned to his native France, where the system was used on Citroën cars between 1921 and 1937 for off-road and military vehicles.


title: Half-track

text: The concept originated with the hauling of logs in the northeastern US, with the Lombard Steam Log Hauler built by Alvin Lombard of Waterville, Maine, from 1899 to 1917. The vehicle resembled a railway steam locomotive, with sled steering (or wheels) in front and at the rear, crawlers driven by chains instead of the driving wheels of a locomotive.


title: Half-track

text: By 1907, dog and pony show operator H. H. Linn abandoned his gas-and-steam-powered four- and six-wheel-drive creations and had Lombard build a motor home/traction engine run by an underslung four-cylinder Brennan gasoline engine to travel the unimproved roads of the day, with wheels at the front and tracks at the rear: the first payload-carrying half-track. By 1909 this was replaced by a smaller machine with two wheels at the front and a single track behind, since rural wooden bridges presented problems.


title: Half-track

text: Stability issues, together with a dispute between Linn and Lombard, led Linn to create the Linn Manufacturing Company, builder of the Linn tractor, for building and putting onto the market his own improved civilian half-track–style machines. Lombard attempted to follow but, for the most part, remained a pulling machine. Linn would later register "Haftrak" and "Catruk" as trademarks, the latter for a half-track meant to convert hydraulically from truck to crawler configuration.


title: Half-track

text: During World War I, its production capacity became focused on military needs. Its tractors replaced horses and were widely used by the Allies as artillery tractors and for hauling supplies. The Holt tractor went on to become the basis for the Mark I, the Schneider CA1 and the German A7V tank. The Holt would be renamed the Caterpillar 60, after merging with C.L. Best Company of California, in 1925, the Holt Manufacturing Company went on to form the company that would become known as Caterpillar.


title: Half-track

text: Tractors used to tow artillery and designs with front wheels and tracks at the rear began to appear prior to the outbreak of war, often based on agricultural machines such as the Holt tractor. The basic half-track concept was originally showcased by the British during the war.


title: Half-track

text: With such tractors, the tactical use of heavier guns to supplement the light horse-drawn field guns became feasible. For example, in the British Army it allowed the heavy guns of the Royal Garrison Artillery to be used flexibly on the battlefield. In England, starting in 1905, David Roberts of Richard Hornsby & Sons had attempted to interest British military officials in a tracked vehicle, but failed.


title: Half-track

text: Holt bought the patents related to the "chain track" track-type tractor from Richard Hornsby & Sons in 1914 for £4,000. Unlike the Holt tractor, which had a steerable tiller wheel in front of the tracks, the Hornsby crawler was steered by controlling power to each track.


title: Half-track

text: When World War I broke out, with the problem of trench warfare and the difficulty of transporting supplies to the front, the pulling power of crawling-type tractors drew the attention of the military. With tanks coming onto the scene, however, the combination of tracks and wheels seemed impractical when fully tracked or six-wheel, four-wheel drive vehicles were available.


title: Half-track

text: The half-track saw a comeback in the 1930s, with development occurring in several countries that would use them in World War II. The White Motor Company, which had designed armored cars for the United States Army and United States Marines, continued after the First World War to develop armored cars and added tracks for the M2 half-track car and M3 half-track.


title: Half-track

text: There were many civilian half-track experiments in the 1920s and 1930s. The Citroën company sponsored several scientific expeditions crossing deserts in North Africa and Central Asia, using their "autochenilles". After World War I, the US military wanted to develop a semi-tracked personnel carrier vehicle, so it looked at these civilian half-tracks. In the late 1920s the US Army purchased several Citroën-Kégresse vehicles for evaluation followed by a licence to produce them. This resulted in the Army Ordnance Department building a prototype in 1939. In September 1940 it went into production with the military M2 and M3 half-track versions.


title: Half-track

text: With the snow and ice of Canada in mind, Joseph-Armand Bombardier developed 7- and 12-passenger half-track "autoneiges" in the 1930s, starting what would become the Bombardier industrial conglomerate. The Bombardier vehicle had tracks for propulsion in the rear and skis for steering in front. The skis could be replaced with wheels in the summer, but this was uncommon.


title: Half-track

text: The Red Army also experimented with half-tracks, such as the BA-30, but found them expensive and unreliable.


title: Half-track

text: Although not a feature on American World War II vehicles, steering could be assisted by track braking, controlled by the steering wheel.


title: Half-track

text: In America, 43,000 halftracks were produced by three primary manufacturers, the largest being the White Motor Company, the original designer, with a total of 15,414 accepted by the War Department. The other manufacturers, Autocar and Diamond T, built 12,168 and 12,421, respectively. These designs were produced under license in Canada, and were widely supplied under the Lend Lease program, with 5,000 supplied to the USSR alone.


title: Half-track

text: The fourth manufacturer of American-made half-tracks was the International Motor Truck Corporation division of International Harvester. IH built approximately 12,853 half-tracks, which were shipped to Europe for use by British and French troops. In 1942, they produced 152 M5 units and 5 M14 units at the Springfield Works; in 1943 they produced 2,026 M9 units, 1,407 M0A1 units, 4,473 M5 units, 1,600 M14 units, and 400 M17 units, all at the Springfield Works; in 1944 they produced 1,100 M5A1 units and 1,100 M17 units also at the Springfield Works; and in 1945 they built 589 M5A1 and 1 M5A3 units at Springfield Works. The IHC half-tracks differed visibly from the White, Diamond T, and AutoCar units in several ways. The IHC units had flat front fenders instead of fenders with compound curves; used the International Red Diamond 450 engines instead of the Hercules 160AX engines used by the other manufacturers; used IHC Model 1856 4-speed transmissions instead of the Spicer 4-speed transmissions used by the other manufacturers; had IHC Model FOK-1370 front drive axles instead of the Timken front axles used by their competitors; used IHC Model RHT-1590 axles in the rear instead of the Timken axles used by their competitors; and were constructed with fully welded armor with rounded rear corners instead of the bolted armor with square corners used by the other three manufacturers.


title: Half-track

text: In August 1944, Allied forces liberated Paris, France. The first vehicle to enter the city was an M3 named "España Cañí" and driven by Spanish soldiers fighting under the French tricolor. There followed several days of parades in late August. One parade of 25 August 1944 was down the Champs-Élysées, with Charles de Gaulle leading throngs of Parisians, and French soldiers driving IH half-tracks.


title: Half-track

text: Half-tracks were used extensively in World War II, especially by the Germans with their armored Demag-designed Sd.Kfz. 250s and Hanomag-designed Sd.Kfz. 251s; and by the Americans with their M2s and M3s.


title: Half-track

text: Half-tracks were widely used as mortar carriers, self-propelled anti-aircraft guns, self-propelled anti-tank guns, armored fighting vehicles and in other tasks.


title: Half-track

text: The Germans used a small 2 seater 1/2-ton class half-track "motorcycle", the Sd.Kfz. 2 (better known as the "Kleines Kettenkraftrad" HK 101 or "Kettenkrad" for short – "Ketten" meaning tracks, and "krad" being the military abbreviation of the German word "Kraftrad", the administrative German term for motorcycle), to pull small artillery guns, for ammunition haulage, general transport and as a ground towing vehicle for the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter. Built by NSU Motorenwerke AG Neckarsulm and Stettin, a total of 8,345 vehicles were produced between 1940 and 1944.


title: Half-track

text: Larger German half-track tractors were used to tow anti-tank and field artillery pieces. The largest of these were also used by mechanical engineers to retrieve bogged down vehicles or perform repairs such as engine maintenance. Maultier half-tracks used to transport supplies to forward units were essentially civilian trucks which had had their rear axles replaced by Panzer I or Panzer II running gear. A replacement half-track design introduced later in World War II, the 1943-introduced "Schwerer Wehrmachtschlepper", was meant to replace the 3-tonne and 5-tonne capacity models – only some 825 examples were built before the war's end.


title: Half-track

text: A common feature of virtually all German World War II half-tracks was the so-called "Schachtellaufwerk" overlapped/interleaved roadwheel arrangement with a "slack track" system possessing no return rollers under the return run of track, used from the small "Kettenkrad" to the nine-tonne capacity Sd.Kfz. 9 vehicle, and most famously used on Henschel's Tiger I and MAN's Panther main battle tanks.


title: Half-track

text: Half-tracks were extensively used after World War II until the late 1960s, mostly in form of surplus World War II vehicles. Half-tracks saw combat in the French colonial empire in the First Indochina War and the Algerian War; in the Indo-Pakistani wars and conflicts; and the early wars of the Arab–Israeli conflict.


title: Half-track

text: Half-tracks were in use by the Israeli Army until recently, where they were deemed to outperform fully tracked and fully wheeled vehicles for non-combat payload tasks such as carrying telecommunications equipment. As of March 2008, 600 half-tracks were still officially listed as on active duty.


title: Half-track

text: Many Second World War half-tracks were sold off to civilian users either as surplus stock or later due to obsolescence when the fully tracked armoured personnel carrier was introduced into service. Most were used in engineering-related tasks involving terrain that would be difficult for even four-wheel drive trucks, such as snow, sand and water-logged soil. Many were significantly modified for their new roles, including being fitted with winches, small cranes, and generators after the rear cabin sides were removed.


title: Electoral district

text: An electoral district, also known as an election district, legislative district, voting district, constituency, riding, ward, division, or (election) precinct is a subdivision of a larger state (a country, administrative region, or other polity) created to provide its population with representation in the larger state's legislative body. That body, or the state's constitution or a body established for that purpose, determines each district's boundaries and whether each will be represented by a single member or multiple members. Generally, only voters ("constituents") who reside within the district are permitted to vote in an election held there. District representatives may be elected by a first-past-the-post system, a proportional representative system, or another voting method. They may be selected by a direct election under universal suffrage, an indirect election, or another form of suffrage.


title: Electoral district

text: The names for electoral districts vary across countries and, occasionally, for the office being elected. The term "constituency" is commonly used to refer to an electoral district, especially in British English, but it can also refer to the body of eligible voters or all the residents of the represented area or only those who voted for a certain candidate.


title: Electoral district

text: In Australia and New Zealand, electoral districts are called "electorates", however elsewhere the term "electorate" generally refers specifically to the body of voters.


title: Electoral district

text: In India electoral districts are referred to as ""Nirvācan Kṣetra"" () in Hindi, which can be literally translated to English as "electoral area" though the official English translation for the term is "constituency". The term "Nirvācan Kṣetra" is used while referring to an electoral district in general irrespective of the legislature. When referring to a particular legislative constituency, it is simply referred to as "Kṣetra" along with the name of the legislature, in Hindi (e.g. 'Lok Sabha Kshetra' for a Lok Sabha constituency). Electoral districts for municipal or other local bodies are called "wards".


title: Electoral district

text: In Canada, districts are colloquially called in English "ridings" (stemming from an earlier British geographical subdivision). In some parts of Canada, "constituencies" is used for provincial districts and "ridings" for federal districts. In colloquial French, they are called "comtés", "counties" ("circonscriptions" is the legal term).


title: Electoral district

text: Local electoral districts are sometimes called "wards", a term also used for administrative subdivisions of a municipality. However, in the Republic of Ireland, voting districts are called local electoral areas.


title: Electoral district

text: "District magnitude" is a term invented by the American political scientist Douglas W. Rae in his 1967 dissertation "The Political Consequences of Electoral Laws". It refers to the number of seats assigned to each district, and thus the easiness to be elected, as the threshold "de facto" decreases in proportion.


title: Electoral district

text: The concept of magnitude explains Duverger's observation that plurality voting tends to produce two-party systems, and proportional representation (PR) methods tend to produce multi-party systems.


title: Electoral district

text: District magnitude is larger than 1 where multiple members are elected, such as single transferable vote elections. They normally range from 2 to 10 members in a district.


title: Electoral district

text: District magnitude may be set at an equal number of seats. Examples include: all districts of the Northern Ireland Assembly elected 6 members (5 members since 2017); all those of the Parliament of Malta send 5 MPs, whereas Chile, between 1989 and 2013, used a method called binomial voting which assigned 2 MPs to each district.


title: Electoral district

text: In many cases, however, multi-member constituencies correspond to already existing jurisdictions (region, district, ward), which creates differences in district magnitude:


title: Electoral district

text: The concept of district magnitude helps explains why Duverger's speculated correlation between proportional representation and party system fragmentation has many counter-examples, as PR methods combined with small-sized multi-member constituencies may produce a low effective number of parties.


title: Electoral district

text: The inverse of the district magnitude plus one is the Droop quota which provides the mathematical threshold to ensure election (probabilistic threshold should include the likely number of votes wasted to minor lists). For instance, a 10%-polling party will not win a seat in a 5-member district (Droop quota of 1/6=16.67%) but will do so in a 9-member district as this is the minimum to exceed a Droop quota (1/10=10%).


title: Electoral district

text: Larger district magnitudes annihilate the need and practice of gerrymandering, which is the practice of partisan redistricting by means of creating imbalances in the make-up of the district map. A higher magnitude means less wasted votes, and less room for such maneuvers.


title: Electoral district

text: Multiple-member contests sometimes use plurality block voting, which allows a single group to take all the district seats. Single voting such as single non-transferable vote or single transferable vote prevents such a landslide.


title: Electoral district

text: Plurality (and other elections with lower district magnitudes) are known to limit the representation of minorities. John Stuart Mill had first proposed proportional representation (PR) in the mid-19th century precisely to respond to this shortcoming.


title: Electoral district

text: With lower district magnitudes, the only way to include demographic minorities scattered across the country is to force parties to include them:


title: Electoral district

text: Greater magnitudes increase the chance for diverse walks of life and minority groups to be elected. However, it is not synonymous with proportional representation. A closed list PR method, for instance, gives the party machine the power to rank the candidates on the party list. In this case, greater magnitudes help minorities only if the party machines choose to include them.


title: Electoral district

text: "Apportionment" is the process of allocating a number of representatives to different regions, such as states or provinces. Apportionment changes are often accompanied by "redistricting", the redrawing of electoral district boundaries to accommodate the new number of representatives. This redrawing is necessary under single-member district systems, as each new representative requires their own district. Multi-member systems, however, vary depending on other rules. Ireland, for example, redraws its electoral districts after every census while Belgium uses its existing administrative boundaries for electoral districts and instead modifies the number of representatives allotted to each. Israel and the Netherlands are among the few countries that avoid the need for apportionment entirely by electing legislators at-large.


title: Electoral district

text: Apportionment is generally done on the basis of population. Seats in the United States House of Representatives, for instance, are reapportioned to individual states every 10 years following a census, with some states that have grown in population gaining seats. By contrast, seats in the Cantonal Council of Zürich are reapportioned in every election based on the number of votes cast in each district, which is only made possible by use of multi-member districts, and the House of Peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by contrast, is apportioned without regard to population; the three major ethnic groups - Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats - each get exactly five members. "Malapportionment" occurs when voters are under- or over-represented due to variation in district population.


title: Electoral district

text: In some places, geographical area is allowed to affect apportionment, with rural areas with sparse populations allocated more seats per elector: for example in Iceland, the Falkland Islands, Scottish islands, and (partly) in US Senate elections.


title: Electoral district

text: "Gerrymandering" is the manipulation of electoral district boundaries for political gain. By creating a few "forfeit" districts where opposing candidates win overwhelmingly, gerrymandering politicians can manufacture more, but narrower, wins for themselves and their party. Gerrymandering relies on the wasted-vote effect, effectively concentrating wasted votes among opponents while minimizing wasted votes among supporters. Consequently, gerrymandering is typically done under voting systems using single-member districts, which have more wasted votes.


title: Electoral district

text: While much more difficult, gerrymandering can also be done under proportional-voting systems when districts elect very few seats. By making three-member districts in regions where a particular group has a slight majority, for instance, gerrymandering politicians can obtain 2/3 of that district's seats. Similarly, by making four-member districts in regions where the same group has slightly less than a majority, gerrymandering politicians can still secure exactly half of the seats.


title: Electoral district

text: However, any possible gerrymandering that theoretically could occur would be much less effective because minority groups can still elect at least one representative if they make up a significant percentage of the population (e.g. 20-25%), compared to single-member districts where 40-49% of the voters can be essentially shut out from any representation.


title: Electoral district

text: Sometimes, particularly under non-proportional winner-take-all voting systems, electoral districts can be prone to landslide victories. A "safe seat" is one that is very unlikely to be won by a rival politician due to the makeup of its constituency. Conversely, a "swing seat" is one that could easily "swing" either way. In United Kingdom general elections and United States presidential and congressional elections, the voting in a relatively small number of swing seats usually determines the outcome of the entire election. Many politicians aspire to have safe seats.


title: Electoral district

text: In large multi-party systems like India, swing seats can lead to a hung assembly like situation if a significant number of seats go for regional parties instead of the larger national parties who are the main competitors at the national or state level, as was the situation in the Lok Sabha (Lower house of the Parliament of India) during the 1990s.


title: Electoral district

text: Elected representatives may spend much of the time serving the needs or demands of individual "constituents", meaning either voters or residents of their district. This is more common in assemblies with many single-member or small districts than those with fewer, larger districts. In a looser sense, corporations and other such organizations can be referred to as constituents, if they have a significant presence in an area.


title: Electoral district

text: Many assemblies allow free postage (through franking privilege or prepaid envelopes) from a representative to a constituent, and often free telecommunications. Caseworkers may be employed by representatives to assist constituents with problems. Members of the U.S. Congress (both Representatives and Senators) working in Washington, D.C. have a governmentally staffed district office to aid in constituent services. Many state legislatures have followed suit. Likewise, British MPs use their Parliamentary staffing allowance to appoint staff for constituency casework. Client politics and pork barrel politics are associated with constituency work.


title: Electoral district

text: In some elected assemblies, some or all constituencies may group voters based on some criterion other than, or in addition to, the location they live. Examples include:


title: Electoral district

text: Not all democratic political systems use separate districts or other electoral subdivisions to conduct elections. Israel, for instance, conducts parliamentary elections as a single district. The 26 electoral districts in Italy and the 20 in the Netherlands have a role in the actual election, but no role whatsoever in the division of the seats. Ukraine elected half of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian Parliament) in this way in the elections in October 2012.


title: Beedi

text: A beedi (also spelled bidi or biri) is a thin cigarette or mini-cigar filled with tobacco flake and commonly wrapped in a tendu ("Diospyros melanoxylon") or "Piliostigma racemosum" leaf tied with a string or adhesive at one end. It originates from the Indian subcontinent. The name is derived from the Marwari word "beeda"—a mixture of betel nuts, herbs, and spices wrapped in a leaf. It is a traditional method of tobacco use throughout South Asia and parts of the Middle East, where beedies are popular and inexpensive. In India, beedi consumption outpaces conventional cigarettes accounting for 48% of all Indian tobacco consumption in 2008.


title: Beedi

text: Beedies were invented after Indian tobacco cultivation began in the late 17th century. Tobacco workers were the first to create them by taking leftover tobacco and rolling it in leaves.


title: Beedi

text: The commercial Indian beedi industry saw rapid growth during the 1930s probably driven by an expansion of tobacco cultivation at the time but also helped by Gandhi's support of Indian industry and Indian products. Perhaps due to this, educated classes in India grew to prefer beedies to cigarettes although this is no longer the case. Muslim leaders, calling cigarettes foreign products, have also endorsed beedies at times.


title: Beedi

text: By the middle of the 20th century, beedi manufacture had grown into a highly competitive industry. This stage of commercial production—at the height of the beedi's popularity—saw the creation of many new beedi brands as well as beedi factories employing upwards of one hundred, primarily male, beedi rollers.


title: Beedi

text: Factory-based beedi production declined as a result of increased regulation during the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, and beedi-making became a cottage industry with a home-based women workforce predominantly employed only in the beedi rolling. In contrast, males continue to be employed in other aspects of beedi production.


title: Beedi

text: Beedi smoking tends to be associated with a lower social standing, and these tobacco-filled leaves are inexpensive when compared to regular cigarettes. Those with a high social standing who do smoke beedies often do so out of the public eye; however, the cultural trend is changing.


title: Beedi

text: Over 3 million Indians are employed in the manufacture of beedies, a cottage industry that is typically done by women in their homes. Analysis of bidi industry in India found that in spite of increase in profits worker wages declined and female workers were paid substantially less than male workers.


title: Beedi

text: Workers roll an average of 500–1000 beedies per day, handling of tobacco flake. Handling tobacco and inhaling its dust is an occupational hazard for beedi workers as an increased level of chromosome aberrations was found in a scientific study.


title: Beedi

text: The production of beedies is also popular in Bangladesh. According to the 2014 "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor" published by the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, the informal sector in these countries employs underage children in the production of beedies "in response to consumer preferences".


title: Beedi

text: Tendu ("Diospyros melanoxylon") leaves make excellent wrappers, and the success of the beedi is due, in part, to this leaf. The leaves are in abundance shortly after the tobacco crop is cured and so are ready to be used in beedi manufacture. Collected in the summer and made into bundles, the leaves are dried in the sun for three to six days before being used as wrappers.


title: Beedi

text: In the United States, beedies are treated like conventional cigarettes. They are taxed at the same rates, are required to have a tax stamp, and must carry the Surgeon General's warning. However, a study done in San Francisco showed that about four in ten packs of beedies did not contain the required warning label and seven in ten did not carry the tax stamp. 2006 statistics on beedi usage show that 2.9% of high school students in the United States take part in beedi smoking compared to 1.4% of those aged 18 to 24. Some beedies are flavoured. Both Canada and the US have banned flavoured cigarettes.


title: Beedi

text: Beedis are currently legal in the UK and are subject to the same taxation as cigarettes. One must be aged 18 or over to purchase them.


title: Beedi

text: Beedies deliver more nicotine, carbon monoxide, and tar and carry a greater risk of oral cancers than conventional cigarettes. As with many other types of smoking, beedies increase the risk of certain kinds of cancers, heart disease, and lung disease. They may also be more harmful than other forms of tobacco consumption.


title: Beedi

text: Frequency of ventilatory abnormalities was highest in the cigarette smokers. A lower prevalence of chronic bronchitis and abnormal ventilatory measurements in beedi smokers, as compared with cigarette smokers, was thought to be primarily due to low total consumption of tobacco. Some added influence of smoke produced by burning of the wrapper leaf and type of tobacco used in beedies could not be ruled out.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The Seveso disaster was an industrial accident that occurred around 12:37  pm on 10 July 1976, in a small chemical manufacturing plant approximately north of Milan in the Lombardy region of Italy. It resulted in the highest known exposure to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) in residential populations, which gave rise to numerous scientific studies and standardized industrial safety regulations, including the European Union's Seveso III Directive. This accident was ranked eighth in a list of the worst man-made environmental disasters by "Time" magazine in 2010.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The Seveso disaster was named after Seveso, the community most affected, which had a population of 17,000 in 1976. Other affected neighbouring communities were Meda (19,000), Desio (33,000), Cesano Maderno (34,000) and to a lesser extent Barlassina (6,000) and Bovisio-Masciago (11,000). The industrial plant, located in Meda, was owned by the company (Meda Chemical Industries S.A., or ICMESA), a subsidiary of Givaudan, which in turn was a subsidiary of Hoffmann-La Roche (Roche Group). The factory building had been built many years earlier and the local population did not perceive it as a potential source of danger. Moreover, although several exposures of populations to dioxins had occurred before, mostly in industrial accidents, they were of a more limited scale.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The accident occurred in the chemical plant's Building B. The chemical 2,4,5-trichlorophenol ("2") was being produced there from 1,2,4,5-tetrachlorobenzene ("1") by the nucleophilic aromatic substitution reaction with sodium hydroxide. The 2,4,5-trichlorophenol was intended as an intermediate for hexachlorophene.


title: Seveso disaster

text: This reaction must be carried out at a temperature above what was achievable using the normal process utilities available at the plant, so it was decided to use the exhaust steam from the onsite electricity generation turbine, and pass that around an external heating coil installed on the chemical reactor vessel. The exhaust steam pressure was normally 12 bar and temperature 190 °C, which resulted in a reaction mixture temperature of 158 °C, very close to its boiling point of 160 °C. Safety testing showed the onset of an exothermic side reaction if the reaction mixture temperature reached 230 °C. Crucially, no steam temperature reading was made available to plant operators responsible for the reactor.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The chemical-release accident occurred when a batch process was interrupted prior to the completion of the final step – removal of ethylene glycol from the reaction mixture by distillation, due to conformance with an Italian law requiring shutdown of plant operations over the weekend. Other parts of the site had already started to close down as the processing of other batches finished, which reduced power consumption across the plant, causing a dramatic drop in the load on the turbine and a consequent increase in the temperature of the exhaust steam to around 300 °C. This much hotter steam then proceeded to heat the portion of the metal wall of the accident reactor above the level of the liquid within it to the same temperature. Not having a steam temperature reading among their instruments, operators of the reactor were unaware of the presence of this additional heating, and they stopped the batch as they normally would – by isolating the steam and turning off the stirrer in the reactor vessel. The abnormally-hot upper region of the reactor jacket then heated the adjacent reaction mixture. With the stirrer not running, the heating was highly localised – confined to just the portion of the upper layers of reaction mixture adjacent to the reactor wall, and increased the local temperature to the critical temperature for the exothermic side reaction seen in testing. Indeed, the critical temperature proved to be only 180 °C, 50 °C lower than believed. At that lower critical temperature, a slow runaway decomposition began, releasing more heat and leading to the onset of a rapid runaway reaction when the temperature reached 230 °C seven hours later.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The reactor relief valve eventually opened, causing the aerial release of 6 tonnes of chemicals, which settled over of the surrounding area. Among the substances released was 1 kg of TCDD (3). At the nominal reaction temperature, TCDD is normally seen only in trace amounts of less than 1 ppm (parts per million). However, in the higher-temperature conditions associated with the runaway reaction, TCDD production apparently reached 166 ppm or more.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The affected area was split into zones A, B, and R in decreasing order of surface soil concentrations of TCDD. Zone A was further split into 7 sub-zones. The local population was advised not to touch or eat locally grown fruits or vegetables.


title: Seveso disaster

text: Within days a total of 3,300 animals, mostly poultry and rabbits, were found dead. Emergency slaughtering commenced to prevent TCDD from entering the food chain, and by 1978 over 80,000 animals had been slaughtered. 15 children were quickly hospitalised with skin inflammation. By the end of August, Zone A had been completely evacuated and fenced. Of the 1,600 local people of all ages who had been medically examined, 447 were found to suffer from skin lesions or chloracne. An advice center was set up for pregnant women, of whom 26 opted for an abortion (which was legal in special cases) after consultation. Another 460 women continued their pregnancies without problems, their children not showing any sign of malformation. Herwig von Zwehl (Technical Director of ICMESA) and Paolo Paoletti (director of production at ICMESA) were arrested. Two government commissions were established to develop a plan for quarantining and decontaminating the area, for which the Italian government allotted 40 billion lire (US$47.8 million). This amount was tripled two years later.


title: Seveso disaster

text: A 1991 study, fourteen years after the accident, sought to assess the effects to the thousands of persons that had been exposed to dioxin. The most evident adverse health effect ascertained was chloracne (193 cases). Other early effects noted were peripheral neuropathy and liver enzyme induction. The ascertainment of other, possibly severe sequelae of dioxin exposure (e.g., birth defects) was hampered by inadequate information; however, generally, no increased risks were evident.


title: Seveso disaster

text: A study published in 1998 concluded that chloracne (nearly 200 cases with a definite exposure dependence) was the only effect established with certainty. Early health investigations including liver function, immune function, neurologic impairment, and reproductive effects yielded inconclusive results.


title: Seveso disaster

text: An excess mortality rate from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases was uncovered, and excess of diabetes cases was also found. Results of cancer incidence and mortality follow-up showed an increased occurrence of cancer of the gastrointestinal sites and of the lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue. Results cannot be viewed as final or comprehensive, however, because of various limitations: the lack of individual exposure data, short latency period, and small population size for certain cancer types.


title: Seveso disaster

text: A 2001 study confirmed in victims of the disaster, that dioxin is carcinogenic to humans and corroborate its association with cardiovascular- and endocrine-related effects. In 2009, an update including 5 more years (up to 1996) found an increase in "lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue neoplasms" and increased breast cancer.


title: Seveso disaster

text: A 2008 study evaluated whether maternal exposure is associated with modified neonatal thyroid function in the highly exposed population in Seveso and concluded that environmental contaminants such as dioxins have a long-lasting capability to modify neonatal thyroid function after the initial exposure.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The male children of mothers who were, during pregnancy of those children, exposed to high levels of toxic dioxins due to the Seveso disaster, have been found to have lower-than-average sperm counts. This result of the underlying Seveso study has been noted to provide the most pronounced evidence for prenatal exposure to an environmental chemical causing low sperm counts.


title: Seveso disaster

text: In January 1977, an action plan consisting of scientific analysis, economic aid, medical monitoring and restoration/decontamination was completed. Shortly after ICMESA began to pay the first compensations to those affected. Later that spring decontamination operations were initiated and in June a system epidemiological health monitoring for 220,000 people was launched. They then used trichlorophenol to make a drug to fight the skin infections, which they tested in dogs.


title: Seveso disaster

text: In June 1978, the Italian government raised its special loan from 40 to 115 billion lire. By the end of the year, most individual compensation claims had been settled out of court. On 5 February 1980, Paolo Paoletti (the Director of Production at ICMESA) was shot and killed in Monza by a member of the Italian radical left-wing terrorist organization Prima Linea.


title: Seveso disaster

text: On 19 December 1980, representatives of the Region of Lombardy/Italian Republic and Givaudan/ICMESA signed a compensation agreement in the presence of the prime minister of Italy, Arnaldo Forlani. The total amount would reach 20 billion lire.


title: Seveso disaster

text: The waste from the clean up of the plant was a mixture of protective clothing and chemical residues from the plant. This waste was packed into waste drums which had been designed for the storage of nuclear waste. It was agreed that the waste would be disposed of in a legal manner.


title: Seveso disaster

text: To this end, in spring 1982, the firm Mannesmann Italiana was contracted to dispose of the contaminated chemicals from Zone A. Mannesmann Italiana made it a condition that Givaudan would not be notified of the disposal site which prompted Givaudan to insist that a notary public certify the disposal. On 9 September, 41 barrels of toxic waste left the ICMESA premises. On 13 December, the notary gave a sworn statement that the barrels had been disposed of in an approved way.