title: M'Naghten rules

text: In "DPP v Harper" (1997) it was held that insanity is not generally a defence to strict liability offences. In this instance, the accused was driving with excess alcohol. By definition, the accused is sufficiently aware of the nature of the activity to commit the "actus reus" of driving and presumably knows that driving while drunk is legally wrong. Any other feature of the accused's knowledge is irrelevant.


title: M'Naghten rules

text: Section 1 of the United Kingdoms' Criminal Procedure (Insanity and Unfitness to Plead) Act 1991 provides that a jury shall not return a special verdict that "the accused is not guilty by reason of insanity" except on the written or oral evidence of two or more registered medical practitioners of whom at least one has special experience in the field of mental disorder. This may require the jury to decide between conflicting medical evidence which they are not necessarily equipped to do, but the law goes further and allows them to disagree with the experts if there are facts or surrounding circumstances which, in the opinion of the court, justify the jury in coming to that conclusion.


title: M'Naghten rules

text: The insanity defense article has a number of alternative tests that have been used at different times and places. As one example, the ALI test replaced the M'Naughten rule in many parts of the United States for many years until the 1980s; when in the aftermath of John Hinckley shooting President Ronald Reagan many ALI states returned to a variation of M'Naughten.


title: M'Naghten rules

text: The M'Naghten rules are at the focus of John Grisham's legal thriller "A Time to Kill". The M'Naghten rules apply in the US State of Mississippi, where the plot is set, and using them is the only way for the lawyer protagonist to save his client.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The sliding filament theory explains the mechanism of muscle contraction based on muscle proteins that slide past each other to generate movement. According to the sliding filament theory, the myosin (thick filaments) of muscle fibers slide past the actin (thin filaments) during muscle contraction, while the two groups of filaments remain at relatively constant length.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The theory was independently introduced in 1954 by two research teams, one consisting of Andrew Huxley and Rolf Niedergerke from the University of Cambridge, and the other consisting of Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was originally conceived by Hugh Huxley in 1953. Andrew Huxley and Niedergerke introduced it as a "very attractive" hypothesis.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: Before the 1950s there were several competing theories on muscle contraction, including electrical attraction, protein folding, and protein modification. The novel theory directly introduced a new concept called cross-bridge theory (classically swinging cross-bridge, now mostly referred to as (cross-bridge cycle) which explains the molecular mechanism of sliding filament. Cross-bridge theory states that actin and myosin form a protein complex (classically called actomyosin) by attachment of myosin head on the actin filament, thereby forming a sort of cross-bridge between the two filaments. The sliding filament theory is a widely accepted explanation of the mechanism that underlies muscle contraction.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The first muscle protein discovered was myosin by a German scientist Willy Kühne, who extracted and named it in 1864. In 1939 a Russian husband and wife team Vladimir Alexandrovich Engelhardt and Militsa Nikolaevna Lyubimova discovered that myosin had an enzymatic (called ATPase) property that can breakdown ATP to release energy. Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian physiologist, turned his focus on muscle physiology after winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1937 for his works on vitamin C and fumaric acid. He demonstrated in 1942 that ATP was the source of energy for muscle contraction. He actually observed that muscle fibres containing myosin B shortened in the presence of ATP, but not with myosin A, the experience which he later described as "perhaps the most thrilling moment of my life." With Brunó Ferenc" "Straub, he soon found that myosin B was associated with another protein, which they called actin, while myosin A was not. Straub purified actin in 1942, and Szent-Györgyi purified myosin A in 1943. It became apparent that myosin B was a combination of myosin A and actin, so that myosin A retained the original name, whereas they renamed myosin B as actomyosin. By the end of the 1940s Szent-Györgyi's team had postulated with evidence that contraction of actomyosin was equivalent to muscle contraction as a whole. But the notion was generally opposed, even from the likes of Nobel laureates such as Otto Fritz Meyerhof and Archibald Hill, who adhered to the prevailing dogma that myosin was a structural protein and not a functional enzyme. However, in one of his last contributions to muscle research, Szent-Györgyi demonstrated that actomyosin driven by ATP was the basic principle of muscle contraction.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: By the time Hugh Huxley earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1952 on his research on the structure of muscle, Szent-Györgyi had turned his career into cancer research. Huxley went to Francis O. Schmitt's laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a post-doctoral fellowship in September 1952, where he was joined by another English post-doctoral fellow Jean Hanson in January 1953. Hanson had a PhD in muscle structure from King's College, London in 1951. Huxley had used X-ray diffraction to speculate that muscle proteins, particularly myosin, form structured filaments giving rise to sarcomere (a segment of muscle fibre). Their main aim was to use electron microscopy to study the details of those filaments as never done before. They soon discovered and confirmed the filament nature of muscle proteins. Myosin and actin form overlapping filaments, myosin filaments mainly constituting the A band (the dark region of a sarcomere), while actin filaments traverse both the A and I (light region) bands. Huxley was the first to suggest the sliding filament theory in 1953, stating:


title: Sliding filament theory

text: Later, in 1996, Huxley regretted that he should have included Hanson in the formulation of his theory because it was based on their collaborative work.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: Andrew Huxley, whom Alan Hodgkin described as "wizard with scientific apparatus", had just discovered the mechanism of the nerve impulse (action potential) transmission (for which he and Hodgkin later won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1963) in 1949 using his own design of voltage clamp, and was looking for an associate who could properly dissect out muscle fibres. Upon recommendation of a close friend Robert Stämpfli, a German physician Rolf Niedergerke joined him at the University of Cambridge in 1952. By then he realised that the conventionally used phase-contrast microscope was not suitable for fine structures of muscle fibres, and thus developed his own interference microscope. Between March 1953 and January 1954 they executed their research. Huxley recollected that at the time the only person who ever thought of sliding filaments before 1953 was Dorothy Hodgkin (later winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). He spent the summer of 1953 at Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to use electron microscope there. There he met Hugh Huxley and Hanson with whom he shared data and information on their works. They parted with an agreement that they would keep in touch, and when their aim is achieved, they would publish together, if they ever "reached similar conclusions".


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The sliding filament theory was born from two consecutive papers published on the 22 May 1954 issue of "Nature" under the common theme "Structural Changes in Muscle During Contraction". Though their conclusions were fundamentally similar, their underlying experimental data and propositions were different.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The first paper, written by Andrew Huxley and Rolf Niedergerke, is titled "Interference microscopy of living muscle fibres". It was based on their study of frog muscle using interference microscope, which Andrew Huxley developed for the purpose. According to them:


title: Sliding filament theory

text: The second paper, by Hugh Huxley and Jean Hanson, is titled "Changes in the cross-striations of muscle during contraction and stretch and their structural interpretation". It is more elaborate and was based on their study of rabbit muscle using phase contrast and electron microscopes. According to them:


title: Sliding filament theory

text: In spite of strong evidence, the sliding filament theory did not gain any support for several years to come. Szent-Györgyi himself refused to believe that myosin filaments were confined to the thick filament (A band). F.O. Schmitt, whose electron microscope provided the best data, also remained sceptical of the original images. There were also immediate arguments as to the organisation of the filaments, whether the two sets (myosin and actin) of filaments were merely overlapping or continuous. It was only with the new electron microscope that Hugh Huxley confirmed the overlapping nature of the filaments in 1957. It was also from this publication that the existence of actin-myosin linkage (now called cross-bridge) was clearly shown. But he took another five years to provide evidence that the cross-bridge was a dynamic interaction between actin and myosin filaments. He obtained the actual molecular arrangement of the filaments using X-ray crystallography by teaming up with Kenneth Holmes, who was trained by Rosalind Franklin, in 1965. It was only after a conference in 1972 at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where the theory and its evidence were deliberated, that it became generally accepted. At the conference, as Koscak Maruyama later recalled, Hanson had to answer the criticisms by shouting, "I know I cannot explain the mechanism yet, but the sliding is a fact." The factual proofs came in the early 1980s when it could be demonstrated the actual sliding motion using novel sophisticated tools by different researchers.


title: Sliding filament theory

text: With substantial evidence, Hugh Huxley formally proposed the mechanism for sliding filament and is variously called swinging cross-bridge model, cross-bridge theory or cross-bridge model. (He himself preferred the name "swinging crossbridge model", because, as he recalled, "it [the discovery] was, after all, the 1960s".) He published his theory in the 20 June 1969 issue of "Science" under the title "The Mechanism of Muscular Contraction". According to his theory, filament sliding occurs by cyclic attachment and detachment of myosin on actin filaments. Contraction occurs when the myosin pulls the actin filament towards the centre of the A band, detaches from actin and creates a force (stroke) to bind to the next actin molecule. This idea was subsequently proven in detail, and is more appropriately known as the cross-bridge cycle.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: Akele Hum Akele Tum (I'm Alone, You Are Alone) is a 1995 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film starring Aamir Khan, Manisha Koirala and Master Adil, and directed by Mansoor Khan. The music is by Anu Malik and the lyrics are by Majrooh Sultanpuri. The film is loosely based on the 1979 American film "Kramer vs. Kramer". Both Aamir Khan and Manisha Koirala's performances were acclaimed; the latter also received a nomination under the Best Actress category at the 41st Filmfare Awards. Although the film was well received with critics, it did not connect with the audience.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: Rohit Kumar (Aamir Khan) is an aspiring playback singer while Kiran (Manisha Koirala) is an ambitious classical singer-in-training. They meet, relate to each other's sentiments, fall in love and get married prematurely. When Kiran's parents oppose their marriage, they decide to lead a separate life.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: However, after marriage, Kiran's ambitions take a back to her household responsibilities and looking after their son. Time fails to abate Kiran's frustration until she decides to leave Rohit and start a new life all over again. Now single, Rohit is forced to look after both his son and his own failing career. After some obvious teething troubles, Rohit succeeds in creating a separate world for himself and his son, Sunil.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: Meanwhile, Kiran becomes a huge film star. She tries to reconcile with Rohit but as luck would have it, Rohit is a proud man and misinterprets her support as her pity and things become worse. A court case is eventually filed for the custody of Sunil.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: Rohit faces a tough time preparing for the case as his financial position is not as sound as Kiran's. He sells his best songs at a very low price so that he can fight the custody battle. During the court battle, Kiran's lawyer Bhujbal (Paresh Rawal) uses every possible trick to show that Rohit does not deserve the custody of his child. He even uses the information that Rohit had told Kiran only because he felt that she had a right to know about her son's life against him. Rohit instructs his lawyer to fight the case honestly as he does not wish to hurt Kiran and her reputation. In the end, the court rules in favor of the mother and Kiran is given custody of the child. During this time, common friends of Rohit and Kiran try to explain to Kiran that Rohit had changed for the better and that he was now very much attached to his son. Kiran also realises that their son would never find happiness only with her. She tells Rohit that she will not take Sunil away and that she wants him to stay at his own home to which Rohit replies that this was Kiran's home as well. Kiran seemingly moves to get out of the house but then closes the door and smiles.


title: Akele Hum Akele Tum

text: The music is given by Anu Malik and the lyrics were penned by Majrooh Sultanpuri. Tracks like "Raja Ko Rani Se Pyaar Gaya", "Dil Mera Churaya Kyun", "Akele Hum Akele Tum" and "Dil Kehta Hai" became immensely popular. The song "Aisa Zakham Diya Hai" sampled the famous 70s psychedelic rock song "Child In Time", performed by the English rock band Deep Purple, while "Dil Mera Churaya Kyun" is inspired from "Last Christmas" by Wham!. In existence is an unreleased version of the soundtrack, 'Dil Mera Churaya Kyun', sung by Udit Narayan, but never made it to the original soundtrack nor motion picture.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Numerous computer and video games have been inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien's works set in Middle-earth. Titles have been produced by studios such as Electronic Arts, Vivendi Games, Melbourne House, and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In 1982, Melbourne House began a series of licensed "Lord of the Rings" graphical interactive fiction (text adventure) games with "The Hobbit", based on the book with the same name. The game was considered quite advanced at the time, with interactive characters that moved between locations independent of the player, and Melbourne House's 'Inglish' text parser which accepted full-sentence commands where the norm was simple two-word verb/noun commands. They went on to release 1986's "", 1987's "Shadows of Mordor", and 1989's "The Crack of Doom".


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: A BBC Micro text adventure released around the same time was unrelated to Melbourne's titles except for the literary origin.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: "The Lord of Rings: Journey to Rivendell" was announced in 1983 by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, but was never released. The prototype ROM can be found at AtariAge.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In 1990, Interplay, in collaboration with Electronic Arts (who would later obtain the licenses to the film trilogy), released "Lord of the Rings Vol. I" (a special CD-ROM version of which featured cut-scenes from Ralph Bakshi's animated adaptation) and the following year's "Lord of the Rings Vol. II: The Two Towers", a series of role-playing video games based on the events of the first two books. A third instalment was planned, but never released. Interplay's games mostly appeared on the PC and Amiga, but later they did a "Lord of the Rings" game for the SNES, which was different from the PC Version. A "Lord of the Rings" game for Sega Genesis was planned to be released by Electronic Arts but never released.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Thereafter, no official "The Lord of the Rings" titles were released until the making of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy for New Line Cinema in 2001–2003, which brought the story to the mass market. Electronic Arts obtained the licences for the three films, while Vivendi Games obtained the licence to produce games based on the books from Tolkien Enterprises. This gave rise to an unusual situation: Electronic Arts produced no adaptation of "The Fellowship of the Ring", but produced adaptations named (which covered events of both the first two films) and , whereas Vivendi only produced a game covering the first volume of Tolkien's work, . While Vivendi's access to the book rights prevented them from using material from the film, it permitted them to include elements of "The Lord of the Rings" which were not in the films. EA, on the other hand, were not permitted to do this, as they were only licensed to develop games based on the films, which left out elements of the original story or deviated in places.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In 2003, Vivendi produced an adaptation of "The Hobbit", aimed at a younger audience: "The Hobbit", as well as a real-time strategy game "", both based on Tolkien's literature.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Further spin-offs from the film trilogy were produced: A real time strategy game "", and a turn based role-playing game "" were released in 2004, and a PSP-exclusive title, "" in 2005.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In 2005, EA secured the rights to both the films and the books, thus "" incorporated elements of the film adaptions, and the original Tolkienesque lore. EA also began work on an open world role-playing video game called "", but it was put on indefinite hold in early 2007, with no further information about its developmental or release status.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In May 2005 Turbine, Inc. announced that they had acquired exclusive rights to create massively multiplayer online role-playing games based on the novel by Tolkien Enterprises, and launched "The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar" on 24 April 2007. Initially, the game covered the region of Eriador, from the Grey Havens to the Misty Mountains, and about as far north and south, but subsequent updates and expansion packs have more than doubled the game world, including areas such as Moria, Lothlórien, Mirkwood, Isengard and Rohan. The game is based on the books and Turbine's licence explicitly prohibits them from including any story or design elements unique to the movie adaptations. On the other hand, this allowed game designers to include lesser-known areas and references to the events, which are absent from the movies. The first expansion to "The Lord of the Rings Online" was released on 18 November 2008, entitled "". The next expansion, "Siege of Mirkwood", was released on 1 December 2009.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: The third expansion titled "" went live on 27 September 2011 and included the areas of Dunland, the Gap of Rohan and Isengard where the tower of Orthanc is located. The fourth expansion, "", was released on 15 October 2012, featuring The Eaves of Fangorn and eastern part of Rohan up to the East Wall. The fifth expansion, "", launched in November 2013 and added the remainder of the Rohan landscape.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: "" produced by Pandemic Studios using the same engine used in "" was released in early 2009 on the PC and all seventh-generation video game systems except the Wii and PSP. All versions received mixed reviews, with the Nintendo DS version garnering slightly better reviews. The game also marked the end of Electronic Arts licence, which had already been extended some months so that the game could be completed. Subsequently, the licence, obtained via Tolkien Enterprises, passed to Warner Bros.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: After Warner Bros. gained the licence to publish Middle-earth video games, the first game to be published under this new licence holder would be "", an action-adventure retelling of the Peter Jackson film trilogy from Aragorn's perspective, on Nintendo and Sony video game platforms, with Wii and PlayStation 3 versions taking advantage of motion controls to simulate sword, shield and bow combat.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: The 2010s saw the release of three darker and more violent Middle-earth video games that were rated Mature by the ESRB. The first of such games was "", an action role-playing game that takes place in Northern Middle-earth. It was developed by Snowblind Studios and released on 1 November 2011.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Then Monolith Productions developed a two-game, non-canon "Middle-earth: Shadow" spin-off series, set during the beginning of "The Hobbit". The main protagonist of these two action RPGs is a Ranger named Talion who bonds with the Elf spirit Celebrimbor, gaining wraith-like powers to deal with adversaries. The first game, "" was released in 2014, with its sequel, "", released in 2017.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: In that same decade, Warner Bros. released "Lego The Lord of the Rings" and "Lego The Hobbit", two family-friendly Lego video game adaptations of the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, "" and "".


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Unofficial games include "Shadowfax" (1982) by Postern, a simplistic side-scrolling action game for the Spectrum, C64, and VIC-20, in which Gandalf rides the titular steed while smiting endless Nazgûl. Some of the most enduring unlicensed games are "Moria" (1983), a roguelike based loosely on "The Fellowship of the Ring" (and unrelated to a 1975 game of the same name with only scant connection to Tolkien); its various forks such as "Angband" (1990), loosely based on "The Silmarillion"; "Elendor" (1991), a MUSH based on Tolkien in general; and two MUDs based on "The Lord of the Rings": "MUME" (Multi-Users in Middle-earth) (1992) and "The Two Towers" (1994).


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: A homebrew text adventure was created for the Atari 2600, based on The Fellowship of the Ring, by Adam Thornton. The game, which is separate and not related to the unreleased Parker Brothers game, was self-published in 2002.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Tolkien-inspired mods and custom maps have been made for many games, such as "Heroes of Might and Magic", "Warcraft III", "Neverwinter Nights", "", "", "Warlords 3", "", "Mount & Blade", "", and "Age of Wonders". The game Minecraft has been used extensively as a tool to recreate Middle-earth, most notably the servers MCME (Minecraft Middle Earth) and ArdaCraft, in addition to large-scale mods like "The Lord of the Rings Mod: Bringing Middle-earth to Minecraft". Furthermore, "The Middle-Earth DEM Project" released a playable dataset compiled for Outerra's engine which attempts to model the terrain of the full Middle-earth in great detail and to feature notable landmarks within the world as 3D models.


title: Middle-earth in video games

text: Delta 4 released the two parody games "Bored of the Rings" (1985, not directly based on the Harvard Lampoon parody novel of the same name), and "The Boggit" (1986).


title: More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers

text: High school student Jirō Yakuin is an introvert who would rather keep to himself and play video games than interact with others. He has unrequited feelings for his childhood friend, Shiori Sakurazaka, but the school has implemented a program, which has the students develop social skills on interacting with a partner as if they were married, and they are judged heavily on how well they work together through monitoring. Despite hoping to be paired with Shiori, Jiro is instead paired with Akari Watanabe, a "gyaru" who finds Jiro repulsive and who would rather be paired with the popular school idol, Minami Tenjin. Learning that if they attain enough points, their current partners can be switched, both Jiro and Akari agree to put their differences aside and work together.


text: As the story proceeds, Jiro and Akari find themselves developing deeper feelings for each other as they "pretend" to get along, causing confusion between themselves as they struggle to sort out which feelings are real and which are not. Adding to the chaos is Shiori herself, who is revealed to also be in love with Jiro. Complications reach a near breaking point when during a time alone together, Minami tactfully turns down Akari's confession and helps her realize that she ended up actually falling in love with Jiro. Now with both girls aiming to have Jiro for themselves, Jiro himself struggles to decide which girl he should ultimately pursue.


text: "More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers" is written and illustrated by Yūki Kanamaru. The series began serialization in Kadokawa Shoten's "Young Ace" magazine on March 2, 2018. Kadokawa has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was released on October 26, 2018. As of October 4, 2022, nine volumes have been released.


text: An anime adaptation was announced on November 22, 2021. It was later confirmed to be a television series produced by Studio Mother and directed by Junichi Yamamoto, with Takao Kato serving as chief director, Naruhisa Arakawa handling the series' scripts, Chizuru Kobayashi designing the characters, and Yuri Habuka composing the music. It premiered on October 9, 2022, on AT-X and other channels. The opening theme song, "TRUE FOOL LOVE", is performed by Liyuu, while the ending theme song, "Stuck on You", is performed by Nowlu. Crunchyroll licensed the series, and will stream an English dub starting on October 23, 2022. Medialink licensed the series in Southeast Asia.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende are one of the two largest ethnic groups in Sierra Leone; their neighbours, the Temne people, constitute the largest ethnic group at 35.5% of the total population, which is slightly larger than the Mende at 31.2%. The Mende are predominantly found in the Southern Province and the Eastern Province. The Mende are mostly farmers and hunters. Some of the major cities with significant Mende populations include Bo, Kenema, Kailahun, and Moyamba.


title: Mende people

text: Like a majority of African nations, Sierra Leone's political parties are often tied to specific ethnic groups and have been dominated by the Mende, on the one hand, and the Temne and their long-time political allies, the Limba, on the other. The Mende are known to typically support the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), while the Temnes and Limbas are associated with the All People's Congress party (APC).


title: Mende people

text: Regional warfare throughout the 19th century led to the capture and sale of many Mende-speakers into slavery. Most notable were those found aboard the "Amistad" in 1839. They eventually won their freedom and were repatriated. This event involved fifty-two free Mende people, stolen by Portuguese slavers in 1839, who were shipped via the Middle Passage to Havana, Cuba, where they were sold to Cuban sugar plantation owners, José Ruiz and Pedro Montes.


title: Mende people

text: After working the plantation, they were placed on the schooner Amistad and shipped to another Cuban plantation. On the way, they escaped their bondage and were led in a rebellion by Sengbe Pieh. They told the crew to return them to Africa. Their efforts to return home were frustrated by the ship's remaining crew, who navigated up to the United States. The ship was intercepted off Long Island, New York, by a U.S. Coastal brig. The Cubans merchants Ruiz and Montes denounced the Mende and asserted that they were their property. The ensuing case, heard in Hartford and New Haven, Connecticut, affirmed that the captives were free, and resulted in the return of the thirty-six surviving Mende to their homes.


title: Mende people

text: In the Americas, especially the United States, researchers have discovered that elements of African culture had long persistence. In some areas where there were large groups of enslaved Africans, they kept much of their heritage.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende people speak the Mende language (also called Boumpe, Hulo, Kossa, or Kosso), which belongs to the Mande language branch of the proposed Niger-Congo language family. In the 1930s African-American linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner found a Gullah family in coastal Georgia that had preserved an ancient song in the Mende language ("A waka"), passing it down for 200 years. In the 1990s three modern researchers -- Joseph Opala, Cynthia Schmidt, and Tazieff Koroma — located a Mende village in Sierra Leone where the same song is still sung today. The story of this Mende song, and its survival in both Africa and the US, is chronicled in the documentary film "The Language You Cry In".


title: Mende people

text: The Mende are divided into five clans: the "Kpa-Mend"e, who are predominantly in the Moyamba district to the south; "the Golah-Mende", who inhabit the Gola forest between Kenema and Pujehun districts into Liberia; "Sewa-Mende", who settled along the Sewa River; the "Vai-Mende", who are also in Liberia and the Pujehun district of Sierra Leone; and the "Koh-Mende", who are a dominant tribe in Kailahun district.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende traditionally live in villages of 70 to 250 residents, which are situated from 1.5 to 5 kilometers apart. There is little or no mechanization over the greater part of rural Mende country. Mende farmers use hoes and machetes, but few other tools. The Mende are generally known as growers of rice and several other crops, practicing crop rotation to protect soil productivity. Coffee, cocoa, and ginger are grown as cash crops, whereas rice, pepper, groundnuts, beniseed (also known as sesame seeds), and palm oil are grown for local consumption. Rice cooperatives have been formed in some rural areas.


title: Mende people

text: Traditionally, Mende farming has been carried out by labour groups organised on a local basis and moving from farm to farm (NIIP, 1973). Work is divided by gender: men attend to the heavy work of clearing the land for planting rice, while women clean and pound rice, fish, and weed the planted crops. This routine is followed during ten months of every year, with a couple of months left around the New Year, when they can spend more time in the village engaging in domestic pursuits like house building.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende are patrilineal, patrilocal, and polygamous. The household unit is represented by at least one man and perhaps several of his brothers, with all of their wives and children. One or more brothers and married sisters usually leave sooner or later and are incorporated into other residential units. The senior male has moral authority—the right to respect and obedience—over the family as a whole, especially with regard to the negotiation of debts, damages, and bride-wealth.


title: Mende people

text: The greatest sins a Mende man can commit is to give away the secrets of their tribe. The "Poro society" is the male equivalent to the female "Sande society". When inducted into this society, Mende boys are initiated into manhood. Many of their rituals parallel those of the Sande society.


title: Mende people

text: During their training, the initiates learn everything that is essential for the survival of the community. The process is described as being reborn, transformed, and—during a masquerade—as being "regurgitated" into fully socialized adult men.


title: Mende people

text: The Poro prepares men for leadership in the community, so they might attain wisdom, accept responsibility, and gain power. It begins with the child's grade of discovery, followed by extensive training and service. During the seven-year initiation period, the young men converse with each other using a secret language and passwords, known only to other Poro members. The member always knows and understands what is being said. This is part of the mystery of this secret society.


title: Mende people

text: At the beginning, young men aged 20 are called into the society and are trained by the group above them, along with a few elders. There is much work to be done during the initiation process. Dancing the masks is part of this work, but not the most important part. Only through work does the dance of the mask become meaningful.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende have always had a remarkable enthusiasm for secret societies. According to Kenneth Little, writing in the 60s, even the prevalence of Poro societies was far more widespread among Mende than Temne.


title: Mende people

text: All Mende women when they reach puberty begin the initiation process into the "Sande society". The goals of this secret society are to teach young Mende women the responsibilities of adulthood. The girls are taught to be hardworking and modest in their behavior, especially towards their elders. Sande influences every aspect of a Mende woman's life; it is present before birth and still present after.


title: Mende people

text: Sande is the guardian of women: their protector and guide through life. It is Sande that grants a woman with an identity and a personality. The Sande society is concerned with defining what it is to be human and with discovering the ways of promoting love, justice, and harmony. It is a moral philosophy that focuses on the perpetual refinement of the individual.


title: Mende people

text: Sande leaders serve as models to women in the community. They exemplify the highest of Mende ideals, and they have the duty of enforcing positive social relationships and of removing any harm that might come to women in their community. "This is Sande; women together in their womanhood, in a free exchange of words and actions among sisters. Wherever two or three women are gathered together, there is the spirit of Sande."


title: Mende people

text: Sande groups conduct masked performances that embody the Sande guardian spirit, who is associated with water and rivers. Descriptions of the society and its masquerade events have been made by visitors since the seventeenth century.


title: Mende people

text: The Sande society is organized by a hierarchy a number of positions all around. The "sowie" are the highest-ranking leaders of the group. It is their job to model to the Mende women the most important Mende social values. It is also their duty to enforce proper social relationships and to remove anything that might be harmful to the women in their community.


title: Mende people

text: The sowie have control over certain sacred knowledge that is essential to the development of success and happiness in an individual, and also to the well-being of the community. They are the experts of the Sande women and have access to spirit ancestors and forces of nature.


title: Mende people

text: The rank below sowie is "ligba". There are two grades within ligba; Ligba Wa (senior) and Ligba Wulo (junior). In any group there is only one Ligba Wa; she is an executive officer in Sande. Before a woman can take a leadership role in artistic activities she must be eligible at least as a Ligba Wulo.


title: Mende people

text: An ordinary member is referred to as "nyaha". The word indicates that the Sande initiation makes a woman of a child, and every woman into a wife. An initiate in training is called "mbogdoni". A non-member is "kpowa". As a noun kpowa means "an ignoramus, stupid, retarded, a fool" as a verb it means "to become insane or deranged."


title: Mende people

text: Much Mende art is in the form of jewelry and carvings. The masks associated with the fraternal and sorority associations of the Marka and the Mende are probably the best-known and finely crafted in the region. The Mende also produce beautifully woven fabrics which are popular throughout western Africa, and gold and silver necklaces, bracelets, armlets, and earrings.


title: Mende people

text: The bells on the necklaces are of the type believed capable of being heard by spirits, ringing in both worlds, that of the ancestors and the living. Mende hunters often wear a single bell that can be easily silenced when stealth is necessary. Women, on the other hand, often wear multiple bells, referring to concepts of community, since the bells ring harmoniously together.


title: Mende people

text: Masks are the collective Mind of Mende community; viewed as one body, they are the Spirit of the Mende people. The Mende masked figures are a reminder that human beings have a dual existence; they live in the concrete world of flesh and material things and the spirit world of dreams, faith, aspirations and imagination.


title: Mende people

text: The features of a Mende mask convey Mende ideals of female morality and physical beauty. They are unusual because the masks are worn by women. The bird on top of the head represents a woman's natural intuition that lets her see and know things that others can't. The high or broad forehead represents good luck or the sharp, contemplative mind of the ideal Mende woman. Downcast eyes symbolize a spiritual nature and it is through these small slits that a woman wearing the mask would look out of. The small mouth signifies the ideal woman's quiet and humble character. The markings on the cheeks are representative of the decorative scars girls receive as they step into womanhood. The scars are a symbol of her new, harder life. The neck rolls are an indication of the health of an ideal woman. They have also been called symbols of the pattern of concentric, circular ripples the Mende spirit makes when emerging from the water.


title: Mende people

text: In the Mende culture, full-figured women are beautiful. The intricate hairstyles reveal the close ties within a community of women. The holes at the base of the mask are where the rest of the costume is attached. A woman who wears these masks must not expose any part of her body or a vengeful spirit may take possession of her. Women often cover their bodies with masses of raffia or black cloth.


title: Mende people

text: When a girl becomes initiated into the Sande society, the village's master woodcarver creates a special mask just for her. Helmet masks are made from a section of tree trunk, often of the kpole (cotton) tree, and then carved and hollowed to fit over the wearer's head and face. The woodcarver must wait until he has a dream that guides him to make the mask a certain way for the recipient. A mask must be kept hidden in a secret place when no one is wearing it.


title: Mende people

text: These masks appear not only in initiation rituals but also at important events such as funerals, arbitrations and the installation of chiefs. Examples of these masks appear in museums. Various Mende masks, specifically Sowei Masks, were the focus of a 2013 exhibition in the British Museum, exploring the Sowei traditions.


title: Mende people

text: Learning dance is a harsh discipline that every Mende girl must tackle. Girls practice for hours at a time until they drop from exhaustion. "Ndoli jowei", the expert in dancing, is in charge of teaching young Mende girls to dance. When girls make a mistake in the steps, they are whipped with a switch until they get it right.


title: Mende people

text: Often girls are awoken in the middle of the night to practice the dance; sometimes they are forced to stay awake for nearly 48 hours dancing almost the entire time. By the end of their brutal training, the girls have transformed into young woman who are tough and confident even in the harshest of conditions. They are in great physical shape and have endurance and stamina.


title: Mende people

text: The traditional character of "Gonde" is also a "Ndoli jowei" or dance instructor, but rather than a harsh enforcer, she acts as the comic relief. Gonde becomes a friend to the initiates, amusing them to help them forget the hard ordeals they are going through. She coaches the slower dancers, encouraging them to work hard. "Gonde is a funny, lovable character who lightens the gloom and reminds everyone that Sande is not always so deadly serious."


title: Mende people

text: Ndoli jowei is the principal spirit for celebration, although she also appears on other occasions besides celebrations. In Sande initiation, there are three major events in which the ndoli jowei appear publicly. The first occurs 1–3 days after the initiates have been taken into the bush to be circumcised. This event is known as "yaya gbegbi".


title: Mende people

text: At this time the ndoli jowei comes into town with a group of Sande women while the initiates stay in the bush recovering from their operations. The women come into town to tell men they have initiated people into Sande. They go through the town waving leaves and gathering food and other supplies that they need.


title: Mende people

text: Ndoli jowei does not dance on this occasion because it is not yet time for celebration. She is there only as a reminder of the powerful medicine which has been summoned by the Sande session. This validates the unruly behavior of the Sande women.


title: Mende people

text: The next time ndoli jowei appears is at a minor feast called "Kpete gbula yombo le" or "Sowo mba yili gbi". At this occasion, an announcement is made to inform people of the date for the "gani" celebration; which is the last event of the Sande initiation that ndoli jowei appears at. At this time, the new initiates are brought into town for the first time since the initiation process began; accompanied by ndoli jowei. This is a happy occasion where dances are performed by both the maskers and the initiates.


title: Mende people

text: "Hojo" is a white clay that Mende women use to mark their territory. The clay comes from the water like many other aspects of Sande. Its smooth, shiny surface reflects light, making it eye-catching. Hojo is found in a scale of colors from beige to pure white. The pure white Hojo is rarer, found only deep beneath the surface of the water. Hojo and Sande are parallel in that they are both well hidden and secretive in its purest form.


title: Mende people

text: White is the color of Sande. To the Mende, the pureness of white signifies the cleanliness and absence of imperfections. "It shows a 'harmlessness'; it is void of all things evil and is thus 'a positive and helpful color. White is symbolic of the spirit world and also of the secret parts of society where people aim for the highest standards.


title: Mende people

text: Objects and people who are marked with Hojo are under Sande protection and control. They are subject to the authority of Sande law and punishment. Initiates are colored with this white clay to show that they are the property of Sande. This signifies that they are under the protection of Sande and should not be fooled with. "Sowei", the judge of women, wears white to represent clear thinking and justice.


title: Mende people

text: A woman's hair is a sign of femininity. Both thickness and length are elements that are admired by the Mende. Thickness means the woman has more individual strands of hair and the length is proof of strength. It takes time, care and patience to grow a beautiful, full head of hair. Ideas about hair root women to nature, the way hair grows is compared to the way forests grow.


title: Mende people

text: The vegetation on earth is the "hair" on the head of Mother Nature in the same way the hair on the head of a woman is her "foliage." (Boone) A woman with long, thick hair illustrates a life force, she may be blessed with a green thumb giving her the ability to have a promising farm and many healthy children.


title: Mende people

text: Hairstyles are very important in Mende society. A Mende woman's hair must be well groomed, clean, and oiled. Hair must be tied down under strict control and shaped into intricate, elegant styles for the sake of beauty and sex appeal. Dirty, disheveled hair is a sign of insanity. A woman who does not groom and maintain her hair has neglected the community's standards of behavior. Only a woman in mourning can let her hair loose. The Mende find unarranged "wild" hair immoral and associate individuals who possess this trait with wild behavior.


title: Mende people

text: A key element of Sande initiation is the clitoridectomy, or female genital mutilation. This surgery is supposed to foreshadow the pain a Mende woman experiences during childbirth. The shock of this experience also tests a Mende woman's physical endurance. The shared pain of the clitoridectomy creates permanent bonds among the initiates. Vows that express a social bond are taken after the operation; these vows are a metaphor for the support the women will have during the pains of childbirth.


title: Mende people

text: This procedure is considered necessary to change Mende children, who are considered to be of neutral sex before the procedure, to heterosexual, gendered adults. Traditional female circumcision is thought to remove the female's residue of maleness.


title: Mende people

text: The neck rings at the base of the mask are an exaggeration of actual neck creases. Mende people consider a beautiful neck to be one with rings as it shows adolescent girls becoming ready for childbearing by the increase in body fat. The rings indicate prosperity and wholesome living, and are given by God to show his affection for a fortunate few.


title: Mende people

text: The rings also indicate a relationship with the divine: the "Sowo" itself is a deity from the waters, and the neck rings represent the concentric waves that are formed on still water by Sowo's head breaking through the surface. The spirit comes from the water, and what the human eye sees on the necks of women "is human in form, but divine in essence", as portrayed in the mask.


title: Mende people

text: The Mende syllabary was invented in 1921 by Kisimi Kamara (c. 1890–1962), a Kuranko man in Sierra Leone. Seeing how the British managed to take over his country, Kisimi concluded that their power was partly a result of their literacy. He decided to give the Mende people that ability. Kisimi claimed he was inspired in a dream to create the Mende syllabary, which he called "Ki-ka-ku". During the 1920s and 1930s, he ran a school in southern Sierra Leone to teach Ki-ka-ku. The syllabary became a popular method of keeping records and writing letters. The script achieved widespread use for a time, but has largely been replaced with an alphabet based on the Latin script, and the Mende script is considered a "failed script".


title: Mende people

text: During the 1940s, the British set up the Protectorate Literacy Bureau in Sierra Leone's second largest city of Bo. Its goal was to teach the Mende people to read and write with a version of the Latin alphabet. As a result, usage of Kisimi's syllabary gradually diminished and, until recently scholars thought that the script was all but forgotten.


title: Mende people

text: But American historian Konrad Tuchscherer made some striking discoveries regarding Ki-ka-ku in the 1990s while researching his Ph.D. thesis for the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. This was the period of Sierra Leone's civil war, and to Tuchscherer's surprise, he found that instead of impeding his research, the war actually advanced it. Thousands of Mendes were taking shelter in huge refugee camps surrounding the cities of Bo and Kenema, and the people living in those camps were organized according to their home chiefdoms, making it possible for Tuchscherer to survey the entire Mende region (about half of Sierra Leone's territory) in a small space and a short period of time. And he found that the Mende syllabary, far from being forgotten, was still being used by quite a few people, mostly elderly men.


title: Mende people

text: But Tuchscherer made another important discovery a few years earlier before the war broke out when he visited the town of Potoru in Pujehun District, where Kisimi Kamara came from. Tuchscherer learned that while Kisimi took the lead in spreading the script (which he calls "kikakui") throughout the Mende region, the actual inventor of the Ki-ka-ku script was a local tailor who developed it in order to keep an accurate record of his customers' names and measurements.


title: Mende people

text: It is well known in Sierra Leone that the Mendes, along with the Krios and Sherbros, are educationists. They are considered to favor learning than doing business. To them, education comes first. They are also known to command respect and possess leadership qualities .


title: Mende people

text: The politics of Sierra Leone have traditionally been dominated by the Mende . The Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), which is one of the two major political parties in the country, is predominantly based among the Mende people. The SLPP gets most of its support in Mende- predominate south-east region of Sierra Leone.


title: Mende people

text: Most of the country's top government positions have been held by the Mende. Sierra Leone's first Prime minister Sir Milton Margai, who led the country to independence from the United Kingdom on April 27, 1961 was a prominent member of the Mende ethnic group. Other prominent Sierra Leonean politicians from the Mende ethnic group include the country's second prime minister Sir Albert Margai, who was also the younger brother of Milton Margai; former commander of the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces and former Sierra Leone's head of state Brigadier David Lansana; former Sierra Leone's vice president Albert Joe Demby; former Sierra Leone's vice president and attorney general Solomon Berewa.


title: Mende people

text: Former Sierra Leone's vice president minister of Justice and Attorney General Francis Minah and Samuel Hinga Norman, who was Sierra Leone's minister of Defense and former leader of the militant group the Civil Defense Forces (commonly known as the Kamajors). Sierra Leonean politician Charles Margai, who is the leader of one of the country's main opposition party the People's Movement for Democratic Change (PMDC). He is also the son of former prime minister Albert Margai and the nephew of Milton Margai; and former Sierra Leone's minister of finance John Oponjo Benjamin, who is currently the National Leader of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP).


title: Mende people

text: The Mende are a well-documented example of a non-western, pre-industrial society in which, at least historically, women took more political leadership positions relative to men. In the pre-colonial era, the Mende had female chiefs and war leaders. One such female chief, Madam Yoko (1849–1906), was the leader of the vast Kpa Mende Confederacy. She was formally recognized by the British as a Paramount Chief in 1894, ruling an area that was eventually divided into fourteen chiefdoms.


title: Mende people

text: Although it is impossible to know the extent to which other Mende women rose to leadership positions comparable to Madam Yoko's, historians believe that perhaps fifteen to twenty percent of the local leaders with whom the British negotiated at the time of colonial consolidation were women. The pattern continues to this day. According to MacCormack, "Contemporary women paramount chiefs are equally prominent, and their political influence now extends into national and international arenas. In 1988, thirteen of the 146 paramount chiefs were female."


title: Mende people

text: MacCormack further notes, "There is a tendency in Western culture to define women as weak and needing protection, since they bear children. In West Africa the same biological facts are given a different cultural interpretation. The bearing of children demonstrates that women are strong and active agents in a society, capable of holding political office." Lynda Rose Day, another authority on Mende female chiefs, writes that "Women rise naturally to leadership positions when they are senior wives in large polygynous households, when they are the oldest living relatives of a large landholding descent group, or when they are heads of local Sande chapters. Mothers with many children are seen as strong, capable authority figures."


title: Masamune Shirow

text: , better known by his pen name , is a Japanese manga artist. Shirow is best known for the manga "Ghost in the Shell", which has since been turned into three theatrical anime films, two anime television series, an anime television movie, an anime ONA series, a theatrical live action movie, and several video games.


title: Masamune Shirow

text: Born in the Hyōgo Prefecture capital city of Kobe, he studied oil painting at Osaka University of Arts. While in college, he developed an interest in manga, which led him to create his own complete work, "Black Magic", which was published in the manga "dōjinshi" "Atlas". His work caught the eye of Seishinsha President Harumichi Aoki, who offered to publish him.


title: Masamune Shirow

text: The result was best-selling manga "Appleseed", a full volume of densely plotted drama taking place in an ambiguous future. The story was a sensation, and won the 1986 Seiun Award for Best Manga. After a professional reprint of "Black Magic" and a second volume of "Appleseed", he released "Dominion" in 1986. Two more volumes of "Appleseed" followed before he began work on "Ghost in the Shell".


title: Masamune Shirow

text: In 2007, he collaborated again with Production I.G to co-create the original concept for the anime television series "Ghost Hound", Production I.G's 20th anniversary project. A further original collaboration with Production I.G began airing in April 2008, titled "Real Drive".


title: Masamune Shirow

text: A substantial amount of Shirow's work has been released in art book or poster book format. The following is an incomplete list.


title: Masamune Shirow

text: "Galgrease" (published in "Uppers Magazine", 2002) is the collected name of several erotic manga and poster books by Shirow. The name comes from the fact that the women depicted often look "greased".


title: Masamune Shirow

text: After each regular series, there were one or more bonus poster books that revisited the existing characters and settings.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: Country Comfort is an American comedy streaming television series created by Caryn Lucas that premiered on Netflix on March 19, 2021. In July 2021, the series was canceled after one season.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: On January 30, 2020, Netflix gave "Country Comfort" a series order consisting of ten episodes. The series is created and executive produced by Caryn Lucas. On July 2, 2021, Netflix canceled the series after one season.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: Upon series order announcement, Katharine McPhee, Eddie Cibrian, Ricardo Hurtado, Jamie Martin Mann, Pyper Braun, Shiloh Verrico, and Griffin McIntyre were cast to star. On February 12, 2020, Eric Balfour and Janet Varney joined the cast in recurring roles.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: The series was filmed at Sunset Bronson Studios in Hollywood, California, but it is set in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 50% based on 6 critic reviews, with an average rating of 5.67/10.


title: Country Comfort (TV series)

text: The series won Outstanding Cinematography For A Multi-Camera Series for the "Crazy" episode with George Mooradian as the cinematographer at the Primetime Emmy Awards.


title: Cunning Single Lady

text: Cunning Single Lady (; lit. "Devious Woman Who's Single Again") is a 2014 South Korean romantic comedy television series starring Lee Min-jung and Joo Sang-wook as a divorced couple who rekindles their romance. It aired on MBC from February 27 to April 24, 2014 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 21:55 for 16 episodes.


title: Cunning Single Lady

text: Na Ae-ra grew up believing she was born to be only pretty and not smart. While working at her family's restaurant, she falls in love with Cha Jung-woo, a geeky engineering graduate student preparing to enter civil service. Na Ae-ra wants to become a housewife, and after Jung-woo promises that she will be, they get married. During their 100th day wedding celebration, Jung-woo announces that he has quit his job because he has an idea for a business. Jung-woo's businesses keep failing and Ae-ra struggles to keep them afloat by working multiple jobs. After secretly suffering a miscarriage from the stress of being the sole breadwinner and living in poverty, Ae-ra divorces Jung-woo after four years of marriage. Three years after the divorce, Ae-ra discovers that Jung-woo has become fabulously successful and wealthy, while she is still paying debts that accrued during their marriage. The fun begins when Ae-ra schemes for revenge, with Jung-woo believing that Ae-ra wants him back because he has become wealthy.


title: Cunning Single Lady

text: In the table below, the blue numbers represent the lowest ratings and the red numbers represent the highest ratings. The final two episodes were not aired as originally scheduled due to media coverage on the sinking of the MV Sewol.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Christianity in Lebanon has a long and continuous history. Biblical Scriptures purport that Peter and Paul evangelized the Phoenicians, whom they affiliated to the ancient patriarchate of Antioch. The spread of Christianity in Lebanon was very slow where paganism persisted especially in the mountaintop strongholds of Mount Lebanon. A 2015 study estimates some 2,500 Lebanese Christians have Muslim ancestry, whereas the majority of Lebanese Christians are direct descendants of the original early Christians.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through a governing and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in the Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate. Proportionally, Lebanon has the highest rate of Christians in the Middle East, where the percentage ranges between 34% and 40%, followed directly by Egypt and Syria at roughly 10%, and Jordan at 3 to 6%. Lebanon's displaced population and diaspora, estimated at 12 million to 20 million people, are Christian - estimated at 85% of the total diaspora.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Before the Christian faith reached the territory of Lebanon, Jesus had traveled to its southern parts near Tyre where the scripture tells that he cured a possessed Canaanite child. Christianity in Lebanon is almost as old as gentile Christian faith itself. Early reports relate the possibility that Saint Peter himself was the one who evangelized the Phoenicians whom he affiliated to the ancient patriarchate of Antioch. Paul also preached in Lebanon, having lingered with the early Christians in Tyre and Sidon. Even though Christianity was introduced to Lebanon after the first century AD, its spread was very slow, particularly in the mountainous areas where paganism was still unyielding.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The earliest indisputable tradition of Christianity in Lebanon can be traced back to Saint Maron in the 4th century AD, being of Greek/Eastern/Antiochian Orthodox origin and the founder of national and ecclesiastical Maronitism. Saint Maron adopted an ascetic and reclusive life on the banks of the Orontes river in the vicinity of Homs–Syria and founded a community of monks which began to preach the gospel in the surrounding areas. By faith, liturgy, rite, religious books and heritage, the Maronites were of Eastern origin. The Saint Maron Monastery was too close to Antioch to grant the monks their freedom and autonomy, which prompted Saint John Maron, the first Maronite patriarch-elect, to lead his monks into the Lebanese mountains to escape emperor Justinian II's persecution, finally settling in the Qadisha valley. Nevertheless, the influence of the Maronite establishment spread throughout the Lebanese mountains and became a considerable feudal force. The existence of the Maronites was largely ignored by the western world until the Crusades. In the 16th century, the Maronite Church adopted the catechism of the Catholic Church and reaffirmed its relationship with it. Moreover, Rome dispatched Franciscan, Dominican and later Jesuit missionaries to Lebanon to Latinise the Maronites.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The relationship between the Druze and Christians has been characterized by harmony and peaceful coexistence, with amicable relations between the two groups prevailing throughout history, with the exception of some periods, including 1860 Mount Lebanon civil war.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Due to their turbulent history, the Maronites formed a secluded identity in the mountains and valleys of Lebanon, led by the Maronite patriarch who voiced his opinion on contemporary issues. They identify themselves as a unique community whose religion and culture is distinct from the predominantly Muslim Arab world. The Maronites played a major part in the definition of and the creation of the state of Lebanon. The modern state of Greater Lebanon was established by France in 1920 after the instigation of ambitious Maronite leaders headed by patriarch Elias Peter Hoayek, who presided over delegations to France following World War I and requested the re-establishment of the entity of the Principality of Lebanon (1515AD–1840AD). With the creation of the state of Lebanon, Arabism was overcome by Lebanism, which emphasizes Lebanon's Mediterranean and Phoenician heritage. In the National Pact, an unwritten gentleman's agreement between the Maronite President Bshara el-Khoury and Sunni Prime Minister Riad as-Solh, the seats of presidency were distributed between the main Lebanese religious denominations. According to the pact, the President of the Lebanese republic shall always be a Maronite. Furthermore, the pact also states that Lebanon is a state with an "Arab face" (not an Arab identity).


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Note that the following percentages are estimates only. However, in a country that had its last census in 1932, it is difficult to have correct population estimates.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The number of Christians in Lebanon has been disputed for many years. There has been no official census in Lebanon since 1932. Christians were still half the country by mid-century, but by 1985, only a quarter of all Lebanese were Christians. Many argue over the percentage and population of Christians in Lebanon. One estimate of the Christian share of Lebanon's population as of 2012 is 40.5%. And more recently, in 2018 the CIA World Factbook estimated that Christians constitute 33.7% of Lebanon's population. Therefore, the country has the largest percentage of Christians of all the Middle Eastern nations.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Maronite Church, an Eastern Catholic church in full communion with the Catholic Church, is the largest and politically most active and influential denomination of Lebanon's Christians. The Catholic Church also includes other Eastern Catholic churches, such as the Melkite Catholic Church. The Eastern Orthodox Church forms the second largest proportion of Lebanese Christians. The Armenian Apostolic Church also forms a large portion of the Christian population in Lebanon.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The other six smaller Christian sects are considered ethnic Assyrians; (Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholics, Assyrian Church of the East and Chaldean Catholics)


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: In the Lebanese Parliament, Lebanese Christians hold 64 seats in tandem with 64 seats for Lebanese Muslims. The Maronites holds 34 seats, the Eastern Orthodox 14, Melkite 8, the Armenians Apostolics 5, Catholic Armenians 1, Protestants 1, and other Christian minority groups, 1.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The head of the Maronite Church is the Maronite Patriarch of Antioch, who is elected by the bishops of the Maronite church and now resides in Bkerké, north of Beirut (but in the northern town of Dimane during the summer months). The current Patriarch (from 2011) is Mar Bechara Boutros al-Rahi. When a new patriarch is elected and enthroned, he requests ecclesiastic communion from the Pope, thus maintaining the Catholic Church communion. Patriarchs may also be accorded the status of cardinals, in the rank of cardinal-bishops. They share with other Catholics the same doctrine, but Maronites retain their own liturgy and hierarchy. Strictly speaking, the Maronite church belongs to the Antiochene Tradition and is a West Syro-Antiochene Rite. Syriac is the liturgical language, instead of Latin. Nevertheless, they are considered, with the Syro-Malabar Church, to be among the most Latinized of the Eastern Catholic Churches.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Seat of the Maronite Catholic Church is in Bkerké. Monasteries in Lebanon are run by both the Maronite and Orthodox Church. The Holy Monastery of Saint George in Deir El Harf and Saint John the Baptist Monastery in Douma both date back to the 5th century. The Balamand Monastery in Tripoli is a very prominent Orthodox monastery that has a seminary and a university associated with it.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Under the terms of an agreement known as the National Pact between the various political and religious leaders of Lebanon, the president of the country must be a Maronite, the Prime Minister must be a Sunnite, and the Speaker of Parliament must be a Shiite.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Taif Agreement helped establish a power sharing system between the Christian and Muslim Lebanese political parties. The political and economic situation in Lebanon had improved greatly. Lebanon had rebuilt its infrastructure. Historical and contemporary conflicts between Hezbollah and Israel have threatened to deteriorate Lebanon's political and economic situation, with growing tension between the 8 March and 14 March alliances and threatening Lebanon with renewed strife. The Christian community is currently divided, with some aligned with the Kataeb party, Michel Aoun's Free Patriotic Movement, the El Marada Party headed by Suleiman Frangieh, Jr., the Lebanese Forces Movement Samir Geagea, and others within the collection of various 14 March Christian leaders. Although the Taif agreement was widely considered by Christians to degrade their role in Lebanon, by removing much of the President's role (which is allocated to the Maronites), and bolstering the roles of the Prime Minister (a Sunni) and the Speaker of Parliament (Shia), the Lebanese President nevertheless still wields considerable power. The constitutional remit of the president includes the role of Commander in Chief of the armed forces, as well as the sole ability to form and dissolve governments. Many Lebanese leaders, as well as global powers, continue to lobby to roll back features of the Taif Agreement that eroded the constitutional powers of the president of the republic. The role of president of the Lebanese Central bank is also a position reserved for Lebanese Christians. This is due to the historical and contemporary influence of Lebanese Christians among the key bankers of the Middle East region.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Although Lebanon is a secular country, family matters such as marriage, divorce and inheritance are still handled by the religious authorities representing a person's faith. Calls for civil marriage are unanimously rejected by the religious authorities but civil marriages conducted in another country are recognized by Lebanese civil authorities.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Non-religion is not recognized by the state. But the Minister of the Interior Ziad Baroud made it possible in 2009 to have religious affiliation removed from the Lebanese identity card. This does not, however, deny the religious authorities' complete control over civil family issues inside the country.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: In a 1976 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, a US diplomat stated "if I got nothing else from my meeting with Frangie, Chamoun and Gemayel, it is their clear, unequivocal and unmistakable belief that their principal hope for saving Christian necks is Syria. They sound like Assad is the latest incarnation of the Crusaders."


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Maronite Christians in Lebanon is the largest Christian denomination among the Lebanese people, representing 21% of the Lebanese population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Maronite Church's full communion with the Catholic Church was reaffirmed in 1182, after hundreds of years of isolation in Mount Lebanon. In accordance with the terms of union, they retain their own rites and canon law and use Arabic and Aramaic in their liturgy as well the Karshuni script with old Syriac letters. Their origins are uncertain. One version traces them to John Maron of Antioch in the seventh century A.D.; another points to St. Maron, a monk in the late fourth and early fifth centuries (who is considered by many to be the true origin of the Maronite Church). The words "maron" or "marun" in Syriac mean "small lord."


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: In the late seventh century, as a result of persecutions from other Christians for the heterodox views they had adopted, the Maronites withdrew from the coastal regions into the mountainous areas of Lebanon and Syria. During the Ottoman era (1516–1914) they remained isolated and relatively independent in these areas. In 1857 and 1858 the Maronites revolted against the large landowning families. The revolt was followed by a further struggle between the Druzes and Maronites over land ownership, political power, and safe passage of community members in the territory of the other. The conflict led France to send a military expedition to the area in 1860. The disagreements diminished in intensity only after the establishment of the Mandate and a political formula whereby all denominations achieved a degree of political representation.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Maronite rite has been directed and administered by the Patriarch of Antioch and the East. Bishops are generally nominated by a church synod from among the graduates of the Maronite College in Rome. In 1987, Mar Nasrallah Butrus Sufayr (also spelled Sfeir) was the Maronite Patriarch.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Besides the Beirut archdiocese, nine other archdioceses and dioceses are in the Middle East: Aleppo, Damascus, Jubayl-Al Batrun, Cyprus, Baalbek, Tripoli, Tyre, Sidon, and Cairo. Parishes and independent dioceses are situated in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Côte d'Ivoire, and Senegal. There are four minor seminaries in Lebanon (Al Batrun, Ghazir, Ayn Saadah, and Trablous) and a faculty of theology at the University of the Holy Spirit at Al Kaslik, which is run by the Maronite Monastic Order. The patriarch is elected in a secret ceremony by a synod of bishops and confirmed by the Pope.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Leaders of the Rite have considered Maronite Christianity as the "foundation of the Lebanese nation". The Maronites have been closely associated with the political system of independent Lebanon; it was estimated that in pre-Civil War Lebanon members of this Rite held a large portion of the leading posts. However roles were shifted due to the Taif Agreement's theoretical balancing of power.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Eastern Orthodox Christianity in Lebanon is the second largest Christian denomination among the Lebanese people, representing 8% of the Lebanese population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch adheres to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is actually a group of autocephalous churches using the Byzantine rite and are the second largest Christian denomination within Christianity in Lebanon. Historically, these churches grew out of the four Eastern Patriarchates (Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople) of the original five major episcopal sees (the Pentarchy) of the Roman Empire which included Rome. The final split took place in 1054. From that time, the Eastern Churches have continued to reject the claims of the Patriarchate of Rome (the Catholic Church) to universal supremacy and have rejected the concept of papal infallibility. Doctrinally, the main point at issue between the Eastern and Western Churches is that of the procession of the Holy Spirit and there are also divergences in ritual and discipline.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Eastern Orthodox Christians include many free-holders, and the community is less dominated by large landowners than other Christian denominations. In present-day Lebanon, the Eastern Orthodox Christians have become increasingly urbanized, and form a major part of the commercial and professional class of Beirut and other cities. Many are found in the Southeast (Nabatieh/Beqaa) and North, near Tripoli. They are highly educated and well-versed in finance. The church has often served as a bridge between Lebanese Christians and the Arab countries, because it exists in various parts of the Arab world. Members of the rite constitute 8% of the population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Melkite Christianity in Lebanon is the third largest Christian denomination among the Lebanese people, representing 5% of the Lebanese population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Melkite Catholics emerged as a distinct group from 1724 when they split from the Greek Orthodox Church over a disputed election of the Patriarch of Antioch. The elected man was considered too 'pro-Roman' and another faction, the larger, elected a rival who was supported by the Orthodox patriarch in Constantinople (the see of Antioch had ignored the split between the two which occurred in 1054 and was canonically in union with both in 1724). Although they fully accept Catholic doctrines as defined by the Holy See, they have generally remained close to the Greek Orthodox Church, retaining more of the ancient rituals and customs than have the Maronites. They employ Arabic and Greek and follow the Byzantine rite.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The highest official of the church since 1930 has been the Patriarch of Antioch, who resides at Ayn Traz, about twenty-four kilometers southeast of Beirut. The patriarch is elected by bishops in a synod and confirmed by the Pope in Rome, who sends him a pallium (a circular band of white wool worn by archbishops) in recognition of their communion. Greek Catholic churches, like those of the Greek Orthodox, contain icons but no statues.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Melkite Greek Catholics live primarily in the central and eastern parts of the country, dispersed in many villages. Members of this rite are concentrated in Beirut, Zahlah, and the suburbs of Sidon. They have a relatively higher level of education than other denominations. Proud of their Arab heritage, Greek Catholics have been able to strike a balance between their openness to the Arab world and their identification with the West. Greek Catholics are estimated to constitute 5% of the population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Protestant Christianity in Lebanon is the fourth largest Christian denomination among the Lebanese people, representing 1% of the Lebanese population.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Most Protestants in Lebanon were converted by missionaries, primarily English and American, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They are divided into a number of denominations, including Presbyterian, Congregational, and Anglican. They are perceived by some to number disproportionately highly among the professional middle class. They constitute nearly 1 percent of the population (around 40,000) and live primarily in Beirut (Greater Beirut).


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Armenians in Lebanon were refugees who had fled Turkey during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Apostolic Church was organized in the third century and became autocephalous as a national church in the fourth century. In the sixth century it modified the formulations of the Council of Chalcedon of 451 that confirmed the dual nature of Christ in one person. Instead the Apostolic Church adopted a form of Miaphysitism that believes in the united nature of divine and human in Christ, a belief shared by the Copts and the Syrian Orthodox Church (Oriental Orthodox Church). The Armenian Orthodox Church has two catholicoi (Sis and Etchmiadzin Cathedral) and two patriarchs (Constantinople and Jerusalem).


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Armenians in Lebanon reside mostly in Beirut and its northern suburbs as well as in Anjar. During the civil war the main stance of the Armenians was not to pick a side between Muslims or Christians and stay exempt mostly from the fighting. The largest Armenian community in Lebanon is found in Bourj Hammoud.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: Among the Armenians in Lebanon there are some who belong to the Armenian Catholic Church. They are also refugees who had fled Turkey during and after World War I and the Armenian genocide.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Latin Catholic Church in Lebanon consists mainly of small group of Latin Catholics who are of at least partial French or Italian descent.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Assyrians in Lebanon were refugees who had fled their native lands in southeastern Turkey during and after World War I due to the Assyrian genocide. Even today refugees continue to flee from northern Iraq into Syria, Lebanon or Jordan due to continuous unrest in Iraq.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Archdiocese of Lebanon and Syria of the Assyrian Church of the East is based in the Mar Gewargis Church of Sad El Bouchrieh, Beirut, Lebanon. After the recent passing of the archdiocese's late Archbishop Mar Narsai D'Baz, Archbishop Mar Meelis Zaia of Australia and New Zealand temporarily took over the archdiocese, handling all church related issues in Lebanon. The current bishops, the Bishop of Europe and the Bishop of Syria, oversee their individual dioceses until a new Metropolitan is appointed.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The members of the Syriac Catholic Church are also refugees who had fled southeastern Turkey (present day Mardin region) during and after World War I and the Assyrian/Syriac genocide. Even today refugees continue to flee from northern Iraq and northeastern Syria into Lebanon or Jordan due to continuous unrest in Iraq and Syria.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Syriac Catholic Eparchy of Beirut is the proper archeparchy (Eastern Catholic (archdiocese) of the Syriac Catholic Church's (Antiochian Rite in Syriac language) Patriarch of Antioch in his actual seat, Beirut, Lebanon.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The members of the Syriac Orthodox Church are also refugees who had fled southeastern Turkey (present day Mardin region) during and after World War I and the Assyrian/Syriac genocide. Even today refugees continue to flee from northern Iraq and northeastern Syria into Lebanon or Jordan due to continuous unrest in Iraq and Syria.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: There are several archdioceses and dioceses of the Syriac Orthodox Church on the territory of Lebanon. The church follows the Syriac liturgy of St. James and has an independent hierarchy under the Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, whose seat was formerly at Mardin in Turkey and is now at Damascus, Syria.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The members of the Chaldean Catholic Church are also refugees who had fled southeastern Turkey (present day Mardin region) during and after World War I and the Assyrian/Syriac genocide. Even today refugees continue to flee from northern Iraq and northeastern Syria into Lebanon or Jordan due to continuous unrest in Iraq and Syria.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Chaldean Catholic Eparchy of Beirut is the sole eparchy (Eastern Catholic diocese) of the Chaldean Catholic Church and is immediately dependent on the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon in Baghdad, Iraq.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: The Copts in Lebanon were immigrants/refugees who had fled their native lands in Egypt, Libya and Sudan.


title: Christianity in Lebanon

text: According to tradition, the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria was established by Saint Mark, an apostle and evangelist, in the middle of the 1st century (approximately AD 42). The ethnic Copts in Lebanon are estimated to be 3,000 – 4,000 and the Coptic Orthodox Church is one of the 18 religious sects recognized by the Lebanese Constitution.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Ethnobotany is the study of a region's plants and their practical uses through the traditional knowledge of a local culture and people. An ethnobotanist thus strives to document the local customs involving the practical uses of local flora for many aspects of life, such as plants as medicines, foods, intoxicants and clothing. Richard Evans Schultes, often referred to as the "father of ethnobotany", explained the discipline in this way:


title: Ethnobotany

text: Since the time of Schultes, the field of ethnobotany has grown from simply acquiring ethnobotanical knowledge to that of applying it to a modern society, primarily in the form of pharmaceuticals. Intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing arrangements are important issues in ethnobotany.


title: Ethnobotany

text: The idea of ethnobotany was first proposed by the early 20th century botanist John William Harshberger. While Harshberger did perform ethnobotanical research extensively, including in areas such as North Africa, Mexico, Scandinavia, and Pennsylvania, it was not until Richard Evans Schultes began his trips into the Amazon that ethnobotany became a more well known science. However, the practice of ethnobotany is thought to have much earlier origins in the first century AD when a Greek physician by the name of Pedanius Dioscorides wrote an extensive botanical text detailing the medical and culinary properties of "over 600 mediterranean plants" named De Materia Medica. Historians note that Dioscorides wrote about traveling often throughout the Roman empire, including regions such as "Greece, Crete, Egypt, and Petra", and in doing so obtained substantial knowledge about the local plants and their useful properties. European botanical knowledge drastically expanded once the New World was discovered due to ethnobotany. This expansion in knowledge can primarily be attributed to the substantial influx of new plants from the Americas, including crops such as potatoes, peanuts, avocados, and tomatoes. The French explorer Jacques Cartier learned a cure for scurvy (a tea made from the needles of a coniferous tree, likely spruce) from a local Iroquois tribe.


title: Ethnobotany

text: During the medieval period, ethnobotanical studies were commonly found connected with monasticism. However, most botanical knowledge was kept in gardens such as physic gardens attached to hospitals and religious buildings. It was thought of in practical use terms for culinary and medical purposes and the ethnographic element was not studied as a modern anthropologist might approach ethnobotany today.


title: Ethnobotany

text: In 1732, Carl Linnaeus carried out a research expedition in Scandinavia asking the Sami people about their ethnological usage of plants.


title: Ethnobotany

text: The age of enlightenment saw a rise in economic botanical exploration. Alexander von Humboldt collected data from the New World, and James Cook's voyages brought back collections and information on plants from the South Pacific. At this time major botanical gardens were started, for instance the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1759. The directors of the gardens sent out gardener-botanist explorers to care for and collect plants to add to their collections.


title: Ethnobotany

text: As the 18th century became the 19th, ethnobotany saw expeditions undertaken with more colonial aims rather than trade economics such as that of Lewis and Clarke which recorded both plants and the peoples encountered use of them. Edward Palmer collected material culture artifacts and botanical specimens from people in the North American West (Great Basin) and Mexico from the 1860s to the 1890s. Through all of this research, the field of "aboriginal botany" was established—the study of all forms of the vegetable world which aboriginal peoples use for food, medicine, textiles, ornaments and more.


title: Ethnobotany

text: The first individual to study the emic perspective of the plant world was a German physician working in Sarajevo at the end of the 19th century: Leopold Glück. His published work on traditional medical uses of plants done by rural people in Bosnia (1896) has to be considered the first modern ethnobotanical work.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Other scholars analyzed uses of plants under an indigenous/local perspective in the 20th century: Matilda Coxe Stevenson, Zuni plants (1915); Frank Cushing, Zuni foods (1920); Keewaydinoquay Peschel, Anishinaabe fungi (1998), and the team approach of Wilfred Robbins, John Peabody Harrington, and Barbara Freire-Marreco, Tewa pueblo plants (1916).


title: Ethnobotany

text: In the beginning, ethonobotanical specimens and studies were not very reliable and sometimes not helpful. This is because the botanists and the anthropologists did not always collaborate in their work. The botanists focused on identifying species and how the plants were used instead of concentrating upon how plants fit into people's lives. On the other hand, anthropologists were interested in the cultural role of plants and treated other scientific aspects superficially. In the early 20th century, botanists and anthropologists better collaborated and the collection of reliable, detailed cross-disciplinary data began.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Beginning in the 20th century, the field of ethnobotany experienced a shift from the raw compilation of data to a greater methodological and conceptual reorientation. This is also the beginning of academic ethnobotany. The so-called "father" of this discipline is Richard Evans Schultes, even though he did not actually coin the term "ethnobotany". Today the field of ethnobotany requires a variety of skills: botanical training for the identification and preservation of plant specimens; anthropological training to understand the cultural concepts around the perception of plants; linguistic training, at least enough to transcribe local terms and understand native morphology, syntax, and semantics.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Mark Plotkin, who studied at Harvard University, the Yale School of Forestry and Tufts University, has contributed a number of books on ethnobotany. He completed a handbook for the Tirio people of Suriname detailing their medicinal plants; "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" (1994); "The Shaman's Apprentice," a children's book with Lynne Cherry (1998); and "Medicine Quest: In Search of Nature's Healing Secrets" (2000).


title: Ethnobotany

text: Plotkin was interviewed in 1998 by "South American Explorer" magazine, just after the release of "Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice" and the IMAX movie Amazonia. In the book, he stated that he saw wisdom in both traditional and Western forms of medicine:


title: Ethnobotany

text: No medical system has all the answers—no shaman that I've worked with has the equivalent of a polio vaccine and no dermatologist that I've been to could cure a fungal infection as effectively (and inexpensively) as some of my Amazonian mentors. It shouldn't be the doctor versus the witch doctor. It should be the best aspects of all medical systems (ayurvedic, herbalism, homeopathic, and so on) combined in a way which makes health care more effective and more affordable for all.


title: Ethnobotany

text: A great deal of information about the traditional uses of plants is still intact with tribal peoples. But the native healers are often reluctant to accurately share their knowledge to outsiders. Schultes actually apprenticed himself to an Amazonian shaman, which involves a long-term commitment and genuine relationship. In "Wind in the Blood: Mayan Healing & Chinese Medicine" by Garcia et al. the visiting acupuncturists were able to access levels of Mayan medicine that anthropologists could not because they had something to share in exchange. Cherokee medicine priest David Winston describes how his uncle would invent nonsense to satisfy visiting anthropologists.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Another scholar, James W. Herrick, who studied under ethnologist William N. Fenton, in his work "Iroquois Medical Ethnobotany" (1995) with Dean R. Snow (editor), professor of Anthropology at Penn State, explains that understanding herbal medicines in traditional Iroquois cultures is rooted in a strong and ancient cosmological belief system. Their work provides perceptions and conceptions of illness and imbalances which can manifest in physical forms from benign maladies to serious diseases. It also includes a large compilation of Herrick’s field work from numerous Iroquois authorities of over 450 names, uses, and preparations of plants for various ailments. Traditional Iroquois practitioners had (and have) a sophisticated perspective on the plant world that contrast strikingly with that of modern medical science.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Researcher Cassandra Quave at Emory University has used ethnobotany to address the problems that arise from antibiotic resistance. Quave notes that the advantage of medical ethnobotany over Western medicine rests in the difference in mechanism. For example, elmleaf blackberry extract focuses instead on the prevention of bacterial collaboration as opposed to directly exterminating them.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Many instances of gender bias have occurred in ethnobotany, creating the risk of drawing erroneous conclusions. Anthropologists would often consult with primarily men. In Las Pavas, a small farming community in Panama, anthropologists drew conclusions about the entire community's use of plant from their conversations and lessons with mostly men. They consulted with 40 families, but the women only participated rarely in interviews and never joined them in the field. Due to the division of labor, the knowledge of wild plants for food, medicine, and fibers, among others, was left out of the picture, resulting in a distorted view of which plants were actually important to them.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Ethnobotanists have also assumed that ownership of a resource means familiarity with that resource. In some societies women are excluded from owning land, while being the ones who work it. Inaccurate data can come from interviewing only the owners.


title: Ethnobotany

text: Other issues include ethical concerns regarding interactions with indigenous populations, and the International Society of Ethnobiology has created a code of ethics to guide researchers.


title: Voiced palatal nasal

text: The voiced palatal nasal is a type of consonant used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a lowercase letter "n" with a leftward-pointing tail protruding from the bottom of the left stem of the letter. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is codice_1. The IPA symbol is visually similar to , the symbol for the retroflex nasal, which has a rightward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem, and to , the symbol for the velar nasal, which has a leftward-pointing hook extending from the bottom of the right stem.


title: Voiced palatal nasal

text: The IPA symbol derives from and , for nasality and denoting palatal. In Spanish and languages whose writing systems are influenced by Spanish orthography, it is represented by the letter , called "eñe" ("enye"). In French and Italian orthographies the sound is represented by the digraph . Occitan uses the digraph , the source of the same Portuguese digraph called "ene-agá" (), used thereafter by languages whose writing systems are influenced by Portuguese orthography, such as Vietnamese. In Catalan, Hungarian and many African languages, as Swahili or Dinka, the digraph is used. In Albanian and some countries that used to be Yugoslavia, the digraph (Nj) is used, and sometimes, for the languages with the Cyrillic script that used to be part of Yugoslavia, uses the (Њњ) Cyrillic ligature that might be part of the official alphabet. In Czech and Slovak, // is represented by letter whilst Kashubian and Polish uses .


title: Voiced palatal nasal

text: The voiced alveolo-palatal nasal is a type of consonantal sound, used in some oral languages. There is no dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound. If more precision is desired, it may be transcribed or ; these are essentially equivalent, since the contact includes both the blade and body (but not the tip) of the tongue. There is a non-IPA letter (, plus the curl found in the symbols for alveolo-palatal sibilant fricatives ), used especially in Sinological circles.


title: Voiced palatal nasal

text: The alveolo-palatal nasal is commonly described as palatal; it is often unclear whether a language has a true palatal or not. Many languages claimed to have a palatal nasal, such as Portuguese, actually have an alveolo-palatal nasal. This is likely true of several of the languages listed here. Some dialects of Irish as well as some non-standard dialects of Malayalam are reported to contrast alveolo-palatal and palatal nasals.


title: Voiced palatal nasal

text: There is also a post-palatal nasal (also called pre-velar, fronted velar etc.) in some languages. Palatal nasals are more common than the palatal stops .


title: Jèrriais

text: Use of has been in decline over the past century, as English has increasingly become the language of education, commerce and administration on Jersey. There are very few people who speak as a mother tongue and, owing to the age of the remaining speakers, their numbers decrease annually. Despite this, efforts are being made to keep the language alive.


title: Jèrriais

text: The language of Sark, Sercquiais, is a descendant of the brought by the Jersey colonists who settled Sark in the 16th century, with mutual intelligibility with the Norman language of mainland Normandy.


title: Jèrriais

text: Although few now speak as a first language, until the 19th century, was used as the everyday language for the majority of the population of Jersey; even as late as the beginning of the Second World War, up to half the population could still communicate in the language. Despite this, awareness of the decline of language use became apparent in the 19th century in scholarly circles. Among foreign linguists, Louis Lucien Bonaparte visited Jersey and interested himself in the language and its literature. Victor Hugo, during his exile in Jersey, took an interest in the language and numbered some writers among his circle of acquaintances and supporters.


title: Jèrriais

text: Sir Robert Pipon Marett's prestige and influence helped to reinforce the movement toward standardisation of the writing system based on French orthography, a trend which was also helped by the nascent Norman literary revival in the neighbouring Cotentin area of mainland Normandy where writers, inspired by the example of the Norman writers of Jersey and Guernsey, began their own production of literary works. However, differing (if mutually comprehensible) writing systems have been adopted in Jersey, Guernsey and mainland Normandy. The question is sometimes raised as to whether should move to a writing system based on English orthography; however, this would have implications for the continuity of the literary tradition over two centuries or more, though some features of the language's writing system, such as the digraph "th" for the typical dental fricative of , have evidently been borrowed from English orthography.


title: Jèrriais

text: As English became dominant in Jersey in the 20th century, efforts were made to preserve the language. The Jersey Eisteddfod has included a section since 1912. Associations were founded; was founded in 1951, while is a trust set up in accordance with the will of Arthur E. Balleine (1864–1943), who bequeathed funds for the promotion of the language. launched a quarterly magazine in 1952, which has been published since (with the occasional hiatus, and latterly under the editorship of ); a standard grammar (by Paul Birt) appeared in 1985; cassettes, booklets and other materials have also been produced.


title: Jèrriais

text: George d'la Forge's maintenance of the language in the North American diaspora is not as surprising as it might seem, as considerable numbers of Jersey people had been involved in the economic development and exploitation of the New World (see New Jersey). Much of the concentration focused on the cod fisheries of the Gaspé peninsula in Quebec, Canada, which were controlled into the early 20th century by Jersey-based companies or companies of Jersey origin employing Jersey labour. The common language of business was , and it is reported that there were still some -speakers in Gaspé villages in the 1960s. The Gaspesian expression (to go and work outside the region) comes from the word "run" applied to a fishing station.


title: Jèrriais

text: The use of is also to be noted during the German Occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War; the local population used among themselves as a language neither the occupying Germans, nor their French interpreters, could understand. However, the social and economic upheaval of the War meant that use of English increased dramatically after the Liberation.


title: Jèrriais

text: It is considered that the last monolingual adult speakers probably died in the 1950s, although monolingual speaking children were being received into schools in St. Ouen as late as the late 1970s.