title: Lop Nur

text: The lake system into which the Tarim River and Shule River empty is the last remnant of the historical post-glacial Tarim Lake, which once covered more than in the Tarim Basin. Lop Nur is hydrologically endorheic – it is landbound and there is no outlet. The lake measured in 1928, but has dried up due to construction of dams which blocked the flow of water feeding into the lake system, and only small seasonal lakes and marshes may form. The dried-up Lop Nur Basin is covered with a salt crust ranging from in thickness.


title: Lop Nur

text: An area to the north west of Lop Nur has been used as a nuclear testing site, and since the discovery of potash at the site in the mid-1990s, it is also the location of a large-scale mining operation. There are some restricted areas under military management and cultural relics protection points in the region, which are not open to the public.


title: Lop Nur

text: From around 1800 BC until the 9th century the lake supported a thriving Tocharian culture. Archaeologists have discovered the buried remains of settlements, as well as several of the Tarim mummies, along its ancient shoreline. Former water resources of the Tarim River and Lop Nur nurtured the kingdom of Loulan since the second century BC, an ancient civilisation along the Silk Road, which skirted the lake-filled basin. Loulan became a client state of the Chinese empire in 55 BC, renamed Shanshan. Faxian went by the Lop Desert on his way to the Indus valley (395–414), followed by later Chinese pilgrims. Marco Polo in his travels passed through the Lop Desert. In the 19th century and early 20th century, the explorers Ferdinand von Richthofen, Nikolai Przhevalsky, Sven Hedin and Aurel Stein visited and studied the area. It is also likely that Swedish soldier Johan Gustaf Renat had visited the area when he was helping the Zunghars to produce maps over the area in the eighteenth century.


title: Lop Nur

text: The lake was given various names in ancient Chinese texts. In "Shiji" it was called Yan Ze (鹽澤, literally Salt Marsh), indicating its saline nature, near which was located the ancient Loulan Kingdom. In "Hanshu" it was called Puchang Hai (蒲昌海, literally Sea of Abundant Reed) and was given a dimension of 300 to 400 "li" (roughly 120–160 km) in length and breadth, indicating it was once a lake of great size. These early texts also mentioned the belief, mistaken as it turns out, that the lake joins the Yellow River at Jishi through an underground channel as the source of the river.


title: Lop Nur

text: The lake was referred to as the "Wandering Lake" in the early 20th century due to the Tarim River changing its course, causing its terminal lake to alter its location between the Lop Nur dried basin, the Kara-Koshun dried basin and the Taitema Lake basin. This shift of the terminal lake caused some confusion amongst the early explorers as to the exact location of Lop Nur. Imperial maps from the Qing dynasty showed Lop Nur to be located in similar position to the present Lop Nur dried basin, but the Russian geographer Nikolay Przhevalsky instead found the terminal lake at Kara-Koshun in 1867. Sven Hedin visited the area in 1900–1901 and suggested that the Tarim river periodically changed its course to and from between its southbound and northbound direction, resulting in a shift in the position of the terminal lake. The change in the course of the river, which resulted in Lop Nur drying up, was also suggested by Hedin as the reason why ancient settlements such as Loulan had perished.


title: Lop Nur

text: In 1921, due to human intervention, the terminal lake shifted its position back to Lop Nur. The lake measured 2400 km in area in 1930–1931. In 1934, Sven Hedin went down the new Kuruk Darya ("Dry River") in a canoe. He found the delta to be a maze of channels and the new lake so shallow that it was difficult to navigate even in a canoe. He had previously walked the dry Kuruk Darya in a caravan in 1900.


title: Lop Nur

text: In 1952 the terminal lake then shifted to Taitema Lake when the Tarim River and Konque River were separated through human intervention, and Lop Nur dried out again by 1964. In 1972, the Great West Sea Reservoir ("Daxihaizi", 大西海子) was built at Tikanlik, water supply to the lake was cut off, and all the lakes for the most part then dried out, with only small seasonal lakes forming in local depressions in Taitema. The loss of water to the lower Tarim River Valley also led to the deterioration and loss of poplar forests and tamarix shrubs that used to be extensively distributed along the lower Tarim River Valley forming the so-called "Green Corridor". In 2000, in an effort to prevent further deterioration of the ecosystem, water was diverted from Lake Bosten in an attempt to fill the Taitema Lake. The Taitema Lake however had shifted westwards during the past 40 years due in part to the spread of the desert. Another cause of the destabilization of the desert has been the cutting of poplars and willows for firewood; in response, a restoration project to reclaim the poplar forests was initiated.


title: Lop Nur

text: On 17 June 1980, Chinese scientist Peng Jiamu disappeared while walking into Lop Nur in search of water. His body was never found, and his disappearance remains a mystery. On 3 June 1996, the Chinese explorer Yu Chunshun died while trying to walk across Lop Nur.


title: Lop Nur

text: China established the Lop Nur Nuclear Test Base on 16 October 1959 with Soviet assistance in selection of the site, with its headquarters at Malan (, "Mǎlán"), about northwest of Qinggir. The first Chinese nuclear bomb test, codenamed "Project 596", occurred at Lop Nur on 16 October 1964. China detonated its first hydrogen bomb on 17 June 1967. Until 1996, 45 nuclear tests were conducted. These nuclear tests were conducted by dropping bombs from aircraft and towers, launching missiles, detonating weapons underground and in the atmosphere.


title: Lop Nur

text: In 2009, Jun Takada, a Japanese scientist known for prominently opposing the tests as "the Devil's conduct", published the results of his computer simulation which suggests – based on deaths from Soviet tests – that 190,000 people could have died in China from nuclear-related illnesses. Enver Tohti, an exiled pro-Uyghur independence activist, claimed that cancer rates in the province of Xinjiang were 30 to 35% higher than the national average. On 29 July 1996, China conducted its 45th and final nuclear test at Lop Nor, and issued a formal moratorium on nuclear testing the following day, although further subcritical tests were suspected. In 2012, China announced plans to spend US$1 million to clean up the Malan nuclear base in Lop Nor to create a red tourism site.


title: Lop Nur

text: Lop Nur is home to the wild Bactrian camel, which is a separate species from the Bactrian camel. The camels have continued to breed naturally despite the nuclear testing. China signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty in 1996 but did not ratify it. Subsequently, the camels were classified as an endangered species on the IUCN Red List. Since the cessation of nuclear testing at Lop Nur, human incursions into the area have caused a decline in the camel population. Wild Bactrian camels have been classified as critically endangered since 2002 and approximately half of the 1400 remaining wild Bactrian camels live on the former Lop Nur test base, which has been designated the Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve.


title: Lop Nur

text: The Hami–Lop Nur Railway, which runs north to Hami, along the same route, opened to freight operations in November 2012. The railway is used to transport potassium-rich salt mined at the lake to the Lanzhou–Xinjiang railway.


title: Lop Nur

text: Given the extreme dryness and resulting thin population, remains of some buildings survived for a significant period of time. When ancient graves, some a few thousand years old, were opened the bodies were often found to be mummified and grave goods well preserved. The earliest sites are associated with an ancient people of Indo European origin.


title: Lop Nur

text: Loulan or Kroran was an ancient kingdom based around an important oasis city already known in the 2nd century BCE on the north-eastern edge of the Lop Desert. It was renamed Shanshan after Chinese took control of the kingdom in 1st century BCE. It was abandoned some time in the seventh century. Its location was discovered by Sven Hedin in 1899, who excavated some houses and found a wooden Kharosthi tablet and many Chinese manuscripts from the Jin dynasty (266–420). Aurel Stein also excavated at the site in the beginning of the 20th century, while Chinese archaeologists explored the area in the latter part of the 20th century. A mummy called the "Beauty of Loulan" was found at a cemetery site on the bank of Töwän River.


title: Lop Nur

text: The Xiaohe Cemetery is located to the west of Lop Nur. This Bronze Age burial site is an oblong sand dune, from which more than thirty well preserved mummies have been excavated. The entire Xiaohe Cemetery contains about 330 tombs, about 160 of which have been violated by grave robbers.


title: Lop Nur

text: A local hunter guided the Swedish explorer and archeologist Folke Bergman to the site in 1934. An excavation project by the Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute began in October 2003. A total of 167 tombs have been dug up since the end of 2002 and excavations have revealed hundreds of smaller tombs built in layers, as well as other precious artifacts. In 2006, a valuable archeological finding was uncovered: a boat-shaped coffin wrapped in ox hide, containing the mummified body of a young woman.


title: Lop Nur

text: In 1979, some of the earliest of the Tarim mummies were discovered in burial sites at Qäwrighul (Gumugou), which is located to the west of Lop Nur, on the Könchi (Kongque) river. Forty-two graves, most of which dated from 2100 to 1500 BC, were found. There were two types of tomb at the site, belonging to two different time periods. The first type of burial featured shaft pit graves, some of which had poles at either end to mark east and west. Bodies were found extended, usually facing east, and sometimes were wrapped in wool weavings and wearing felt hats. Artifacts found included basketry, wheat grains, cattle and sheep/goat horns, bird bone necklaces and bracelets, nephrite beads, and fragments of copper (or bronze), although no pottery was discovered.


title: Lop Nur

text: The second type of burial, from a later period, also consisted of shaft pit graves, surrounded by seven concentric circles of poles. Six male graves were found, in which the bodies were extended on their backs, and facing towards the east. Few artifacts were found, except for some traces of copper, or bronze.


title: Lop Nur

text: Miran is located to the south-west of Lop Nur. Buddhist monasteries were excavated here, and murals and sculptures showed artistic influences from India and Central Asia, with some showing influences from as far as Rome.


title: Hacker News

text: Hacker News (sometimes abbreviated as HN) is a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. It is run by the investment fund and startup incubator Y Combinator. In general, content that can be submitted is defined as "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."


title: Hacker News

text: The word "hacker" in "Hacker News" is used in its original meaning and refers to the hacker culture which consists of people who enjoy tinkering with technology.


title: Hacker News

text: The site was created by Paul Graham in February 2007. Initially called Startup News or occasionally News.YC., it became known by its current name on August 14, 2007. It developed as a project of Graham's company Y Combinator, functioning as a real-world application of the Arc programming language which Graham co-developed.


title: Hacker News

text: At the end of March 2014, Graham stepped away from his leadership role at Y Combinator, leaving Hacker News administration in the hands of other staff members. The site is currently moderated by Daniel Gackle who posts under the username "dang".


title: Hacker News

text: Gackle co-moderated Hacker News with Scott Bell (username "sctb") until 2019 when Bell stopped working on the site.


title: Hacker News

text: The intention was to recreate a community similar to the early days of Reddit. However, unlike Reddit where new users can immediately both upvote and downvote content, Hacker News does not allow users to downvote content until they have accumulated 501 "karma" points. Karma points are calculated as the number of upvotes a given user's content has received minus the number of downvotes. "Flagging" comments, likewise, is not permitted until a user has 30 karma points.


title: Hacker News

text: Graham stated he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community. The site has a proactive attitude in moderating content, including automated flame and spam detectors and active human moderation. It also practices stealth banning in which user posts stop appearing for others to see, unbeknownst to the user. Additional software is used to detect "voting rings to purposefully vote up stories".


title: Hacker News

text: According to a 2013 TechCrunch article: "Graham says that Hacker News gets a lot of complaints that it has a bias toward featuring stories about Y Combinator startups, but he says there is no such bias. [...] Graham adds that he gets a lot of vitriol from users personally with accusations of bias or censoring."


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a means-tested program that provides cash payments to disabled children, disabled adults, and individuals aged 65 or older who are citizens or nationals of the United States. SSI was created by the Social Security Amendments of 1972 and is incorporated in Title 16 of the Social Security Act. The program is administered by the Social Security Administration (SSA) and began operations in 1974.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Individuals or their helpers may start the application for SSI benefits by completing a short form on SSA's website. SSA staff will schedule an appointment for the individual or helper within 1–2 weeks and complete the process.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: SSI was created to replace federal-state adult assistance programs that served the same purpose, but were administered by the state agencies and received criticism for lacking consistent eligibility criteria. The restructuring of these programs was intended to standardize the eligibility requirements and level of benefits. Although administered by SSA, SSI is funded from the U.S. Treasury general funds, not the Social Security trust fund. As of July 2022, the program provides benefits to approximately five million Americans.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The legislation creating the program was a result of President Richard Nixon's effort to reform the nation's welfare programs. At that time, each state had somewhat different programs under the Aid to the Blind, Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled, and Aid to the Elderly. These programs, which received federal funding, were created as part of the original Social Security Act of 1935. The Nixon Administration thought these programs should be federalized and run by the Social Security Administration. Thus, SSI was created to eliminate the differences between the states including different disability standards and income and resources requirements, which many perceived as irrational or unfair. President Nixon signed the Social Security Amendments of 1972 on October 30, 1972, which created the SSI Program. The SSI program officially began operations in January 1974 by federalizing states' programs, designating the Social Security Administration (SSA) to administer the SSI program. SSA was selected because it had been administering a nationwide adult disability program under the Social Security Disability Insurance Benefits (DIB) program since 1956 for workers who are insured through their payroll deduction under the Old Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) programs associated with Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) payroll taxes.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The initial benefit levels for SSI in 1972 were approximately the same as the average monthly benefit as a retired worker under the Social Security retirement benefits program. In August 1974, Congress established legislation to automatically increase SSI benefits by the same percentage and at the same time as Social Security retirement, survivors, and disability benefits. In 2020, the maximum SSI benefit for an individual ($783) was about 52 percent of the average monthly benefit of retired workers ($1,503) in the Social Security retirement benefits program. Although both Social Security and SSI benefits are adjusted for price inflation, initial Social Security benefits are computed by using wage indexing. Because wages tend to grow faster than prices, the maximum SSI benefit will continue to decline relative to benefit levels in the Social Security program.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The maximum SSI benefit in 2020 for an individual ($783) is below the federal poverty standard for an individual in the United States (about $1,084 per month) Because both the SSI amount and the poverty standard are indexed to price inflation, this will continue to be true in the future, in the absence of legislative changes. With SSI income and other sources of family income, about 42 percent of persons on SSI are poor.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Historians Edward D. Berkowitz and Larry DeWitt argue that, while "critics often accused the U.S. social welfare system of skewing benefits toward the middle class, rather than the truly needy," SSI successfully targeted benefits to economically vulnerable groups such as minorities. In 2020, African Americans made up about 28 percent of the adult SSI population (about 13.4 percent of the overall U.S. population is African American). Among SSI recipients 75 or older, 18 percent are Asian American, 20 percent are African American, and 20 percent are Hispanic.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Disabled children have been categorically eligible for SSI since the program's beginning. "Sullivan v. Zebley" was a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1990 that led to additional children qualifying for SSI based on disability. Brian Zebley had brain damage at birth, resulting in mental and physical problems including visual problems and partial paralysis. The Supreme Court found that SSA improperly denied him benefits and concluded that SSA must consider how health impairments affect functioning in children when making disability decisions. A study in 2020 found that, relative to other children, SSI child beneficiaries have "high rates of poverty, near poverty, material hardship, hospitalization, mortality, and adverse schooling outcomes. A study in 2019 found that infant mortality rates for SSI child applicants are about five times that of all children.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Although there are some exceptions, generally individuals must reside in one of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, or the Northern Mariana Islands to receive SSI benefits. The Northern Mariana Islands became a U.S. territory in 1976 (after the SSI program began) and the covenant establishing its territorial status included eligibility for SSI. The territories of Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands are eligible for federal grants to support the "aged, blind, and disabled" but residents are not eligible for SSI. In April 2022, the Supreme Court ruled (in "United States v. Vaello Madero") that it is constitutional to exclude residents of Puerto Rico from the SSI program, as the territory does not pay most federal taxes.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: For adults who are married, SSA will sometimes pay a benefit based on a couple amount. This would occur if both members of a couple meet the categorical requirements of eligibility (for example, both members of the couple are disabled according to the program's definition of disability). In these cases, the benefit payable to a couple is smaller than the combined benefits payable to two individuals in order to take account of the fact that two people living together can live more economically than if each lived alone. However, the reduced SSI couple benefit applies only to those who are legally married, which gives beneficiaries an incentive not to marry.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In order to receive SSI benefits, individuals must apply for benefits and meet the following requirements:


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: For eligibility based on age, applicants must establish they are 65 or older. For eligibility based on disability, applicants must provide evidence they meet the Social Security Administration's definition of disability. With regard to adult disability cases, the Social Security Administration (SSA) determines whether an individual has a disability that prevents working, at a substantial level, in the national economy. For child disability cases, SSA determines whether the child has "marked" or severe functional limitations. The initial decision as to whether an individual is disabled is made by the various state Disability Determination Services (DDS), which contract with the federal government and must follow federal rules regarding the definition of disability. Individuals denied disability benefits at the initial level have appeal rights. Appealed cases may be heard by Administrative Law Judges, SSA's Appeals Council, and the federal courts.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In some cases, individuals may be eligible for Social Security benefits and SSI benefits. For example, a disabled individual who worked in Social Security covered employment and who has limited income and resources may receive a Social Security disability benefit (due to employment prior to disability) and a partial SSI benefit (due to limited income and resources). The Social Security Administration treats an application for SSI to also be an application for any Social Security benefit for which the individual is eligible. In general, however, SSI differs from Social Security because SSI pays benefits to individuals who have limited income and resources. There is no requirement that the individual worked in Social Security covered employment.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: An application must be filed with the Social Security Administration before an individual can receive SSI. Individuals or their helpers may start the application for SSI benefits by completing a short form on SSA's website. SSA staff will schedule an appointment for the individual or helper within 1–2 weeks and complete the process.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In order to be eligible for SSI, a person must meet the definition of being aged, disabled, or blind.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Aged – Being deemed aged consists of attaining the age of 65 or older. In some cases benefits can be claimed as the age 62. The Social Security Administration, like the United States Government in general, follows English common law and considers a person to attain an age the day before their birthday.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Disabled – Being deemed disabled consists of meeting the general disability definition used by the Social Security Administration to be eligible for SSDI:


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: "Disability means inability to engage in any SGA [substantial gainful activity] by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death, or has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months."


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: "The 1967 amendments specified that workers shall be determined to be under a disability only if the physical or mental impairment or impairments are of such severity that the individual is not only unable to do his previous work but cannot, considering his age, education, and work experience, engage in any other kind of substantial gainful work which exists in the national economy. This is regardless of whether any of these are true:


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: "The statute also specifies that 'work which exists in the national economy means work which exists in significant numbers either in the region where such individuals live or in several regions of the country.'"


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Substantial gainful activity (SGA), for 2021, is the ability to earn $1,310 gross income in a month's period for most disabled individuals. For legally blind individuals, the SGA is $2,190, but applies only to SSDI and not SSI.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In addition, children under the age of 18 can be determined to be disabled for SSI purposes "if the individual has a medically determinable impairment or combination of impairments that causes marked or severe functional limitation(s), and can be expected to result in death, or has lasted or can be expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months."


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: "central visual acuity of 20/200 or less in the better eye with the use of a correcting lens. An eye which has a limitation in the field of vision such that the widest diameter of the visual field subtends an angle no greater than 20 degrees should also be considered as having a central visual acuity of 20/200 or less."


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In addition, for SSI purposes, an individual is considered blind regardless of the period of time they are expected to be blind or if they are performing substantial gainful activity.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: One of the requirements to receive SSI is that the individual's income must be below certain limits. These limits may vary based on the state in which the individual lives, living arrangements, the number of people living in the residence, and the type of income. Not all income is counted when determining an individual's "countable income" for SSI eligibility purposes. Certain payments such as: grants, scholarships, SNAP benefits, home energy assistance, and small infrequent payments are not included.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Another requirement for SSI is that the individual's resources be below a certain limit. This amount is $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for an individual and their spouse (whether the spouse is eligible for SSI or not), $4,000 for a child applicant with one parent living in the household, and $5,000 for a child applicant with two parents living in the household. However, conditional benefits may be paid if a substantial portion of the resources are considered non-liquid, resources that cannot be sold within 20 working days, if they agree to sell the resources at their current market value within a specified period and repay the money after the non-liquid property is sold. However, not all actual resources are counted in calculating an individual's or couple's resources for SSI purposes.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The resource limits were originally set at $1,500 for an individual and $2,500 for couples in 1974, and were not linked to inflation. In 1987, the limits were raised to $1,800 and $2,700, in 1988, to $1,900 and $2,850, and, in 1989, to $2,000 and $3,000. Under current law they will remain at present levels indefinitely.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The one exception to the general asset limit is the ABLE account, which was established with the signing into law of the ABLE Act of 2014 (standing for Achieving a Better Life Experience Act) on December 19, 2014, This tax-advantaged account was codified under the newly added Section 529A of the Internal Revenue Code. Details of the accounts, which officially came into effect once the Treasury Department issued enabling regulations and states passed legislation regarding account administration, are:


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: SSI benefits are not paid solely to US citizens, but may also be paid to aliens legally residing in the United States. Conversely, citizens may find themselves ineligible because they do not currently reside within the United States; exceptions apply for children of military parents who were born overseas, were disabled or became blind overseas, or first applied for benefits overseas and for students studying abroad who were eligible for SSI in the month prior to leaving the US, whose absence will be for less than one year, and who are studying to enhance their ability to perform substantial gainful activity, sponsored by an educational institution in the US, and would not be available to the individual in the US. Several restrictions apply to the eligibility of aliens however. These include being in a "qualified alien" category and meeting an exception condition.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: There are seven categories of qualified aliens based on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immigration statuses. This includes:


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In order to qualify for SSI, an immigrant must have been a legal resident of the United States before the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 took effect (August 22, 1996). Those who arrived after that date may be denied SSI benefits. However, the regulations governing alien eligibility for SSI are complex and contain many exceptions; for instance, asylees, refugees, spouses of a member of the U.S. military, and some LAPR may be "qualified aliens." A person who has been in LAPR status for at least five years, has a valid Form I-551 (Green card status) issued by the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration, and has been employed in the United States, may qualify. People wishing to learn whether they might qualify for SSI should contact the Social Security Administration to schedule an appointment for an interview.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: A person who is incarcerated for a calendar month is ineligible for benefits. If the person is in a medical facility where at least 50% of their costs are paid by Medicaid, their benefit may be reduced to $30.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Since Congress enacted "fugitive felons" and parole/probation violation provisions in 1996, the Social Security Administration has suspended benefits and charged overpayments to individuals receiving SSI on the basis of outstanding warrants.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Individuals who are fleeing to avoid prosecution or incarceration for a felony or violating probation or parole are statutorily prohibited from receiving SSI or Title II Social Security benefits.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Social Security Administration interpreted the statutes broadly to include individuals whose names were matched against a warrant database. Some individuals lost benefits even though the warrant in question was for a different person. For others, the presence of a warrant did not necessarily mean that an individual was "fleeing," or that the individual had violated probation or parole.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: As a result of two legal cases ("Martinez v. Astrue" and "Clark v. Astrue"), the SSA may not suspend benefits based merely on the evidence that a warrant had been issued. Back benefits were owed to hundreds of thousands of recipients.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The SSI program (or Title XVI of the Social Security Act 1611) provides monthly federal cash assistance of up to $783 for an individual and $1,175 for a couple (as of 2020) to help meet the costs of basic needs of food, shelter, and clothing.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In most states, SSI eligibility usually assures concurrent access to important medical coverage under the various state Medicaid programs and sometimes access to Section 8 housing benefits. In some states, supplemental payments are made by the state, increasing the cash assistance available through SSI. For example, the state of California (through its State Supplementation Program or SSP) increases the cash assistance, making the total 2020 SSI benefit for an individual $943.72 per month.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: SSI takes the income and resources of the applicant or recipient into consideration when calculating their benefit amount. Resources are determined at the first of the month. If an individual reduces their countable resources below the limit through investing in excluded resources, they will remain eligible. Excluded resources are resources such as: household goods, personal effects, up to one vehicle, and the home the applicant lives in.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: An individual's monthly benefit will be calculated by subtracting their "countable income" from the maximum benefit amount. "Countable income" is an individual's income after applying any appropriate exclusions. It includes earned, unearned, in-kind, and deemed income.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Payments for SSI are made on the first day of the month unless that day is on a weekend or legal holiday, in which case the payment is made on the first day prior that is not a weekend or legal holiday. The minimum benefit is one dollar.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Social Security determines the first month of potential eligibility for SSI by the date of the intent to file an application for benefits as expressed to the Social Security Administration, and an application is filed within 60 days of the date of that expressed intention. To begin the process, people wishing to be considered must contact Social Security (there is a toll-free telephone number) to set up a "disability interview." No online application for SSI is currently available; however, one may apply for Social Security Disability or Retirement benefits online and add the application for SSI via a telephone-scheduled interview. Calls placed on the last day of the month, where the interview is scheduled for the second week of the following month, will result in SSI eligibility being retroactive to the month in which the call was made to set up the appointment, although the first check will not be received until the next month. For example, a person calls on 31 January to set up an appointment for February. January will be the month-of-application for determination purposes, but the first benefit check will be issued in February. Medicaid benefits usually begin the first month in which medical and financial requirements are met.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: People who have qualified for Social Security disability benefits may receive SSI during the five-month waiting period if they meet the income and resource requirements specified above in the eligibility section.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Social Security Administration (SSA) indicates that their "greatest payment accuracy challenges occur within the SSI program." Further, the agency notes administering "the SSI program is complicated by the statutory requirement for us to determine SSI eligibility and calculate SSI payments on a monthly basis." Because payment accuracy is sometimes the result of "program requirements themselves", the agency is seeking ways to simplify the program.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: An overpayment occurs when the Social Security Administration pays an individual benefits that they are not eligible for. This may occur if an individual exceeds the income or resource limit for a given month. The overpayment amount is calculated as they difference between the amount that was paid and the amount for which the individual was eligible. To avoid overpayments, individuals should make sure to comply with their reporting responsibilities (e.g., report any new income). Additionally, individuals should be aware of the resource and income thresholds (see above) that determine eligibility. To avoid overpayment, when an individual knows they will surpass a resource or income threshold for a given month, they should proactively report this to the Social Security Administration.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: If a beneficiary is not at fault for an overpayment and cannot afford to pay the money back, they can submit a waiver form (SSA-63BK) to prevent overpayment recovery. "Fault" can be the failure to furnish information which the individual knew or should have known was incorrect, making an incorrect statement they knew to be incorrect, or not returning a payment they knew or could have been expected to know was incorrect.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: An underpayment occurs when the Social Security Administration pays an individual benefits below the amount they are due. Underpayments in SSI often occur if the agency is unaware of changes in a beneficiary's earnings or living arrangements.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Missed benefits occur when an individual is unaware of eligibility for SSI and does not apply. A randomized control trial by SSA found mailing notices to individuals informing them about the SSI program sharply increased applications and benefit awards. Studies have found that "just over 50 percent" of individuals eligible for SSI receive benefits from the program, which can be attributed to lack of awareness, a complex application process, or a desire not to participate in the program.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: There are four living arrangements for SSI: A, B, C, and D. Living arrangement A is for an individual that has rental liability or buys their food separately from the rest of the household. Living arrangement B is for an individual that has no rental liability and does not buy their food separately. This is the most disadvantageous living arrangement. An individual will have a minimum charge of income deducted from their check. This is done because it is considered that an individual is being given income in the form of free housing and food. An individual in living arrangement B will also be subject to more periodic reviews called redeterminations. This is done because it is common for a person in living arrangement B to eventually obtain rental liability or buy their food separately. Living arrangement C is for children living with at least one of their parents. In some cases it may be possible that a child has another living arrangement. This happens when the child does not live with either parent. Living arrangement D is for individuals in facility where Medicaid pays over fifty percent. A person is only due a check of fifty dollars per month. This is because it considered that the individual has all his basic needs met.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Generally, the person qualifying for benefits is determined to be capable of managing their own financial affairs, and the benefits may be disbursed directly to them. In the case of persons who have a diagnosed mental impairment which interferes with their ability to manage their own finances, the Social Security Administration may require that the person assign someone to be their representative payee. This person will receive the benefits on behalf of the disabled individual, and disburse them directly to payors such as landlords, or to the disabled person, while providing money management assistance (help with purchasing items, limiting spending money, etc.). The representative payee generally does not charge a fee for this service, especially if the payee is a friend or relative. Social service agencies who are assigned as payee are prohibited from charging a fee, though some private payee agencies do provide the service for a small fee. Some states and counties have representative payee agencies (also called substitute payee programs) which receive the benefits on behalf of the disabled person's social worker, and disburse the benefits per the social worker's instructions.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Almost all children eligible for SSI have representative payees (typically a parent or other family member). Among disabled adults receiving SSI, about 34 percent have representative payees. Disabled adults with mental disorders, such as autistic disorders, developmental disorders, and intellectual disabilities, commonly have representative payees. About 10 percent of SSI recipients 65 or older have representative payees.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Social Security Advisory Board commissioned a study of the Social Security Administration's representative payee program and held a policy forum in 2020 on the topic. The study noted the difficulty SSA field staff face in determining the need for representative payees and finding suitable payees particularly when family members are not available. In addition, the large size of the payee program (6 million payees for Social Security and SSI beneficiaries) combined with limited agency resources makes selection and monitoring of payees challenging for SSA. Among its recommendations, the authors of the study concluded SSA needed additional staff to effectively run the payee program. The authors also suggested SSA pilot a program where some field staff specialized in representative payee workloads.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Once an individual qualifies for Supplemental Security Income they automatically become eligible for several other assistance programs as allowed by Federal and State law. An SSI recipient can receive benefits from all programs listed and they serve as a safety net for those on the program.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In addition, SSI recipients who are eligible for Medicare receive assistance in covering out-of-pocket medical expenses through the Medicare Savings Programs and the Extra Help Program.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Biden Administration has proposed legislative changes that would raise the maximum federal benefit under SSI to at least the poverty threshold for the United States (about $1,084 per month in 2020). Under current benefit amounts, about 3.3 million SSI recipients are poor. The Administration has also proposed increasing the resource limits in SSI by changes in the price level in the United States. Under current resource limits, to qualify for SSI, individuals must have resources below $2,000 and married couples must have resources below $3,000. These limits have been fixed in dollar amounts since 1989. The Administration's proposal would increase these to about $4,300 and $8,600 in 2021 (reflecting price growth since 1989 and setting the couple rate at twice that of an individual). Amounts would be automatically increased for future price growth. The Biden Administration has further proposed to eliminate benefit reductions due to "in kind" support received by SSI recipients and to set the couple rate under SSI to twice that of the individual rate.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Trump Administration proposed legislative changes to disregard earnings of disabled students for purposes of calculating SSI benefits, which would allow students to increase earnings without a loss in SSI benefits. The Trump Administration also proposed legislative changes to reduce total SSI benefits in cases where more than one person in the family qualified for SSI. These proposals were not acted upon by Congress.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: A regulation implemented by the Trump Administration removed the inability to speak English as an educational factor to be considered in SSI and Social Security disability determination. The regulation is projected to "result in a reduction of about 6,500 OASDI [Social Security] beneficiary awards per year and 4,000 SSI recipient awards per year on average over the period FY 2019-28, with a corresponding reduction of $4.6 billion in OASDI benefit payments and $0.8 billion in Federal SSI payments over the same period." The Trump Administration argued communicating in English is no longer "a reliable indicator of an individual's educational attainment or the vocational impact of an individual's education." Disability advocates, however, questioned the validity of this argument and provided comments arguing against the regulation.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The Trump Administration proposed a regulation to conduct an additional 1.1 million full disability reviews over the 2020-2029 period of individuals receiving Social Security and SSI disability. The regulation would have terminated Social Security and SSI benefits for a number of individuals and, based on a number of comments in the federal register, was controversial. Trump Administration officials argued the rule would encourage labor force reentry among disabled persons. However, organizations expressed concern that many disabled individuals would not have representation when their cases were reviewed and would face onerous administrative challenges that would ultimately prevent them from continuing to receive benefits even though they were still disabled. The proposed regulation was withdrawn by the Biden Administration.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: In addition, the Trump Administration developed a proposal that would have made it more difficult for older workers to qualify for Social Security or SSI disability. The Social Security Act requires SSA to consider a person's education and age when making disability decisions. Officials in the Trump Administration argued that older workers in the current economy no longer face the same difficulties as in the past with regard to meeting the occupational requirements of work and therefore tighter standards were necessary. Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives strongly opposed the proposal, arguing the disability requirements were already strict and the regulation would prevent severely disabled individuals from receiving benefits. Leaked documents to the press indicated that as many as 500,000 individuals would not receive Social Security or SSI if the regulation was implemented. The Biden Administration withdrew consideration of the regulation.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Recent legislative proposals in Congress have included proposed changes to child benefits, eligibility requirements, and benefit amounts.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: The School Attendance Improves Lives (SAIL) Act in 2015 proposed reducing SSI benefits for children ages 16–17 if they were not attending school. The goal of the legislation was to increase school attendance among SSI recipients, although the legislation was criticized by some as being unnecessary. The legislation was not enacted.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Some members of the House and Senate, including the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Ron Wyden, have requested the Biden Administration include legislative proposals to increase SSI benefits to the poverty level and to adjust resource limits under SSI as part of the Administration's "American Families Plan."


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Disabled youth transitioning to adulthood have been a focus of policymakers. Upon turning 18, a child's disability is re-evaluated using SSA's definition of disability for adults. In about one-third of the cases, SSI benefits are terminated. Policymakers have been concerned that these youth, who have a history of health problems, are unprepared to support themselves in adulthood. As a result, Congress has created special provisions in the law and funded large-scale research studies to test ways to improve outcomes for youth on SSI. In addition, federal agencies have made some attempts to improve outcomes through better practices.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: A special provision of the Social Security Act, called Section 301, allows disabled youth to retain benefits at age 18 so long as they are working in an approved program to prepare for employment in adulthood. For example, youth participating in programs run by state Vocational Rehabilitation agencies may continue to receive benefits even if they do not meet the adult disability definition. Because many families are unaware of the protections under Section 301, SSA began mailing information to families with disabled youth to inform them of this provision and provide other information to help youth successfully transition to adulthood.


title: Supplemental Security Income

text: Congress has funded two large-scale studies to test ways to improve outcomes among disabled youth on SSI. The Youth Transition Demonstration (YTD) tested service and other interventions in several states. Findings from the demonstration were mixed, with some interventions improving outcomes (employment, lower contact with the juvenile justice system) and some interventions not having statistically significant effects. YTD was followed by the Promoting Readiness in Minors in SSI (PROMISE) demonstration. Interim impact results found positive employment and other outcomes from "case management, employment-promoting services, benefits counseling, financial education, and parent training and information about youth’s disability."


title: Mephibosheth

text: Mephibosheth (Biblical Hebrew: , "Məfīḇōšeṯ", also called Meribaal, , "Mərīḇ-Baʻal") was the son of Jonathan—and, thus, a grandson of Saul—mentioned in the Biblical Books of Samuel and Chronicles.


title: Mephibosheth

text: Mephibosheth was five years old when both his father and grandfather died at the Battle of Mount Gilboa. After the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, Mephibosheth's nurse took him and fled in panic. () In her haste, the child fell, or was dropped while fleeing. After that, he was unable to walk.


title: Mephibosheth

text: Some years later, after his accession to the kingship of the United Monarchy, King David sought "someone of the house of Saul, to whom I may show the kindness of God" and Mephibosheth was brought to him. David restored Saul's inheritance to Mephibosheth and permitted him to live within his palace in Jerusalem.


title: Mephibosheth

text: He is called Mephibosheth, meaning "from the mouth of shame", in the Books of Samuel while the Books of Chronicles ( and ) call him "Meribbaal". Arnold Gottfried Betz and David Noel Freedman argue that "Memphibaal", a name preserved in the "Lucianic recension" may actually be the original name of Jonathan's son, while "Meribbaal" may originally refer to one of Saul's sons.


title: Mephibosheth

text: There is some scholarly agreement that "Mephibosheth" replaced "Meribbaal" (or "Memphibaal") in order to conceal the theophoric name "baal", a reference to a Canaanite deity, which became taboo.


title: Rosalie Craig

text: Rosalie Mae Craig (born 30 May 1981) is an English actress, noted for her performances in musical theatre. In 2013 she received her first major award, a London Evening Standard Award for Best Performance in a Musical.


title: Rosalie Craig

text: Craig grew up in Nottingham, and studied for a BA in Actor Musicianship at Rose Bruford College, from which she graduated in 2001. After graduation she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company and made her professional stage debut in an adaptation by Adrian Mitchell of Alice in Wonderland.


title: Rosalie Craig

text: In 2007 she had her first leading role in a West End production, playing the character Arwen in the musical stage adaptation of "The Lord of the Rings".


title: Rosalie Craig

text: Since then her notable roles in theatre have included the title character in Tori Amos's "The Light Princess" at the National Theatre in 2013, for which she was nominated for an Olivier Award as well as winning an Evening Standard Award. She has also had leading parts in "City of Angels" (Donmar Warehouse), "Finding Neverland" (Leicester Curve) and "Ragtime" (Regent's Park Open Air Theatre).


title: Rosalie Craig

text: She appeared in the musical "London Road" at the National Theatre and subsequently in Rufus Norris's film adaptation. Craig's other work with the National Theatre include: "As You Like It" and "The Threepenny Opera". She appeared in the premiere of musical "Wonder.land", at Palace Theatre, Manchester for the Manchester International Festival; also directed by Norris in association with the National Theatre.


title: Rosalie Craig

text: Her television work includes appearances in "Spooks", "Miranda", "Endeavour", "Lovesick", "Midsomer Murders", "Truth Seekers" and "The Queen's Gambit".


title: Rosalie Craig

text: In September 2018, Craig began appearing alongside Patti LuPone in a revival of the Stephen Sondheim musical "Company." She played the lead role of 'Bobbie,' reimagined for the first time as a woman.


title: Rosalie Craig

text: In 2021, Craig played the brief role of the Whaletaur Shaman in Netflix's "Centaurworld", released on 30 July 2021. In 2022, she appeared in the Netflix series "1899".


title: Rosalie Craig

text: She is married to the actor Hadley Fraser. On 1 November 2016, Craig gave birth to the couple's first child, named Elvie.


title: Amber Smith

text: Amber Smith is the daughter of Carol Smith. During her 2008 and 2009 appearances on the reality television programs in which she sought treatment by Dr. Drew Pinsky for addiction, she stated that both her father and mother had long histories with addiction. In the third episode of "Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew", she stated that her father died as a result of a drinking problem, and that while he was absent during much of her childhood, she was still devastated by his death.


title: Amber Smith

text: Smith started modeling by age 16. As a teenager she was represented by Irene Marie Models in Miami Beach and traveled to Paris, France, where she worked as a model throughout Europe for four years. Her breakthrough came when her naturally blonde hair was dyed red, giving her a strong resemblance to 1940s and '50s movie star Rita Hayworth. Smith appeared in back-to-back issues of the 1993 & 1994 "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue", and became "Esquire" magazine's first Vargas Girl of the 1990s. She also became the first model of the Wonderbra campaign. She later posed for photographer Helmut Newton for a Wolford advertising campaign, and was the model for the 2002 lingerie campaign for Venus Victoria, the European sister company to Victoria's Secret.


title: Amber Smith

text: Smith has appeared on the covers of the fashion magazines and women's magazines "Vogue", "Elle", "Cosmopolitan", "Marie Claire", "MAX" (Australian and French editions) and "YM". She was the cover girl for the March 1995 issue of "Playboy". She was photographed by Clifford Wright for "Maxim"' and "Ocean Drive". She has appeared in advertising for L'Oréal makeup, Buffalo Jeans, Camel cigarettes, Kahlúa liqueur, Volkswagen automobiles, and Panama Jack, among others, and has walked the runway for such fashion designers as Chanel and Jean Paul Gaultier.


title: Amber Smith

text: Smith was cast in her first film role in Paul Mazursky's "Faithful", on a referral from Robert De Niro that stemmed from her "Casino" auditions. She also appeared in "The Funeral", directed by Abel Ferrara, and Barbra Streisand's "The Mirror Has Two Faces". She played Susan Lefferts, a Rita Hayworth lookalike, in Curtis Hanson's "L.A. Confidential". Smith's resemblance to Hayworth came into play again with a role in HBO's cable telefilm "The Rat Pack". She also had a role in "American Beauty". Her biggest role to date has been as the star of the Cinemax TV series "Sin City Diaries", which debuted in 2007. She played Angelica, a Las Vegas entertainment consultant who plans activities for casinos' high-roller guests.


title: Amber Smith

text: Smith appeared as a cast member during the second season of the VH1 television show "Celebrity Rehab", which depicted her 16-year struggle with opiate and alcohol addiction. She subsequently appeared in the 2009 series "Sober House", a "Celebrity Rehab" spin-off focusing on a sober living environment. That same year, she appeared in the VH1 series "Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew". During these appearances, she recounted hers and her mother's histories with addiction and co-dependency, which began when Smith was a teenager, and how her experiences with date rape and prostitution played a part in those addictions.


title: Amber Smith

text: That same year, Smith and other alumni of "Celebrity Rehab" appeared as panel speakers to a new group of addicts at the Pasadena Recovery Center. Her appearance, which marked a year and a half of sobriety for her, was aired in the third-season episode "Triggers".


title: Amber Smith

text: In a January 2010 "TV Guide" story on "Celebrity Rehab", Dr. Drew Pinsky stated she was living with her mother in Los Angeles, and "doing stupendous work...She's someone who reaches out and is an inspiration and of service to other patients."


title: Amber Smith

text: Smith's name surfaced in connection with the January 2008 bankruptcy of the entertainment payroll firm Axium. A lawsuit alleged the company's partners misused funds by renting a Los Angeles, California apartment for Smith, paying for her car and issuing "numerous large payments" to Smith, which they explained by calling her a "consultant" to the company.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: Pearl Mackie is a British actress. She is best known for playing Bill Potts in the long-running television series "Doctor Who". Mackie is a 2010 graduate of the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Her first major television role came in 2014, when she played Anne-Marie Frasier in BBC One soap opera "Doctors".


title: Pearl Mackie

text: Mackie grew up in Brixton in south London and is of paternal West Indian and maternal English descent. She is the granddaughter of Philip Mackie, who wrote the screenplay for "The Naked Civil Servant." She earned a degree in Drama from the University of Bristol, and speaks English, French and Spanish. During her studies she went to workshops and took part in many extra-curricular plays.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: In 2010 she graduated from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. In the same year Mackie was nominated for the "BBC Carleton Hobbs Award" for outstanding duologues in the school play "Noughts & Crosses".


title: Pearl Mackie

text: Mackie appeared in an early mainstream role as a front of house girl in the 2013 music comedy "Svengali". In 2014, Mackie played Anne-Marie Frasier in "Doctors" and the young computer genius Mia in "Crystal Springs" at the Park Theatre in London. She could also be seen in the political satire "Obama-ology" at the Finborough theatre in west London, playing Cece and Caits, two young women finding their voice.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: In 2015, she performed in the National Theatre's West End production of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time". In the same year Mackie appeared in the short film "Date Aid" by Bond, a satirical public service announcement. Mackie has also worked as an acting tutor for Troupers, a company that teaches theatre skills to children and young people.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: On 23 April 2016, it was announced that Mackie would be playing Bill Potts, the companion of The Doctor in the British television series "Doctor Who". It was also announced in March 2017 that Bill would be the first openly gay main companion in the series.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: After production on Series 10 of "Doctor Who" had wrapped, Mackie joined a production of Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" as Lulu. The production – costarring Stephen Mangan, Toby Jones, and Zoë Wanamaker – opened in January 2018 at London's Harold Pinter Theatre.


title: Pearl Mackie

text: On 28 June 2020, Mackie came out as bisexual in an Instagram post. She and her partner Kam Chhokar announced their engagement on 19 January 2022.


title: Coalition

text: A coalition is a group formed when two or more people or groups temporarily work together to achieve a common goal. The term is most frequently used to denote a formation of power in political or economical spaces.


title: Coalition

text: According to "A Guide for Political Parties" published by National Democratic Institute and The Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, there are five steps of coalition-building:


title: Coalition

text: By contrast to alliances, coalitions are what might be termed "partnerships of unequals," since comparative political, economic, and military might, as well as the extent to which a nation is prepared to commit, dictates influence. Coalitions can often occur as an unplanned response to situations of danger, uncertainty, or extraordinary events, directed at interim objectives.


title: Coalition

text: Internal coalitions consist of people who are already in an organization, such as a workplace. For example, a trade union is a type of coalition formed to represent employees' wages, benefits, and working conditions. Without this unity between employees, workers may be subjugated to harsh working environments and low pay due to no practical regulations. Often, organizations prefer to council with members of their respective internal coalitions before implementing changes at the workplace to ensure support.


title: Coalition

text: In contrast, external coalitions consist of people that are members of different organizations who collaborate their efforts to achieve an overall objective. For example, in order to prevent gun violence and advocate gun control, several groups, unions, and nonprofit organizations banded to form the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. External coalitions base their confidence in gaining credibility on inviting unlikely partners who wish to attain the same end goal, but the reasons to achieve these goals differ.


title: Coalition

text: Coalition government is an alternative model to majoritarian governance, the latter being characterized by winner-take-all "first-past-the-post" electoral systems that favor clear distinctions between winners and losers. Not only can coalitions of legislative groups form governments in parliamentary systems but they can form in divisions of power as well. The most usual analyses of coalitions in politics deal with the formation of multiparty cabinets in parliamentary regimes. In Germany, every administration has been a multiparty coalition since the conclusion of the Second World Waran example of a coalition government creation in a parliamentary government. When different winning coalitions can be formed in a parliament, the party composition of the government may depend on the bargaining power of each party and the presence (or lack of it) of a dominant party.


title: Coalition

text: The Cambridge Dictionary defines coalition as "the joining together of different political parties or groups for a particular purpose, usually for a limited time, or a government that is formed in this way".


title: Coalition

text: Coalitions of political parties are political groups, coalitions of some members of a political party are parliamentary groups.


title: Coalition

text: The temporary collaboration of two or more separate parties with a set goal and common purpose can be viewed as a coalition in international relations. Coalition competitions are represented in international political dynamics . In international relations, a coalition can be an "ad hoc" grouping of nations united for specific purposes. Although persons and groups form coalitions for many and varied reasons, the most common purpose is to combat a common threat or to take advantage of a certain opportunity, resulting in the often temporary nature of coalitions. The common threat or existence of opportunity is what gives rise to the coalition and allows it to exist as all parties involved see the benefit in working together. Such collaborative processes allow the actors of the coalition to approach a common goal or accomplish the same task. The behavior and dynamics of coalitions in international relations are created by commonalties and differences within the groups joining together. Rationality, group dynamics, and gender are all contributing factors of coalitional behaviors in an international security framework.


title: Coalition

text: Economic agents can form coalitions. When a coalition is formed around economic goals, the reasoning is financial. In economics, when two opposing sectors, such as a buyer and seller or two sellers, come together, it can be thought of as a coalition in the denotative sense, as the two groups come together temporarily to achieve a goal. One example would be the 1997 deal between Microsoft and Apple. The deal consisted of Microsoft rescuing the then-struggling Apple with an infusion of $150 million. Unions can be viewed as coalitions of workers (usually of the same job sector). When the agents considered are countries, the formation of an international treaty (e.g. trade agreements or international environmental agreements) can also be seen as a coalition. In economics, a coalition's formation and its stability is mostly studied with tools from game theory.


title: Coalition

text: In civil society, "coalition" connotes a group effort or a population of people coming together who believe strongly in their cause. The term also describes alliances between civil society organizations, such as labor unions, community organizations, and religious institutions. In France, for example, workers from different sectors and unions band together to aid each other in communicating a point. This coalition of unions is often very effective as it causes massive inconvenience to the country. The formation of coalitions such as the Community-Labor Coalition have proven to be an important strategy for social change in many contexts. In social groups, a coalition often forms from private citizens uniting behind a common goal or purpose. Many of these private citizen groups form grassroots organizations, such as the Christian Coalition, which is the largest grassroots political group in America. Activist groups in civil society are also viewed as coalitions for their respective cause. These activists are joined together by their belief in what they hope to achieve or accomplish.


title: Coalition

text: Military coalitions can be built and united under a singular power by multiple states and governments. They are fluid in terms of membership—not only does a country not have to have been a traditional ally to join a coalition, but nations can join, vary their contributions and caveats, withdraw, and be replaced by new members as the situation changes or national agendas change. The expansion of assets accessible to member nations to perform military operations is a crucial attribute of coalitions. In many ways, coalition warfare serves to make the crafting of a peace more difficult than the winning of the war itself. An example of such a coalition happened during the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 when the Allied powers attempted to reach a peace agreement.


title: Coalition

text: Examples of military coalitions include the Coalition of the Gulf War, when George H. W. Bush ended Saddam Hussein's aggression in the Middle East by enlisting and leading a military coalition in the 1991 Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm as well as his son George W. Bush's efforts in the "Coalition of the Willing", a phrase employed during the 2003 campaign for the war in Iraq led by the United States and its allies. A contemporary example is the United Nations coalition that intervened in the 2011 Libyan Civil War against Muammar Gaddafi. For coalitions to be effective in principle or in action, participating nations have tended to require a single overpowering threat—perhaps to freedom or a way of life or a crucial national interest—or the presence of a single despotic figure or regime whose continued existence is considered not only abhorrent to the generality of nations but also destabilizing to the region or world order.


title: Coalition

text: In mathematics, the term "coalition" is linked to an equation which uses the coalition model for exponential population growth. This analytical equation was first published by mathematician Pierre François Verhulst in 1838 to allow for the approximation of the world's population at a given time by applying differential and integral techniques.


title: The Inbestigators

text: The Inbestigators (stylised The InBESTigators) is an Australian mockumentary children's television series created by Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope. The show stars Abby Bergman, Anna Cooke, Aston Droomer and Jamil Smyth-Secka as Ava Andrikides, Maudie Miller, Ezra Banks and Kyle Klimson, respectively, fifth-graders who solve crimes in their school and neighbourhood. The series has the comic tone of "Little Lunch" (another series on which they had worked) and an air of mystery. The show aired in two series from 21 June to 30 November 2019 on ABC Me. Netflix released the first and second series in mid-2019 and early 2020 respectively.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The Inbestigators" garnered critical acclaim, with praise for its humour and cast, though its characters drew mixed opinions. The show received two AACTA Award nominations for Best Children's Television Series. A spin-off web series, "The InBESTigators: Crime Crack", was released in July 2019; a cast Q&A was released in late 2019, followed by a study guide during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: The Inbestigators

text: The series is centred around Ezra Banks, a tech-savvy boy; Maudie Miller, a socially-awkward, intelligent aspiring private investigator; Ava Andrikides, an outgoing, dramatic girl; and Kyle Klimson, an athletic goof. They form the Inbestigators, a detective agency that solves crimes in their school and neighbourhood. After a case is solved, they describe it on a vlog.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The InBESTigators" is based on an original idea by Robyn Butler. It was created by Robyn Butler and Wayne Hope, who are also known for "Little Lunch". After the success of "Little Lunch", Butler and Hope wanted to create another children's comedy. For "The Inbestigators", they "took the comic tone of "Little Lunch" and married with it the private detective, mystery genre". Butler explained that she and Hope created the show as a reaction to the "world [they are] living in", which she considered toxic and affected children's viewpoints. In response, she decided to make a show about kids with "ethnic diversity and gender equity and respect and integrity and kindness" to encourage "something else" in children. Screen Australia head of production Sally Callan said, "It's vital that young Australians are able to see their country, their stories and hear their accent reflected on the screen ... The characters in "The InBESTigators" ... are distinctive and inclusive, and tell stories that are innovative and culturally significant." In June 2018, ABC and Screen Australia greenlit the series. Development was funded by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF) and ABC.


title: The Inbestigators

text: Writing for "The Inbestigators", by Robyn Butler, Wayne Hope, Molly Daniels, Lisa Marie Corso, Maddy Butler, Jayden Masciulli and Bob Franklin, began in 2017. Butler and Hope instructed the writers to keep the scripts clear and simple without dumbing them down, and to ensure that the children's dialogue was child-like: "Rather than writing what was funny or nostalgic for them, they had to get into the bones of a 10-year-old."


title: The Inbestigators

text: After the scripts were written, the team began to focus on the main cast; they sought talent and confidence. After 715 auditions, newcomers Aston Droomer, Anna Cooke, Abby Bergman and Jamil Smyth-Secka were cast as Ezra Banks, Maudie Miller, Ava Andrikides and Kyle Klimson. The series used many children in guest roles, most of whom had auditioned for the main roles. Cooke heard about auditions for "The Inbestigators" through her school newsletter. She thought it "looked [like] fun", and attended "three or four auditions". For the role, she cut her hair short. In the auditions, Bergman learnt and performed lines for the casting agency. She attended four auditions, the last of which was the chemistry read. Droomer's agency, Emma Raciti Management, sent an audition request for his role in "The Inbestigators". Before the first audition, he needed to learn two scripts; for the following auditions he learnt more scripts, met with the series' creators and did a chemistry read.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The Inbestigators" used a single-camera setup. To create 40 episodes, the production team required outside funding, which Netflix provided. Production was originally scheduled for July to November 2018. Filming began on 19 July 2018 at Moorabbin Primary School in Melbourne, and the wrap date was pushed back to December. The children worked for eight hours a day, with ten-minute breaks each hour and tutoring on set. Filming wrapped in November. Dan Maxwell was the series' photography director, and Simon McCutcheon was its production designer. The creators originally wanted to create the detective-agency set at their Port Melbourne production office; realising that travel would be difficult, however, they built it in the staff car park. Episodes were not filmed chronologically; scenes at the same location were shot together. There was a one-week break between filming of the first and second series. They needed to be filmed simultaneously due to the child actors' rapid growth.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The Inbestigators" focusses on themes of honesty, loyalty, kindness, friendship, teamwork and responsibility. According to "TV Tonight", instead of "nasty adult vices", the show's crimes are justified by desires to fit in or avoid loneliness. When caught, culprits apologise and learn a lesson or moral, which, according to Common Sense Media, are pertinent to tweens.


title: The Inbestigators

text: Each episode of "The Inbestigators" is approximately 15 minutes long. The series premiered on ABC Me in Australia and New Zealand on 21 June 2019. The first series' broadcast ended on 10 July 2019. It was renewed for a second series on 12 August, which was broadcast from 11 November to 30 November 2019. The first and second series were released worldwide on Netflix on 9 August 2019 and 10 January 2020 respectively. On the streaming service, episodes are presented in pairs, totalling 30 minutes each.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The Inbestigators" has received critical acclaim. The show has been listed as one of Netflix's best Australian, detective, educational, and children's series by "Screen Rant", "The Cinemaholic", "Variety" and "Stuff" respectively.


title: The Inbestigators

text: The show's comical aspects attracted praise. Reviewers found the series hilarious and "genuinely funny". "Decider" Joel Keller said "[i]t's got a sharp sense of humour with a lot of gentle snarkiness". He and Common Sense Media writer Mandie Caroll argued adults would enjoy "The Inbestigators" due to its comical aspects. In addition, critics thought the Australian actors had a natural approach to comedy. Caroll described their line deliveries as "often dripping with kid-friendly sarcasm and good-natured humour"; Keller assured that the show would be of lower quality with British or American actors. Additionally, reviewers lauded the racial diversity.


title: The Inbestigators

text: Journalists have had mixed opinions on the characters. They deemed the characters stereotypical; critics believed they matched tropes such as the geek and the jock. Despite this, Mumtaj Begum of "The Star" stated the show's writing and liveliness made such stereotypes less irritating. Aside from the clichés, Carrol considered the characters "[l]ikeable, interesting ... [and] role-model worthy". She also praised the show for breaking gender stereotypes.


title: The Inbestigators

text: "The InBESTigators: Crime Crack", a short web series, was released on ABC Me's YouTube channel. The series, starring Abby Bergman as Ava Andrikides and Anna Cooke as Maudie Miller, recounts each episode in six steps: the crime, the red herrings, the culprit, the clues, the motive and the moral of the story. Two episodes were released on 18 July 2019, based on the first series' second and fifth episods.


title: The Inbestigators

text: On 13 September 2019, a cast Q&A webinar for primary-school students was announced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation; the webinar premiered on 22 November 2019. Schools in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and Victoria participated in the Q&A, which featured cast members Anna Cooke, Abby Bergman, Aston Droomer and Jamil Smyth-Secka. It was released on YouTube on 18 December 2019. A study guide, "The InBESTigators Teaching Toolkit", was released in May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: The Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council or Andhra Pradesh Śāsana Manḍali is the upper house of the legislature of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and the lower house being the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly It is situated in the state Legislative capital of Amaravati, and has 58 members.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: The Sasana Mandali has been in existence in two spells - from 1958 to 1985, and from 2007 continuing till today. A resolution has been passed by AP government for dissolution of the house which awaits parliament ratification.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: In the first years since its creation in post-independence India, the state of Andhra Pradesh worked under a unicameral parliamentary system. On 5 December 1956, the Andhra Pradesh Vidhana Sabha passed a resolution calling for the creation of an upper house, the Vidhan Parishad, to transition to a bicameral system. The members of the majority party/coalition in the lower house would be the ruling party of the upper house, regardless of number. The house will have a chairman who conducts day-to-day affairs, rather than a speaker. The Vidhan Parishad was formed officially on 1 July 1958 under article 168 of the Constitution of India. The first President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad inaugurated the Vidhan Parishad on 8 July 1958.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: In the 1980s, Andhra Pradesh became one of the first states to seek the abolition of the upper houses, which were being increasingly criticised as being unnecessary, unrepresentative of the population, a burden on the state budget and causing delays in passing legislation. However, the move was criticised as an attempt by the then-ruling party, the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), to deny their main political opposition, the Indian National Congress (then Congress (I)) of influence in the state government and the control of the upper house, which could delay TDP-sponsored legislation and where the TDP held no seats. In accordance with a resolution passed by the Andhra Pradesh Vidhan Sabha, the Indian Parliament abolished the Vidhan Parishad through the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council (Abolition) Act in 1985, after the Congress (I) suffered a major defeat in the state elections in Andhra Pradesh.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: Subsequent attempts were made to revive the Legislative Council under Chief Minister Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy, who belonged to the Congress (I), which had won the state elections in 1989. A resolution to revive the Legislative Council was passed in the Vidhan Sabha on 22 January 1990. The Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament, passed legislation authorising the revival of the Legislative Council as per the resolution of the state Vidhan Sabha on 28 May 1990, but the legislation stalled in the lower house, the Lok Sabha, primarily due to its dissolution in 1991 before the completion of its five-year term. The subsequent Lok Sabhas (1991–1996, 1996–1998, 1998–2004) did not take any further action.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: After its victory in the 2004 state elections, the Congress-led Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly passed another resolution on 8 July 2004 calling for the revival of the Legislative Council. This time it was introduced in the Lok Sabha as the Andhra Pradesh Council Bill on 16 December 2004. On 15 December 2006 the Lok Sabha passed the legislation, which was quickly passed by the Rajya Sabha on 20 December, and received the assent of the President on 10 January 2007. The newly revived Legislative Council was constituted on 30 March 2007 and inaugurated on 2 April by Rameshwar Thakur, the Governor of Andhra Pradesh.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly made and passed the resolution for abolition of the Legislative Council on 27 Jan 2020. This resolution is yet to be cleared by the Parliament of India to finally abolish the council.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: The chairman, elected by the council, presides over the sessions of the council. The deputy chairman is also elected to preside in the chairman's absence.


title: Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council

text: The Legislative Council is a permanent house, not subject to dissolution. Its 58 members serves six-year term, and every two years, one-third of the total number of members "retire" in rotation, and undergo the re-election process. To become a member, the individual must be a citizen of India and at least 30 years of age. 8 members of the council are nominated by the Governor of Andhra Pradesh. 40 members are elected by an electoral college of the Legislative Assembly and local governing bodies. The 10 remaining members would be elected from constituencies of college graduates and teachers.


"Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)" is a psychedelic rock song written by Mickey Newbury and best known from a version by The First Edition, recorded in 1967 and released to popular success in 1968. Said to reflect the LSD experience, the song was intended to be a warning about the dangers of using the drug, and came to be associated with the counterculture of the 1960s.


title: Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)

text: The song was first recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis, backed by members of "The Memphis Boys", the chart-topping rhythm section at Chips Moman's American Sounds Studio in Memphis, on May 9, 1967. The song appeared on Lewis' album "Soul My Way," released November 1, 1967. Before Lewis' record was issued, on October 10, 1967, it was recorded by Teddy Hill & the Southern Soul as a single on Rice Records (Rice 5028 b/w "Stagger Lee") and produced by Norro Wilson.


text: "Just Dropped In ..." was recorded by The First Edition (with Kenny Rogers on lead vocals) in October 1967, and peaked at number five on the "Billboard" charts. It was Rogers' first top ten hit. The song captures the psychedelic era of the late 1960s with a hard rock edge that stands in stark contrast to much of the group's other music, which leaned towards country rock and emphasized harmony vocals. Nonetheless, "Just Dropped In..." led to the group's first national TV appearance on "The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour".


text: The song was the group's second single from their eponymous album, "The First Edition". Producer Mike Post reversed a few riffs to create the intro; the guitar solo played by Glen Campbell was heavily compressed and a tremolo effect was used to achieve its sound. Another studio guitarist, Mike Deasy, provided the acoustic lead guitar parts. The track was recorded by Jimmy Valentine at "Valentine Recording Studios" located in Valley Village California.


text: When Rogers signed with United Artists Records, in the mid-1970s after the breakup of First Edition, he re-recorded the track for his "Ten Years of Gold" album.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium is a chemical element with the symbol Rf and atomic number 104, named after New Zealand-born British physicist Ernest Rutherford. As a synthetic element, it is not found in nature and can only be made in a laboratory. It is radioactive; the most stable known isotope, Rf, has a half-life of ~1.3 hours.


title: Rutherfordium

text: In the periodic table, it is a d-block element and the second of the fourth-row transition elements. It is in period 7 and is a group 4 element. Chemistry experiments have confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as the heavier homolog to hafnium in group 4. The chemical properties of rutherfordium are characterized only partly. They compare well with the other group 4 elements, even though some calculations had indicated that the element might show significantly different properties due to relativistic effects.


title: Rutherfordium

text: In the 1960s, small amounts of rutherfordium were produced at Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in the Soviet Union and at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Priority of discovery and hence the name of the element was disputed between Soviet and American scientists, and it was not until 1997 that the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) established rutherfordium as the official name of the element.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium was reportedly first detected in 1964 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research at Dubna (Soviet Union at the time). Researchers there bombarded a plutonium-242 target with neon-22 ions and separated the reaction products by gradient thermochromatography after conversion to chlorides by interaction with ZrCl. The team identified spontaneous fission activity contained within a volatile chloride portraying eka-hafnium properties. Though a half-life was not accurately determined, later calculations indicated that the product was most likely rutherfordium-259 (Rf in standard notation):


title: Rutherfordium

text: In 1969, researchers at University of California, Berkeley conclusively synthesized the element by bombarding a californium-249 target with carbon-12 ions and measured the alpha decay of Rf, correlated with the daughter decay of nobelium-253:


title: Rutherfordium

text: The American synthesis was independently confirmed in 1973 and secured the identification of rutherfordium as the parent by the observation of K-alpha X-rays in the elemental signature of the Rf decay product, nobelium-253.


title: Rutherfordium

text: As a consequence of the initial competing claims of discovery, an element naming controversy arose. Since the Soviets claimed to have first detected the new element they suggested the name "kurchatovium" (Ku) in honor of Igor Kurchatov (1903–1960), former head of Soviet nuclear research. This name had been used in books of the Soviet Bloc as the official name of the element. The Americans, however, proposed "rutherfordium" (Rf) for the new element to honor Ernest Rutherford, who is known as the "father" of nuclear physics. In 1992, the IUPAC/IUPAP Transfermium Working Group (TWG) assessed the claims of discovery and concluded that both teams provided contemporaneous evidence to the synthesis of element 104 and that credit should be shared between the two groups.


title: Rutherfordium

text: The American group wrote a scathing response to the findings of the TWG, stating that they had given too much emphasis on the results from the Dubna group. In particular they pointed out that the Russian group had altered the details of their claims several times over a period of 20 years, a fact that the Russian team does not deny. They also stressed that the TWG had given too much credence to the chemistry experiments performed by the Russians and accused the TWG of not having appropriately qualified personnel on the committee. The TWG responded by saying that this was not the case and having assessed each point raised by the American group said that they found no reason to alter their conclusion regarding priority of discovery. The IUPAC finally used the name suggested by the American team ("rutherfordium").


title: Rutherfordium

text: The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) adopted "unnilquadium" (Unq) as a temporary, systematic element name, derived from the Latin names for digits 1, 0, and 4. In 1994, IUPAC suggested a set of names for elements 104 through 109, in which "dubnium" (Db) became element 104 and "rutherfordium" became element 106. This recommendation was criticized by the American scientists for several reasons. Firstly, their suggestions were scrambled: the names "rutherfordium" and "hahnium", originally suggested by Berkeley for elements 104 and 105, were respectively reassigned to elements 106 and 108. Secondly, elements 104 and 105 were given names favored by JINR, despite earlier recognition of LBL as an equal co-discoverer for both of them. Thirdly and most importantly, IUPAC rejected the name "seaborgium" for element 106, having just approved a rule that an element could not be named after a living person, even though the IUPAC had given the LBNL team the sole credit for its discovery. In 1997, IUPAC renamed elements 104 to 109, and gave element 104 the current name "rutherfordium". The name "dubnium" was given to element 105 at the same time.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium has no stable or naturally occurring isotopes. Several radioactive isotopes have been synthesized in the laboratory, either by fusing two atoms or by observing the decay of heavier elements. Sixteen different isotopes have been reported with atomic masses from 253 to 270 (with the exceptions of 264 and 269). Most of these decay predominantly through spontaneous fission pathways.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Out of isotopes whose half-lives are known, the lighter isotopes usually have shorter half-lives; half-lives of under 50 μs for Rf and Rf were observed. Rf, Rf, Rf are more stable at around 10 ms, Rf, Rf, Rf, and Rf live between 1 and 5 seconds, and Rf, Rf, and Rf are more stable, at around 1.1, 1.5, and 10 minutes respectively. The heaviest isotopes are the most stable, with Rf having a measured half-life of about 1.3 hours.


title: Rutherfordium

text: The lightest isotopes were synthesized by direct fusion between two lighter nuclei and as decay products. The heaviest isotope produced by direct fusion is Rf; heavier isotopes have only been observed as decay products of elements with larger atomic numbers. The heavy isotopes Rf and Rf have also been reported as electron capture daughters of the dubnium isotopes Db and Db, but have short half-lives to spontaneous fission. It seems likely that the same is true of Rf, a likely daughter of Db. These three isotopes remain unconfirmed.


title: Rutherfordium

text: In 1999, American scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, announced that they had succeeded in synthesizing three atoms of Og. These parent nuclei were reported to have successively emitted seven alpha particles to form Rf nuclei, but their claim was retracted in 2001. This isotope was later discovered in 2010 as the final product in the decay chain of Fl.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Very few properties of rutherfordium or its compounds have been measured; this is due to its extremely limited and expensive production and the fact that rutherfordium (and its parents) decays very quickly. A few singular chemistry-related properties have been measured, but properties of rutherfordium metal remain unknown and only predictions are available.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium is the first transactinide element and the second member of the 6d series of transition metals. Calculations on its ionization potentials, atomic radius, as well as radii, orbital energies, and ground levels of its ionized states are similar to that of hafnium and very different from that of lead. Therefore, it was concluded that rutherfordium's basic properties will resemble those of other group 4 elements, below titanium, zirconium, and hafnium. Some of its properties were determined by gas-phase experiments and aqueous chemistry. The oxidation state +4 is the only stable state for the latter two elements and therefore rutherfordium should also exhibit a stable +4 state. In addition, rutherfordium is also expected to be able to form a less stable +3 state. The standard reduction potential of the Rf/Rf couple is predicted to be higher than −1.7 V.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Initial predictions of the chemical properties of rutherfordium were based on calculations which indicated that the relativistic effects on the electron shell might be strong enough that the 7p orbitals would have a lower energy level than the 6d orbitals, giving it a valence electron configuration of 6d 7s 7p or even 7s 7p, therefore making the element behave more like lead than hafnium. With better calculation methods and experimental studies of the chemical properties of rutherfordium compounds it could be shown that this does not happen and that rutherfordium instead behaves like the rest of the group 4 elements. Later it was shown in ab initio calculations with the high level of accuracy that the Rf atom has the ground state with the 6d 7s valence configuration and the low-lying excited 6d 7s 7p state with the excitation energy of only 0.3–0.5 eV.


title: Rutherfordium

text: In an analogous manner to zirconium and hafnium, rutherfordium is projected to form a very stable, refractory oxide, RfO. It reacts with halogens to form tetrahalides, RfX, which hydrolyze on contact with water to form oxyhalides RfOX. The tetrahalides are volatile solids existing as monomeric tetrahedral molecules in the vapor phase.


title: Rutherfordium

text: In the aqueous phase, the Rf ion hydrolyzes less than titanium(IV) and to a similar extent as zirconium and hafnium, thus resulting in the RfO ion. Treatment of the halides with halide ions promotes the formation of complex ions. The use of chloride and bromide ions produces the hexahalide complexes and . For the fluoride complexes, zirconium and hafnium tend to form hepta- and octa- complexes. Thus, for the larger rutherfordium ion, the complexes , and are possible.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium is expected to be a solid under normal conditions and have a hexagonal close-packed crystal structure (/ = 1.61), similar to its lighter congener hafnium. It should be a metal with density ~17 g/cm. The atomic radius of rutherfordium is expected to be ~150 pm. Due to relativistic stabilization of the 7s orbital and destabilization of the 6d orbital, Rf and Rf ions are predicted to give up 6d electrons instead of 7s electrons, which is the opposite of the behavior of its lighter homologs. When under high pressure (variously calculated as 72 or ~50 GPa), rutherfordium is expected to transition to body-centered cubic crystal structure; hafnium transforms to this structure at 71±1 GPa, but has an intermediate ω structure that it transforms to at 38±8 GPa that should be lacking for rutherfordium.<section end=properties />


title: Rutherfordium

text: Early work on the study of the chemistry of rutherfordium focused on gas thermochromatography and measurement of relative deposition temperature adsorption curves. The initial work was carried out at Dubna in an attempt to reaffirm their discovery of the element. Recent work is more reliable regarding the identification of the parent rutherfordium radioisotopes. The isotope Rf has been used for these studies, though the long-lived isotope Rf (produced in the decay chain of Lv, Fl, and Cn) may be advantageous for future experiments. The experiments relied on the expectation that rutherfordium would begin the new 6d series of elements and should therefore form a volatile tetrachloride due to the tetrahedral nature of the molecule. Rutherfordium(IV) chloride is more volatile than its lighter homologue hafnium(IV) chloride (HfCl) because its bonds are more covalent.


title: Rutherfordium

text: A series of experiments confirmed that rutherfordium behaves as a typical member of group 4, forming a tetravalent chloride (RfCl) and bromide (RfBr) as well as an oxychloride (RfOCl). A decreased volatility was observed for when potassium chloride is provided as the solid phase instead of gas, highly indicative of the formation of nonvolatile mixed salt.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Rutherfordium is expected to have the electron configuration [Rn]5f 6d 7s and therefore behave as the heavier homologue of hafnium in group 4 of the periodic table. It should therefore readily form a hydrated Rf ion in strong acid solution and should readily form complexes in hydrochloric acid, hydrobromic or hydrofluoric acid solutions.


title: Rutherfordium

text: The most conclusive aqueous chemistry studies of rutherfordium have been performed by the Japanese team at Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute using the isotope Rf. Extraction experiments from hydrochloric acid solutions using isotopes of rutherfordium, hafnium, zirconium, as well as the pseudo-group 4 element thorium have proved a non-actinide behavior for rutherfordium. A comparison with its lighter homologues placed rutherfordium firmly in group 4 and indicated the formation of a hexachlororutherfordate complex in chloride solutions, in a manner similar to hafnium and zirconium.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Very similar results were observed in hydrofluoric acid solutions. Differences in the extraction curves were interpreted as a weaker affinity for fluoride ion and the formation of the hexafluororutherfordate ion, whereas hafnium and zirconium ions complex seven or eight fluoride ions at the concentrations used:


title: Rutherfordium

text: Experiments performed in mixed sulfuric and nitric acid solutions shows that rutherfordium has a much weaker affinity towards forming sulfate complexes than hafnium. This result is in agreement with predictions, which expect rutherfordium complexes to be less stable than those of zirconium and hafnium because of a smaller ionic contribution to the bonding. This arises because rutherfordium has a larger ionic radius (76 pm) than zirconium (71 pm) and hafnium (72 pm), and also because of relativistic stabilisation of the 7s orbital and destabilisation and spin–orbit splitting of the 6d orbitals.


title: Rutherfordium

text: Coprecipitation experiments performed in 2021 studied rutherfordium's behaviour in basic solution containing ammonia or sodium hydroxide, using zirconium, hafnium, and thorium as comparisons. It was found that rutherfordium does not strongly coordinate with ammonia and instead coprecipitates out as a hydroxide, which is probably Rf(OH).


title: Hearts in Atlantis

text: Hearts in Atlantis (1999) is a collection of two novellas and three short stories by Stephen King, all connected to one another by recurring characters and taking place in roughly chronological order.