If you want to know where commercialization is trending, the simple answer is to follow the money. That’s exactly what you can do with Glassdoor’s most recent ranking of the Best Jobs in America. It’s pretty clear that technology, and specifically software, tops the rankings. The report, which can be sliced and diced by many metrics including salaries, number of openings, geographies, and reputation of the companies and their CEO’s, is well put together and easy to understand. There’s a treasure trove for anyone trying to figure out what careers to target, what technologies are being commercialized, or just doing a deep-dive on competitors.
Conclusion on the report? The tech industry is dominating and software is clearly eating the world. The tech industry not only has the top positions right now, it also has some of the strongest company reputations and employee loyalty.


innovateAFRICA is a pan-African contest run by Code for Africa that aims to accelerate digital innovation in watchdog media and civic news organisations by funding transformational ideas and then continuing to support them through a network of peers and advisors.
This innovation challenge focuses on journalism and the news media. innovateAFRICA is designed to find and nurture ideas that have the potential to empower ordinary African citizens by transforming journalism and the media industry into more digitally savvy civic watchdogs.
innovateAFRICA is looking for disruptive digital ideas to improve the way that news is collected and disseminated. By digital ideas, we mean tools or strategies that use the Internet, mobile platforms, data-driven journalism, computer-assisted reporting, digitally augmented reality or virtual reality, camera drones or the Internet of Things (sensors), and other electronic means to improve the relevance and impact of news media.
innovateAFRICA is an open and worldwide contest. Anyone, anywhere can therefore apply – as long as they have an African partner to help with implementation.
There is no other age or geographic restriction.
The competition is open to nonprofits, for-profits or individuals of any age, anywhere in the world. Awards to minors will be made to an intermediary designated by innovateAFRICA.
Platforms: Strengthen existing media platforms, or harness new digital platforms to engage audiences and transmit news or other journalistic content.
Delivery: Improve the way news reaches audiences, from traditional circulation / airtime management to newer disruptive ‘cross platform’ channels.
Context: Amplify the usefulness of news by harnessing geo-location, or by improving the immediacy, depth and accuracy of journalistic content.
Targeting: Deepen media’s understanding of its audiences and markets by improving user analytics, audience profiling and market segmentation.
Sustainability: Boost the media’s resource base by diversifying business models, developing new revenue streams or improving operational efficiencies.
Winners will receive more than just cash grants. They will also receive a combination of technical advice and software development support from Code for Africa’s affiliate technology labs across the continent, along with business and editorial mentorship from industry experts at CFI, the Media Development Investment Fund and the Global Editors Network (GEN), and additional support for winners to market their innovations to a wider African and world audience.
CFI, the Media Development Investment Fund and the Global Editors Network (GEN) will provide winners with one-on-one mentorship and technical advice from some of the world’s leading media strategists.
The innovateAFRICA grants that winners receive will function as seed capital for innovators to kickstart their projects.
The only place you can apply is on the official innovateAFRICA website. We will not accept faxes, posted applications, hand deliveries or other channels. All you need to do is answer the 7 questions on the form. Brevity counts. Any supporting media, videos, links to prototypes, etc, can be included with the post, but are not required.
It is important to read the Contest Rules, and also to visit the official website (link below) for detailed information on how to apply for this scholarship.
No late submissions will be accepted. innovateAFRICA will contact semi-finalists for additional information, including a detailed budget, by mid-December.
Finalists will be announced on 20th January, 2017. And Winners announced on 31st January, 2017.
Code for Africa, or CfAfrica, is the lead organisation driving innovateAFRICA. CfAfrica is not a run-of-the-mill NGO or donor organisation. It is an umbrella federation of country-based civic technology and data journalism laboratories, that use digital tools to build digital democracies. CfAfrica’s affiliates use technology to give citizens timely and unfettered access to actionable information that empowers them to make informed decisions and that strengthens civic engagement for improved public governance and accountability.


Research by a University of Southampton professor has revealed the story of the medieval plumbers who maintained a complex water supply system, which was centuries ahead of its time.
A unique network of subterranean tunnels, partly dating back to the 14th century, still lies beneath the streets of Exeter, Devon. These once channeled fresh drinking-water from springs outside the town-walls to public fountains at the heart of the city.
Professor Mark Stoyle is a historian at the University of Southampton who this week publishes the first comprehensive history of the tunnels. He says: "People from all social backgrounds relied on the system to provide their drinking water, so it was vital to keep it running smoothly. The city retained a plumber to carry out regular maintenance and he, in turn, hired in a team of workers to help with specific jobs."
Originally, the water was carried in lead pipes buried underground, but they regularly sprang leaks and had to be dug up, so local people came up with a novel idea, building a labyrinth of stone-lined, vaulted tunnels to house the pipes. These tunnels -- now known as 'the underground passages' -- allowed quick, direct access below ground for the plumbers to carry out repairs..
Professor Stoyle says: "The tunnels gave maintenance access to the pipes which was way ahead of its time -- providing the kind of opportunity to quickly mend a fault that modern utility companies can only dream of. Imagine if today there was no more digging up the roads to mend a water main!
"Even so, conditions for the plumbers were often very difficult -- they were working by candlelight and creeping along the passages in extremely cramped conditions as they tried to find and repair the leaks." Professor Stoyle has examined hundreds of original documents relating to the plumbers' activities, including accounts detailing payments for supplies like lead, candles and lanterns. He has also discovered a mass of evidence about the individual craftsmen who worked to keep the city fountains flowing.
John Date, for example, was the first plumber known to have worked on the main city aqueduct, and was employed during the 1420s, while William Frost came down to Exeter from London in the 1440s to upgrade the city system. The city accounts provide a detailed picture of the work Frost carried out on the pipes, showing that he and his colleague John Were were provided with regular meals at the city's expense.
The city's most prominent plumber during the Tudor period was Nicholas Walrond, who oversaw the pipes for more than 30 years from the 1520s. Walrond witnessed two major historical events; the old monastic aqueducts passing into lay hands as a result of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries and the devastation caused by the Prayer Book Rebellion of 1549 -- when Exeter was besieged by the rebels for over a month, the pipes were dug up and their lead was melted down by the insurgents for ammunition. This meant major repairs for Walrond once the emergency was over. 'Nicholas Plumber', as Walrond was usually known, was still working on the aqueducts as late as the 1560s, by which time he was a relatively old man.
Professor Stoyle has recovered the stories of countless other characters whose lives intersected with Exeter's aqueducts and underground passages over the years. For example, Richard and John Deymond were two stone masons who carved a splendid figure of Queen Elizabeth I, which was set up on one of the city's public fountains in the 1590s and which still survives today -- having narrowly escaped destruction during the Blitz of World War Two. An altogether more alarming figure was Dr William Cox, one of the cathedral canons, who -- during the English Civil War -- was accused of plotting to blow up the city with gunpowder laid in the passage vaults.


My job is to design, build and study robots that communicate with people. But this story doesn't start with robotics at all, it starts with animation. When I first saw Pixar's "Luxo Jr.,"I was amazed by how much emotion they could put into something as trivial as a desk lamp. I mean, look at them -- at the end of this movie, you actually feel something for two pieces of furniture. (Laughter) And I said, I have to learn how to do this. So I made a really bad career decision. And that's what my mom was like when I did it. (Laughter) I left a very cozy tech job in Israel at a nice software company and I moved to New York to study animation. And there I lived in a collapsing apartment building in Harlem with roommates.I'm not using this phrase metaphorically, the ceiling actually collapsed one day in our living room. Whenever they did those news stories about building violations in New York, they would put the report in front of our building. As kind of like a backdrop to show how bad things are.
Anyway, during the day I went to school and at night I would sit and draw frame by frame of pencil animation. And I learned two surprising lessons -- one of them was that when you want to arouse emotions, it doesn't matter so much how something looks, it's all in the motion -- it's in the timing of how the thing moves. And the second, was something one of our teachers told us. He actually did the weasel in Ice Age. And he said: "As an animator you are not a director, you're an actor." So, if you want to find the right motion for a character, don't think about it, go use your body to find it -- stand in front of a mirror, act it out in front of a camera -- whatever you need. And then put it back in your character.
A year later I found myself at MIT in the robotic life group, it was one of the first groupsresearching the relationships between humans and robots. And I still had this dream to make an actual, physical Luxo Jr. lamp. But I found that robots didn't move at all in this engaging way that I was used to for my animation studies. Instead, they were all -- how should I put it, they were all kind of robotic. (Laughter) And I thought, what if I took whatever I learned in animation school, and used that to design my robotic desk lamp. So I went and designed frame by frame to try to make this robot as graceful and engaging as possible.And here when you see the robot interacting with me on a desktop. And I'm actually redesigning the robot so, unbeknownst to itself, it's kind of digging its own grave by helping me. (Laughter) I wanted it to be less of a mechanical structure giving me light, and more of a helpful, kind of quiet apprentice that's always there when you need it and doesn't really interfere. And when, for example, I'm looking for a battery that I can't find, in a subtle way, it will show me where the battery is. So you can see my confusion here. I'm not an actor. And I want you to notice how the same mechanical structure can at one point, just by the way it moves seem gentle and caring -- and in the other case, seem violent and confrontational.And it's the same structure, just the motion is different. Actor: "You want to know something? Well, you want to know something? He was already dead! Just laying there, eyes glazed over!" (Laughter) But, moving in graceful ways is just one building block of this whole structure called human-robot interaction. I was at the time doing my Ph.D., I was working on human robot teamwork; teams of humans and robots working together. I was studying the engineering, the psychology, the philosophy of teamwork. And at the same time I found myself in my own kind of teamwork situation with a good friend of mine who is actually here. And in that situation we can easily imagine robots in the near future being there with us. It was after a Passover seder. We were folding up a lot of folding chairs, and I was amazed at how quickly we found our own rhythm. Everybody did their own part. We didn't have to divide our tasks. We didn't have to communicate verbally about this. It all just happened. And I thought, humans and robots don't look at all like this. When humans and robots interact, it's much more like a chess game. The human does a thing, the robot analyzes whatever the human did, then the robot decides what to do next, plans it and does it. And then the human waits, until it's their turn again. So, it's much more like a chess game and that makes sense because chess is great for mathematicians and computer scientists. It's all about information analysis, decision making and planning.
But I wanted my robot to be less of a chess player, and more like a doer that just clicks and works together. So I made my second horrible career choice: I decided to study acting for a semester. I took off from a Ph.D. I went to acting classes. I actually participated in a play, I hope theres no video of that around still. And I got every book I could find about acting,including one from the 19th century that I got from the library. And I was really amazed because my name was the second name on the list -- the previous name was in 1889. (Laughter) And this book was kind of waiting for 100 years to be rediscovered for robotics.And this book shows actors how to move every muscle in the body to match every kind of emotion that they want to express.
But the real relevation was when I learned about method acting. It became very popular in the 20th century. And method acting said, you don't have to plan every muscle in your body.Instead you have to use your body to find the right movement. You have to use your sense memory to reconstruct the emotions and kind of think with your body to find the right expression. Improvise, play off yor scene partner. And this came at the same time as I was reading about this trend in cognitive psychology called embodied cognition. Which also talks about the same ideas -- We use our bodies to think, we don't just think with our brains and use our bodies to move. but our bodies feed back into our brain to generate the way that we behave. And it was like a lightning bolt. I went back to my office. I wrote this paper -- which I never really published called "Acting Lessons for Artificial Intelligence." And I even took another month to do what was then the first theater play with a human and a robot acting together. That's what you saw before with the actors. And I thought: How can we make an artificial intelligence model -- computer, computational model -- that will model some of these ideas of improvisation, of taking risks, of taking chances, even of making mistakes. Maybe it can make for better robotic teammates. So I worked for quite a long time on these models and I implemented them on a number of robots. Here you can see a very early example with the robots trying to use this embodied artificial intelligence, to try to match my movements as closely as possible, sort of like a game. Let's look at it. You can see when I psych it out, it gets fooled. And it's a little bit like what you might see actors dowhen they try to mirror each other to find the right synchrony between them. And then, I did another experiment, and I got people off the street to use the robotic desk lamp, and try out this idea of embodied artificial intelligence. So, I actually used two kinds of brains for the same robot. The robot is the same lamp that you saw, and I put in it two brains. For one half of the people, I put in a brain that's kind of the traditional, calculated robotic brain. It waits for its turn, it analyzes everything, it plans. Let's call it the calculated brain. The other got more the stage actor, risk taker brain. Let's call it the adventurous brain. It sometimes acts without knowing everything it has to know. It sometimes makes mistakes and corrects them. And I had them do this very tedious task that took almost 20 minutes and they had to work together. Somehow simulating like a factory job of repetitively doing the same thing.And what I found was that people actually loved the adventurous robot. And they thought it was more intelligent, more committed, a better member of the team, contributed to the success of the team more. They even called it 'he' and 'she,' whereas people with the calculated brain called it 'it.' And nobody ever called it 'he' or 'she'. When they talked about it after the task with the adventurous brain, they said, "By the end, we were good friends and high-fived mentally." Whatever that means. (Laughter) Sounds painful. Whereas the people with the calculated brain said it was just like a lazy apprentice. It only did what it was supposed to do and nothing more. Which is almost what people expect robots to do, so I was surprised that people had higher expectations of robots, than what anybody in robotics thought robots should be doing. And in a way, I thought, maybe it's time -- just like method acting changed the way people thought about acting in the 19th century, from going from the very calculated, planned way of behaving, to a more intuitive, risk-taking, embodied way of behaving. Maybe it's time for robots to have the same kind of revolution.
Being a musician is not just about making notes, otherwise nobody would every go see a live show. Musicians also communicate with their bodies, with other band members, with the audience, they use their bodies to express the music. And I thought, we already have a robot musician on stage, why not make it be a full-fledged musician. And I started designing a socially expressive head for the robot. The head does't actually touch the marimba, it just expresses what the music is like. These are some napkin sketches from a bar in Atlanta,that was dangerously located exactly halfway between my lab and my home. (Laughter) So I spent, I would say on average, three to four hours a day there. I think. (Laughter) And I went back to my animation tools and tried to figure out not just what a robotic musician would look like, but especially what a robotic musician would move like. To sort of show that it doesn't like what the other person is playing -- and maybe show whatever beat it's feelingat the moment.
Just to introduce the last robot that we've worked on, that came out of something kind of surprising that we found: At some point people didn't care anymore about the robot being so intelligent, and can improvise and listen, and do all these embodied intelligence things that I spent years on developing. They really liked that the robot was enjoying the music. (Laughter) And they didn't say that the robot was moving to the music, they said that the robot was enjoying the music. And we thought, why don't we take this idea, and I designed a new piece of furniture. This time it wasn't a desk lamp; it was a speaker dock. It was one of those things you plug your smartphone in. And I thought, what would happen if your speaker dock didn't just play the music for you, but it would actually enjoy it too. (Laughter)And so again, here are some animation tests from an early stage. (Laughter) And this is what the final product looked like. ("Drop It Like It's Hot") So, a lot of bobbing head.(Applause) A lot of bobbing heads in the audience, so we can still see robots influence people. And it's not just fun and games.


For other people called Princess Alexandra, see Princess Alexandra (disambiguation).
Princess Arthur of Connaught, 2nd Duchess of Fife, RRC, GCStJ (Alexandra Victoria Alberta Edwina Louise Duff; Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife before marriage; 17 May 1891 – 26 February 1959) was a granddaughter of King Edward VII and great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria.
Alexandra's father was Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife. Having succeeded his father as the 6th Earl Fife, he was elevated to Duke of Fife and Marquess of Macduff in the Peerage of the United Kingdom two days after his marriage in 1889 to Princess Louise of Wales, the eldest daughter of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. Princess Louise accordingly became the Duchess of Fife.
Alexandra was born at East Sheen Lodge, Richmond on 17 May 1891. After ten years of marriage and the birth in 1893 of Alexandra's younger sister Maud, no more children would be born to Alexandra's parents and the dukedom and marquessate of Fife were headed toward extinction since only a male heir could inherit those titles. On 24 April 1900 Queen Victoria granted Alexander Duff a second dukedom of Fife, along with the earldom of Macduff, stipulating by special remainder that these two titles would jointly devolve, in default of sons born to him and the Queen's granddaughter, upon their daughters in order of seniority of birth, and upon their respective agnatic male descendants in the same order.
As a female-line granddaughter of the British monarch, Alexandra was not entitled to the title of "Princess", nor to the style of Her Royal Highness. Instead she was styled Lady Alexandra Duff, as the daughter of a duke, even though she was born fifth in the line of succession to the British throne. Alexandra and her sister were unique among British princesses in that they were descended from both William IV (through his mistress, Dorothea Jordan), and William IV's niece, Queen Victoria, who succeeded him because he left no legitimate issue.
She was baptised at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace on 29 June 1891 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson. Her godparents were Queen Victoria and the Prince and Princess of Wales..
On 9 November 1905, King Edward VII declared his eldest daughter Princess Royal. He further ordered Garter King of Arms to gazette Lady Alexandra Duff and her sister Lady Maud Duff with the style and attribute of Highness and the style of Princess prefixed to their respective Christian names, with precedence immediately after all members of the British Royal Family bearing the style of Royal Highness. From that point, Her Highness Princess Alexandra held her title and rank, not from her ducal father, but from the decree issued by will of the sovereign (her grandfather).
Around 1910, Alexandra became secretly engaged to Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark, a son of King George I of the Hellenes. The engagement was terminated when their disapproving parents learned of the liaison. As Prince Christopher's father was a younger brother of Princess Alexandra's maternal grandmother, the hopeful couple were first cousins once removed.
The wedding day of Prince Arthur of Connaught and Princess Alexandra of Fife.
On 15 October 1913, Princess Alexandra married her first cousin, once removed, Prince Arthur of Connaught at the Chapel Royal, St. James's Palace, London.
Princess Mary, daughter of King George V.
Princess Mary of Teck and Princess Helena of Teck, daughters of Prince Adolphus, Duke of Teck (brother of Queen Mary).
Princess May of Teck, daughter of Prince Alexander of Teck (brother of Queen Mary) and Princess Alice of Albany.
Princess Maud, the bride's sister.
Prince Arthur of Connaught was the only son of the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, third son of Queen Victoria and thus a younger brother of her maternal grandfather, King Edward VII. As such, Arthur and Alexandra were first cousins once removed.
After their marriage, Alexandra was referred to as HRH Princess Arthur of Connaught, in accordance with the tradition that a wife normally shares the title and style of her husband.
With her husband, Alexandra also carried out royal engagements on behalf of her uncle, King George V, and later for her cousin, King George VI. She also served as a Counsellor of State between 1937 and 1944.
Princess Arthur of Connaught with her only son Alastair.
World War I gave to Princess Arthur of Connaught the opportunity to embrace a vocation of nursing in which she subsequently made a highly successful career. In 1915 she joined the staff of St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, as a full-time nurse and worked untiringly in this capacity until the armistice. After the war she continued her training at St. Mary's, becoming a state registered nurse in 1919 and being awarded a first prize for a paper on eclampsia. She also served in Queen Charlotte's Hospital where she specialized in gynaecology, receiving a certificate of merit. Throughout these years Princess Arthur increasingly impressed her superiors by her technical skill and practical efficiency.
When her husband was appointed governor-general of the Union of South Africa, Princess Arthur ably seconded him and shared his popularity. Her tact and friendliness made her many friends among the South Africans, who also greatly admired the interest which she displayed in hospitals, child welfare, and maternity work throughout the Union. To these subjects she brought her exceptional personal knowledge and experience, which enabled her to make many effective and valuable suggestions.
On her return to London in 1923, Princess Arthur resumed her nursing career at University College Hospital, where she was known as Nurse Marjorie, and subsequently at Charing Cross Hospital. At this time she was specializing in surgery, proving herself a competent, dependable, and imperturbable theatre sister, who was capable of performing minor operations herself and of instructing juniors in their duties. Her services to the nursing profession were recognized in July 1925, when she was awarded the badge of the Royal Red Cross by George V.
The outbreak of World War II in 1939 afforded Princess Arthur further scope for her nursing abilities. She refused the offer of a post as matron of a hospital in the country, preferring to become sister-in-charge of the casualty clearing station of the Second London General Hospital. Shortly thereafter, she opened the Fife Nursing Home in Bentinck Street which she personally equipped, financed, and administered as matron for ten years with great competence.
On 26 April 1943 her only child, Alastair, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, died unexpectedly while in Canada, which came as "a crushing blow and a great shock" to her.
In 1949 the multiple-rheumatoid-arthritis, from which Princess Arthur had suffered for many years, rendered her completely crippled and necessitated the closing of her nursing-home. She retired to her house near Regent's Park where she wrote for private circulation two autobiographical fragments in a vivid and entertaining style: A Nurse's Story (1955) and Egypt and Khartoum (1956), in which she gave a graphic account of the shipwreck of SS Delhi which ran aground in fog and heavy seas in 1911 – Princess Arthur, her sister and mother nearly died but her father Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife subsequently died as a result of his injuries. She was engaged on a further volume on big-game hunting in South Africa when she died at her London home on 26 February 1959.
At her special request she was cremated, and her ashes were laid in St Ninian's Chapel, Braemar on the Mar Lodge estate.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife.
^ a b c d Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels, Fürstliche Häuser Band III. "Fife". C.A. Starke Verlag, 1955, pp. 336–337. (German).
^ Prince Arthur is the first cousin of Alexandra's mother, Louise, Princess Royal, as both are grandchildren of Queen Victoria.
^ "Royal Wedding Group". National Portrait Gallery, London.
^ "'H.R.H. Princess Arthur of Connaught (the Duchess of Fife) and her bridesmaids'". National Portrait Gallery.


So they went and saw where he was staying and stayed the day with him.
Sometimes I think the Gospel of John is hard to read.
When people first come to know Christ, Christian leaders often recommend that they start their Bible reading with the book of John. And I think, Why? John is hard.


What are the world's greatest military forces doing with enlisted marine mammals? We did some digging to find out exactly what a sea creature commando can do.
As The Wire reported earlier this week, in addition to annexing Crimea, Russia stole Ukraine’s killer dolphin army. The dolphin army (or navy, depending on your point of view) will be joining forces with Moscow's existing killer sea lion unit. Yes, these are real animals in service to their country's military. Even the United States Navy has a sea creature division which includes dolphins, sea lions and whales.
What are the world's greatest military forces doing with enlisted marine mammals? We did some digging to find out exactly what a sea creature commando can do, and if they've done any real damage in the past.
The dolphins' most impressive skill makes them expert mine finders. The Navy Marine Mammal Program has found that dolphin sonar, known as echolocation, “makes them uniquely effective at locating sea mines so they can be avoided and removed.” Basically, this makes dolphins incredible at telling apart man-made objects from natural objects even in murky, deep waters; even better than similar machines can do. When the dolphin finds a mine, it swims back to the boat and signals the naval crew by poking a ball or disk with its nose. The crew then gives the dolphin a weighted buoy line or an acoustic transponder to mark the location of the mine.
Between 1986 and 1988, the U.S. Navy sent six dolphins into the Persian Gulf to patrol for mines. One brave veteran, Skippy the Dolphin, died of a bacterial infection during this mission. Overall, the Navy is incredibly careful with their dolphin mine hunters, although they have insisted in the past that the risk to dolphins is “virtually nil because the animals are trained to stay a safe distance away from any mines they find.” Mines are also specifically designed not to go off when marine life comes near them, as they are triggered by large and heavy ships.
Sea lions are also an important component of the sea creature combat force. While they don’t have sonar, they have exceptional eyesight. They can dive and find objects as far as 650 feet below the surface. Sea lions are regularly used to retrieve things, such as lost equipment, in the ocean. The Navy has trained sea lions to recover “military hardware or weaponry fired and dropped in the ocean."
The Navy also has a Shallow Water Intruder Detection System. This is a fancy way for saying "attack sea lions." These sea lions are trained to carry a “spring loaded D clamp attached to a line. The sea lion approaches an intruder from behind, attaches the clamp to their leg and swims off. The intruder is then reeled in like a fish by the security team.” Thus, the invading human frog diver is captured by the sea lion with relative ease. LaPuzza remarks that sea lions are incredibly effective at this: “It’s difficult to put up effective resistance when you’re being dragged backwards through the water.” Sea lions are awesome at capturing humans, but LaPuzza assures the public that sea lions absolutely do not kill, even though we like to imagine that they very easily could if they wanted to.
Lest we leave out whales, the Navy introduced these big guys to the sea creature commando force in 1975. Beluga whales have sonar just like dolphins, but “could operate at much colder temperatures and deeper depths than either dolphins or sea lions.” Beluga whales are also trained to use clamps to mark targets, like you see here in the photo. Whales aren't on the front lines quite as often as sea lions or dolphins, but they are still super adorable.
Conclusion: Not only are dolphins, whales and sea lions all adorable creatures, they are much better equipped to handle deep seas than even the best military technology. They (probably) won’t kill you, but if they're on your side, they'll keep the bad guys away from the door.


This article is about the empire founded by the Wanyan clan. For the empire founded by the Sima clan, see Jin dynasty (265–420).
"Jurchen dynasty" redirects here. For the 17th-century Jurchen khanate, see Later Jin (1616–1636).
"Anchu" redirects here. For the novel, see Anchu (novel).
The Jin dynasty, officially known as the Great Jin (/dʒɪn/), lasted from 1115 to 1234 as one of the last dynasties in Chinese history to predate the Mongol invasion of China. Its name is sometimes written as Kin, Jurchen Jin or Jinn in English to differentiate it from an earlier Jìn dynasty of China whose name is identical when transcribed without tone marker diacritics in the Hanyu Pinyin system for Standard Chinese. It is also sometimes called the "Jurchen dynasty" or the "Jurchen Jin", because its founding leader Aguda (reign 1115–1123) was of Wanyan Jurchen descent.
The Jin emerged from Taizu's rebellion against the Liao dynasty (907–1125), which held sway over northern China until the nascent Jin drove the Liao to the Western Regions, where they became known as the Western Liao. After vanquishing the Liao, the Jin launched an over hundred-year struggles against the Chinese Song dynasty (960–1279), which was based in southern China. Over the course of their rule, the Jurchens of Jin quickly adapted to Chinese customs, and even fortified the Great Wall against the rising Mongols. Domestically, the Jin oversaw a number of cultural advancements, such as the revival of Confucianism.
The Mongols invaded the Jin under Genghis Khan in 1211 and inflicted catastrophic defeats on their armies. Though the Jin seemed to suffer a never-ending wave of defeats, revolts, defections, and coups, they proved to have tenacity. The Jin finally succumbed to Mongol conquest 23 years later in 1234.
The Jin dynasty was officially known as the "Great Jin" at that time. Furthermore, the Jin emperors referred to their state as Zhongguo (中國) like some other non-Han dynasties. Non-Han rulers expanded the definition of "China" to include non-Han peoples in addition to Han people whenever they ruled China. Jin documents indicate that the usage of "China" by dynasties to refer to themselves began earlier than previously thought.
The Jin dynasty was created in modern Jilin and Heilongjiang by the Jurchen tribal chieftain Aguda in 1115. According to tradition, Aguda was a descendant of Hanpu. Aguda adopted the term for "gold" as the name of his state, itself a translation of "Anchuhu" River, which meant "golden" in Jurchen. This river known as Alachuke in Chinese, was a tributary of the Songhua River east of Harbin. The Jurchens' early rival was the Khitan-led Liao dynasty, which had held sway over modern north and northeast China and Mongolia, for several centuries. In 1121, the Jurchens entered into the Alliance Conducted at Sea with the Han Chinese-led Northern Song dynasty and agreed to jointly invade the Liao dynasty. While the Song armies faltered, the Jurchens succeeded in driving the Liao to Central Asia. In 1125, after the death of Aguda, the Jin dynasty broke its alliance with the Song dynasty and invaded north China. When the Song dynasty reclaimed the southern part of the Liao where Han Chinese lived, they were "fiercely resisted" by the Han Chinese population there who had previously been under Liao rule, while when the Jurchens invaded that area, the Han Chinese did not oppose them at all and handed over the Southern Capital (present-day Beijing, then known as Yanjing) to them. The Jurchens were supported by the anti-Song, Beijing-based noble Han clans. The Han Chinese who worked for the Liao were viewed as hostile enemies by the Song dynasty. Song Han Chinese also defected to the Jin. One crucial mistake that the Song made during this joint attack was the removal of the defensive forest it originally built along the Song-Liao border. Because of the removal of this landscape barrier, in 1126/27, the Jin army marched quickly across the North China Plain to Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng). On 9 January 1127, the Jurchens ransacked Kaifeng, the capital of the Northern Song dynasty, capturing both Emperor Qinzong and his father, Emperor Huizong, who had abdicated in panic in the face of the Jin invasion. Following the fall of Bianjing, the succeeding Southern Song dynasty continued to fight the Jin dynasty for over a decade, eventually signing the Treaty of Shaoxing in 1141, which called for the cession of all Song territories north of the Huai River to the Jin dynasty and the execution of Song general Yue Fei in return for peace. The peace treaty was formally ratified on 11 October 1142 when a Jin envoy visited the Song court.
Having conquered Kaifeng and occupied North China, the Jin later deliberately chose earth as its dynastic element and yellow as its royal color. According to the theory of the Five Elements (wuxing), the earth element follows the fire, the dynastic element of the Song, in the sequence of elemental creation. Therefore, this ideological move shows that the Jin regarded the Song reign of China was officially over and themselves as the rightful ruler of China Proper.
The Chengling Pagoda of Zhengding, Hebei Province, built between 1161 and 1189.
After taking over Northern China, the Jin dynasty became increasingly sinicised. About three million people, half of them Jurchens, migrated south into northern China over two decades, and this minority governed about 30 million people. The Jurchens were given land grants and organised into hereditary military units: 300 households formed a moukecode: zho promoted to code: zh (company) and 7–10 moukescode: zho promoted to code: zh formed a meng-ancode: zho promoted to code: zh (battalion). Many married Han Chinese, although the ban on Jurchen nobles marrying Han Chinese was not lifted until 1191. After Emperor Taizong died in 1135, the next three Jin emperors were grandsons of Aguda by three different princes. Emperor Xizong (r. 1135–1149) studied the classics and wrote Chinese poetry. He adopted Han Chinese cultural traditions, but the Jurchen nobles had the top positions.
Later in life, Emperor Xizong became an alcoholic and executed many officials for criticising him. He also had Jurchen leaders who opposed him murdered, even those in the Wanyan clan. In 1149 he was murdered by a cabal of relatives and nobles, who made his cousin Wanyan Liang the next Jin emperor. Because of the brutality of both his domestic and foreign policy, Wanyan Liang was posthumously demoted from the position of emperor. Consequently, historians have commonly referred to him by the posthumous name "Prince of Hailing".
Having usurped the throne, Wanyan Liang embarked on the program of legitimising his rule as an emperor of China. In 1153, he moved the empire's main capital from Huining Prefecture (south of present-day Harbin) to the former Liao capital, Yanjing (present-day Beijing). Four years later, in 1157, to emphasise the permanence of the move, he razed the nobles' residences in Huining Prefecture. Wanyan Liang also reconstructed the former Song capital, Bianjing (present-day Kaifeng), which had been sacked in 1127, making it the Jin's southern capital.
Wanyan Liang also tried to suppress dissent by killing Jurchen nobles, executing 155 princes. To fulfil his dream of becoming the ruler of all China, Wanyan Liang attacked the Southern Song dynasty in 1161. Meanwhile, two simultaneous rebellions erupted in Shangjing, at the Jurchens' former power base: led by Wanyan Liang's cousin, soon-to-be crowned Wanyan Yong, and the other of Khitan tribesmen. Wanyan Liang had to withdraw Jin troops from southern China to quell the uprisings. The Jin forces were defeated by Song forces in the Battle of Caishi and Battle of Tangdao. With a depleted military force, Wanyan Liang failed to make headway in his attempted invasion of the Southern Song dynasty. Finally he was assassinated by his own generals in December 1161, due to his defeats. His son and heir was also assassinated in the capital.
Although crowned in October, Wanyan Yong (Emperor Shizong) was not officially recognised as emperor until the murder of Wanyan Liang's heir. The Khitan uprising was not suppressed until 1164; their horses were confiscated so that the rebels had to take up farming. Other Khitan and Xi cavalry units had been incorporated into the Jin army. Because these internal uprisings had severely weakened the Jin's capacity to confront the Southern Song militarily, the Jin court under Emperor Shizong began negotiating for peace. The Treaty of Longxing (隆興和議) was signed in 1164 and ushered in more than 40 years of peace between the two empires.
In the early 1180s, Emperor Shizong instituted a restructuring of 200 meng'an units to remove tax abuses and help Jurchens. Communal farming was encouraged. The Jin Empire prospered and had a large surplus of grain in reserve. Although learned in Chinese classics, Emperor Shizong was also known as a promoter of Jurchen language and culture; during his reign, a number of Chinese classics were translated into Jurchen, the Imperial Jurchen Academy was founded, and the imperial examinations started to be offered in the Jurchen language. Emperor Shizong's reign (1161–1189) was remembered by the posterity as the time of comparative peace and prosperity, and the emperor himself was compared to the mythological rulers Yao and Shun.
Emperor Shizong's grandson, Emperor Zhangzong (r. 1189–1208), venerated Jurchen values, but he also immersed himself in Han Chinese culture and married an ethnic Han Chinese woman. The Taihe Code of law was promulgated in 1201 and was based mostly on the Tang Code. In 1207, the Southern Song dynasty attempted an invasion, but the Jin forces effectively repulsed them. In the peace agreement, the Song dynasty had to pay higher annual indemnities and behead Han Tuozhou, the leader of the hawkish faction in the Song imperial court.
Jade ornament with flower design, Jin dynasty, Shanghai Museum.
Starting from the early 13th century, the Jin dynasty began to feel the pressure of Mongols from the north. Genghis Khan first led the Mongols into Western Xia territory in 1205 and ravaged it four years later. In 1211 about 50,000 Mongol horsemen invaded the Jin Empire and began absorbing Khitan and Jurchen rebels. The Jin had a large army with 150,000 cavalry but abandoned the "western capital" Datong (see also the Battle of Yehuling). The next year the Mongols went north and looted the Jin "eastern capital", and in 1213 they besieged the "central capital", Zhongdu (present-day Beijing). In 1214 the Jin made a humiliating treaty but retained the capital. That summer, Emperor Xuanzong abandoned the central capital and moved the government to the "southern capital" Kaifeng, making it the official seat of the Jin dynasty's power.
In 1216, a hawkish faction in the Jin imperial court persuaded Emperor Xuanzong to attack the Song dynasty, but in 1219 they were defeated at the same place by the Yangtze River where Wanyan Liang had been defeated in 1161. The Jin dynasty now faced a two front war that they could not afford. Furthermore, Emperor Aizong won a succession struggle against his brother and then quickly ended the war and went back to the capital. He made peace with the Tanguts of Western Xia, who had been allied with the Mongols.
Shi Tianze was a Han Chinese who lived under Jin rule. Inter-ethnic marriage between Han Chinese and Jurchens became common at this time. His father was Shi Bingzhi (史秉直). Shi Bingzhi married a Jurchen woman (surname Nahe) and a Han Chinese woman (surname Zhang); it is unknown which of them was Shi Tianze's mother. Shi Tianze was married to two Jurchen women, a Han Chinese woman, and a Korean woman, and his son Shi Gang was born to one of his Jurchen wives. His Jurchen wives' surnames were Monian and Nahe, his Korean wife's surname was Li, and his Han Chinese wife's surname was Shi. Shi Tianze defected to the Mongol forces upon their invasion of the Jin dynasty. His son, Shi Gang, married a Keraite woman; the Keraites were Mongolified Turkic people and considered as part of the "Mongol nation". Shi Tianze, Zhang Rou, Yan Shi and other Han Chinese who served in the Jin dynasty and defected to the Mongols helped build the structure for the administration of the new Mongol state.
The Mongols created a "Han Army" (漢軍) out of defected Jin troops, and another army out of defected Song troops called the "Newly Submitted Army" (新附軍).
Genghis Khan died in 1227 while his armies were attacking Western Xia. His successor, Ögedei Khan, invaded the Jin dynasty again in 1232 with assistance from the Southern Song dynasty. The Jurchens tried to resist; but when the Mongols besieged Kaifeng in 1233, Emperor Aizong fled south to the city of Caizhou. A Song–Mongol allied army looted the capital, and the next year Emperor Aizong committed suicide to avoid being captured when the Mongols besieged Caizhou, ending the Jin dynasty in 1234. The territory of the Jin dynasty was to be divided between the Mongols and the Song dynasty. However, due to lingering territorial disputes, the Song dynasty and the Mongols eventually went to war with one another over these territories.
In Empire of The Steppes, René Grousset reports that the Mongols were always amazed at the valour of the Jurchen warriors, who held out until seven years after the death of Genghis Khan.
Contemporary Chinese writers ascribed Jurchen success in overwhelming the Liao and Northern Song dynasties mainly to their cavalry. Already during Aguda's rebellion against the Liao dynasty, all Jurchen fighters were mounted. It was said that the Jurchen cavalry tactics were a carryover from their hunting skills. Jurchen horsemen were provided with heavy armor; on occasions, they would use a team of horses attached to each other with chains (Guaizi Ma).
"Great Golden Central State O-Giao Jeo-Shio" (1196), found in now Mongolia.
As the Liao dynasty fell apart and the Song dynasty retreated beyond the Yangtze, the army of the new Jin dynasty absorbed many soldiers who formerly fought for the Liao or Song dynasties. The new Jin empire adopted many of the Song military's weapons, including various machines for siege warfare and artillery. In fact, the Jin military's use of cannons, grenades, and even rockets to defend besieged Kaifeng against the Mongols in 1233 is considered the first ever battle in human history in which gunpowder was used effectively, even though it failed to prevent the eventual Jin defeat.
On the other hand, the Jin military was not particularly good at naval warfare. Both in 1129–30 and in 1161 Jin forces were defeated by the Southern Song navies when trying to cross the Yangzi River into the core Southern Song territory (see Battle of Tangdao and Battle of Caishi), even though for the latter campaign the Jin had equipped a large navy of their own, using Han Chinese shipbuilders and even Han Chinese captains who had defected from the Southern Song.
In 1130, the Jin army reached Hangzhou and Ningbo in southern China. But heavy Chinese resistance and the geography of the area halted the Jin advance, and they were forced to retreat and withdraw, and they had not been able to escape the Song navy when trying to return until they were directed by a Han Chinese defector who helped them escape in Zhenjiang. Southern China was then cleared of the Jurchen forces.
In order to prevent incursion from the Mongols, a large construction program was launched. The records show that two important sections of the Great Wall were completed by the Jurchens.
The Great Wall as constructed by the Jurchens differed from the previous dynasties. Known as the Border Fortress or the Boundary Ditch of the Jin, it was formed by digging ditches within which lengths of wall were built. In some places subsidiary walls and ditches were added for extra strength. The construction was started in about 1123 and completed by about 1198. The two sections attributable to the Jin dynasty are known as the Old Mingchang Walls and New Great Walls, together stretching more than 2,000 kilometres in length.
The government of the Jin dynasty merged Jurchen customs with institutions adopted from the Liao and Song dynasties. The pre-dynastic Jurchen government was based on the quasi-egalitarian tribal council. Jurchen society at the time did not have a strong political hierarchy. The Shuo Fu (說郛) records that the Jurchen tribes were not ruled by central authority and locally elected their chieftains. Tribal customs were retained after Aguda united the Jurchen tribes and formed the Jin dynasty, coexisting alongside more centralised institutions. The Jin dynasty had five capitals, a practice they adopted from the Balhae and the Liao. The Jin had to overcome the difficulties of controlling a multi-cultural empire composed of territories once ruled by the Liao and Northern Song. The solution of the early Jin government was to establish separate government structures for different ethnic groups.
Chinese gold plates and a chalice from the Jin Dynasty's Zhongdu.
Because the Jin had few contacts with its southern neighbor the Song, different cultural developments took place in both states. Within Confucianism, the "Learning of the Way" that developed and became orthodox in Song did not take root in Jin. Jin scholars put more emphasis on the work of northern Song scholar and poet Su Shi (1037–1101) than on Zhu Xi's (1130–1200) scholarship, which constituted the foundation of the Learning of the Way.
A significant branch of Taoism called the Quanzhen School was founded under the Jin by Wang Zhe (1113–1170), a Han Chinese man who founded formal congregations in 1167 and 1168. Wang took the nickname of Wang Chongyang (Wang "Double Yang") and the disciples he took were retrospectively known as the "seven patriarchs of Quanzhen". The flourishing of ci poetry that characterized Jin literature was tightly linked to Quanzhen, as two-thirds of the ci poetry written in Jin times was composed by Quanzhen Taoists.
Jin dynasty fresco of a Bodhisattva from Chongfu Temple (崇福寺), Shuozhou, Shanxi.
The Jin state sponsored an edition of the Taoist Canon that is known as the Precious Canon of the Mysterious Metropolis of the Great Jin (Da Jin Xuandu baozang 大金玄都寶藏). Based on a smaller version of the Canon printed by Emperor Huizong (r. 1100–1125) of the Song dynasty, it was completed in 1192 under the direction and support of Emperor Zhangzong (r. 1190–1208). In 1188, Zhangzong's grandfather and predecessor Shizong (r. 1161–1189) had ordered the woodblocks for the Song Canon transferred from Kaifeng (the former Northern Song capital that had now become the Jin "Southern Capital") to the Central Capital's "Abbey of Celestial Perpetuity" or Tianchang guan 天長觀, on the site of what is now the White Cloud Temple in Beijing. Other Daoist writings were also moved there from another abbey in the Central Capital. Zhangzong instructed the abbey's superintendent Sun Mingdao 孫明道 and two civil officials to prepare a complete Canon for printing. After sending people on a "nationwide search for scriptures" (which yielded 1,074 fascicles of text that was not included in the Huizong edition of the Canon) and securing donations for printing, in 1192 Sun Mingdao proceeded to cut the new woodblocks. The final print consisted of 6,455 fascicles. Though the Jin emperors occasionally offered copies of the Canon as gifts, not a single fragment of it has survived.
A Buddhist Canon or "Tripitaka" was also produced in Shanxi, the same place where an enhanced version of the Jin-sponsored Taoist Canon would be reprinted in 1244. The project was initiated in 1139 by a Buddhist nun named Cui Fazhen, who swore (and allegedly "broke her arm to seal the oath") that she would raise the necessary funds to make a new official edition of the Canon printed by the Northern Song. Completed in 1173, the Jin Tripitaka counted about 7,000 fascicles, "a major achievement in the history of Buddhist private printing." It was further expanded during the Yuan.
Buddhism thrived during the Jin, both in its relation with the imperial court and in society in general. Many sutras were also carved on stone tablets. The donors who funded such inscriptions included members of the Jin imperial family, high officials, common people, and Buddhist priests. Some sutras have only survived from these carvings, which are thus highly valuable to the study of Chinese Buddhism. At the same time, the Jin court sold monk certificates for revenue. This practice was initiated in 1162 by Shizong to fund his wars, and stopped three years later when war was over. His successor Zhanzong used the same method to raise military funds in 1197 and one year later to raise money to fight famine in the Western Capital. The same practice was used again in 1207 (to fight the Song and more famine) as well as under the reigns of emperors Weishao (r. 1209–1213) and Xuanzong (r. 1213–1224) to fight the Mongols.
(1) Too long. Normally not used when referring to this sovereign.
(2) Too short. Easy to be ignored.
^ Turchin, Peter; Adams, Jonathan M.; Hall, Thomas D (December 2006). "East-West Orientation of Historical Empires" (PDF). Journal of World-systems Research. 12 (2): 219–229. doi:10.5195/JWSR.2006.369. ISSN 1076-156X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 February 2007. Retrieved 12 August 2010.
^ "Jin". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
^ Lipschutz, Leonard (1 August 2000). Century-By-Century: A Summary of World History. iUniverse. p. 59. ISBN 9780595125784. Retrieved 28 June 2014.
^ Zhao 2006, p. 7.
^ Zhao 2006, p. 6.
^ Zhao 2006, p. 24.
^ Franke 1994, p. 221.
^ Denis C. Twitchett; Herbert Franke; John King Fairbank (25 November 1994). The Cambridge History of China: Volume 6, Alien Regimes and Border States, 907–1368. Cambridge University Press. p. 39. ISBN 978-0-521-24331-5.
^ Hoyt Cleveland Tillman; Stephen H. West (1995). China Under Jurchen Rule: Essays on Chin Intellectual and Cultural History. SUNY Press. pp. 28–. ISBN 978-0-7914-2273-1.
^ Elliott, Mark (2012). "8. Hushuo The Northern Other and the Naming of the Han Chinese" (PDF). In Mullaney, Tomhas S.; Leibold, James; Gros, Stéphane; Bussche, Eric Vanden. Critical Han Studies The History, Representation, and Identity of China's Majority. University of California Press. p. 186.
^ Jacques Gernet (31 May 1996). A History of Chinese Civilization. Cambridge University Press. pp. 358–. ISBN 978-0-521-49781-7.
^ Chen, Yuan Julian (2018). "FRONTIER, FORTIFICATION, AND FORESTATION: DEFENSIVE WOODLAND ON THE SONG–LIAO BORDER IN THE LONG ELEVENTH CENTURY". Journal of Chinese History. 2 (2): 313–334. doi:10.1017/jch.2018.7. ISSN 2059-1632.
^ Robert Hymes (2000). John Stewart Bowman, ed. Columbia Chronologies of Asian History and Culture. Columbia University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-231-11004-4.
^ Chen, Yuan Julian. ""Legitimation Discourse and the Theory of the Five Elements in Imperial China." Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 44 (2014): 325–364". Journal of Song-Yuan Studies.
^ Mark C. Elliot (2001). The Manchu Way: The eight banners and ethnic identity in late imperial China. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 60.
^ a b Tao (1976), Chapter 6. "The Jurchen Movement for Revival", Pages 69–83.
^ Collectif (2002). Revue bibliographique de sinologie 2001. Éditions de l'École des hautes études en sciences sociales. p. 147.
^ May, Timothy Michael (2004). The Mechanics of Conquest and Governance: The Rise and Expansion of the Mongol Empire, 1185–1265. University of Wisconsin—Madison. p. 50.
^ Schram, Stuart Reynolds (1987). Foundations and Limits of State Power in China. European Science Foundation by School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. p. 130.
^ Gary Seaman; Daniel Marks (1991). Rulers from the steppe: state formation on the Eurasian periphery. Ethnographics Press, Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California. p. 175.
^ "404". Archived from the original on 2016-08-02. Retrieved 2016-05-03.
^ a b Igor de Rachewiltz, ed. (1993). In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol-Yüan Period (1200–1300). Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. p. 41.
^ a b J. Ganim; S. Legassie, eds. (2013). Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages. Springer. p. 47.
^ Watt, James C. Y. (2010). The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty. Metropolitan Museum of Art. p. 14.
^ Chan, Hok-Lam (1997). "A Recipe to Qubilai Qa'an on Governance: The Case of Chang Te-hui and Li Chih". Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. Cambridge University Press. 7 (2): 257–83. doi:10.1017/S1356186300008877.
^ Hucker, Charles O. (1985). A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Stanford University Press. p. 66.
^ a b c d e Tao (1976), Chapter 2. "The Rise of the Chin dynasty", Pages 21–24.
^ René Grousset (1970). The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (reprint, illustrated ed.). Rutgers University Press. p. 137. ISBN 978-0-8135-1304-1. The emperor Kao-tsung had taken flight to Ningpo (then known as Mingchow) and later to the port of Wenchow, south of Chekiang. From Nanking the Kin general Wu-chu hastened in pursuit and captured Hangchow and Ningpo (end of 1129 and beginning of 1130. However, the Kin army, consisting entirely of cavalry, had ventured too far into this China of the south with its flooded lands, intersecting rivers, paddy fields and canals, and dense population which harassed and encircled it. We-chu, leader of the Kin troops, sought to return north but was halted by the Yangtze, now wide as a sea and patrolled by Chinese flotillas. At last a traitor showed him how he might cross the river near Chenkiang, east of Nanking (1130).
^ Jacques Gernet (1996). A history of Chinese civilization (2, illustrated, revised ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 357. ISBN 978-0-521-49781-7. Nanking and Hangchow were taken by assault in 1129 and in 1130 the Jürchen ventured as far as Ning-po, in the north-eastern tip of Chekiang.
^ "Great Wall of Jin Dynasty (1115 - 1234): History, Structure, Relics".
^ a b Franke 1994, p. 265.
^ Franke 1994, pp. 265–266.
^ Franke 1994, p. 266.
^ Franke 1994, p. 270.
^ Franke 1994, p. 267.
^ Tillman 1995, pp. 71–114.
^ a b c d Boltz 2008, p. 291.
^ Boltz 2008, pp. 291–92.
^ a b Boltz 2008, p. 292.
^ Yao 1995, p. 174; Goossaert 2008, p. 916 (both Buddhist Canon and Daoist Canon printed in Shanxi).
^ a b c Yao 1995, p. 174.
^ Yao 1995, p. 173.
^ a b c Yao 1995.
^ a b Yao 1995, p. 161.
^ Yao 1995, pp. 161–62.
Boltz, Judith (2008), "Da Jin Xuandu baozang 大金玄嘟寶藏", in Pregadio, Fabrizio, The Encyclopedia of Taoism, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 291–92, ISBN 978-0-7007-1200-7 .
Chen Yuan (2014), "Legitimation Discourse and the Theory of the Five Elements in Imperial China," Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 44(1): 325–364. DOI: 10.1353/sys.2014.0000.
Franke, Herbert (1971), "Chin Dynastic History Project", Sung Studies Newsletter, 3 (3): 36–37, JSTOR 23497078, (Subscription required (help)) .
Goossaert, Vincent (2008), "Song Defang 宋德方", in Pregadio, Fabrizio, The Encyclopedia of Taoism, London and New York: Routledge, pp. 915–16, ISBN 978-0-7007-1200-7 .
The Qara Khitai, known as the Kara Khitan Khanate or Western Liao, officially the Great Liao, was a sinicized Khitan empire in Central Asia. The empire was usurped by the Naimans under Kuchlug in 1211, traditional Chinese, the empire was conquered by the Mongol Empire in 1218. Kara Khitan was the used by the Khitans to refer to themselves. The phrase is translated as the Black Khitans in Turkish. In Mongolian, Kara-Khitan is rendered Хар Хятан, since no direct records from the empire survive today, the only surviving historical records about the empire come from outside sources. Black Khitans has seen used in Chinese. The Jurchens referred to the empire as Dashi or Dashi Linya, Muslim historians initially referred to the state simply as Khitay or Khitai, they may have adopted this form of Khitan via the Uyghurs of Kocho in whose language the final -n or -ń became -y. Only after the Mongol conquest did the state begin to be referred to in the Muslim world as the Kara-Khitai or Qara-Khitai, the Qara Khitai empire was established by Yelü Dashi, who led nomadic Khitans west by way of Mongolia after the collapse of the Liao dynasty.
The Jurchens, once vassals of the Khitans, had allied with the Song dynasty, Yelü recruited Khitans and other tribes to form an army, and in 1134 captured Balasagun from the Kara-Khanid Khanate, which marks the start of the empire in Central Asia. The Khitan forces were joined by 10,000 Khitans. The Khitans conquered Kashgar and Beshbalik, the Khitans defeated the Western Kara-Khanid Khanate at Khujand in 1137, eventually leading to their control over the Fergana Valley. They won the Battle of Qatwan against the Western Kara-Khanids and the Seljuk Empire on September 9,1141, Yelü Dashi died in 1143, and his wife, Xiao Tabuyan, acted as regent for their son. Their son, Yelü Yiliu, became the ruler in 1150 and died in 1163, to be succeeded by his sister and she sent her husband, Xiao Duolubu, on many military campaigns. She fell in love with his brother, Xiao Fuguzhi. They were executed in 1177 by her father-in-law, Xiao Wolila, the empire was weakened by rebellions and internal wars among its vassals, especially during the latter parts of its history.
Cash was a type of coin of China and East Asia from the 2nd century BC until the 20th century AD. The English term cash referring to the coin was derived from the Tamil kāsu, the English word cash, meaning tangible currency, is an older and unrelated word from Middle French caisse. There are a variety of Chinese terms for cash coins, usually descriptive, Chinese qián is a weight-derived currency denomination in Chinese called mace in English. Traditionally, Chinese cash coins were cast in copper, brass or iron, in the mid-19th century, the coins were made of 3 parts copper and 2 parts lead. Cast silver coins were produced but are considerably rarer. Cast gold coins are known to exist but are extremely rare. Chinese cash coins originated from the barter of farming tools and agricultural surpluses, around 1200 BC, smaller token spades and knives began to be used to conduct smaller exchanges with the tokens melted down to produce real farm implements. These tokens came to be used as media of exchange themselves and were known as spade money, the hole enabled the coins to be strung together to create higher denominations, as was frequently done due to the coins low value.
The number of coins in a string of cash varied over time, a string of 1000 cash was supposed to be equal in value to one tael of pure silver. A string of cash was divided into ten sections of 100 cash each, local custom allowed the person who put the string together to take a cash or a few from each hundred for his effort. Thus an ounce of silver could exchange for 970 in one city and 990 in the next, in some places in the North of China short of currency the custom counted one cash as two and fewer than 500 cash would be exchanged for an ounce of silver. A string of cash weighed over ten pounds and was carried over the shoulder. Paper money equivalents known as flying cash sometimes showed pictures of the number of cash coins strung together. The Koreans and Vietnamese all cast their own copper cash in the part of the second millennium similar to those used by China. The last Chinese cash coins were struck, not cast, in the reign of the Qing Xuantong Emperor shortly before the fall of the Empire in 1911, the coin continued to be used unofficially in China until the mid-20th century.
Confucianism, known as Ruism, is described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or simply a way of life. In the Han dynasty, Confucian approaches edged out the proto-Taoist Huang-Lao, the disintegration of the Han political order in the second century CE opened the way for the doctrines of Buddhism and Neo-Taoism, which offered spiritual explanations lacking in Confucianism. A Confucian revival began during the Tang dynasty of 618-907, in the late Tang, Confucianism developed in response to Buddhism and Taoism and was reformulated as Neo-Confucianism. This reinvigorated form was adopted as the basis of the imperial exams, the abolition of the examination system in 1905 marked the end of official Confucianism. The New Culture intellectuals of the twentieth century blamed Confucianism for Chinas weaknesses. In the late twentieth century Confucian work ethic has been credited with the rise of the East Asian economy, with particular emphasis on the importance of the family and social harmony, rather than on an otherworldly source of spiritual values, the core of Confucianism is humanistic.
While Tiān has some characteristics that overlap the category of deity, it is primarily an impersonal absolute principle, Confucianism focuses on the practical order that is given by a this-worldly awareness of the Tiān. Confucian thought focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, Some of the basic Confucian ethical concepts and practices include rén, yì, and lǐ, and zhì. Rén is the essence of the human being which manifests as compassion and it is the virtue-form of Heaven. Yì is the upholding of righteousness and the disposition to do good. Lǐ is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act in everyday life according to the law of Heaven. Zhì is the ability to see what is right and fair, or the converse, Confucianism holds one in contempt, either passively or actively, for failure to uphold the cardinal moral values of rén and yì. In the 20th century Confucianisms influence diminished greatly, in the last decades there have been talks of a Confucian Revival in the academic and the scholarly community and there has been a grassroots proliferation of various types of Confucian churches.
Taoism, known as Daoism, is a religious or philosophical tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao. The Tao is an idea in most Chinese philosophical schools, in Taoism, however. Taoism differs from Confucianism by not emphasizing rigid rituals and social order, the Tao Te Ching, a compact book containing teachings attributed to Laozi, is widely considered the keystone work of the Taoist tradition, together with the writings of Zhuangzi. By the Han dynasty, the sources of Taoism had coalesced into a coherent tradition of religious organizations. In earlier ancient China, Taoists were thought of as hermits or recluses who did not participate in political life, Zhuangzi was the best known of these, and it is significant that he lived in the south, where he was part of local Chinese shamanic traditions. Women shamans played an important role in this tradition, which was strong in the southern state of Chu. Early Taoist movements developed their own institution in contrast to shamanism, shamans revealed basic texts of Taoism from early times down to at least the 20th century.
Institutional orders of Taoism evolved in various strains that in recent times are conventionally grouped into two main branches, Quanzhen Taoism and Zhengyi Taoism. After Laozi and Zhuangzi, the literature of Taoism grew steadily and was compiled in form of a canon—the Daozang—which was published at the behest of the emperor, throughout Chinese history, Taoism was nominated several times as a state religion. After the 17th century, however, it fell from favor, Chinese alchemy, Chinese astrology, Chan Buddhism, several martial arts, traditional Chinese medicine, feng shui, and many styles of qigong have been intertwined with Taoism throughout history. Beyond China, Taoism had influence on surrounding societies in Asia, Taoism has a presence in Hong Kong, and in Southeast Asia. English speakers continue to debate the preferred romanization of the words Daoism and Taoism, the root Chinese word 道 way, path is romanized tao in the older Wade–Giles system and dào in the modern Pinyin system. In linguistic terminology, English Taoism/Daoism is formed from the Chinese loanword tao/dao 道 way, route and the native suffix -ism.
Huining Prefecture was a prefecture in the Shangjing region of Manchuria. It served as the first superior capital of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty from 1122 to 1153 and its location was in present-day Acheng District, Harbin City, Heilongjiang Province, China. During the early years of building up their empire, Jurchen rulers often moved people from elsewhere in China to their capital, the first emperor of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty, Aguda resettled captives to the Shangjing area during his war against the Khitan-led Liao dynasty. Agudas successor, Wuqimai conquered most of northern China in the wars against the Han Chinese-led Northern Song dynasty and he continued the policy, resulting in numerous wealthy people, skilled craftsmen from Yanjing and the former Song capital, being relocated to Shangjing. A variety of valuable goods captured in Bianjing was brought to the Jin capital as well, the city plan on Shangjing emulated major Chinese cities, in particular Bianjing, although the Jin capital was much smaller than its Northern Song prototype.
The Han dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms period. Spanning over four centuries, the Han period is considered an age in Chinese history. To this day, Chinas majority ethnic group refers to itself as the Han people and it was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han, and briefly interrupted by the Xin dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang. This interregnum separates the Han dynasty into two periods, the Western Han or Former Han and the Eastern Han or Later Han, the emperor was at the pinnacle of Han society. He presided over the Han government but shared power with both the nobility and appointed ministers who came largely from the gentry class. The Han Empire was divided into areas controlled by the central government using an innovation inherited from the Qin known as commanderies. These kingdoms gradually lost all vestiges of their independence, particularly following the Rebellion of the Seven States, from the reign of Emperor Wu onward, the Chinese court officially sponsored Confucianism in education and court politics, synthesized with the cosmology of scholars such as Dong Zhongshu.
This policy endured until the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1911 AD, the Han dynasty was an age of economic prosperity and saw a significant growth of the money economy first established during the Zhou dynasty. The coinage issued by the government mint in 119 BC remained the standard coinage of China until the Tang dynasty. The period saw a number of limited institutional innovations, the Xiongnu, a nomadic steppe confederation, defeated the Han in 200 BC and forced the Han to submit as a de facto inferior partner, but continued their raids on the Han borders. Emperor Wu of Han launched several campaigns against them. The ultimate Han victory in these wars eventually forced the Xiongnu to accept vassal status as Han tributaries, the territories north of Hans borders were quickly overrun by the nomadic Xianbei confederation. Imperial authority was seriously challenged by large Daoist religious societies which instigated the Yellow Turban Rebellion. When Cao Pi, King of Wei, usurped the throne from Emperor Xian, following Liu Bangs victory in the Chu–Han Contention, the resulting Han dynasty was named after the Hanzhong fief.
The Zhou dynasty was a Chinese dynasty that followed the Shang dynasty and preceded the Qin dynasty. This period of Chinese history produced what many consider the zenith of Chinese bronze-ware making, the dynasty spans the period in which the written script evolved into its almost-modern form with the use of an archaic clerical script that emerged during the late Warring States period. He even received sacrifice as a harvest god, the term Hòujì was probably an hereditary title attached to a lineage. Jus son Liu, led his people to prosperity by restoring agriculture and settling them at a place called Bin, tai led the clan from Bin to Zhou, an area in the Wei River valley of modern-day Qishan County. Taibo and Zhongyong had supposedly fled to the Yangtze delta. Jilis son Wen bribed his way out of imprisonment and moved the Zhou capital to Feng, the Zhou enfeoffed a member of the defeated Shang royal family as the Duke of Song, which was held by descendants of the Shang royal family until its end.
This practice was referred to as Two Kings, Three Reverences, according to Nicholas Bodman, the Zhou appear to have spoken a language not basically different in vocabulary and syntax from that of the Shang. A recent study by David McCraw, using lexical statistics, reached the same conclusion, the Zhou emulated extensively Shang cultural practices, perhaps to legitimize their own rule, and became the successors to Shang culture. At the same time, the Zhou may have connected to the Xirong, a broadly defined cultural group to the west of the Shang. According to the historian Li Feng, the term Rong during the Western Zhou period was used to designate political and military adversaries rather than cultural. The proto-Zhou were first located in the Shaanxi-Shanxi highland, where they absorbed elements from the Guangshe culture, King Liu moved his people to the lower Fen Valley and to the western bank of the Yellow River, where they resumed agriculture. His son Qing Jie, led the Zhou to the valley of the Jing River.
Emperor Taizu of Jin, personal name Aguda, sinicised name Wanyan Min, was the founder and first emperor of the Jurchen-led Jin dynasty, which ruled northern China between the 12th and 13th centuries. He was initially the chieftain of the Wanyan tribe, the most dominant among the Jurchen tribes which were subjects of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty, starting in 1114, Aguda united the Jurchen tribes under his rule and rebelled against the Liao dynasty. A year later, he declared himself emperor and established the Jin dynasty, by the time of his death, the Jin dynasty had conquered most of the Liao dynastys territories and emerged as a major power in northern China. In 1145, he was honoured with the temple name Taizu by his descendant. The name Aguda is transcribed A-ku-ta in Wade-Giles, the alternative, Aguda was the second son of Helibo, the chieftain of the Wanyan tribe. His mother was a daughter of the chieftain of the Nalan tribe and he was born in 1068 near the Ashi River within present-day Harbin, Heilongjiang Province.
He was well-known within his tribe for his bravery, and had participated in campaigns against rival Jurchen tribes at the command of the Khitan-led Liao dynasty. In 1109, during the height of a famine, Aguda assisted his father in absorbing famished warriors from other Jurchen tribes to strengthen his own tribe. Later, he fought wars against other Jurchen tribes and succeeded to unify all Jurchens under the Wanyan tribes leadership, in 1113, Aguda succeeded his elder brother, Wuyashu, as the leader of his tribe. Like other Jurchens, Aguda loathed what he considered the exploitation of his tribesmen by corrupt Liao officials, in 1122, when the Liao ruler, Emperor Tianzuo, went on a fishing expedition in Jurchen territory, he ordered all the chieftains to dance for him. Aguda became famous among the Jurchens when he was the person who defied the order. In early 1114, Aguda sent spies into Liao territory and prepared to revolt against the Khitan regime and his chief advisors were Wanyan Zonghan and Wanyan Xiyin.
Yue ware with motif, 3rd century CE, Western Jin, Zhejiang.
The famous painting Along the River During the Qingming Festival is believed by some to portray life in Kaifeng on Qingming Festival. Several versions exist – the above is an 18th-century recreation – of an original attributed to the 12th-century artist Zhang Zeduan.
Games in the Jinming Pool, an early 12th-century painting depicting Kaifeng, by Zhang Zeduan.
Evening market at the Temple of Supreme Brightness (太清宫 Tàiqīnggōng), an urban temple of the Zhengyi order in Xiguan, Lanzhou, Gansu.
Temple of the Golden Measure (金台观 Jīntáiguan) in Baoji, Shaanxi.
A Taoist temple of Mount Longhu, in Jiangxi.
The Temple of the Town God of Wenao, Magong, Taiwan.
Temple of Hebo ("River Lord"), the god (Heshen, "River God") of the sacred Yellow River, in Hequ, Xinzhou, Shanxi.
Detail of Chinese silk from the 4th century BCE. The characteristic trade of silk through the Silk Road connected various regions from China, India, Central Asia, and the Middle East to Europe and Africa.
A view of the Fort St George in 18th-century Madras.
Coronation of Ögedei Khan in 1229 as the successor of Genghis Khan. By Rashid al-Din, early 14th century.
Bronze mould for minting Ban Liang coins, the mould was used during the Warring States period (475-221 BC) by the State of Qin, from an excavation in Qishan County, Baoji, Shaanxi province.
Machine-struck cash coins issued under the Guangxu Emperor in Guangzhou, Guangdong.
Cash coins minted between 330 BC and 1912 AD.
Three different cash coins from the Northern Song dynasty, the first coin reads clockwise while the others read top-bottom-right-left, the first and second coins are written in Regular script while the third coin is written in Seal script.
From left to right: Pak Chang-ok, Li Jishen, Kim Tu-bong, Zhu De, Kim Il-sung, Averky Aristov, Pak Chŏng Ae and Choe Yong-gon in 1955.
This painting, titled Horse and Archer, is believed to have been painted by Yelü Bei.
A stone rubbing of a carved relief from the Han dynasty depicting Jin Ke's assassination attempt on Qin Shi Huang; Jing Ke (left) is held by one of Qin Shi Huang's physicians (left, background). The dagger used in the assassination attempt is seen stuck in the pillar. Qin Shi Huang (right) is seen holding an imperial jade disc. One of his soldiers (far right) rushes to save his emperor.
Jurchen cavalry charging Ming infantry in the battle of Sarhu.
Stone 'qing' (percussion instrument) from the Erlitou Culture. Unearthed at Dongxialeng, Xiaxian, Shanxi Province, 1974.
A poster outside a high school in Yangzhou urges people to "speak Putonghua, welcome guests from all parts" and "use civilised language".
Chinese pu vessel with interlaced dragon design, Spring and Autumn period.


The sales process, captured by the sales funnel, is no longer as linear as it once was. How can marketing teams use sales funnel management to gain control of the customer journey?
In the old days, sales and marketing could rely on a predictable sequence of events for turning customers into prospects.
Marketers would send out broad print- or email-based messages to a wide audience. Potential customers would respond. Marketing, and then sales, would try to capture their interest and turn them into buyers. Thus, the broad-based messaging would narrow as marketers and sales teams identified qualified leads or customers. Otherwise known as the sales funnel process, this inverted pyramid was the go-to map for how companies identified potential buyers and closed the deal.
Today, though, the inverted pyramid is only one possible pathway of a customer lifecycle, or journey, to a sale. Buyers are savvier and better educated through online research, peer opinions found on social channels and other means of self-service. For enterprises, the buying team has also expanded to include a wider array of decision makers. So, too, the channels of communication have proliferated dramatically, and the signals regarding customers' propensity to buy have become more complex. Finally, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) customers expect a level of personalization in their journey that indicates that companies understand their needs and preference. The combination of these newfound pressures with the volumes of data that selling organizations have at their disposal has forced sales and marketing teams to adjust, prompting some to wonder whether the sales funnel is even still valid.
"Does the funnel still work in a digital, social, mobile age?" Mark Boncheck and Cara France wrote in a May 2014 Harvard Business Review article.
One thing is certain. With 67% of the buyer's journey now occurring digitally, according to some studies, "most buyers don't engage in a sequential process of information gathering," said Kerry Cunningham, research director at SiriusDecisions Inc., a global B2B research and advisory firm.
B2B is finally arriving at a place of having data about buyers that B2C has had for some time.
Kerry Cunninghamresearch director, SiriusDecisions Inc.
In the old model, a prospect would enter the funnel at the awareness stage. Marketing would nurture it along until it became a sales lead and, hopefully, a buyer. Today, however, prospects are just as apt to show up mid-funnel, perhaps after discovering a white paper that they want to download from a search, said Liam O'Connor, a principal at marketing and sales strategy consultancy Lenati LLC, where he's leader of the customer acquisition team.
O'Connor added that what used to be a funnel is now an erratic progression through channels of a customer's own choosing, including offline research, online search, peer referrals, social media, online communities, third-party reviews and competitive comparisons. Not only does this make their needs more difficult to anticipate, but these customers are also better informed and thus highly expectant of the interaction itself.
Making matters even more complex, only a small fraction of the buyer's journey is visible through traditional marketing automation platforms, Cunningham said. Even though 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of 760 executives recently surveyed by IDC use social media to make purchasing decisions, many businesses can only see what buyers do on their own website.
"That is what's deceptive about the buyer's journey when seen through the lens of marketing automation," Cunningham said. "Buyers still really utilize conversations with vendors and sales people, both early and late in the buying process, but they're also engaged in a lot of self-directed online research all through the buying process." As a result, mapping the customer journey has become more difficult because customer paths are less linear and sequential.
But just as increased online activity is upending marketers' jobs, businesses can now use the burgeoning volumes of data generated by online activity to their benefit. Indeed, the explosion in sales and marketing technologies over the past few years has given customers more options to engage with vendors, which only increases the amount of data available, whether directly or through third parties, O'Connor said.
"B2B is finally arriving at a place of having data about buyers that B2C has had for some time," Cunningham said.
The new data volumes are increasing interest in predictive analytics. The aim is for marketers and sales teams to make efforts more efficient and productive -- whether that involves serving up the most relevant content for a prospective buyer, predicting which prospects are most likely to become valuable customers, or determining which actions would be most successful in converting a prospect to the next step of the journey.
"Lots of statistics show that over 90% of people on a business's website are not in buying mode," O'Connor said. "It's important to be able to serve up the right message at the right time, and convert the prospect to the next action along the journey, and not necessarily a sale." Early in the journey, prospects might value expert information on the product category, for instance, while demos, webinars or ROI calculators might be more applicable further along in the buying process, he said.
This shift is also leading marketers to invest in new content types that are more interactive in nature, such as surveys, pop-up infographics, embedded video and quizzes, O'Connor added. Not only do customers get a more personalized experience with the content, but by tracking their interactions with it, marketers can also gain more insight into what customers value and where they are in their journeys.
"Customers can decide what's interesting and what isn't, and it's all tracked," O'Connor said. The data can also be used for lead scoring, a tactic to apply value to individual prospects to help guide sales teams in prioritizing their efforts. "If someone downloads this content and then moves over here and comes back to the site this many times, they'll rank higher than a company that only engaged slightly or only comes once," he said.
Predictive analytics systems need to incorporate cookies and other tracking mechanisms to include what buyers are doing both on and off your website. "You want to deliver content based on where they are -- not where they were when you last saw them on your website," Cunningham said. "Over time, we expect predictive analytics to be built in, so that instead of deciding, 'Here's a sequence of four communications,' the business can say, 'What's the next best thing for that prospect based on who they are and where they are on the journey?'"
Another development is for systems to track not just a single buyer, but also the efforts of multiple people within the organization who are researching the same purchase. After all, according to IDC, the average deal today involves more than eight decision makers, a 43% increase from three years ago. "This would involve using big data to help me understand when one of my buyers has three or four colleagues who are also engaged in researching the solution," Cunningham said. Systems are emerging that can sew together evidence that people working for the same organization are researching the same topic, as well as tools that combine search data with information from LinkedIn that reveals who works for whom and what the organization looks like. "When you bring this all together, provided you have the data science chops, you can better understand who your buyers are and how they're grouped together," he said.
This capability is used in account-based marketing, which B2B businesses often use for large accounts. While this approach has been around for some time, it is more scalable today. Instead of the traditional sales funnel process that involves casting a wide net and nurturing those leads down the funnel, the funnel is basically flipped. "Marketers get a few qualified leads for sales to close, targeting senior buyers and then expanding to broader committees," O'Connor explained. "When they land a sale, they try to expand the account."
No matter what shape the sales funnel and marketing take in the future, O'Connor said he believes the traditional model will continue to be useful as marketers track and measure how well their content fares with constituencies. This is particularly relevant today, with at least a third of marketing dollars spent on content by both B2B and B2C businesses, according to the Content Marketing Institute. "The path customers take isn't as linear as it once was, but it's still useful to measure how content is working and how it's helping in moving customers through the process," O'Connor said.
What is your strategy to modernize sales funnel management?


1. What is the Area of triangle whose base is 12 cm and height is 16 cm?
3. A and B can do a piece of work in 10 days and B and C can do the same job in 15 days. In how many days A and C can finish the work?
We have only 2 equations but 3 variables are there. So we cannot conclude this sum.
4. A Train runs with the speed of 50 kmph and reached 150km. In how long it takes to cover the distance of 225 km?
5. A bag contains 4 blue balls and 3 red balls. What is the probability of same colour balls picked up, if two balls are picked up randomly?
7. Preeti sold his laptop with the loss of 10%. If he sells 1500 more she got 10 % gain on this laptop. Find the cost price of the laptop.
9. In a class there are 15 girl and 20 boys. What is the ratio of boys to that of girls?
10. ¾ of 5/6of 11/ 7 of a number is 1650.
1) What is the Area of triangle whose base is 12 cm and height is 16 cm?
3) A and B can do a piece of work in 10 days and B and C can do the same job in 15 days. In how many days A and C can finish the work?
4) A Train runs with the speed of 50 kmph and reached 150km. In how long it takes to cover the distance of 225 km?
5) A bag contains 4 blue balls and 3 red balls. What is the probability of same colour balls picked up, if two balls are picked up randomly?
7) Preeti sold his laptop with the loss of 10%. If he sells 1500 more she got 10 % gain on this laptop. Find the cost price of the laptop.
9) In a class there are 15 girl and 20 boys. What is the ratio of boys to that of girls?
10) ¾ of 5/6of 11/ 7 of a number is 1650.


Choose the sentence that has a subject complement. A. The day ended with many surprises. B. The nurse felt my pulse. C. I felt much better. D. We can't leave without seeing her.
The sentence that has a subject complement is I felt much better.
If you need 2,000 calories per day and you regularly consume 2,500, you'll A. lose weight. B. lose muscle mass. C. gain weight. D. maintain your weight.
Positive energy balance is important when A. a child is growing. B. weight stability is desired. C. you're stressed. D. weight loss is desired.
People who are overweight A. have no control over the food they eat. B. lack the motivation to try to manage their weight. C. are always genetically predisposed to being overweight. D. aren't necessarily well-nourished.
People who are overweight: lack the motivation to try to manage their weight.


In my fifth Sherlock Holmes novel, I send Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson off to the Forbidden City, in 1907. What sparked the idea to send them so far away, to a place Britons then thought of as the most mysterious city on earth? My first novel was set in the English countryside during the reign of King Edward V11, but later settings include Serbia before the First World War - the country was then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire ruled by the Hapsburgs, an empire at the time in decline - and in Sherlock Holmes And the Sword of Osman, ‘Stamboul’, Istanbul, capital of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.
Sherlock Holmes and the Nine-Dragon Sigil also takes place in a vast old Empire, the Qing or Ch’ing, at the start of the 20th Century when, as the Chinese say, Heaven was withdrawing its mandate. So, you can see setting it in China followed a pattern in my previous novels where great empires – the Ottomans, the Hapsburgs – were in sharp decline.
My choice of Peking as a setting was influenced by reading Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Empty House where Sherlock Holmes tells Dr. Watson: “I travelled for two years in Tibet, therefore, and amused myself by visiting Lhassa and spending some days with the head Lama”.
This mysterious period is Holmes’ life is known to readers of the Arthur Conan Doyle canon as The Great Hiatus. Whilst Holmes was in Tibet, everybody back home believed the famous detective had died in the clutches of the evil Professor Moriarty at Switzerland’s Reichenbach Falls. I wondered: could a heavily disguised Holmes have gone beyond ‘Lhassa’ (Lhasa), following in the footsteps of Marco Polo all the way to the Middle Kingdom?
Choosing a setting so far, and so different, from Holmes’ European haunts allowed me to push his deductive powers to the limit – a detective is far better able to interpret the clues back home, in familiar surroundings than when everything is foreign to him. Indeed, in the Forbidden City Holmes comes close complete failure. I would even say this is just about the closest he came to failure in his career!
However, he won through in the end, and caught his criminal. To find out how, you’ll have to read my novel, but here’s a clue: Holmes deploys his famous photographic memory to help him solve the case.
Details: Sherlock Holmes and the Nine-Dragon Sigil is published in eBook by MX Publishing. They also publish Watson's Afghan Adventure, by Kieran McMullen, in which Watson explains how a treasure map brought him to Afghanistan.


Step 1. Place the stabilizer on the floor, ears pointed toward you.
Step 2. Set the bolt, nut, 2 washers, and 2 wrenches on the floor by the stabilizer.
Step 3. Place the mainframe into the stabilizer ears.
Step 4. Hold the mainframe in place while inserting bolt. When bolting the mainframe to the stabilizer, be sure one washer rests between the bolt head and the machine, and the other washer between the nut and the machine.
Step 5. Make sure the mainframe and the stabilizer are flush, then torque the bolt, do not over-tighten.
Step 1. Place the bench legs in the stabilizer supports, legs leaning away from the mainframe.
Step 2. Rest the bench on the bench legs, slide the bench ears around the mainframe.
Step 3. Insert the black bench pin into the desired hole to secure the bench to the mainframe.
Step 1. Place the ears of the barbell arm around the mainframe.
Step 2. Secure the barbell arm by inserting the stainless steel barbell arm pin.
Step 3. Place the load pin in the third hole below the stainless barbell arm pin and tighten securely. This leaves two empty holes between the stainless barbell pin and the load pin. Check to see if the load pin is tight between sets.
Step 1. When setting the barbell arm for a "pressing-up or pulling-up" exercise, place the load pin in the third hole below the stainless barbell arm pin. (Two empty holes between pins.) Keep the load balanced. Put heavier straps on first. Always use retainer clips.
Step 2. When setting up a "pressing-down or pulling-down" exercise, place the load pin in the third hole above the stainless barbell arm pin. (Two empty holes between pins.) For some "pulling-down" exercises, you may prefer to leave one empty hole between pins. Lift the barbell arm to slide on the weightstraps. Don't forget to hold on to the barbell arm when removing the straps.
Step 3. When loading the resistance on any exercise, always use the provided retainer clips. (One on each side of the machined load pin.) This will prevent the strap from moving during the exercise. Use the retainer clips on the load pin, butterfly attachment, and the leg extension attachment.
When doing pull up and dips, use the bench legs for additional support. Center the top cross bar in the slot near the base of the mainframe.
Place the dip bar as pictured, centered, and resting on the barbell arm.
Weight plates can be used alone or in conjunction with your Soloflex weightstraps. To use standard one-inch plates, slide the iron plate attachment rods (sold separately) half way into each end of the barbell arm. then slide the plate over the rod until it butts up to the barbell arm. Olympic plates may be used in conjunction with your Olympic plate attachment rods (sold separately). You can load up to 500 pounds of weight plates on the Soloflex barbell arm.
Step 1. slide the butterfly body with pins facing up, over the top of the mainframe, allowing it to rest on the load pin.
Step 2. Place one bushing into each side of the butterfly arm. Repeat with the other arm.
Step 3. Insert the arm into the body and slide the D-shaped clevis pin down through the butterfly arm, connecting it to the body. Repeat with the other arm.
Step 4. Fasten the "e" clip to the bottom of the D-shaped clevis pin. Repeat with the other side.
Step 5. Open the arms to slide the weightstraps on. Secure the retainer clip. Slide on foam pads. Note: The Butterfly attachment comes with 2 urethane foam pads.
Step 1. Remove bench and bench legs. Set the pins of the leg extension into the stabilizer support holes.
Step 2. Remove the “e” clip with a screwdriver and then remove the clevis pin from the pivot point. Leave the bushing in the hole.
Step 3. Attach the leg extension pivot arm to the pivot point, replace the clevis pin and “e” clip.
Step 4. Using the supplied bushing, clevis pin and “e” clip, attach the lower pivot point of the leg extension to the pivot arm by first inserting the bushing, then the pivot arm, then the clevis pin, and “e” clip.
Step 5. Attach the bench to the mainframe using bench pin hole #24. note: remove the leg extension when not in use.
Step 6. Attach the leg extension to the bench using the supplied hitch pin. Slide on weightstraps, retainer clips, and urethane foam pads. note: the leg extension comes with 4 urethane foam pads.


There is an 8 by 8 chessboard in which two diagonally opposite corners have been cut off.You are given 31 dominos, and a single domino can cover exactly two squares. Can you use the 31 dominos to cover the entire board?
Each domino we set on the chessboard will always take 1 Black and 1 White square.Therefore, 31 dominos will take 31 white square and 31 black squares exactly. On this chessbord however, we must have 32 black and 30 white squares. Hence it is not possible to do so.


Young people who smoke electronic cigarettes are considerably more likely to start smoking traditional cigarettes within a year than their peers.
Electronic cigarettes that are widely promoted and used to help smokers quit traditional cigarettes are not assisting much in this task, says a new study.
A new analysis by the University of California-San Francisco has found that 'vapers' -- dedicated enthusiasts of electronic cigarettes -- are 28 percent less likely to stop smoking.
"As currently being used, e-cigarettes are associated with significantly less quitting among smokers," said lead author Sara Kalkhoran from the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
"The inclusion of e-cigarettes in smoke-free laws and voluntary smoke-free policies could help decrease use of e-cigarettes as a cigarette substitute, and, perhaps, increase their effectiveness for smoking cessation," the researchers explained.
"E-cigarettes should not be recommended as effective smoking cessation aids until there is evidence that, as promoted and used, they assist smoking cessation," Kalkhoran said.
The study -- a systematic review and meta-analysis of published data -- was published online The Lancet Respiratory Medicine.