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My re-visit to Darjeeling, October, 2015.
Darjeeling is located in the Lesser Himalaya, within the state of West Bengal, India, at an elevation of 6,700 ft. The word Darjeeling has evolved from the Sanskrit, "Durjaya Linga", means "Shiva of invincible prowess, who rules the Himalayas. It is also believed that the name Darjeeling also comes from the Tibetan word dorje, meaning the thunderbolt sceptre of the Hindu deity Indra, and ling, a place or land.
Darjeeling is noted for its tea industry, the spectacular views of Kangchenjunga, the world's third-highest mountain, and the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is a 600 mm (2 ft) narrow-gauge railway that was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1999 for being "an outstanding example of the influence of an innovative transportation system on the social and economic development of a multi-cultural region, which was to serve as a model for similar developments in many parts of the world", becoming only the second railway in the world to have this honour.
The development of the town dates back to the mid-19th century, when the colonial British administration set up a sanatorium and a military depot. Subsequently, extensive tea plantations were established in the region, and tea growers developed hybrids of black tea and created new fermentation techniques. The resultant distinctive Darjeeling tea is internationally recognised and ranks among the most popular of the black teas.
During the British Raj, Darjeeling's temperate climate led to its development as a hill station for British residents seeking to escape the summer heat of the plains. The development of Darjeeling as a sanatorium and health resort proceeded briskly. Arthur Campbell, a surgeon with the Company, and Lieutenant Robert Napier were responsible for establishing a hill station there. Campbell's efforts to develop the station, attract immigrants to cultivate the slopes and stimulate trade resulted in a hundredfold increase in the population of Darjeeling between 1835 and 1849.
Darjeeling has several British-style public schools and churches. The varied culture of the town reflects its diverse demographic milieu consisting of Gorkhas, Bhutia, Lepcha and other mainland Indian ethno-linguistic groups.
Darjeeling Mall and Mall Road is a center of attraction to all the tourists. Visitors who have taken a stroll along this mystic tree shaded meandering Mall Road and enjoyed the views of the mountain ranges and the lovely Rhododendrons, knows all about it. Mall Road is a mountain walkway the British families once used for leisure strolls to enjoy the sheer serenity and the best of views that Darjeeling has to offer. Its actually a loop, that starts from the Chowrasta Mall, goes around the Observatory Hill and returns to the Mall itself. So there are two entries to this road from the Mall. The Mall road is also known as Bhanubhakta Sarani named after the Nepali national poet whose statue is erected on the Mall where the road begins.
History
The history of Darjeeling is intertwined with that of Sikkim, Nepal, British India and Bhutan. Until the early 19th century, the hilly area around Darjeeling was controlled by the kingdom of Sikkim, while the plains around Siliguri were intermittently occupied by the Kingdom of Nepal, with settlement consisting of a few villages of Lepcha and Kirati people.The Chogyal of Sikkim had been engaged in unsuccessful warfare against the Gorkhas of Nepal. From 1780, the Gorkhas made several attempts to capture the entire region of Darjeeling. By the beginning of 19th century, they had overrun Sikkim as far eastward as the Teesta River and had conquered and annexed the Terai. In the meantime, the British were engaged in preventing the Gorkhas from overrunning the whole of the northern frontier. The Anglo-Gorkha war broke out in 1814, which resulted in the defeat of the Gorkhas and subsequently led to the signing of the Sugauli Treaty in 1815. According to the treaty, Nepal had to cede all those territories which the Gorkhas had annexed from the Chogyal of Sikkim to the British East India Company (i.e. the area between Mechi River and Teesta River). Later in 1817, through the Treaty of Titalia, the British East India Company reinstated the Chogyal of Sikkim, restored all the tracts of land between the River Mechi and the River Teesta to the Chogyal of Sikkim and guaranteed his sovereignty.
Flora and fauna
Darjeeling is a part of the Eastern Himalayan zoo-geographic zone. Flora around Darjeeling comprises sal, oak, semi-evergreen, temperate and alpine forests. Dense evergreen forests of sal and oak lie around the town, where a wide variety of rare orchids are found. The Lloyd's Botanical Garden preserves common and rare species of plants, while the Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park specialises in conserving and breeding endangered Himalayan species, especially red panda. A conservation centre for red pandas opened at Darjeeling Zoo in 2014, building on a prior captive breeding.
The town of Darjeeling and surrounding region face deforestation due to increasing demand for wood fuel and timber, as well as air pollution from increasing vehicular traffic.
Wildlife in the district is protected by the wildlife wing of the West Bengal Forest Department. The fauna found in Darjeeling includes several species of ducks, teals, plovers and gulls that pass Darjeeling while migrating to and from Tibet. Small mammals found in the region include civets, mongooses and badgers. The nearby Jaldapara National Park consists of semi-evergreen and sal forests. Animals found here include the one-horned rhinoceros, elephant, tiger, leopard and hog deer, while the main bird species include the Bengal florican and herons.
Argus C44R 1958-62
35mm Argus Cintagon f4.5 lens
ORWO UN54 Film, 100 iso
Developed with Cinestill Film Df96 Monobath Developer
5th roll developed
75 degrees 5 minutes
20180929AC44R-048
The National Memorial Arboretum is a national site of remembrance at Alrewas, near Lichfield, Staffordshire, United Kingdom. It gives its purpose as:
The National Memorial Arboretum honours the fallen, recognises service and sacrifice and fosters pride in our country. It is a spiritually uplifting place and is emerging as a world-renowned centre for remembrance.
The Arboretum is an evolving, maturing woodland landscape featuring 30,000 trees and a vast collection of memorials. The 150-acre site is a living, growing tribute to those who have served and continue to serve our country.
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The Pelican Nebula (also known as IC 5070 and IC 5067[1]) is an H II region associated with the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus. The gaseous contortions of this emission nebula bear a resemblance to a pelican, giving rise to its name.[1] The Pelican Nebula is located nearby first magnitude star Deneb, and is divided from its more prominent neighbour, the North America Nebula, by a molecular cloud filled with dark dust.
The Pelican is much studied because it has a particularly active mix of star formation and evolving gas clouds. The light from young energetic stars is slowly transforming cold gas to hot and causing an ionization front gradually to advance outward. Particularly dense filaments of cold gas are seen to still remain, and among these are found two jets emitted from the Herbig–Haro object 555.[1] Millions of years from now this nebula might no longer be known as the Pelican, as the balance and placement of stars and gas will leave something that appears completely different.
Image Details:
Scope: Televue NP101is
Camera: QSI 683-wsg8
Filters: Astrodon 5nm SII, Astrodon 5nm OIII, Astrodon 5nm HA
Mount: Astrophysics AP900GTO
Capture: 6.5 hours SII, 8 hours HA, 8 hours OIII
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The importance of defending airfields against attack was realised before the outbreak of World War II and a strategy evolved as the war went on. Initially based on the principle of defence against air attack, anti-aircraft guns, air raid shelters and dispersed layouts, with fighter or `blast' pens to protect dispersed aircraft, are characteristics of this early phase. With time, however, the capture of the airfield became a more significant threat, and it was in this phase that the majority of surviving defence structures were constructed, mostly in the form of pillboxes and other types of machine gun post. The scale of airfield defence depended on the likelihood of attack, with those airfields in south or east England, and those close to navigable rivers, ports and dockyards being more heavily defended. But the types of structure used were fairly standard. For defence against air attack there were anti-aircraft gun positions, either small machine gun posts or more substantial towers for Bofors guns; air raid shelters were common, with many examples on each airfield; and for aircraft, widely dispersed to reduce the potential effects of attack, fighter pens were provided. These were groups together, usually in threes, and took the form of `E' shaped earthworks with shelter for ground crew. Night fighter stations also had sleep shelters where the crew could rest. For defence against capture, pillboxes were provided. These fortified gun positions took many forms, from standard ministry designs used throughout Britain and in all contexts, to designs specifically for airfield defence. Three Pickett-Hamilton forts were issued to many airfields and located on the flying field itself. Normally level with the ground, these forts were occupied by two persons who entered through the roof before raising the structure by a pneumatic mechanism to bring fire on the invading force. Other types of gun position include the Seagull trench, a complex linear defensive position, and rounded `Mushroom' pillboxes, while fighter pens were often protected by defended walls. Finally, airfield defence was co-ordinated from a Battle Headquarters, a heavily built structure of which under and above ground examples are known. Defences survive on a number of airfields, though few in anything like the original form or configuration, or with their Battle Headquarters. Examples are considered to be of particular importance where the defence provision is near complete, or where a portion of the airfield represents the nature of airfield defence that existed more widely across the site. Surviving structures will often be given coherence and context by surviving lengths of perimeter track and the concrete dispersal pads. In addition, some types of defence structure are rare survivals nationally, and all examples of Pickett- Hamilton forts, fighter pens and their associated sleep shelters, gun positions and Battle Headquarters closely associated with defence structures, are of national importance.
Despite the loss of parts of West Malling airfield to modern development, elements of its World War II defences survive well and represent a range of structures originally present. The Pickett-Hamilton fort is a well-preserved example of a rare form of gun emplacement, 242 of which were installed on 82 airfields in 1940-41 by a commercial construction company. The structure remains substantially unchanged and still retains all the principal elements of its original design, including its operating equipment. Its use in this location illustrates the often unique character of airfield structures, in this case specifically designed for the defence of the flying field. The anti-aircraft defences at West Malling are also notable for the survival of a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower at the north western corner of the former airfield, one of only three examples recorded on airfields nationally (the other two survive at Brooklands and Weston-super-Mare). As such, it is an important historic structure, serving as a physical record of similar emplacements which have been demolished elsewhere. The Type 24 irregular hexagonal pillbox is the most common form of pillbox built between 1939 and 1941. Pillboxes are especially representative of World War II defence structures and its association with the adjacent airfield adds to the significance of the structure. The pillbox, located on the southern side of West Malling airfield survives comparatively well. Its presence, as well as the strengthening of its walls in concrete, illustrates the perceived vulnerability of the airfield to attack by heavy German artillery. The importance of the surviving defence structures at West Malling is further enhanced by the overall significance of the airfield itself and the necessity to safeguard crucial elements in the defence of Britain against the threat of invasion during the greatest conflict of the 20th century.
Details
The monument, which falls into three separate areas, includes a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower, a Pickett-Hamilton fort and a Type 24 pillbox. These structures formed part of the World War II defences of West Malling airfield, situated at Kings Hill, on top of the Greensand ridge, about 5km west of Maidstone. West Malling opened in 1930 as a private airfield for the Maidstone School of Flying, and was subsequently registered as Maidstone airport two years later. With the outbreak of World War II the airfield, which fell within Fighter Command's strategically important 11 Group (that part of Fighter Command covering the south east of England), was requisitioned by the RAF and soon re-opened as a front line fighter station in June 1940, and a satellite airfield to Biggin Hill, the principal fighter station in the area. A series of German bombing raids in August 1940 rendered the airfield unserviceable during the Battle of Britain, although it became a leading night fighter station the following year and played a key role in the 1944 campaign, code named Operation Diver, to defend the South East against the V1 flying bomb. With the end of the war West Malling became the main rehabilitation centre for prisoners of war returning from Germany. By this time its former grass runways, reinforced with Somerfield track (a heavy steel netting), had been replaced in concrete to meet the needs of the new jet aircraft. After the war the airfield was used for peacetime training, and during the 1960s the station was placed on `care and maintenance' by the RAF. The site was acquired by Kent County Council in 1970 and many of the airfield buildings are now used as offices by Tonbridge and Malling Borough Council. Since the 1990s, parts of the airfield have been lost to modern development. With the deepening threat of German invasion, the defence of Britain's airfields became a high priority during 1940. Fear of German `blitzkrieg' or `lightening' war tactics (involving rapid assault by air and seaborne troops, as witnessed in Europe in the Spring of 1940), led to the implementation of a national strategy for the defence of airfields in September 1940. West Malling was identified as one of 149 important airfields, located within 20 miles of vulnerable ports which could be targets for seaborne landings. Heavy defence of these airfields was therefore crucial to prevent capture of strategic landing grounds by enemy paratroops or gliderborne forces, rapidly followed by the arrival of transport aircraft carrying the principal invasion force. By the end of 1940, three Pickett-Hamilton forts had been installed at West Malling. These structures were designed in June 1940 by the New Kent Construction Company, specifically for the close defence of airfield runways. One of these forts was located towards the northern end of the flying field and survives next to what is now a modern access track. The structure consists of two, vertically sunken concrete cylinders, one mounted inside the other. The inner cylinder, known as the lifting head, remains in its lowered position, flush with the ground surface. The lifting head, pierced with three apertures for its main Vickers or Bren gun, was designed to be raised to its firing position by means of a pneumatic jack, supplemented by a manual pump for emergency use. The fort retains most of its original features, including its internal operating equipment as well as the access hatch in the lid of the lifting head through which the crew of two men entered at ground level. The second fort was removed from the airfield in 1983, and survives on display at the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. The location of the third fort has not yet been identified. Adjacent to the southern perimeter track at West Malling is a Type 24 hexagonal pillbox which originally formed part of an inner and outer series of about 20-30 pillboxes. The small squat structure measures about 6m by 5.5m and is entered through a doorway on its longer eastern side. The entrance is protected by a low externally attached brick wall, and is flanked by one of two loopholes, the second of which is located in the opposite wall of the pillbox. In accordance with orders issued in 1941, the walls of the original brick built structure were thickened by the external application of reinforced concrete, and evidence suggests that at least two additional loopholes were also blocked at this time. These measures were intended to strengthen pillboxes at vulnerable locations against heavy German artillery. The presence of a recess in the edge of the roof above each opening suggests that further protection for the gun crew may have been provided in the form of shields, designed to deflect flame-throwers. A rare surviving example of a Bofors Light Anti-aircraft gun tower also survives close to a modern roundabout, at the north western approach to the airfield. The concrete and brick built tower appears to conform to type `DFW 55087', which was designed at the end of 1939, with the earliest examples constructed during the first half of 1940. The tower was designed to raise a 40mm Bofors gun and its operational equipment, above surrounding obstacles in order to achieve an all-round field of fire in defending the airfield from attack by fast moving, low flying enemy aircraft. The tower stands to a height of about 20m and consists of two parallel, independent structures, separated for much of their height by a 1m gap and linked at intervals by cantilevered concrete bridges to allow movement between the towers. At ground level, the gap functioned as a passageway, providing access to the chambers on either side. The combined structure measures 9m from north to south by 4m east to west and each tower was constructed on four levels: three internal levels contained the magazine and accommodation chambers, lit by vertical two-light windows. The emplacement was located on the flat concrete roof, which projects beyond the brick walls of the tower and was reached via a ladder from the chamber below. The ordnance was centrally mounted on the roof of the northern tower and was served by ammunition lockers at each corner of the roof space. The roof of the southern tower supported the target predictor and was separated from the gun platform by a narrow intervening gap, above the passage below, to insulate this sensitive equipment from the vibration of the Bofors gun. Several temporary station buildings survive around the airfield perimeter. These derelict structures include externally rendered, temporary brick buildings, dispersed from the main technical site in anticipation of concentrated bombing raids. These structures are not included in the current scheduling. Among the more architecturally sophisticated airfield buildings, the Neo-Georgian style Officers' Mess is Listed Grade II. Several semi-sunken Stanton air raid shelters survive, in buried form, near the barrack buildings. These are infilled and are not therefore included in the scheduling. Other structures associated with the defence of the airfield, such as the battle headquarters and the protected aircraft dispersal pens, were destroyed towards the end of the 20th century, although further, as yet unidentified elements may survive beyond the area of the monument. All modern fixtures and fittings associated with the Bofors tower, including modern doors and window boxes, and all modern materials and equipment stored within the tower are excluded from the scheduling; the ground beneath these features, or the structures to which they are attached, however, is included.
MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.
'Everything changes'...The Square Mile - the City of London continues to undergo radical architectural upheavals. the Lloyd's Building was very contemporary for the time (1986). That's the building with the spirals down the side - the external fire escapes /stairs. To the right is 122 Leadenhall Street (aka 'The Cheesegrater') and to the left is the currently being constructed WRB Building (aka The Scalpel'), At the back is 20 Fenchurch Street (aka 'The Walkie Talkie').
The lit up sandstone building was a pretty tall building when I started work. Look at it now, totally dwarfed by the surrounding structures.
Dramatic light highlights the architecture of Prague, from the Gothic Our Lady before Tyn church to the infamous Communist broadcasting tower.
Prague has been a political, cultural, and economic centre of central Europe with waxing and waning fortunes during its 1,100-year existence. Founded during the Romanesque and flourishing by the Gothic and Renaissance eras, Prague was not only the capital of the Czech state, but also the seat of two Holy Roman Emperors.
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What was I thinking of!
Well, I do know, I guess. I had an idea for a film noir look and a bit of a nod to 50's movie star pics, which is what is in the picture frames on the wall. It would, of course, need to be Humphrey Bogart at the top of the stairs.
Tell me if it's a delusional and embarrassing idea by a mad old lady that should never have seen the light of day.
Shirley Baker’s Women, Children; and Loitering Men exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery.
Shirley Baker (1932 – 2014) was one of Britain’s most compelling yet underexposed social documentary photographers. Her street photography of the working-class inner-city areas, taken from 1960 until 1981, would come to define her humanist vision.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Shirley Baker continuously photographed a range of humanist subjects, sparked by her amusement and curiosity of human character and behaviour, and a compassion for social injustice. However, it is her empathetic but unsentimental photographs of inner-city working-class communities in Salford and Manchester as they experienced years of ‘slum’ clearance that has come to define her distinct vision. This twenty-year period sees Shirley evolve her ideas of documentary form and subject matter, and includes a startling body of colour work taken in the summer of 1965.
I recently uncovered a trippy little piece I wrote on constructive constructions for the creatives at ARUP:
Evolving Cities and Culture
Innovation is critical to economic growth, progress, and the fate of the planet. Yet, it seems so random. But patterns emerge in the aggregate, and planners and politicians may be able to promote innovation and growth despite the overall inscrutability of this complex system.
One emergent pattern, spanning centuries, is that the pace of innovation is perpetually accelerating, and it is exogenous to the economy. Rather, it is the combinatorial explosion of possible innovation-pairings that creates economic growth. And that is why cities are the crucible of innovation.
Geoffrey West of the Santa Fe Institute argues that cities are an autocatalytic attractor and amplifier of innovation. People are more innovative and productive, on average, when they live in a city because ideas can cross-pollinate more easily. Proximity promotes propinquity and the promiscuity of what Matt Ridley calls “ideas having sex”. This positive network effect drives another positive feedback loop - by attracting the best and the brightest to flock to the salon of mind, the memeplex of modernity.
Cities are a structural manifestation of the long arc of evolutionary indirection, whereby the vector of improvement has risen steadily up the ladder of abstractions from chemicals to genes to systems to networks. At each step, the pace of progress has leapt forward, making the prior vectors seem glacial in comparison – rather we now see the nature of DNA and even a neuron as a static variable in modern times. Now, it’s all about the ideas - the culture and the networks of humanity. We have moved from genetic to mimetic evolution, and much like the long-spanning neuron (which took us beyond nearest neighbor and broadcast signaling among cells) ushering the Cambrian explosion of differentiated and enormous body plans, the Internet brings long-spanning links between humans, engendering an explosion in idea space, straddling isolated pools of thought.
And it’s just beginning. In the next 10 years, four billion minds will come online for the first time to join this global conversation (via Starlink broadband satellites).
But why does this drive innovation and accelerating change? Start with Brian Arthur’s observation that all new technologies are combinations of technologies that already exist. Innovation does not occur in a vacuum; it is a combination of ideas from before. In any academic field, the advances today are built on a large edifice of history. This is the foundation of progress, something that was not so evident to the casual observer before the age of science. Science tuned the process parameters for innovation, and became the best method for a culture to learn.
From this conceptual base, come the origin of economic growth and accelerating technological change, as the combinatorial explosion of possible idea pairings grows exponentially as new ideas come into the mix (on the order of 2^n of possible groupings per Reed’s Law). It explains the innovative power of urbanization and networked globalization. And it explains why interdisciplinary ideas are so powerfully disruptive; it is like the differential immunity of epidemiology, whereby islands of cognitive isolation (e.g., academic disciplines) are vulnerable to disruptive memes hopping across, much like South America was to smallpox from Cortés and the Conquistadors. If disruption is what you seek, cognitive island-hopping is good place to start, mining the interstices between academic disciplines.
So what evidence do we have of accelerating technological change? At Future Ventures, we see it in the diversity and quality of the entrepreneurial ideas arriving each year across our global offices. Scientists do not slow their thinking during recessions.
For a good mental model of the pace of innovation, consider Moore’s Law in the abstract – the annual doubling of compute power or data storage. As Ray Kurzweil has plotted, the smooth pace of exponential progress spans from 1890 to today, across countless innovations, technology substrates, and human dramas — with most contributors completely unaware that they were fitting to a curve.
Moore’s Law is a primary driver of disruptive innovation – such as the iPod usurping the Sony Walkman franchise – and it drives not only IT and communications, but also now genomics, medical imaging and the life sciences in general. As Moore’s Law crosses critical thresholds, a formerly lab science of trial and error experimentation becomes a simulation science and the pace of progress accelerates dramatically, creating opportunities for new entrants in new industries. And so the industries impacted by the latest wave of tech entrepreneurs are more diverse, and an order of magnitude larger — from automobiles and rockets to energy and chemicals.
At the cutting edge of computational capture is biology; we are actively reengineering the information systems of biology and creating synthetic microbes whose DNA was manufactured from bare computer code and an organic chemistry printer. But what to build? So far, we largely copy large tracts of code from nature. But the question spans across all the complex systems that we might wish to build, from cities to designer microbes, to computer intelligence.
As these systems transcend human comprehension, will we continue to design them or will we increasingly evolve them? As we design for evolvability, the locus of learning shifts from the artifacts themselves to the process that created them. There is no mathematical shortcut for the decomposition of a neural network or genetic program, no way to "reverse evolve" with the ease that we can reverse engineer the artifacts of purposeful design. The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms (machine learning, evolution, fractals, organic growth, art) derives from their irreducibility.
And what about human social systems? The corporation is a complex system that seeks to perpetually innovate. Leadership in these complex organizations shifts from direction setting to a wisdom of crowds. And this “process learning” is a bit counterintuitive to some alpha leaders: cognitive diversity is more important than ability, disagreement is more important than consensus, voting policies and team size are more important than the coherence or comprehensibility of the decisions, and tuning the parameters of communication (frequency and fanout) is more important than charisma.
The same could be said for urban planning. How will cities be built and iterated upon? Who will make those decisions and how? We are just starting to see the shimmering refractions of the hive mind of human culture, and now we want to redesign the hives themselves to optimize the emergent complexity within. Perhaps the best we can do is set up the grand co-evolutionary dance and listen carefully for the sociobiology of supra-human sentience.
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I first brainstormed about reinventing construction with Astro Teller and Sebastian Thrun when they were forming Google X and looking for the largest markets in the world that look ripe for disruption from advancing information technology and machine learning. The $10 trillion spent each year on buildings certainly qualified, and the global construction industry is growing from 13% of the entire global economy to 15% in 2020. Helix.re became the first Google X spinout, taking a data and software-driven approach to building design and optimization.
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Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Arsenal (de l'Aéronautique) VB 31 was a French naval fighter aircraft developed shortly after World War II. In January 1947 Arsenal were given a contract to develop a powerful naval fighter for the four French aircraft carriers. Since the modernization of the Aéronavale was pressing, the aircraft had to be developed fast. In order to cut time, the initial concept, the VB 30, was based on the unrealized German Messerschmitt Me 155 project.
The Me 155 naval fighter had been a naval development of the Messerschmitt Bf 109G, intended for the German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin, which never saw the light of day. When it was clear that the Me 155 was a dead end, the basic design was developed further into a high altitude interceptor and the project handed over to Blohm & Voss. The resulting, highly modified Bv 155 saw the prototype stage in the late years of WWII, but was never put into service. Years later, though, the Me 155 should surface again: Evolved by Ingenieur-General Vernisse and M. Badie, the VB 30 did not only use many design features of the original Me 155 design, it also heavily drew on the indigenous VB 10 heavy fighter which had been previously under development since WWII.
The VB 30 was more compact than the VB 10, though, even though it had similar proportions. IIt was an all-metal single-seat fighter with a low-wing monoplane, a retractable tailwheel undercarriage and of largely orthodox configuration. The wings had an inverted gull wing shape, in order to shorten the main undercarriage as much as possible, and were foldable. The landing gear retracted inwards, and the tail wheel was retractable, too.
The VB 30's layout resembled much the smaller North American Mustang. The aircraft was powered by a powerful Arsenal 24 H engine which was theoretically capable of 3.400hp – itself a development based on the cylinder blocks of the German Junkers IV12 213 engine. A huge radiator bath for the liquid-cooled engine was located under the fuselage, at the wings’ trailing edge.
The aircraft was heavily armed, with a newly developed, compact 30mm cannon (which would eventually become the famous DEFA cannon), firing through the propeller axis, plus four HS-404 20mm cannons or six 12.7mm machine guns in the wings, outside of the propeller arc. Various ordnance loads, including bombs of up to 500 kg caliber, drop tanks or unguided missiles, could be carried under the fuselage and outer wings.
Unlike the huge, tandem-engined VB 10, the VB 30 was (relatively) more successful, but its career started under misfortunate stars: Just one month after the VB 10 contract was cancelled, the prototype VB 30-01 made its maiden flight on 8th of December 1948. Overall, the aircraft behaved well, but its low speed handling was hampered by the immense torque of the Arsenal 24 H engine and the huge, four-bladed propeller. This problem was eventually countered with an enlarged fin, which earned the type its nickname "Requin" (Shark).
With this and many other detail modifications the aircraft was now called VB 31and cleared for series production, even though it was already apparent that the future of the fighter lay with jet power. A second prototype, the VB 30-02, had been started, but its assembly lagged so much behind that it was eventually finished as the first serial VB 31. Anyway, the development of the VB 31 continued as a safety net for France's nascent jet fighter programs, since it was not clear when pure jets would eventually offer the appropriate performance for carrier use, and when they'd be ready for service.
The VB 31’s development saw several drawbacks, including constant problems with the complicated, liquid-cooled engine, the radiator system and the landing gear. Serial production and service introduction of the VB 31 started slowly and was delayed until January 1951 – by which the French Air Force already had to rely on surplus British and American fighters to tide it over until domestically-produced jet fighters appeared. Time was already working against the VB 31.
Additionally, with the brooding Indochina War since August 1945, the need for a maritime fighter and fighter-bomber became so dire that the Aéronavale had to order the WWII Vought F4U-7 to fill this specific gap and replace several obsolete types. The XF4U-7 prototype did its test flight on 2 July 1952 with a total of 94 F4U-7s built for the French Navy's Aéronavale (79 in 1952, 15 in 1953), with the last of the batch, the final Corsair built, rolled out on 31 January 1953. With this proven (and cheaper) alternative, only a single batch of 40 VB 31 aircraft (instead of the planned 200!) was eventually built and put into service.
The VB 31 just came in time for the First Indochina War between France’s French Far East Expeditionary Corps and Emperor Báo Dai’s Vietnamese National Army against the Viet Minh, Led by Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap. During this conflict, the French used many different pre Cold War aircraft of World War Two, as well as the new types.The VB 31 were distrubuted between Flotille 3F and 12F, where they replayced Curtiss SB2C Helldivers and Grumman F6F-3 Hellcats, respectively. Flotille 12F pilots arrived in Asia on board of the aircraft carrier 'Arromanches' in early 1952, equipped with both VB 31 and F4U-7 fighters. Both types were deployed from the carrier and also served from Haiphong for CAS and escort duties in the Tonkin area.
The operational era of the VB 31 did not last long, though. The type was powerful, but complicated. The VB 31 also needed much more maintenance than the sturdy Corsair, which could also take more damage and had a considerable larger range. Hence, already in June 1953, all VB 31 were returned to Europe and based at Hyères, where they replaced obsolete F6F-5 Hellcats and were mainly used for training purposes. In the early sixties, with naval jet fighters finally available, the VB 31 were quickly withdrawn and scrapped, being replaced by Sud-Ouest SO-203 'Aquilon' (license-built D.H. Sea Venom) and Dassault Etendard IVM.
General characteristics:
Crew: one, pilot
Length: 11.63 m (38 ft 8 in)
Wingspan: 13.07 m (43 ft 6 in)
Height (peopeller at max. elevation): 4,9 m (16 ft 1 in)
Powerplant:
1 × Arsenal 24 H, 2.260 kW (3.000 hp), driving a four-bladed propeller
Performance:
Maximum speed: 665 km/h (413 mph)
Range: 1.191 km (740 miles)
Service ceiling: 11.125 m (37.100 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.2 m/s (2008 ft/min)
Armament:
1× 30 mm cannon with 100 RPG, firing through the propeller axis
4× 20 mm HS-404 cannons with 200 RPG or 6×12,7mm machine guns with 250 RPG in the outer wings
1.500kg (3.300 lbs.) of external ordnance, including bombs of of to 454kg (1.000 lbs) calibre, drop tanks or up to eight unguided missiles under the outer wings.
The Kit and its assembly:
I wonder if you recognize the basis for this fantasy airplane? It's actually a modified Bv 155 kit from ART Model/Special Hobby from Russia (Both kits are identical; the ART Model contains an injected clear canopy while the Special Hobby kit offers two vacu canopies, though).
Inspiration struck when I read about the huge VB 10, which has, in its profile view, much resemblance to the Bv 155 - and the latter actually has some naval-friendly features, e .g .the raised cockpit, placed pretty far forward at the wings' leading edge, or the massive landing gear. Since France used some German aircraft after WWII (e.g. Fw 190 for the Air Force and Ju 188 for the Navy), why not create a naval fighter from the Me 155/Bv 155 concept? Well, here it is... the Arsenal VB 31.
For this fantasy conversion, the Bv 155 kit saw major modifications, e. g.:
● The wing span was reduced - from each wing, 4.2cm/1.65" were taken away
● The wings received a new inverted gull wing shape, the cuts came handy
● Outer wings were clipped by 10mm/0,4" each
● Original wing tips were transplanted and re-sculpted to fit
● The rear fuselage was shortened by about 1.3cm/0.5"
● A carburetor intake was added under the nose (from a Hawker Hurricane)
● New horizontal stabilizers from a Grumman Panther (Matchbox)
● Lower position of the horizontal stabilizers
● New landing gear wells had to be cut out, a simple interior was scratch-built
● The landing gear retracts now inwards, original struts and covers were slightly shortened
● New main wheels from a Douglas Skyknight (Matchbox) were used
● New tail wheel (front wheel of a Revell F-16, I guess)
● Modified tail section with an arrestor hook
● The original, extensive exhaust piping between the engine and the turbo charger had to go
● New exhausts at the nose were added (scratch, HO scale roof tiles)
● New propeller from a Matchbox Hawker Tempest was mated with the original spinner
● Cockpit was taken OOB, but a different seat, a pilot and a radio in the rear were added
● Some panel lines had to be re-engraved, due to putty work and/or logical reasons
● Missile hardpoints under the wings come from an F4U
● Antennae were added, accoring to French F4U-7 pictures
There actually was no big plan - I had an idea of what to make from the kit, but modifications came step by step, as the parts fell together and looked or looked not right.
The 24 cylinder Arsenal 24 H engine was really under development in France, so it was a neat choice for such a relatively large aircraft. The huge turbocharger bath under the fuselage of the Bv 155 could easily be taken as a radiator bath for the large, liquid-cooled engine, so that no additional adaptations had to be made.
Overall, I wanted to save the elegant lines of the Bv 155. With the reduced wing span the aircraft looks even elegant, IMHO. All in all, and with its slender, inverted gull wings, the VB 31 somehow reminds of the Ju 87 and the later paper Ju 187 development. There's also something IL-2ish to it?
A side note concerning the kit itself: it has nice engraved details and some fine resin parts for the cockpit or the radiators. But wall strength is high (up to 2mm!), the material is somewhat soft and waxy, and fit is mediocre, so expect serious putty work. Not a bad kit, but something for the experienced modeler. Things surely were worse here, since my modifications to wings and fuselage called for even more sculpting.
Painting and markings:
It took some time to settle on a French naval aircraft, since I already have an all dark-blue whif in my collection (the whiffy F1J Sea Mustang). But I had some appropriate decals at hand, and the time frame as well as the potential user offered a good and plausible story behind the VB 31 in Aéronaval service.
Overall, the aircraft was painted in Blue Angels Blue (FS 15050, Testors 1718) and weathered with slightly lighter shades of blue and grey, for a sun-bleached look and in order to emphasize the panel lines. One can argue about this tone: many Aéronavale aircraft look much darker, rather like FS 15042, but I have seen pictures of such bright aircraft - I'd assume that the color standard was not very strict, as long as the aircraft was "dark blue"?
After basic painting the VB 31 looked very bright, so I did some major dry painting with darker/duller shades like Humbrol 67, 77 and 104 to tame things down, and the result is O.K. now.
The interior surfaces were painted in Mid Stone and dry-painted with Chromate Yellow (Humbrol 225 and 81). AFAIK, this is the typical interior finish for Aéronavel aircraft of that time, and it is a nice contrast to the dark and uniform outside.
Most markings come from an F4U-7 decal sheet, some things like the tail rudder Tricolore had to be improvised (comes from a 30 year old Airfix Bristol Blenheim decal sheet!).
Beyond the dry-painted blue and grey hues on the upper surfaces, the model was slightly weathered with exhaust and soot stains and some dry-painted silver on the leading edges. This makes the all-blue aircraft look a bit more lively and is IMHO authentic for Aéronavale fighters of the 50ies, esp. under the harsh climate of South East Asia.
Finally, everything was sealed under a semi-matt varnish (Tamiya Acryllics, rattle can), and some additional matt varnish was applied on the upper surfaces, also for a dull and sun-bleached look.
The kit was built in a week from sprues to pictures, overall a sleek and elegant aircraft with plausible lines - an hommage to the many elegant and innovative aircraft which were developed in France in WWII and later but which are easily overlooked today!
The Asian elephant (Elephas maximus), also known as the Asiatic elephant, is the only living species of the genus Elephas and is distributed throughout the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, from India in the west, Nepal in the north, Sumatra in the south, and to Borneo in the east. Three subspecies are recognised—E. m. maximus from Sri Lanka, E. m. indicus from mainland Asia and E. m. sumatranus from the island of Sumatra. Formerly, there was also the Syrian elephant or Western Asiatic elephant (Elephas maximus asurus) which was the westernmost population of the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus). This subspecies became extinct in ancient times. Skeletal remains of E. m. asurus have been recorded from the Middle East: Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey from periods dating between at least 1800 BC and likely 700 BC. It is one of only three living species of elephants or elephantids anywhere in the world, the others being the African bush elephant and African forest elephant. It is the second largest species of elephant after the African bush elephant.
The Asian elephant is the largest living land animal in Asia. Since 1986, the Asian elephant has been listed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, as the population has declined by at least 50 per cent over the last three elephant generations, which is about 60–75 years. It is primarily threatened by loss of habitat, habitat degradation, fragmentation and poaching. In 2019, the wild population was estimated at 48,323–51,680 individuals. Female captive elephants have lived beyond 60 years when kept in semi-natural surroundings, such as forest camps. In zoos, Asian elephants die at a much younger age; captive populations are declining due to a low birth and high death rate.
The genus Elephas originated in Sub-Saharan Africa during the Pliocene and spread throughout Africa before expanding into the southern half of Asia. The earliest indications of captive use of Asian elephants are engravings on seals of the Indus Valley civilisation dated to the 3rd millennium BC.
Evolution
The genus Elephas, of which the Asian elephant is the only living member, is the closest relative of the extinct mammoths. The two groups are estimated to have split from each other around 7 million years ago. The earliest Elephas species, Elephas ekorensis, is known from the Early Pliocene of East Africa, around 5-4.2 million years ago. The oldest remains of the genus in Asia are known from the Siwalik Hills in the Indian subcontinent, dating to the late Pliocene, around 3.6-3.2 million years ago, assigned to the species Elephas planifrons. The modern Asian elephant is suggested to have evolved from the species Elephas hysudricus, which first appeared at the beginning of the Early Pleistocene around 2.6 million years ago, and is primarily known from remains of Early-Middle Pleistocene age found on the Indian subcontinent.
In general, the Asian elephant is smaller than the African bush elephant and has the highest body point on the head. The back is convex or level. The ears are small with dorsal borders folded laterally. It has up to 20 pairs of ribs and 34 caudal vertebrae. The feet have five nail-like structures on each forefoot, and four on each hind foot. The forehead has two hemispherical bulges, unlike the flat front of the African elephants. Its long trunk or proboscis has only one fingerlike tip, in contrast to the African elephants which have two. Hence, the Asian species relies more on wrapping around a food item and squeezing it into its mouth, rather than grasping with the tip. Asian elephants have more muscle coordination and can perform more complex tasks.
Cows usually lack tusks; if tusks—in that case, called "tushes"—are present, they are barely visible and only seen when the mouth is open.[citation needed] The enamel plates of the molars are greater in number and closer together in Asian elephants. Some bulls may also lack tusks; these individuals are called "filsy makhnas", and are especially common among the Sri Lankan elephant population. A tusk from an 11 ft (3.4 m) tall elephant killed by Sir Victor Brooke measured 8 ft (2.4 m) in length, and nearly 17 in (43 cm) in circumference, and weighed 90 lb (41 kg). This tusk's weight is, however, exceeded by the weight of a shorter tusk of about 6 ft (1.8 m) in length which weighed 100 lb (45 kg), and there have reportedly been tusks weighing over 150 lb (68 kg).
Skin colour is usually grey, and may be masked by soil because of dusting and wallowing. Their wrinkled skin is movable and contains many nerve centres. It is smoother than that of African elephants and may be depigmented on the trunk, ears, or neck. The epidermis and dermis of the body average 18 mm (0.71 in) thick; skin on the dorsum is 30 mm (1.2 in) thick providing protection against bites, bumps, and adverse weather. Its folds increase surface area for heat dissipation. They can tolerate cold better than excessive heat. Skin temperature varies from 24 to 32.9 °C (75.2 to 91.2 °F). Body temperature averages 35.9 °C (96.6 °F).
Size
On average, when fully-grown, bulls are about 2.75 m (9.0 ft) tall at the shoulder and 4.0 t (4.4 short tons) in weight, while cows are smaller at about 2.40 m (7.9 ft) at the shoulder and 2.7 t (3.0 short tons) in weight. Sexual dimorphism in body size is relatively less pronounced in Asian elephants than in African bush elephants; with bulls averaging 15% and 23% taller in the former and latter respectively. Length of body and head including trunk is 5.5–6.5 m (18–21 ft) with the tail being 1.2–1.5 m (3.9–4.9 ft) long. The largest bull elephant ever recorded was shot by the Maharajah of Susang in the Garo Hills of Assam, India, in 1924, it weighed an estimated 7 t (7.7 short tons), stood 3.43 m (11.3 ft) tall at the shoulder and was 8.06 m (26.4 ft) long from head to tail. There are reports of larger individuals as tall as 3.7 m (12 ft).
Asian elephants inhabit grasslands, tropical evergreen forests, semi-evergreen forests, moist deciduous forests, dry deciduous forests and dry thorn forests, in addition to cultivated and secondary forests and scrublands. Over this range of habitat types elephants occur from sea level to over 3,000 m (9,800 ft). In the eastern Himalaya in northeast India, they regularly move up above 3,000 m (9,800 ft) in summer at a few sites.
In China, the Asian elephant survives only in the prefectures of Xishuangbanna, Simao, and Lincang of southern Yunnan. The estimated population is around 300 individual (in 2020).
In Bangladesh, some isolated populations survive in the south-east Chittagong Hills.[10] A herd of 20–25 wild elephants was reported as being present in the Garo Hills of Mymensingh in the late-1990s, being detached from a big herd in the Peack hills of India and prevented from returning by fences put up in the meantime by the Indian border security force. The herd was estimated at about 60 individuals in 2014.
In Malaysia's northern Johor and Terengganu National Park, two Asian elephants were tracked using satellite tracking technology. They spent most of their time in secondary or "logged-over forest" and travelled 75% of their time in an area less than 1.5 km (0.93 mi) away from a water source.
Asian elephants are crepuscular. They are classified as megaherbivores and consume up to 150 kg (330 lb) of plant matter per day. They are generalist feeders, and are both grazers and browsers. They are known to feed on at least 112 different plant species, most commonly of the order Malvales, as well as the legume, palm, sedge and true grass families. They browse more in the dry season with bark constituting a major part of their diet in the cool part of that season. They drink at least once a day and are never far from a permanent source of fresh water.They need 80–200 litres of water a day and use even more for bathing. At times, they scrape the soil for clay or minerals.
Cows and calves move about together as groups, while bulls disperse from their mothers upon reaching adolescence. Bulls are solitary or form temporary "bachelor groups". Cow-calf units generally tend to be small, typically consisting of three adults (most likely related females) and their offspring. Larger groups of as many as 15 adult females have also been recorded. Seasonal aggregations of 17 individuals including calves and young adults have been observed in Sri Lanka's Uda Walawe National Park. Until recently, Asian elephants, like African elephants, were thought to be under the leadership of older adult females, or matriarchs. It is now recognized that cows form extensive and very fluid social networks, with varying degrees of associations between individuals. Social ties generally tend to be weaker than in African elephants.
Unlike African elephants, which rarely use their forefeet for anything other than digging or scraping soil, Asian elephants are more agile at using their feet in conjunction with the trunk for manipulating objects. They can sometimes be known for their violent behavior.
Asian elephants are recorded to make three basic sounds: growls, squeaks and snorts. Growls in their basic form are used for short distance communication. During mild arousal, growls resonate in the trunk and become rumbles while for long-distance communication, they escalate into roars. Low-frequency growls are infrasonic and made in many contexts. Squeaks come in two forms: chirpings and trumpets. Chirping consists of multiple short squeaks and signals conflict and nervousness. Trumpets are lengthened squeaks with increased loudness and are produced during extreme arousal. Snorts signal changes in activity and increase in loudness during mild or strong arousal. During the latter case, when an elephant bounces the tip of the trunk, it creates booms which serve as threat displays: 142 Elephants can distinguish low-amplitude sounds.
Rarely, tigers have been recorded attacking and killing calves, especially if the calves become separated from their mothers, stranded from their herd, or orphaned. Adults are largely invulnerable to natural predation. There is a singular anecdotal case of a mother Asian elephant allegedly being killed alongside her calf; however, this account is contestable. In 2011 and 2014, two instances were recorded of tigers successfully killing adult elephants; one by a single tiger in Jim Corbett National Park on a 20-year-old young adult elephant cow, and another on a 28-year-old sick adult bull in Kaziranga National Park further east, which was taken down and eaten by several tigers hunting cooperatively. Elephants appear to distinguish between the growls of larger predators like tigers and smaller predators like leopards; they react to leopards less fearfully and more aggressively.
Reproduction in Asian elephants can be attributed to the production and perception of signaling compounds called pheromones. These signals are transmitted through various bodily fluids. They are commonly released in urine but in males they are also found in special secretions from the temporal glands. Once integrated and perceived, these signals provide the receiver with information about the reproductive status of the sender. If both parties are ready to breed, reproductive ritualic behavior occurs and the process of sexual reproduction proceeds.
Bulls will fight one another to get access to oestrus cows. Strong fights over access to females are extremely rare. Bulls reach sexual maturity around the age of 12–15. Between the ages of 10 and 20 years, bulls undergo an annual phenomenon known as "musth". This is a period where the testosterone level is up to 100 times greater than non-musth periods, and they become aggressive. Secretions containing pheromones occur during this period, from the paired temporal glands located on the head between the lateral edge of the eye and the base of the ear. The aggressive behaviors observed during musth can be attributed to varying amounts of frontalin (1,5-dimethyl-6,8-dioxabicyclo[3.2.1]octane) throughout the maturation process of bulls. Frontalin is a pheromone that was first isolated in bark beetles but can also be produced in the bulls of both Asian and African Elephants. The compound can be excreted through urine as well as through the temporal glands of the bull, allowing signaling to occur. During musth, increased concentrations of frontalin in the bull's urine communicate the reproductive status of the bull to female elephants.
Similar to other mammals, hormone secretion in female elephants is regulated by an estrous cycle. This cycle is regulated by surges in Luteinizing Hormone that are observed 3 weeks from each other. This type of estrous cycle has also been observed in African Elephants but is not known to affect other mammals. The first surge in Luteinizing Hormone is not followed by the release of an egg from the ovaries. However, some female elephants still exhibit the expected mating protocols during this surge. Female elephants give ovulatory cues by utilizing sex pheromones. A principal component thereof, (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate, has also been found to be a sex pheromone in numerous species of insects. In both insects and elephants, this chemical compound is used as an attractant to assist the mating process. In elephants, the chemical is secreted through urination and this aids in the attraction of bulls to mate. Once detected, the chemical stimulates the vomeronasal organ of the bull, thus providing information on the maturity of the female.
Reproductive signaling exchange between male and female elephants are transmitted through olfactory cues in bodily fluids. In males, the increase in frontalin during musth heightens their sensitivity to the (Z)-7-dodecen-1-yl acetate produced by female elephants. Once perceived by receptors in the trunk, a sequence of ritualistic behaviors follow. The responses in males vary based on both the stage of development and the temperament of the elephant. This process of receiving and processing signals through the trunk is referred to as flehmen. The difference in body movements give cues to gauge if the male is interested in breeding with the female that produced the secretion. A bull that is ready to breed will move closer to the urine and in some cases an erection response is elicited. A bull that is not ready to breed will be timid and try to dissociate themselves from the signal.
In addition to reproductive communication, chemosensory signaling is used to facilitate same-sex interactions. When less developed males detect pheromones from a male in musth, they often retreat to avoid coming in contact with aggressive behaviors. Female elephants have also been seen to communicate with each other through pheromone in urine. The purpose of this type of intersex communication is still being investigated. However, there are clear differences in signaling strength and receiver response throughout different stages of the estrous cycle.
The gestation period is 18–22 months, and the cow gives birth to one calf, only occasionally twins. The calf is fully developed by the 19th month, but stays in the womb to grow so that it can reach its mother to feed. At birth, the calf weighs about 100 kg (220 lb), and is suckled for up to three years. Once a female gives birth, she usually does not breed again until the first calf is weaned, resulting in a four to five-year birth interval. During this period, mother to calf communication primarily takes place through temporal means. However, male calves have been known to develop sex pheromone-producing organs at a young age. Early maturity of the vomeronasal organ allows immature elephants to produce and receive pheromones. It is unlikely that the integration of these pheromones will result in a flehmen response in a calf. Females stay on with the herd, but mature males are chased away.
Female Asian elephants sexually mature around the age of 10~15 and keep growing until 30, while males fully mature at more than the age of 25, and constantly grow throughout their life. Average elephant life expectancy is 60 years in the wild and 80 in captivity, although this has been exaggerated in the past. Generation length of the Asian elephant is 22 years.
Asian elephants have a very large and highly developed neocortex, a trait also shared by humans, apes and certain dolphin species. They have a greater volume of cerebral cortex available for cognitive processing than all other existing land animals.[citation needed] Results of studies indicate that Asian elephants have cognitive abilities for tool use and tool-making similar to great apes. They exhibit a wide variety of behaviours, including those associated with grief, learning, allomothering, mimicry, play, altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory, and language. Elephants reportedly head to safer ground during natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes, but data from two satellite-collared Sri Lankan elephants indicate this may be untrue.
Several students of elephant cognition and neuroanatomy are convinced that Asian elephants are highly intelligent and self-aware. Others contest this view.
Threats
The pre-eminent threats to the Asian elephant today are the loss, degradation and fragmentation of its habitat, which leads to increasing conflicts between humans and elephants. Asian elephants are poached for ivory and a variety of other products including meat and leather. The demand for elephant skin has risen due to it being an increasingly-common ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine.
Human–elephant conflict
In some parts of Asia, people and elephants have co-existed for thousands of years. In other areas, people and elephants come into conflict, resulting in violence, and ultimately, the displacement of elephants.
Destruction of forests through logging, encroachment, slash-and-burn, shifting cultivation, and monoculture tree plantations are major threats to the survival of elephants. Human–elephant conflicts occur when elephants raid crops of shifting cultivators in fields, which are scattered over a large area interspersed with forests. Depredation in human settlements is another major area of human–elephant conflict occurring in small forest pockets, encroachments into elephant habitat, and on elephant migration routes. However, studies in Sri Lanka indicate that traditional slash-and-burn agriculture may create optimal habitat for elephants by creating a mosaic of successional-stage vegetation. Populations inhabiting small habitat fragments are much more liable to come into conflict with humans.
Human-elephant conflict can be categorised into:
ultimate causes including growing human population, large-scale development projects and poor top-down governance;
proximate causes including habitat loss due to deforestation, disruption of elephant migratory routes, expansion of agriculture and illegal encroachment into protected areas.
Development such as border fencing along the India–Bangladesh border has become a major impediment to the free movement of elephants. In Assam, more than 1,150 humans and 370 elephants died as a result of human-elephant conflict between 1980 and 2003. In India alone, over 400 people are killed by elephants every year, and 0.8 to 1 million hectares are damaged, affecting at least 500,000 families across the country. Moreover, elephants are known to destroy crops worth up to US$2–3 million annually. This has major impacts on the welfare and livelihoods of local communities, as well as the future conservation of this species. In countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, the Asian elephant is one of the most feared wild animals, even though they are less deadly than other local animals such as venomous snakes (which were estimated to claim more than 30 times more lives in Sri Lanka than elephants). As a whole, Asian elephants display highly sophisticated and sometimes unpredictable behaviour. Most untamed elephants try to avoid humans, but if they are caught off guard by any perceived physical threat, including humans, they will likely charge. This is especially true of males in musth and of females with young. Gunfire and other similar methods of deterring, which are known to be effective against many kinds of wild animals including tigers, may or may not work with elephants, and can even worsen the situation. Elephants that have been abused by humans in the past often become "rogue elephants", which regularly attack people with no provocation.
Poaching
For ivory
The demand for ivory during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly in East Asia, led to rampant poaching and the serious decline of elephants in both Africa and Asia. In Thailand, the illegal trade in live elephants and ivory still flourishes. Although the amount of ivory being openly sold has decreased substantially since 2001, Thailand still has one of the largest and most active black markets for ivory seen anywhere in the world. Tusks from Thai-poached elephants also enter the market; between 1992 and 1997 at least 24 male elephants were killed for their tusks.
Up to the early 1990s, Vietnamese ivory craftsmen used exclusively Asian elephant ivory from Vietnam and neighbouring Lao and Cambodia. Before 1990, there were few tourists and the low demand for worked ivory could be supplied by domestic elephants. Economic liberalisation and an increase in tourism raised both local and visitors' demands for worked ivory, which resulted in heavy poaching.
For skin
The skin of the Asian elephant is used as an ingredient in Chinese medicine as well as in the manufacture of ornamental beads. The practice has been aided by China's State Forestry Administration (SFA), which has issued licences for the manufacture and sale of pharmaceutical products containing elephant skin, thereby making trading legal. In 2010, four skinned elephants were found in a forest in Myanmar; 26 elephants were killed by poachers in 2013 and 61 in 2016. According to the NGO Elephant Family, Myanmar is the main source of elephant skin, where a poaching crisis has developed rapidly since 2010.
Handling methods
Young elephants are captured and illegally imported to Thailand from Myanmar for use in the tourism industry; calves are used mainly in amusement parks and are trained to perform various stunts for tourists.
The calves are often subjected to a 'breaking in' process, which may involve being tied up, confined, starved, beaten and tortured; as a result, two-thirds may perish. Handlers use a technique known as the training crush, in which "handlers use sleep-deprivation, hunger, and thirst to "break" the elephants' spirit and make them submissive to their owners"; moreover, handlers drive nails into the elephants' ears and feet.
Disease
The Asian elephant is listed on CITES Appendix I. It is a quintessential flagship species, deployed to catalyze a range of conservation goals, including habitat conservation at landscape scales, generating public awareness on conservation issues, and mobilisation as a popular cultural icon both in India and the West. A key aspect of Asian elephant conservation is connectivity, and preserving the preferred movement routes of elephants through areas of high vegetation cover and with "low human population density".
The World Elephant Day has been celebrated on 12 August since 2012. Events are organized to divulge information and to engage people about the problems that the Asian elephant is facing. August has been established as the Asian Elephant Awareness Month by zoos and conservation partners in the United States.
In China, Asian elephants are under first-level protection. Yunnan province has 11 national and regional nature reserves. In total, the covered protected area in China is about 510,000 km2 (200,000 sq mi). In 2020, the population of Asian elephants in Yunnan was estimated at around 300 individuals. As conflicts between humans and wild elephants have emerged around protected areas in the last years, the prefecture of Xishuangbanna built food bases and planted bananas and bamboo to create a better habitat.
In Thailand, Salakpra Wildlife Sanctuary and Tham Than Lot National Park are protected areas hosting around 250–300 elephants, according to figures from 2013. In recent years the National Park has faced issues due to encroachment and over-exploitation.
In India, the National Board of Wildlife did a recommendation, allowing coal mining in the Dehing Patkai elephant reserve in April 2020. The decision raised concerns between students and environmental activists who launched an online campaign to stop the project.
In captivity
About half of the global zoo elephant population is kept in European zoos, where they have about half the median life span of conspecifics in protected populations in range countries. This discrepancy is clearest in Asian elephants: infant mortality is twice that seen in Burmese timber camps, and adult survivorship in zoos has not improved significantly in recent years. One risk factor for Asian zoo elephants is being moved between institutions, with early removal from the mother tending to have additional adverse effects. Another risk factor is being born into a zoo rather than being imported from the wild, with poor adult survivorship in zoo-born Asians apparently being conferred prenatally or in early infancy. Likely causes for compromised survivorship is stress and/or obesity. Foot problems are commonly observed in captive elephants. These are related to lack of exercise, long hours standing on hard substrates, and contamination resulting from standing in their dung. Many of these problems are treatable. However, mistreatment may lead to serious disability or death.
Demographic analysis of captive Asian elephants in North America indicates that the population is not self-sustaining. First year mortality is nearly 30 per cent, and fecundity is extremely low throughout the prime reproductive years. Data from North American and European regional studbooks from 1962 to 2006 were analysed for deviations in the birth and juvenile death sex ratios. Of 349 captive calves born, 142 died prematurely. They died within one month of birth, major causes being stillbirth and infanticide by either the calf's mother or by one of the exhibition mates. The sex ratio of stillbirths in Europe was found to have a tendency for excess of males.
In culture
Bones of Asian elephants excavated at Mohenjo-daro in the Indus Valley indicate that they were tamed in the Indus Valley civilization and used for work. Decorated elephants are also depicted on seals and were modelled in clay.
The Asian elephant became a siege engine, a mount in war, a status symbol, a beast of burden, and an elevated platform for hunting during historical times in South Asia.
Asian elephants have been captured from the wild and tamed for use by humans. Their ability to work under instruction makes them particularly useful for carrying heavy objects. They have been used particularly for timber-carrying in jungle areas. Other than their work use, they have been used in war, in ceremonies, and for carriage. It is reported that war elephants are still in use by the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) to take control of Kachin State in northern Myanmar from Myanmar's military. The KIA use about four dozen elephants to carry supplies.
The Asian elephant plays an important part in the culture of the subcontinent and beyond, being featured prominently in the Panchatantra fables and the Buddhist Jataka tales. They play a major role in Hinduism: the god Ganesha's head is that of an elephant, and the "blessings" of a temple elephant are highly valued. Elephants are frequently used in processions where the animals are adorned with festive outfits.
The Asian elephant is depicted in several Indian manuscripts and treatises. Notable amongst these is the Matanga Lila (elephant sport) of Nilakantha. The manuscript Hastividyarnava is from Assam in northeast India.
In the Burmese, Thai and Sinhalese animal and planetary zodiac, the Asian elephant, both tusked and tuskless, are the fourth and fifth animal zodiacs of the Burmese, the fourth animal zodiac of the Thai, and the second animal zodiac of the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka. Similarly, the elephant is the twelfth animal zodiac in the Dai animal zodiac of the Dai people in southern China.
In North America, triffids begin evolving new shapes and behaviours: standard triffids develop a form of echolocation, swamp-dwelling triffids become fully aquatic and a small number of super-sized triffids attack New York. Members of the Algonquin tribe manage to escape attack due to their immunity to triffid venom. By the end it is revealed that due to their constant exposure to small doses of triffid venom present in their food, a quarter of the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight are immune to triffid venom, thus encouraging them to return to the British mainland.
For most this was too late.!!!
Something I haven’t done I don’t think before. This set will take this maxi dress and swap out and add accessories to produce different looks based on the same core layer. I was quite surprised putting this together how versatile a long animal print Primark dress could be
For Blog: evolvefashionsl.wordpress.com/2023/12/05/alitash/
Dress - Evolve
Makeup - Opulein
Head - LeLutka
Jewelry - Chop Zuey
Hair - Truth
All links in Blog
Most civilisations have always been formed and have evolved around water, which is essential to every animal and plant. Rivers all over the world have spawned civilisations from times ancient.
The Tigris and the Euphrates in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq); the River Nile in Egypt; the Indus River in India; and the Yellow and Blue rivers in China would be a starting point for reference.
India has had successive waves of conquerors coming in from the Khyber Pass to exploit the riches and wealth accreated because of the flood plains of the rivers Ganges and Yamuna. Over the centuries Yamuna has lost its charm but the Ganges still has lots of water flowing through.
Amongst the invaders the Mughals held sway for a very long time alongwith the English. The most important of Mughal Emperors was Akbar who ruled a glorious empire. He founded a city called FAtehpur Sikri on the banks of the River Yamuna in mid 16th century to commemorate his victories.
However, Fatehpur Sikri's glory was short-lived due to its abandonment primarily caused by a lack of water supply. Despite its grandeur and strategic location near Agra, the capital had to be deserted as it couldn't sustain the growing population and needs of the empire.
Do we call this as Akbar's Folly ? Yes.
The intricate palaces, mosques, and courtyards within Fatehpur Sikri stand as a testament to the artistic and architectural brilliance of that era. Visitors can explore structures like Buland Darwaza, Jama Masjid, Tomb of Salim Chishti, and Panch Mahal that reflect the grandeur and vision of Akbar's reign.
Though now in ruins, Fatehpur Sikri continues to attract tourists and history enthusiasts from around the world who marvel at its beauty and ponder over its mysterious abandonment centuries ago.
On a dusty polluted day, I ventured into the monument with scant hope of any good photographic settings but the man sitting with 5-6 clay pitchers of water to disburse the liquid nourishment was really apt to showcase the pivotal role that water plays.
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