View allAll Photos Tagged segmentation
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Serial ultrathin (70nm) section ribbons were collected on a silica wafer for array tomography. It is possible to collect even up to a thousand consecutive sections on a single wafer. Then, these sections can be imaged with an SEM and stitched into a 3D EM stack for segmentation. This technique could replace conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM), because it is more powerful and less time consuming.
On the picture, mouse hippocampus was sectioned, and the pyramidal layer was false coloured.
Courtesy of Mr. Abel Major , MTA KOKI, IEM HAS
Image Details
Instrument used: Apreo
Magnification: 100x
Horizontal Field Width: -
Vacuum: High vac.
Voltage: 2 kV
Spot: 0.1 nA
Working Distance: 6.5
Detector: ETD
Three Legged Cross, Dorset
COLLEMBOLA (Springtails) > SYMPHYPLEONA
Dicyrtomidae > Dicyrtominae > Dicyrtomina saundersi
____________________________________________________
Hidden Worlds
Whilst previously classified with insects, the COLLEMBOLA (Springtails) are now treated as a separate subclass with the other non-insect hexapods – DIPLURA (the Two-pronged Bristletails) and PROTURA (Proturans or Coneheads); all being grouped together into ENTOGNATHA, the class for wingless ARTHROPODS, that sits alongside INSECTA in the subphylum HEXAPODA.
Springtails, the most abundant arthropods on earth, are very small wingless creatures, just a few millimetres long that live mainly in soil and leaf litter. They are so named due to their forked springing organ, or furca, which enables them to jump considerable distances of up to several centimetres when disturbed. They have reduced eyes, variable length antennae, simple bodies and short legs. They have two distinct forms; elongate in which the six abdomen segments are clearly visible, and globular bodies where the segmentation is far from apparent. There are around 250 species in Britain, the majority of which are so small that I wouldn’t even attempt to photograph them. However, there are a few in the 2-5mm range that are of interest and over the past few weeks I have managed to get some reasonable photos of some of them.
Despite being only 2-3mm in size, Dicyrtomina saundersi is one of the most widely observed springtail species in Britain; photos of which are often used to support articles on Collembola due to their features and the fact that they appear to be smiling when seen face-on. Apart from the shape of the markings, Dicyrtomina saundersi is, to all intents and purposes, identical in appearance and morphological characters to Dicyrtomina ornata. They are both a pale greeny-yellow ground colour with maroon markings, but whereas Dicyrtomina ornata has a solid patch of the dark pigment at the posterior end of the abdomen, Dicyrtomina saundersi is distinctively multi-barred. It also has a definite colour change at the joint of second and third segments of the antennae.
This is the last series of photos in my Hidden Worlds feature.
Abstract
To understand the evolutionary significance of geographic variation, one must identify the factors that generate phenotypic differences among populations. I examined the causes of geographic variation in and evolutionary history of number of trunk vertebrae in slender salamanders. Batrachoseps (Caudata: Plethodontidae). Number of trunk vertebrae varies at many taxonomic levels within Batrachoseps. Parallel clines in number occur along an environmental gradient in three lineages in the Coast Ranges of California. These parallel clines may signal either adaptation or a shared phenotypically plastic response to the environmental gradient. By raising eggs from 10 populations representing four species of Batrachoseps, I demonstrated that number of trunk vertebrae can be altered by the developmental temperature; however, the degree of plasticity is insufficient to account for geographic variation. Thus, the geographic variation results largely from genetic variation. Number of trunk vertebrae covaries with body size and shape in diverse vertebrate taxa, including Batrachoseps. I hypothesize that selection for different degrees of elongation, possibly related to fossoriality, has led to the extensive evolution of number of trunk vertebrae in Batrachoseps. Analysis of intrapopulational variation revealed sexual dimorphism in both body shape and number of trunk vertebrae, but no correlation between these variables in either sex. Females are more elongate than males, a pattern that has been attributed to fecundity selection in other taxa. Patterns of covariation among different classes of vertebrae suggest that some intrapopulational variation in number results from changes in vertebral identity rather than changes in segmentation.
Elizabeth L. Jockusch
Evolution
Images in this gallery were captured by:
Mark Smith M.S. Geoscientist mark@macroscopicsolutions.com
Daniel Saftner B.S. Geoscientist and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer daniel@macroscopicsolutions.com
Annette Evans Ph.D. Student at the University of Connecticut annette@macroscopicsolutions.com
A photo inspired by Saul Leiter Retrospektive - an exhibition at the Kunstfoyer in Munich
[www.versicherungskammer-kulturstiftung.de/en/kunstfoyer/e...]:
Early street photography with reflections and segmentations
***
What you see first depends on the level of perception:
Working area at Munich, Marienhof with an artistic decoration on the surface of the hoarding.
What did You see first?
Comments welcome...
***
[CF_2019-09-04_113518(R)_EditCPP4(Ausschnitt3x2_3991x2661_Sch2).jpg]
Abstract
To understand the evolutionary significance of geographic variation, one must identify the factors that generate phenotypic differences among populations. I examined the causes of geographic variation in and evolutionary history of number of trunk vertebrae in slender salamanders. Batrachoseps (Caudata: Plethodontidae). Number of trunk vertebrae varies at many taxonomic levels within Batrachoseps. Parallel clines in number occur along an environmental gradient in three lineages in the Coast Ranges of California. These parallel clines may signal either adaptation or a shared phenotypically plastic response to the environmental gradient. By raising eggs from 10 populations representing four species of Batrachoseps, I demonstrated that number of trunk vertebrae can be altered by the developmental temperature; however, the degree of plasticity is insufficient to account for geographic variation. Thus, the geographic variation results largely from genetic variation. Number of trunk vertebrae covaries with body size and shape in diverse vertebrate taxa, including Batrachoseps. I hypothesize that selection for different degrees of elongation, possibly related to fossoriality, has led to the extensive evolution of number of trunk vertebrae in Batrachoseps. Analysis of intrapopulational variation revealed sexual dimorphism in both body shape and number of trunk vertebrae, but no correlation between these variables in either sex. Females are more elongate than males, a pattern that has been attributed to fecundity selection in other taxa. Patterns of covariation among different classes of vertebrae suggest that some intrapopulational variation in number results from changes in vertebral identity rather than changes in segmentation.
Elizabeth L. Jockusch
Evolution
Images in this gallery were captured by:
Mark Smith M.S. Geoscientist mark@macroscopicsolutions.com
Daniel Saftner B.S. Geoscientist and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer daniel@macroscopicsolutions.com
Annette Evans Ph.D. Student at the University of Connecticut annette@macroscopicsolutions.com
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Nakajima J9N Kitsuka (中島 橘花, "Orange Blossom", pronounced Kikka in Kanji used traditionally by the Japanese) was Japan's first jet aircraft. In internal IJN documents it was also called Kōkoku Nigō Heiki (皇国二号兵器, "Imperial Weapon No.2"). After the Japanese military attaché in Germany witnessed trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a request to Nakajima to develop a similar aircraft to be used as a fast attack bomber. Among the specifications for the design were the requirements that it should be able to be built largely by unskilled labor, and that the wings should be foldable. This latter feature was not intended for potential use on aircraft carriers, but rather to enable the aircraft to be hidden in caves and tunnels around Japan as the navy began to prepare for the defense of the home islands.
Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura laid out an aircraft that bore a strong but superficial resemblance to the Me 262. Compared to the Me 262, the J9N airframe was noticeably smaller and more conventional in design, with straight wings and tail surfaces, lacking the slight sweepback of the Me 262. The triangular fuselage cross section characteristic of the German design was less pronounced, due to smaller fuel tanks. The main landing gear of the Kikka was taken from the A6M Zero and the nose wheel from the tail of a Yokosuka P1Y bomber.
The Kikka was designed in preliminary form to use the Tsu-11, a rudimentary motorjet style jet engine that was essentially a ducted fan with an afterburner. Subsequent designs were planned around the Ne-10 (TR-10) centrifugal-flow turbojet, and the Ne-12, which added a four-stage axial compressor to the front of the Ne-10. Tests of this powerplant soon revealed that it would not produce anywhere near the power required to propel the aircraft, and the project was temporarily stalled. It was then decided to produce a new axial flow turbojet based on the German BMW 003.
Development of the engine was troubled, based on little more than photographs and a single cut-away drawing of the BMW 003. A suitable unit, the Ishikawa-jima Ne-20, was finally built in January 1945. By that time, the Kikka project was making progress and the first prototype made its maiden flight. Due to the worsening war situation, the Navy considered employing the Kikka as a kamikaze weapon, but this was quickly rejected due to the high cost and complexity associated with manufacturing contemporary turbojet engines. Other more economical projects designed specifically for kamikaze attacks, such as the simpler Nakajima Tōka (designed to absorb Japanese stock of obsolete engines), the pulsejet-powered Kawanishi Baika, and the infamous Yokosuka Ohka, were either underway or already in mass production.
The following month the prototype was dismantled and delivered to Kisarazu Naval Airfield where it was re-assembled and prepared for flight testing. The aircraft performed well during a 20-minute test flight, with the only concern being the length of the takeoff run – the Ne 20 only had a thrust of 4.66 kN (1,047 lbf), and the engine pair had barely sufficient power to get the aircraft off the ground. This lack of thrust also resulted in a maximum speed of just 623 km/h (387 mph, 336 kn) at sea level and 696 km/h (432 mph; 376 kn) at 10,000 m (32,808 ft).
For the second test flight, four days later, rocket assisted take off (RATO) units were fitted to the aircraft, which worked and gave the aircraft acceptable field performance. The tests went on, together with a second prototype, but despite this early test stage, the J9N was immediately rushed into production.
By May 1945 approximately forty airframes had been completed and handed over to IJN home defense frontline units for operational use and conversion training. These were structurally identical with the prototypes, but they were powered by more potent and reliable Ne-130 (with 8.826 kN/900 kgf) or Ne-230 (8.679 kN/885 kgf) engines, which finally gave the aircraft a competitive performance and also made the RATO boosters obsolete - unless an 800 kg bomb was carried in overload configuration. Most were J9N1 day fighter single seaters, armed with two 30 mm Type 5 cannons with 50 rounds per gun in the nose. Some operational Kitsukas had, due to the lack of equipment, the 30 mm guns replaced with lighter 20 mm Ho-5 cannon. A few were unarmed two-seaters (J9N2) with dual controls and a second seat instead of the fuselage fuel tank. This markedly limited the aircraft’s range but was accepted for a dedicated trainer, but a ventral 500 l drop tank could be carried to extend the two-seater’s range to an acceptable level.
A small number, both single- and two-seaters, were furthermore adapted to night fighter duties and equipped with an experimental ”FD-2” centimeter waveband radar in the nose with an “antler” antenna array, similar to German radar sets of the time. The FD-2 used four forward-facing Yagi style antennae with initially five and later with seven elements (the sideway facing rods) each. These consisted of two pairs, each with a sending (top and bot) and a receiving antenna (left and right). The set used horizontal lobe switching to find the target, an electrical shifter would continuously switch between the sets. The signal strengths would then be compared to determine the range and azimuth of the target, and the results would then be shown on a CRT display.
In order to fit the electronics (the FD-2 weighed around 70 kg/155 lb) the night fighters typically had one of the nose-mounted guns replaced by a fixed, obliquely firing Ho-5 gun ("Schräge Musik"-style), which was mounted in the aircraft’s flank behind the cockpit, and the 500l drop tank became a permanent installation to extend loiter time, at the expense of top speed, though. These machines received the suffix “-S” and flew, despite the FD-2’s weaknesses and limitations, a few quite effective missions against American B-29 bombers, but their impact was minimal due to the aircrafts’ small numbers and poor reliability of the still experimental radar system. However, the FD-2’s performance was rather underwhelming, though, with an insufficient range of only 3 km. Increased drag due to the antennae and countermeasures deployed by B-29 further decreased the effectiveness, and the J9N2-S’s successes could be rather attributed to experienced and motivated crews than the primitive radar.
Proposed follow-on J9N versions had included a reconnaissance aircraft and a fast attack aircraft that was supposed to carry a single bomb under the fuselage against ships. There was also a modified version of the design to be launched from a 200 m long catapult, the "Nakajima Kikka-kai Prototype Turbojet Special Attacker". All these proposed versions were expected to be powered by more advanced developments of the Ne-20, the Ne-330 with 13 kN (1.330 kg) thrust, but none of them reached the hardware stage.
The J9Ns’ overall war contribution was negligible, and after the war, several airframes (including partial airframes) were captured by Allied forces. Three airframes (including a two-seat night fighter with FD-2 radar) were brought to the U.S. for study. Today, two J9N examples survive in the National Air and Space Museum: The first is a Kikka that was taken to the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Maryland for analysis. This aircraft is very incomplete and is believed to have been patched together from a variety of semi-completed airframes. It is currently still in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, MD. The second Kikka is on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) fuselage only
10.30 m (33 ft 8¾ in) with FD-2 antenna array
Wingspan: 10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 13.2 m² (142 sq ft)
Empty weight: 2,300 kg (5,071 lb)
Gross weight: 3,500 kg (7,716 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,080 kg (8,995 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Ishikawajima Ne-130 or Ne-230 axial-flow turbojet engines
each with 8.83 kN/900 kg or 8.68 kN/885 kg thrust
Performance:
Maximum speed: 785 km/h (487 mph, 426 kn)
Range: 925 km (574 mi, 502 nmi) with internal fuel
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.5 m/s (2,064 ft/min)
Wing loading: 265 kg/m² (54 lb/sq ft)
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.43
Armament:
1× 30 mm (1.181 in) Type 5 cannon with 50 rounds in the nose
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Type Ho-2 cannon with 80 rounds, mounted obliquely behind the cockpit
1× ventral hardpoint for a 500 l drop tank or a single 500 kg (1,102 lb) bomb
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Well, this fictional Kikka night fighter looks quite dry, but that makes it IMHO more credible. The large antler antenna array might look “a bit too much”, and a real night fighter probably had a simpler arrangement with a single Yagi-style/arrow-shaped antenna, but a description of the FD-2 radar suggested the layout I chose – and it does not look bad. The oblique cannon in the flank is another odd detail, but it is not unplausible. However, with all the equipment and esp. the draggy antennae on board, the Kikka’s mediocre performance would surely have seriously suffered, probably beyond an effective use. But this is whifworld, after all. ;-)
İş hayatında kaliteli hizmet
Her ne iş yaptırırsak yaptıralım bütün işlerimizde kaliteyi ararız. Aldığımız ürünlerden tutun da çevremizde yapılan her işin en ince ayrıntısına kadar dikkat eder mutlaka ama mutlaka işlerin kaliteli olmasına özen gösteririz. Peki, bizler yaptığımız işleri kaliteli y...
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Nakajima J9N Kitsuka (中島 橘花, "Orange Blossom", pronounced Kikka in Kanji used traditionally by the Japanese) was Japan's first jet aircraft. In internal IJN documents it was also called Kōkoku Nigō Heiki (皇国二号兵器, "Imperial Weapon No.2"). After the Japanese military attaché in Germany witnessed trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a request to Nakajima to develop a similar aircraft to be used as a fast attack bomber. Among the specifications for the design were the requirements that it should be able to be built largely by unskilled labor, and that the wings should be foldable. This latter feature was not intended for potential use on aircraft carriers, but rather to enable the aircraft to be hidden in caves and tunnels around Japan as the navy began to prepare for the defense of the home islands.
Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura laid out an aircraft that bore a strong but superficial resemblance to the Me 262. Compared to the Me 262, the J9N airframe was noticeably smaller and more conventional in design, with straight wings and tail surfaces, lacking the slight sweepback of the Me 262. The triangular fuselage cross section characteristic of the German design was less pronounced, due to smaller fuel tanks. The main landing gear of the Kikka was taken from the A6M Zero and the nose wheel from the tail of a Yokosuka P1Y bomber.
The Kikka was designed in preliminary form to use the Tsu-11, a rudimentary motorjet style jet engine that was essentially a ducted fan with an afterburner. Subsequent designs were planned around the Ne-10 (TR-10) centrifugal-flow turbojet, and the Ne-12, which added a four-stage axial compressor to the front of the Ne-10. Tests of this powerplant soon revealed that it would not produce anywhere near the power required to propel the aircraft, and the project was temporarily stalled. It was then decided to produce a new axial flow turbojet based on the German BMW 003.
Development of the engine was troubled, based on little more than photographs and a single cut-away drawing of the BMW 003. A suitable unit, the Ishikawa-jima Ne-20, was finally built in January 1945. By that time, the Kikka project was making progress and the first prototype made its maiden flight. Due to the worsening war situation, the Navy considered employing the Kikka as a kamikaze weapon, but this was quickly rejected due to the high cost and complexity associated with manufacturing contemporary turbojet engines. Other more economical projects designed specifically for kamikaze attacks, such as the simpler Nakajima Tōka (designed to absorb Japanese stock of obsolete engines), the pulsejet-powered Kawanishi Baika, and the infamous Yokosuka Ohka, were either underway or already in mass production.
The following month the prototype was dismantled and delivered to Kisarazu Naval Airfield where it was re-assembled and prepared for flight testing. The aircraft performed well during a 20-minute test flight, with the only concern being the length of the takeoff run – the Ne 20 only had a thrust of 4.66 kN (1,047 lbf), and the engine pair had barely sufficient power to get the aircraft off the ground. This lack of thrust also resulted in a maximum speed of just 623 km/h (387 mph, 336 kn) at sea level and 696 km/h (432 mph; 376 kn) at 10,000 m (32,808 ft).
For the second test flight, four days later, rocket assisted take off (RATO) units were fitted to the aircraft, which worked and gave the aircraft acceptable field performance. The tests went on, together with a second prototype, but despite this early test stage, the J9N was immediately rushed into production.
By May 1945 approximately forty airframes had been completed and handed over to IJN home defense frontline units for operational use and conversion training. These were structurally identical with the prototypes, but they were powered by more potent and reliable Ne-130 (with 8.826 kN/900 kgf) or Ne-230 (8.679 kN/885 kgf) engines, which finally gave the aircraft a competitive performance and also made the RATO boosters obsolete - unless an 800 kg bomb was carried in overload configuration. Most were J9N1 day fighter single seaters, armed with two 30 mm Type 5 cannons with 50 rounds per gun in the nose. Some operational Kitsukas had, due to the lack of equipment, the 30 mm guns replaced with lighter 20 mm Ho-5 cannon. A few were unarmed two-seaters (J9N2) with dual controls and a second seat instead of the fuselage fuel tank. This markedly limited the aircraft’s range but was accepted for a dedicated trainer, but a ventral 500 l drop tank could be carried to extend the two-seater’s range to an acceptable level.
A small number, both single- and two-seaters, were furthermore adapted to night fighter duties and equipped with an experimental ”FD-2” centimeter waveband radar in the nose with an “antler” antenna array, similar to German radar sets of the time. The FD-2 used four forward-facing Yagi style antennae with initially five and later with seven elements (the sideway facing rods) each. These consisted of two pairs, each with a sending (top and bot) and a receiving antenna (left and right). The set used horizontal lobe switching to find the target, an electrical shifter would continuously switch between the sets. The signal strengths would then be compared to determine the range and azimuth of the target, and the results would then be shown on a CRT display.
In order to fit the electronics (the FD-2 weighed around 70 kg/155 lb) the night fighters typically had one of the nose-mounted guns replaced by a fixed, obliquely firing Ho-5 gun ("Schräge Musik"-style), which was mounted in the aircraft’s flank behind the cockpit, and the 500l drop tank became a permanent installation to extend loiter time, at the expense of top speed, though. These machines received the suffix “-S” and flew, despite the FD-2’s weaknesses and limitations, a few quite effective missions against American B-29 bombers, but their impact was minimal due to the aircrafts’ small numbers and poor reliability of the still experimental radar system. However, the FD-2’s performance was rather underwhelming, though, with an insufficient range of only 3 km. Increased drag due to the antennae and countermeasures deployed by B-29 further decreased the effectiveness, and the J9N2-S’s successes could be rather attributed to experienced and motivated crews than the primitive radar.
Proposed follow-on J9N versions had included a reconnaissance aircraft and a fast attack aircraft that was supposed to carry a single bomb under the fuselage against ships. There was also a modified version of the design to be launched from a 200 m long catapult, the "Nakajima Kikka-kai Prototype Turbojet Special Attacker". All these proposed versions were expected to be powered by more advanced developments of the Ne-20, the Ne-330 with 13 kN (1.330 kg) thrust, but none of them reached the hardware stage.
The J9Ns’ overall war contribution was negligible, and after the war, several airframes (including partial airframes) were captured by Allied forces. Three airframes (including a two-seat night fighter with FD-2 radar) were brought to the U.S. for study. Today, two J9N examples survive in the National Air and Space Museum: The first is a Kikka that was taken to the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Maryland for analysis. This aircraft is very incomplete and is believed to have been patched together from a variety of semi-completed airframes. It is currently still in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, MD. The second Kikka is on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) fuselage only
10.30 m (33 ft 8¾ in) with FD-2 antenna array
Wingspan: 10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 13.2 m² (142 sq ft)
Empty weight: 2,300 kg (5,071 lb)
Gross weight: 3,500 kg (7,716 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,080 kg (8,995 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Ishikawajima Ne-130 or Ne-230 axial-flow turbojet engines
each with 8.83 kN/900 kg or 8.68 kN/885 kg thrust
Performance:
Maximum speed: 785 km/h (487 mph, 426 kn)
Range: 925 km (574 mi, 502 nmi) with internal fuel
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.5 m/s (2,064 ft/min)
Wing loading: 265 kg/m² (54 lb/sq ft)
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.43
Armament:
1× 30 mm (1.181 in) Type 5 cannon with 50 rounds in the nose
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Type Ho-2 cannon with 80 rounds, mounted obliquely behind the cockpit
1× ventral hardpoint for a 500 l drop tank or a single 500 kg (1,102 lb) bomb
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Well, this fictional Kikka night fighter looks quite dry, but that makes it IMHO more credible. The large antler antenna array might look “a bit too much”, and a real night fighter probably had a simpler arrangement with a single Yagi-style/arrow-shaped antenna, but a description of the FD-2 radar suggested the layout I chose – and it does not look bad. The oblique cannon in the flank is another odd detail, but it is not unplausible. However, with all the equipment and esp. the draggy antennae on board, the Kikka’s mediocre performance would surely have seriously suffered, probably beyond an effective use. But this is whifworld, after all. ;-)
This photo was taken in the Tri-House area on January 20th, 2018. This could be a worker ant of the species Solenopsis invicta (Fire Ant), due to its reddish-brown coloring that darkens to almost black near the abdomen, as well as the length and segmentation of its antennae, and the presence of a stinger. Solenopsis invicta are native to Brazil, but were introduced to the US between 1933 and 1945 and have now become well established in the southeastern US. While considered a pest themselves, the Solenopsis invicta have also been known to consume many other pest species (MacGown, 2016). One of the important ecological roles of ants, is their ability to aerate the soil around the roots of plants. This allows the plants to get the water and oxygen they need. Some plants have elaiosomes on their seeds, which are protein rich and attract the ants, who in turn carry the seeds underground and eat the elaiosomes. This is an important form of seed dispersal for the plants. Ants also live in a microclimate. They build a system of complex tunnels under the ground, providing them with insulation. There will be warmer temperatures inside the nest than the cooler above ground temperatures during cold months, and cooler temperatures in the nest during warmer months. Ants usually prefer warmer temperatures and will structure their nests and the mound of discarded soil above it to absorb heat from the sun and further increase the temperature inside.
www.royalparks.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/41504/a...
harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu/ants/ecological-importance
animals.mom.me/ant-hills-look-like-10251.html
mississippientomologicalmuseum.org.msstate.edu/Researchta...
The soldier beetles, Cantharidae, are relatively soft-bodied, straight-sided beetles, related to the Lampyridae or firefly family, but being unable to produce light. They are cosmopolitan in distribution. One common British species is bright red, reminding people of the red coats of soldiers, hence the common name. A secondary common name is leatherwing, obtained from the texture of the wing covers.
Historically, these beetles were placed in a superfamily "Cantharoidea", which has been subsumed by the superfamily Elateroidea; the name is still sometimes used as a rankless grouping, including the families Cantharidae, Drilidae, Lampyridae, Lycidae, Omalisidae, Omethidae, Phengodidae (which includes Telegeusidae), and Rhagophthalmidae.
Soldier beetles are highly desired by gardeners as biological control agents of a number of pest insects. The larvae tend to be dark brown or gray, slender and wormlike with a rippled appearance due to pronounced segmentation. They consume grasshopper eggs, aphids, caterpillars and other soft bodied insects, most of which are pests.
The adults are especially important predators of aphids. They supplement their diet with nectar and pollen and can be minor pollinators. Soldier beetle populations can be increased by planting good nectar- or pollen-producing plants such as Asclepias or Solidago.
bata department store (centrum), brno, 1930 - 1931, architect: vladimir karfik;
The Tomáš Baťa shoemaking firm achieved such prosperity that he decided to build a network of large department stores throughout the entire Czechoslovakia. The company purchased the plot between Jánská and Kobližná streets, right in the center of the city, where Europe's first skyscraper was to have replaced the historic low buildings. After the unsuccessful architectural competition and other delays, Tomáš Baťa addressed architect Vladimír Karfík, who could profit from his experiences from the studio of American Frank Lloyd Wright, and design the final appearance of the building. The building consisted of the rectangular and horizontally segmented mass of the department store and the lean tower of the administrative facilities.
In 1944 the facade was damaged by a bomb blast near the department store during an Allied air raid. The present modified appearance of the facade is the result of the reconstruction of the building in 1966 involving the only available materials, so-called Boletice panels, which entirely disrupted the original horizontal segmentation of the facade.
Playground on a foggy day. G'mic dream smoother, segmentation, upscale, and shock filter + custom highpass.
In approximately 7 months time (on October 7th, 2016 to be exact), the last Australian-designed & manufactured Ford Falcon will exit the production line at Broadmeadows in Melbourne. This will marktthe end of 57 years of Falcon production, and 92 years of Ford production in Australia.
The Falcon, rather than the Territory (which is also assembled in Broadmeadows) has been chosen due to the many years that this nameplate has been at the forefront of the Australian automotive market.
Unfortunately, increased competition, globalisation and market segmentation have all played their part in reducing the viability of producing cars in Australia. After Ford's exit in October 2016, the two other automotive producers in Australia, Holden (part of General Motors) and Toyota Australia are expected to close within 12 months or so.
The remaining bright spot is that Ford's Product Development activities in Australia have never been stronger.
The office campus in Broadmeadows has been turned over solely to Product Development and Design, becoming the Asia-Pacific Product Development Campus (APPDC) - a bit of a mouthful, such that employees still just call it 'Head Office'.
This facility is supported by full-vehicle testing at the You-Yangs Proving Ground outside Lara, and the Ford Reasearch & Development Centre in Geelong (at one end of the existing vehicle production site).
The model shown the FGX G6-E displays the current Ford 'look' draped over the FG platform, first launched in 2008. the model has a 4.0 litre, inline six-cylinder engine producing 195 kW in standard form, and up to 325 kW in its final turbocharged edition (The XR6 Sprint). An intermediate 270 kW tune is used for the G6-E Turbo, - a luxury-sport model.
The fourth generation Ford Focus (C519) launched in 2018 included a new sub-nameplate 'Active', previously introduced on the 7th generation of Ford Fiesta a year earlier. 'Active' represented a number of engineering and design changes, including a marginally taller ride height, roof bars, lower body black plastic cladding and revised front and rear bumper treatments.
Most changes were relatively insignificant, but represented a stylistic shift to associate the vehicles with the growing 'Crossover' vehicle market segmentation. In the case of the Focus, the 'Active' trim was available on the 5-door hatchback (shown) and the wagon/estate model.
This segmentation will be interesting to observe over the next few years, The natural Crossover version of the Focus is the Escape/Kuga, yet Ford has chosen to create a more offroad-oriented version with the Bronco Sport, and electrified version (a significantly re-engineered version of the platform) with the upcoming Mustang Mach-E. Other marques, such as BMW with the X4, and Mazda with the CX30, are blending the higher-riding Crossover wagon sub-type withe a Coupe/Hatch body style.
The fourth generation Ford Focus (C519) launched in 2018 included a new sub-nameplate 'Active', previously introduced on the 7th generation of Ford Fiesta a year earlier. 'Active' represented a number of engineering and design changes, including a marginally taller ride height, roof bars, lower body black plastic cladding and revised front and rear bumper treatments.
Most changes were relatively insignificant, but represented a stylistic shift to associate the vehicles with the growing 'Crossover' vehicle market segmentation. In the case of the Focus, the 'Active' trim was available on the 5-door hatchback (shown) and the wagon/estate model.
This segmentation will be interesting to observe over the next few years, The natural Crossover version of the Focus is the Escape/Kuga, yet Ford has chosen to create a more offroad-oriented version with the Bronco Sport, and electrified version (a significantly re-engineered version of the platform) with the upcoming Mustang Mach-E. Other marques, such as BMW with the X4, and Mazda with the CX30, are blending the higher-riding Crossover wagon sub-type withe a Coupe/Hatch body style.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Nakajima J9N Kitsuka (中島 橘花, "Orange Blossom", pronounced Kikka in Kanji used traditionally by the Japanese) was Japan's first jet aircraft. In internal IJN documents it was also called Kōkoku Nigō Heiki (皇国二号兵器, "Imperial Weapon No.2"). After the Japanese military attaché in Germany witnessed trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a request to Nakajima to develop a similar aircraft to be used as a fast attack bomber. Among the specifications for the design were the requirements that it should be able to be built largely by unskilled labor, and that the wings should be foldable. This latter feature was not intended for potential use on aircraft carriers, but rather to enable the aircraft to be hidden in caves and tunnels around Japan as the navy began to prepare for the defense of the home islands.
Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura laid out an aircraft that bore a strong but superficial resemblance to the Me 262. Compared to the Me 262, the J9N airframe was noticeably smaller and more conventional in design, with straight wings and tail surfaces, lacking the slight sweepback of the Me 262. The triangular fuselage cross section characteristic of the German design was less pronounced, due to smaller fuel tanks. The main landing gear of the Kikka was taken from the A6M Zero and the nose wheel from the tail of a Yokosuka P1Y bomber.
The Kikka was designed in preliminary form to use the Tsu-11, a rudimentary motorjet style jet engine that was essentially a ducted fan with an afterburner. Subsequent designs were planned around the Ne-10 (TR-10) centrifugal-flow turbojet, and the Ne-12, which added a four-stage axial compressor to the front of the Ne-10. Tests of this powerplant soon revealed that it would not produce anywhere near the power required to propel the aircraft, and the project was temporarily stalled. It was then decided to produce a new axial flow turbojet based on the German BMW 003.
Development of the engine was troubled, based on little more than photographs and a single cut-away drawing of the BMW 003. A suitable unit, the Ishikawa-jima Ne-20, was finally built in January 1945. By that time, the Kikka project was making progress and the first prototype made its maiden flight. Due to the worsening war situation, the Navy considered employing the Kikka as a kamikaze weapon, but this was quickly rejected due to the high cost and complexity associated with manufacturing contemporary turbojet engines. Other more economical projects designed specifically for kamikaze attacks, such as the simpler Nakajima Tōka (designed to absorb Japanese stock of obsolete engines), the pulsejet-powered Kawanishi Baika, and the infamous Yokosuka Ohka, were either underway or already in mass production.
The following month the prototype was dismantled and delivered to Kisarazu Naval Airfield where it was re-assembled and prepared for flight testing. The aircraft performed well during a 20-minute test flight, with the only concern being the length of the takeoff run – the Ne 20 only had a thrust of 4.66 kN (1,047 lbf), and the engine pair had barely sufficient power to get the aircraft off the ground. This lack of thrust also resulted in a maximum speed of just 623 km/h (387 mph, 336 kn) at sea level and 696 km/h (432 mph; 376 kn) at 10,000 m (32,808 ft).
For the second test flight, four days later, rocket assisted take off (RATO) units were fitted to the aircraft, which worked and gave the aircraft acceptable field performance. The tests went on, together with a second prototype, but despite this early test stage, the J9N was immediately rushed into production.
By May 1945 approximately forty airframes had been completed and handed over to IJN home defense frontline units for operational use and conversion training. These were structurally identical with the prototypes, but they were powered by more potent and reliable Ne-130 (with 8.826 kN/900 kgf) or Ne-230 (8.679 kN/885 kgf) engines, which finally gave the aircraft a competitive performance and also made the RATO boosters obsolete - unless an 800 kg bomb was carried in overload configuration. Most were J9N1 day fighter single seaters, armed with two 30 mm Type 5 cannons with 50 rounds per gun in the nose. Some operational Kitsukas had, due to the lack of equipment, the 30 mm guns replaced with lighter 20 mm Ho-5 cannon. A few were unarmed two-seaters (J9N2) with dual controls and a second seat instead of the fuselage fuel tank. This markedly limited the aircraft’s range but was accepted for a dedicated trainer, but a ventral 500 l drop tank could be carried to extend the two-seater’s range to an acceptable level.
A small number, both single- and two-seaters, were furthermore adapted to night fighter duties and equipped with an experimental ”FD-2” centimeter waveband radar in the nose with an “antler” antenna array, similar to German radar sets of the time. The FD-2 used four forward-facing Yagi style antennae with initially five and later with seven elements (the sideway facing rods) each. These consisted of two pairs, each with a sending (top and bot) and a receiving antenna (left and right). The set used horizontal lobe switching to find the target, an electrical shifter would continuously switch between the sets. The signal strengths would then be compared to determine the range and azimuth of the target, and the results would then be shown on a CRT display.
In order to fit the electronics (the FD-2 weighed around 70 kg/155 lb) the night fighters typically had one of the nose-mounted guns replaced by a fixed, obliquely firing Ho-5 gun ("Schräge Musik"-style), which was mounted in the aircraft’s flank behind the cockpit, and the 500l drop tank became a permanent installation to extend loiter time, at the expense of top speed, though. These machines received the suffix “-S” and flew, despite the FD-2’s weaknesses and limitations, a few quite effective missions against American B-29 bombers, but their impact was minimal due to the aircrafts’ small numbers and poor reliability of the still experimental radar system. However, the FD-2’s performance was rather underwhelming, though, with an insufficient range of only 3 km. Increased drag due to the antennae and countermeasures deployed by B-29 further decreased the effectiveness, and the J9N2-S’s successes could be rather attributed to experienced and motivated crews than the primitive radar.
Proposed follow-on J9N versions had included a reconnaissance aircraft and a fast attack aircraft that was supposed to carry a single bomb under the fuselage against ships. There was also a modified version of the design to be launched from a 200 m long catapult, the "Nakajima Kikka-kai Prototype Turbojet Special Attacker". All these proposed versions were expected to be powered by more advanced developments of the Ne-20, the Ne-330 with 13 kN (1.330 kg) thrust, but none of them reached the hardware stage.
The J9Ns’ overall war contribution was negligible, and after the war, several airframes (including partial airframes) were captured by Allied forces. Three airframes (including a two-seat night fighter with FD-2 radar) were brought to the U.S. for study. Today, two J9N examples survive in the National Air and Space Museum: The first is a Kikka that was taken to the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Maryland for analysis. This aircraft is very incomplete and is believed to have been patched together from a variety of semi-completed airframes. It is currently still in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, MD. The second Kikka is on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) fuselage only
10.30 m (33 ft 8¾ in) with FD-2 antenna array
Wingspan: 10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 13.2 m² (142 sq ft)
Empty weight: 2,300 kg (5,071 lb)
Gross weight: 3,500 kg (7,716 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,080 kg (8,995 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Ishikawajima Ne-130 or Ne-230 axial-flow turbojet engines
each with 8.83 kN/900 kg or 8.68 kN/885 kg thrust
Performance:
Maximum speed: 785 km/h (487 mph, 426 kn)
Range: 925 km (574 mi, 502 nmi) with internal fuel
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.5 m/s (2,064 ft/min)
Wing loading: 265 kg/m² (54 lb/sq ft)
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.43
Armament:
1× 30 mm (1.181 in) Type 5 cannon with 50 rounds in the nose
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Type Ho-2 cannon with 80 rounds, mounted obliquely behind the cockpit
1× ventral hardpoint for a 500 l drop tank or a single 500 kg (1,102 lb) bomb
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Well, this fictional Kikka night fighter looks quite dry, but that makes it IMHO more credible. The large antler antenna array might look “a bit too much”, and a real night fighter probably had a simpler arrangement with a single Yagi-style/arrow-shaped antenna, but a description of the FD-2 radar suggested the layout I chose – and it does not look bad. The oblique cannon in the flank is another odd detail, but it is not unplausible. However, with all the equipment and esp. the draggy antennae on board, the Kikka’s mediocre performance would surely have seriously suffered, probably beyond an effective use. But this is whifworld, after all. ;-)
As if the males of this genus were not strange enough to look at, males and females are worlds apart in terms of appearance (see comments for female image).
Pu'er, Yunnan, China
To say the least, scale insects are strange. I have included this brief overview as an indicator of this reality and because more specific information seems very hard to come by in the mainstream.....
Adult females resemble immature stages: they are soft-bodied and lack wings, have compound eyes and obvious segmentation. The last three developmental stages (pre-pupa, pupa, adult) in male scale insects do not feed. Adult males usually live for less than a day; they are listless and slow. They may be dipterous (one pair of wings) or wingless, have compound eyes, or a variable number of simple eyes aranged in a line around the head, or dorsal and ventral pairs. Many scale insect species have done away with males completely, reproducing asexually. Scales have the greatest diversity of sperm structure and sex determining chromosome systems of any known group of organisms. One group has a placenta-like structure in the female that is used to feed first-instar males. Another is hermaphroditic - the only known example among insects. Most scale insects produce a waxy secretion that either coats the body or protects it beneath a domicilelike structure (called a scale cover). Secretions vary from a thin translucent sheet to a thick, wet mass, to a powdery bloom.
Serial-section/montaged tomographic reconstruction of a region of gold-Fc fed neonatal rat jejunum. Tissue was high-pressure frozen and gold-enhanced and low-temperature during freeze substitution. Samples was plastic-embedded, serial-sectioned and imaged by dual-axis tomography on a Tecnai 12 EM. The resulting data was analyzed and segmented in color using IMOD. Image shown is a 3D segmentation superimposed over a single tomographic slice. Green represents the border membranes of adjacent epithelial cells, gold spheres represent pools of Fc in dilated regions of the intercellular space. Red represents clathrin-coated buds on the membrane surfaces.
Courtesy of Mark Ladinsky
Image Details
Instrument used: Tecnai Family
Magnification: 11,000x
Voltage: 120KeV
Spot: 2
Detector: CCD
Entwickelungsgeschichte (Ontogenie), die Wissenschaft von der Entwickelung des pflanzlichen oder tierischen Lebewesens von der Eizelle an bis zu seiner Vollendung; sie umfaßt also nicht nur die Embryologie (s. Embryo), sondern auch alle spätern Metamorphosen. Bis zur Mitte des vorigen Jahrhunderts hatte man im Sinn der Evolutions- oder Präformationstheorie angenommen, daß die Entwickelung des Embryos nur auf einer Entfaltung von Teilen beruhe, welche im Ei bereits vorgebildet vorhanden seien. Diese Anschauung gipfelte konsequenterweise in der Einschachtelungstheorie, nach welcher jede Tier- oder Pflanzenart ursprünglich nur in einem Individuum oder Paar vorhanden gewesen sein sollte, welches aber die Keime aller folgenden Individuen derselben Art, einen in dem andern eingeschachtelt, enthalten habe. Auf einer Auswickelung solchergestalt eingeschachtelter vorgebildeter Teile sollte demnach alle Entwickelung beruhen. Diesen Anschauungen machte K. F. Wolff ein Ende, indem er 1759 in seiner "Theoria generationis" den Nachweis führte, daß der Embryo aus einer Reihe von Neubildungen hervorgeht, welche durch die Zeugungsstoffe veranlaßt, aber in keiner Weise, weder im Ei noch im Sperma, vorgebildet vorhanden sind (Epigenesis-, Postformationstheorie). Allein Wolff war seinen Zeitgenossen viel zu weit vorangeeilt, und das Ansehen seiner Gegner, an deren Spitze A. v. Haller stand, war zu groß, als daß seine Leistungen nach Gebühr hätten gewürdigt werden können; deshalb gerieten seine Arbeiten in Vergessenheit, bis Merkel 1812 einzelne Teile derselben von neuem herausgab. Durch Oken wurde die E. zu derselben Zeit zwar genauer studiert, aber zugleich in den Dienst einer besondern naturwissenschaftlichen Theorie gestellt, nach welcher aller tierischen Entwickelung das Ziel der Menschwerdung zu Grunde liegen sollte, so daß die niedern Tiere nur als eine Art Hemmungsbildung des Menschen, als Wesen, die auf dem Weg der Menschwerdung auf einer niedern Stufe stehen geblieben seien, betrachtet wurden, während der Mensch und die höhern Tiere umgekehrt in ihrer Entwickelung durch alle niedern Stufen hindurchgehen müßten. Diese in Deutschland namentlich durch Oken, Rudolphi, in Frankreich durch Etienne Geoffroy de Saint-Hilaire und Serres verteidigte sogen. Hemmungstheorie setzte, wie man sieht, die Einheit des Plans sämtlicher Tiere voraus und mußte erst durch Baer und Cuvier widerlegt werden, bevor das Studium der E. emporblühen konnte. Der Aufschwung derselben begann mit den Forschungen von Pander und Baer, welche von Döllinger in Würzburg zu erneuerten Forschungen auf diesem Gebiet veranlaßt worden waren. Pander ist der Urheber der sogleich näher zu erwähnenden Keimblättertheorie, während Baer zum erstenmal die Entwickelung höherer Wirbeltiere durch alle Stadien und in allen Einzelheiten genau verfolgte, weshalb er auch mit Recht als der "Vater der E." bezeichnet wird. Das Resultat dieser Untersuchungen war, daß die Tiere nicht nach einheitlichem Plan sich entwickeln, und daß man wenigstens vier verschiedene Hauptabteilungen unterscheiden müsse, daß die Entwickelung stets vom Allgemeinen ins Spezielle gehe, und daß sich zuerst die Kennzeichen der Klasse, dann die der Ordnung und hierauf nacheinander die der Familie, Gattung und Art ausbilden. So erkennt man beim Hühnchen zuerst nur das Wirbeltier, dann den Vogel, hierauf einen Angehörigen der Scharrvögel, das Huhn, und zuletzt die spezielle Art. Damit blieben aber die Thatsachen unerklärt, auf welche die Okensche Schule ihre Hemmungstheorie gestützt hatte, daß nämlich höhere Tiere wirklich in ihrer Entwickelung durch gewisse Zustände hindurchgehen, die bei tiefer stehenden Tieren bleibend sind, also z. B. der lungenatmende Frosch durch den Zustand eines Kiementiers, und diese Thatsache war um so frappanter, als man bald hernach auch bei den Embryos der höhern Wirbeltiere, die niemals durch Kiemen atmen, bis zum Menschen hinauf das Auftreten von Kiemenspalten und andern Einrichtungen bemerkte, die bei niedern Tieren bleibend sind. Für diese embryologischen Thatsachen konnte erst die durch Darwin zum Siege gelangte Deszendenztheorie die gesuchte Erklärung geben, und hier waren es Huxley, O. Schmidt, Fritz Müller, Häckel u. a., welche bald den Zusammenhang darlegten. In zweifellosester Weise gelang dies Fritz Müller (1865) durch seine Studien über die Entwickelung der Krebse, indem er zeigte, daß Arten aus den verschiedensten Krebsfamilien, die im ausgewachsenen Zustand nur eine ziemlich entfernte Verwandtschaft und nicht die geringste Ähnlichkeit miteinander zeigen, anfangs in fast gleicher Gestalt als sogen. Nauplius-Larve erscheinen. Es ist dies ein kleines, sechsfüßiges Tier mit einem unpaarigen Ange auf dem Kopf, und einzelne niedere Krebsformen gehen zeitlebens nur wenig über seine Gesamtorganisation hinaus. Mit derselben Form beginnen aber auch gewisse Garneelen, die den höchsten Krebsfamilien angehören, ihre Entwickelung und gehen dann durch andre Larvenformen hindurch, die man als Zoëa- und Mysis-Larven bezeichnet hat, weil sie gewissen mittlern Krebsgeschlechtern gleichen; kurz, der Schluß, wurde unabweisbar, daß die Nauplius-Larve dem gemeinsamen Ahnen des Krebsgeschlechts gleiche, und daß die höhern, vollkommener differenzierten Krebsarten von den mittlern Formen abstammen, deren Nachbilder ebenfalls in den Metamorphosen ihrer Larve auftreten. Ganz unabweisbar wurde dieser Schluß bei jenen Krebsarten, die im erwachsenen Zustand zu einem Klumpen ohne alle Gestaltung entartet sind, und deren Zugehörigkeit zum Krebsgeschlecht fast nur noch an der Nauplius-Larve oder durch die Entwickelung überhaupt erkennbar ist (s. Entartung). Auf diese Thatsachen begründete Fritz Müller die Folgerung, welche Häckel unter dem Namen des biogenetischen Grundgesetzes kurz dahin formuliert hat: die E. des Individuums (Ontogenesis) ist die abgekürzte Wiederholung seiner Stammesgeschichte (Phylogenesis). Dieser Schluß hat sich seither in tausendfältiger Weise bewährt und das Studium der E. zu einer der wichtigsten Erkenntnisquellen sowohl für die Ermittelung der natürlichen Verwandtschaften als besonders der Abstammung der Organismen erhoben. Freilich ist diese Quelle eine nur mit großer Vorsicht zu benutzende, weil nicht immer ungetrübte, wie dies schon Fritz Müller erkannte. Die in der E. erhaltene geschichtliche Urkunde wird nämlich allmählich verwischt, indem die Entwickelung einen immer geradern Weg vom Ei zum fertigen Tier einschlägt, sie wird außerdem sowohl, wenn das Tier sich nicht frei, sondern in einem Ei entwickelt, als auch, indem es als Larve den Einflüssen des Kampfes ums Dasein ausgesetzt wird, nachträglich verändert, also im Hinblick auf den getreuen Bericht der Stammesgeschichte gefälscht, und das ist, was Häckel als Fälschungsgeschichte (Cenogenesis) bezeichnet. Das biogenetische Grundgesetz gibt uns demnach, wenn mit der nötigen Vorsicht angewendet, die wichtigsten Aufschlüsse darüber, warum sich viele Tiere, statt direkt, auf so vielen Umwegen entwickeln, und warum sie zuerst die Kennzeichen der höhern Abteilungen und dann erst die der niedern und der Art erkennen lassen, denn die Art ist ja das jüngst entstandene Glied dieser Formenkette; es erklärt ferner die Erscheinungen des Atavismus, vieler Mißbildungen und vor allem die natürliche Verwandtschaft der Wesen. Daher der ungeheure Aufschwung, den das Studium der E. in der Neuzeit genommen hat.
Nach dieser geschichtlichen Einleitung bleibt uns noch übrig, kurz den allgemeinen Gang der tierischen Entwickelung anzudeuten. Die Entdeckung von Schwann und Schleiden, daß die Zelle das Elementarorgan ist, aus welchem sich jeder zusammengesetzte organische Körper aufbaut, führte bald zu genauern mikroskopischen Studien über den Aufbau der Gewebe, und es zeigte sich, daß jedes tierische (oder pflanzliche) Wesen seine Entwickelung als einfache Zelle beginnt. Auch bei den höhern Wirbeltieren ist das weibliche Ei, wie es aus dem Eierstock kommt, eine solche einfache Zelle. Dieselbe unterliegt dann nach der Befruchtung zunächst dem von Prevorst und Dumas (1824) entdeckten Furchungsprozeß oder der Segmentation, d. h. sie teilt sich zuerst in 2 Zellen und diese durch wiederholte Doppelteilung in 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. Zellen (Fig. A, B, C, D), die zuletzt einen kugeligen Klumpen, die sogen. Maulbeerlarve (Morula, Fig. E), bilden. Hierauf treten die einzelnen Zellen auseinander und bilden einen mit Flüssigkeit gefüllten Hohlraum, die Flimmerlarve, auch Blasenkeim (Planula oder Blastula) genannt (Fig. F, G). Indem sich diese aus einer einzigen Lage von Wimperzellen bestehende Hohlblase durch Einstülpung (Invagination, Fig. H) oder, wie es in einzelnen Fällen geschehen soll, durch Teilung ihrer Wandzellen in einen aus einer doppelten Zelllage bestehenden Hohlsack mit Mundöffnung verwandelt, entsteht die sogen. Darmlarve oder Gastrula (Fig. I, K), auch Becherkeim, welche nach Häckel die letzte, allen echten, vielzelligen Tieren (Metazoen) gemeinsame Grundform darstellt. In der That ist der bis hierher beschriebene Entwickelungsgang bei den Tieren der verschiedensten Klassen derselbe, obwohl die Gastrula-Larve unter mancherlei abgeleiteten Formen auftritt, und Häckel schloß daraus nach seinem oben erwähnten "biogenetischen Grundgesetz", daß die Gastrula-Larue das Nachbild einer gemeinsamen Ahnenstufe aller höhern Tiere sei, der sogen. Gasträa, von der noch heute zu den Pflanzentieren gerechnete Verwandte ("Gasträaden der Gegenwart") leben, deren Körper zeitlebens nur aus einer doppelten Zellenschicht besteht. Es ist dies die vielgenannte Häckelsche Gasträatheorie, die von mehreren Zoologen verworfen wird, indem sie annehmen, es seien einzig tektonische Ursachen, welche einen derartigen Verlauf der ersten Entwickelung aller Tiere bedingen.
Auf diese Weise sind zwei deutlich unterschiedene Zellenschichten entstanden, welche den schon von Pander entdeckten primären Keimblättern entsprechen, das die Innenwand der Gastrula auskleidende Magen- oder Innenblatt, auch unteres Keimblatt (Entoderm) genannt, und das sie bedeckende Hautblatt oder äußere Keimblatt (Exo- oder Ektoderm), welche die Grundlage aller fernern Entwickelung der Tiere bilden und zwar so, daß stets aus dem Hautblatt die Körperbedeckungen, das Nervensystem und die Sinnesorgane hervorgehen, weshalb es auch Hautsinnesblatt genannt wird, während sich aus dem Magenblatt die Schleimhaut des Magens und die Eingeweide bilden. Huxley wies 1849 die sogen. Homologie der Keimblätter, d. h. ihre Gleichwertigkeit durch alle Tierklassen, nach und zeigte, daß der Körper der meisten Pflanzentiere zeitlebens nur aus diesen beiden Zellenschichten und deren Derivaten besteht. Bei höhern Tieren bildet sich indessen zwischen beiden bald noch ein mittleres, sekundäres Keimblatt (Mesoderm) oder auch zwei sekundäre Keimblätter, woraus die verschiedenen Muskelsysteme hervorgehen. Über den Ursprung und die Beziehungen sowie die weitern Umbildungen der Keimblätter haben namentlich Remak im Beginn der 50er und Kowalewsky um die Mitte der 60er Jahre gearbeitet, und in neuester Zeit haben Häckel, van Beneden, Balfour, Ray. Lankester, die Gebrüder Hertwig u. a. darüber gearbeitet. Bei der weitern Entwickelung der Tiere krümmen und falten sich diese drei Platten in der mannigfaltigsten Weise, schließen sich an der Bauchseite röhrenförmig zusammen und bilden so die Grundlage des Embryos, über dessen weitere Entwickelung bei den höhern Wirbeltieren der Artikel "Embryo" zu vergleichen ist. Vgl. Wolff, Theoria generationis (Halle 1759); v. Baer, E. der Tiere (Königsb. 1828-37, 2 Bde.); Remak, Untersuchungen über die Entwickelung der Wirbeltiere (Berl. 1850-55); Rathke, E. der Wirbeltiere (Leipz. 1861); Balfour, Handbuch der vergleichenden Embryologie (deutsch, Jena 1880-1881, 2 Bde.); Häckel, Biologische Studien (das. 1876-77); Derselbe, Ziele und Wege der heutigen E. (das. 1875); Derselbe, Anthropogenie, E. des Menschen (4. Aufl., Leipz. 1881); Kölliker, E. des Menschen (2. Aufl., das. 1879); Derselbe, Grundriß der E. des Menschen und der höhern Tiere (2. Aufl., das. 1884); His, Unsre Körperform und das physiologische Problem ihrer Entstehung (das. 1875).
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s0682 9639 MeyA4B5 Entwickelungszustände von Monoxenia Darwinii. Vergrößert. Meyers Konversations-Lexikon Vierte Auflage 1886. Distanzgeschäft bis Faidherbe.
Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs and chelicerae with fangs that inject venom. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species diversity among all other orders of organisms. Spiders are found worldwide on every continent except for Antarctica, and have become established in nearly every habitat with the exceptions of air and sea colonization. As of November 2015, at least 45,700 spider species, and 114 families have been recorded by taxonomists. However, there has been dissension within the scientific community as to how all these families should be classified, as evidenced by the over 20 different classifications that have been proposed since 1900.
Anatomically, spiders differ from other arthropods in that the usual body segments are fused into two tagmata, the cephalothorax and abdomen, and joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel. Unlike insects, spiders do not have antennae. In all except the most primitive group, the Mesothelae, spiders have the most centralized nervous systems of all arthropods, as all their ganglia are fused into one mass in the cephalothorax. Unlike most arthropods, spiders have no extensor muscles in their limbs and instead extend them by hydraulic pressure.
Their abdomens bear appendages that have been modified into spinnerets that extrude silk from up to six types of glands. Spider webs vary widely in size, shape and the amount of sticky thread used. It now appears that the spiral orb web may be one of the earliest forms, and spiders that produce tangled cobwebs are more abundant and diverse than orb-web spiders. Spider-like arachnids with silk-producing spigots appeared in the Devonian period about 386 million years ago, but these animals apparently lacked spinnerets. True spiders have been found in Carboniferous rocks from 318 to 299 million years ago, and are very similar to the most primitive surviving suborder, the Mesothelae. The main groups of modern spiders, Mygalomorphae and Araneomorphae, first appeared in the Triassic period, before 200 million years ago.
A herbivorous species, Bagheera kiplingi, was described in 2008,[5] but all other known species are predators, mostly preying on insects and on other spiders, although a few large species also take birds and lizards. Spiders use a wide range of strategies to capture prey: trapping it in sticky webs, lassoing it with sticky bolas, mimicking the prey to avoid detection, or running it down. Most detect prey mainly by sensing vibrations, but the active hunters have acute vision, and hunters of the genus Portia show signs of intelligence in their choice of tactics and ability to develop new ones. Spiders' guts are too narrow to take solids, and they liquefy their food by flooding it with digestive enzymes and grinding it with the bases of their pedipalps, as they do not have true jaws.
Male spiders identify themselves by a variety of complex courtship rituals to avoid being eaten by the females. Males of most species survive a few matings, limited mainly by their short life spans. Females weave silk egg-cases, each of which may contain hundreds of eggs. Females of many species care for their young, for example by carrying them around or by sharing food with them. A minority of species are social, building communal webs that may house anywhere from a few to 50,000 individuals. Social behavior ranges from precarious toleration, as in the widow spiders, to co-operative hunting and food-sharing. Although most spiders live for at most two years, tarantulas and other mygalomorph spiders can live up to 25 years in captivity.
While the venom of a few species is dangerous to humans, scientists are now researching the use of spider venom in medicine and as non-polluting pesticides. Spider silk provides a combination of lightness, strength and elasticity that is superior to that of synthetic materials, and spider silk genes have been inserted into mammals and plants to see if these can be used as silk factories. As a result of their wide range of behaviors, spiders have become common symbols in art and mythology symbolizing various combinations of patience, cruelty and creative powers. An abnormal fear of spiders is called arachnophobia.
BODY PLAN
Spiders are chelicerates and therefore arthropods.[6] As arthropods they have: segmented bodies with jointed limbs, all covered in a cuticle made of chitin and proteins; heads that are composed of several segments that fuse during the development of the embryo. Being chelicerates, their bodies consist of two tagmata, sets of segments that serve similar functions: the foremost one, called the cephalothorax or prosoma, is a complete fusion of the segments that in an insect would form two separate tagmata, the head and thorax; the rear tagma is called the abdomen or opisthosoma. In spiders, the cephalothorax and abdomen are connected by a small cylindrical section, the pedicel. The pattern of segment fusion that forms chelicerates' heads is unique among arthropods, and what would normally be the first head segment disappears at an early stage of development, so that chelicerates lack the antennae typical of most arthropods. In fact, chelicerates' only appendages ahead of the mouth are a pair of chelicerae, and they lack anything that would function directly as "jaws". The first appendages behind the mouth are called pedipalps, and serve different functions within different groups of chelicerates.
Spiders and scorpions are members of one chelicerate group, the arachnids. Scorpions' chelicerae have three sections and are used in feeding. Spiders' chelicerae have two sections and terminate in fangs that are generally venomous, and fold away behind the upper sections while not in use. The upper sections generally have thick "beards" that filter solid lumps out of their food, as spiders can take only liquid food.[8] Scorpions' pedipalps generally form large claws for capturing prey, while those of spiders are fairly small appendages whose bases also act as an extension of the mouth; in addition, those of male spiders have enlarged last sections used for sperm transfer.
In spiders, the cephalothorax and abdomen are joined by a small, cylindrical pedicel, which enables the abdomen to move independently when producing silk. The upper surface of the cephalothorax is covered by a single, convex carapace, while the underside is covered by two rather flat plates. The abdomen is soft and egg-shaped. It shows no sign of segmentation, except that the primitive Mesothelae, whose living members are the Liphistiidae, have segmented plates on the upper surface.
CIRCULATION AND RESPIRATION
Like other arthropods, spiders are coelomates in which the coelom is reduced to small areas round the reproductive and excretory systems. Its place is largely taken by a hemocoel, a cavity that runs most of the length of the body and through which blood flows. The heart is a tube in the upper part of the body, with a few ostia that act as non-return valves allowing blood to enter the heart from the hemocoel but prevent it from leaving before it reaches the front end. However, in spiders, it occupies only the upper part of the abdomen, and blood is discharged into the hemocoel by one artery that opens at the rear end of the abdomen and by branching arteries that pass through the pedicle and open into several parts of the cephalothorax. Hence spiders have open circulatory systems. The blood of many spiders that have book lungs contains the respiratory pigment hemocyanin to make oxygen transport more efficient.
Spiders have developed several different respiratory anatomies, based on book lungs, a tracheal system, or both. Mygalomorph and Mesothelae spiders have two pairs of book lungs filled with haemolymph, where openings on the ventral surface of the abdomen allow air to enter and diffuse oxygen. This is also the case for some basal araneomorph spiders, like the family Hypochilidae, but the remaining members of this group have just the anterior pair of book lungs intact while the posterior pair of breathing organs are partly or fully modified into tracheae, through which oxygen is diffused into the haemolymph or directly to the tissue and organs. The trachea system has most likely evolved in small ancestors to help resist desiccation. The trachea were originally connected to the surroundings through a pair of openings called spiracles, but in the majority of spiders this pair of spiracles has fused into a single one in the middle, and moved backwards close to the spinnerets. Spiders that have tracheae generally have higher metabolic rates and better water conservation. Spiders are ectotherms, so environmental temperatures affect their activity.
FEEDING, DIGESTION AND EXCRETION
Uniquely among chelicerates, the final sections of spiders' chelicerae are fangs, and the great majority of spiders can use them to inject venom into prey from venom glands in the roots of the chelicerae. The family Uloboridae has lost its venom glands, and kills its prey with silk instead. Like most arachnids, including scorpions, spiders have a narrow gut that can only cope with liquid food and spiders have two sets of filters to keep solids out. They use one of two different systems of external digestion. Some pump digestive enzymes from the midgut into the prey and then suck the liquified tissues of the prey into the gut, eventually leaving behind the empty husk of the prey. Others grind the prey to pulp using the chelicerae and the bases of the pedipalps, while flooding it with enzymes; in these species, the chelicerae and the bases of the pedipalps form a preoral cavity that holds the food they are processing.
The stomach in the cephalothorax acts as a pump that sends the food deeper into the digestive system. The mid gut bears many digestive ceca, compartments with no other exit, that extract nutrients from the food; most are in the abdomen, which is dominated by the digestive system, but a few are found in the cephalothorax.
Most spiders convert nitrogenous waste products into uric acid, which can be excreted as a dry material. Malphigian tubules ("little tubes") extract these wastes from the blood in the hemocoel and dump them into the cloacal chamber, from which they are expelled through the anus. Production of uric acid and its removal via Malphigian tubules are a water-conserving feature that has evolved independently in several arthropod lineages that can live far away from water, for example the tubules of insects and arachnids develop from completely different parts of the embryo. However, a few primitive spiders, the sub-order Mesothelae and infra-order Mygalomorphae, retain the ancestral arthropod nephridia ("little kidneys"), which use large amounts of water to excrete nitrogenous waste products as ammonia.
CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM
The basic arthropod central nervous system consists of a pair of nerve cords running below the gut, with paired ganglia as local control centers in all segments; a brain formed by fusion of the ganglia for the head segments ahead of and behind the mouth, so that the esophagus is encircled by this conglomeration of ganglia. Except for the primitive Mesothelae, of which the Liphistiidae are the sole surviving family, spiders have the much more centralized nervous system that is typical of arachnids: all the ganglia of all segments behind the esophagus are fused, so that the cephalothorax is largely filled with nervous tissue and there are no ganglia in the abdomen; in the Mesothelae, the ganglia of the abdomen and the rear part of the cephalothorax remain unfused.
Despite the relatively small central nervous system, some spiders (like Portia) exhibit complex behaviour, including the ability to use a trial-and-error approach.
Sense organs
EYES
Most spiders have four pairs of eyes on the top-front area of the cephalothorax, arranged in patterns that vary from one family to another. The pair at the front are of the type called pigment-cup ocelli ("little eyes"), which in most arthropods are only capable of detecting the direction from which light is coming, using the shadow cast by the walls of the cup. However, the main eyes at the front of spiders' heads are pigment-cup ocelli that are capable of forming images. The other eyes are thought to be derived from the compound eyes of the ancestral chelicerates, but no longer have the separate facets typical of compound eyes. Unlike the main eyes, in many spiders these secondary eyes detect light reflected from a reflective tapetum lucidum, and wolf spiders can be spotted by torch light reflected from the tapeta. On the other hand, jumping spiders' secondary eyes have no tapeta. Some jumping spiders' visual acuity exceeds by a factor of ten that of dragonflies, which have by far the best vision among insects; in fact the human eye is only about five times sharper than a jumping spider's. They achieve this by a telephoto-like series of lenses, a four-layer retina and the ability to swivel their eyes and integrate images from different stages in the scan. The downside is that the scanning and integrating processes are relatively slow.
There are spiders with a reduced number of eyes, of these those with six-eyes are the most numerous and are missing a pair of eyes on the anterior median line, others species have four-eyes and some just two. Cave dwelling species have no eyes, or possess vestigial eyes incapable of sight.
OTHER SENSES
As with other arthropods, spiders' cuticles would block out information about the outside world, except that they are penetrated by many sensors or connections from sensors to the nervous system. In fact, spiders and other arthropods have modified their cuticles into elaborate arrays of sensors. Various touch sensors, mostly bristles called setae, respond to different levels of force, from strong contact to very weak air currents. Chemical sensors provide equivalents of taste and smell, often by means of setae. Pedipalps carry a large number of such setae sensitive to contact chemicals and air-borne smells, such as female pheromones. Spiders also have in the joints of their limbs slit sensillae that detect forces and vibrations. In web-building spiders, all these mechanical and chemical sensors are more important than the eyes, while the eyes are most important to spiders that hunt actively.
Like most arthropods, spiders lack balance and acceleration sensors and rely on their eyes to tell them which way is up. Arthropods' proprioceptors, sensors that report the force exerted by muscles and the degree of bending in the body and joints, are well understood. On the other hand, little is known about what other internal sensors spiders or other arthropods may have.
LOCMOTION
Each of the eight legs of a spider consists of seven distinct parts. The part closest to and attaching the leg to the cephalothorax is the coxa; the next segment is the short trochanter that works as a hinge for the following long segment, the femur; next is the spider's knee, the patella, which acts as the hinge for the tibia; the metatarsus is next, and it connects the tibia to the tarsus (which may be thought of as a foot of sorts); the tarsus ends in a claw made up of either two or three points, depending on the family to which the spider belongs. Although all arthropods use muscles attached to the inside of the exoskeleton to flex their limbs, spiders and a few other groups still use hydraulic pressure to extend them, a system inherited from their pre-arthropod ancestors. The only extensor muscles in spider legs are located in the three hip joints (bordering the coxa and the trochanter). As a result, a spider with a punctured cephalothorax cannot extend its legs, and the legs of dead spiders curl up. Spiders can generate pressures up to eight times their resting level to extend their legs, and jumping spiders can jump up to 50 times their own length by suddenly increasing the blood pressure in the third or fourth pair of legs. Although larger spiders use hydraulics to straighten their legs, unlike smaller jumping spiders they depend on their flexor muscles to generate the propulsive force for their jumps.
Most spiders that hunt actively, rather than relying on webs, have dense tufts of fine hairs between the paired claws at the tips of their legs. These tufts, known as scopulae, consist of bristles whose ends are split into as many as 1,000 branches, and enable spiders with scopulae to walk up vertical glass and upside down on ceilings. It appears that scopulae get their grip from contact with extremely thin layers of water on surfaces.[8] Spiders, like most other arachnids, keep at least four legs on the surface while walking or running.
SILK PRODUCTION
The abdomen has no appendages except those that have been modified to form one to four (usually three) pairs of short, movable spinnerets, which emit silk. Each spinneret has many spigots, each of which is connected to one silk gland. There are at least six types of silk gland, each producing a different type of silk.
Silk is mainly composed of a protein very similar to that used in insect silk. It is initially a liquid, and hardens not by exposure to air but as a result of being drawn out, which changes the internal structure of the protein. It is similar in tensile strength to nylon and biological materials such as chitin, collagen and cellulose, but is much more elastic. In other words, it can stretch much further before breaking or losing shape.
Some spiders have a cribellum, a modified spinneret with up to 40,000 spigots, each of which produces a single very fine fiber. The fibers are pulled out by the calamistrum, a comb-like set of bristles on the jointed tip of the cribellum, and combined into a composite woolly thread that is very effective in snagging the bristles of insects. The earliest spiders had cribella, which produced the first silk capable of capturing insects, before spiders developed silk coated with sticky droplets. However, most modern groups of spiders have lost the cribellum.
Tarantulas also have silk glands in their feet.
Even species that do not build webs to catch prey use silk in several ways: as wrappers for sperm and for fertilized eggs; as a "safety rope"; for nest-building; and as "parachutes" by the young of some species.
REPRODUCTION AND LIFE CYCLE
Spiders reproduce sexually and fertilization is internal but indirect, in other words the sperm is not inserted into the female's body by the male's genitals but by an intermediate stage. Unlike many land-living arthropods, male spiders do not produce ready-made spermatophores (packages of sperm), but spin small sperm webs on to which they ejaculate and then transfer the sperm to special syringe-like structures, palpal bulbs or palpal organs, borne on the tips of the pedipalps of mature males. When a male detects signs of a female nearby he checks whether she is of the same species and whether she is ready to mate; for example in species that produce webs or "safety ropes", the male can identify the species and sex of these objects by "smell".
Spiders generally use elaborate courtship rituals to prevent the large females from eating the small males before fertilization, except where the male is so much smaller that he is not worth eating. In web-weaving species, precise patterns of vibrations in the web are a major part of the rituals, while patterns of touches on the female's body are important in many spiders that hunt actively, and may "hypnotize" the female. Gestures and dances by the male are important for jumping spiders, which have excellent eyesight. If courtship is successful, the male injects his sperm from the palpal bulbs into the female's genital opening, known as the epigyne, on the underside of her abdomen. Female's reproductive tracts vary from simple tubes to systems that include seminal receptacles in which females store sperm and release it when they are ready.
Males of the genus Tidarren amputate one of their palps before maturation and enter adult life with one palp only. The palps are 20% of male's body mass in this species, and detaching one of the two improves mobility. In the Yemeni species Tidarren argo, the remaining palp is then torn off by the female. The separated palp remains attached to the female's epigynum for about four hours and apparently continues to function independently. In the meantime, the female feeds on the palpless male. In over 60% of cases, the female of the Australian redback spider kills and eats the male after it inserts its second palp into the female's genital opening; in fact, the males co-operate by trying to impale themselves on the females' fangs. Observation shows that most male redbacks never get an opportunity to mate, and the "lucky" ones increase the likely number of offspring by ensuring that the females are well-fed. However, males of most species survive a few matings, limited mainly by their short life spans. Some even live for a while in their mates' webs.
Females lay up to 3,000 eggs in one or more silk egg sacs, which maintain a fairly constant humidity level. In some species, the females die afterwards, but females of other species protect the sacs by attaching them to their webs, hiding them in nests, carrying them in the chelicerae or attaching them to the spinnerets and dragging them along.
Baby spiders pass all their larval stages inside the egg and hatch as spiderlings, very small and sexually immature but similar in shape to adults. Some spiders care for their young, for example a wolf spider's brood cling to rough bristles on the mother's back, and females of some species respond to the "begging" behaviour of their young by giving them their prey, provided it is no longer struggling, or even regurgitate food.
Like other arthropods, spiders have to molt to grow as their cuticle ("skin") cannot stretch. In some species males mate with newly molted females, which are too weak to be dangerous to the males. Most spiders live for only one to two years, although some tarantulas can live in captivity for over 20 years.
SIZE
Spiders occur in a large range of sizes. The smallest, Patu digua from Colombia, are less than 0.37 mm in body length. The largest and heaviest spiders occur among tarantulas, which can have body lengths up to 90 mm and leg spans up to 250 mm.
COLORATION
Only three classes of pigment (ommochromes, bilins and guanine) have been identified in spiders, although other pigments have been detected but not yet characterized. Melanins, carotenoids and pterins, very common in other animals, are apparently absent. In some species, the exocuticle of the legs and prosoma is modified by a tanning process, resulting in brown coloration. Bilins are found, for example, in Micrommata virescens, resulting in its green color. Guanine is responsible for the white markings of the European garden spider Araneus diadematus. It is in many species accumulated in specialized cells called guanocytes. In genera such as Tetragnatha, Leucauge, Argyrodes or Theridiosoma, guanine creates their silvery appearance. While guanine is originally an end-product of protein metabolism, its excretion can be blocked in spiders, leading to an increase in its storage. Structural colors occur in some species, which are the result of the diffraction, scattering or interference of light, for example by modified setae or scales. The white prosoma of Argiope results from hairs reflecting the light, Lycosa and Josa both have areas of modified cuticle that act as light reflectors.
ECOGOGY AND BEHAVIOR
NON-PREDATORY FEEDING
Although spiders are generally regarded as predatory, the jumping spider Bagheera kiplingi gets over 90% of its food from fairly solid plant material produced by acacias as part of a mutually beneficial relationship with a species of ant.
Juveniles of some spiders in the families Anyphaenidae, Corinnidae, Clubionidae, Thomisidae and Salticidae feed on plant nectar. Laboratory studies show that they do so deliberately and over extended periods, and periodically clean themselves while feeding. These spiders also prefer sugar solutions to plain water, which indicates that they are seeking nutrients. Since many spiders are nocturnal, the extent of nectar consumption by spiders may have been underestimated. Nectar contains amino acids, lipids, vitamins and minerals in addition to sugars, and studies have shown that other spider species live longer when nectar is available. Feeding on nectar avoids the risks of struggles with prey, and the costs of producing venom and digestive enzymes.
Various species are known to feed on dead arthropods (scavenging), web silk, and their own shed exoskeletons. Pollen caught in webs may also be eaten, and studies have shown that young spiders have a better chance of survival if they have the opportunity to eat pollen. In captivity, several spider species are also known to feed on bananas, marmalade, milk, egg yolk and sausages.
METHODS OF CAPTURING PREY
The best-known method of prey capture is by means of sticky webs. Varying placement of webs allows different species of spider to trap different insects in the same area, for example flat horizontal webs trap insects that fly up from vegetation underneath while flat vertical webs trap insects in horizontal flight. Web-building spiders have poor vision, but are extremely sensitive to vibrations.
Females of the water spider Argyroneta aquatica build underwater "diving bell" webs that they fill with air and use for digesting prey, molting, mating and raising offspring. They live almost entirely within the bells, darting out to catch prey animals that touch the bell or the threads that anchor it. A few spiders use the surfaces of lakes and ponds as "webs", detecting trapped insects by the vibrations that these cause while struggling.
Net-casting spiders weave only small webs, but then manipulate them to trap prey. Those of the genus Hyptiotes and the family Theridiosomatidae stretch their webs and then release them when prey strike them, but do not actively move their webs. Those of the family Deinopidae weave even smaller webs, hold them outstretched between their first two pairs of legs, and lunge and push the webs as much as twice their own body length to trap prey, and this move may increase the webs' area by a factor of up to ten. Experiments have shown that Deinopis spinosus has two different techniques for trapping prey: backwards strikes to catch flying insects, whose vibrations it detects; and forward strikes to catch ground-walking prey that it sees. These two techniques have also been observed in other deinopids. Walking insects form most of the prey of most deinopids, but one population of Deinopis subrufa appears to live mainly on tipulid flies that they catch with the backwards strike.
Mature female bolas spiders of the genus Mastophora build "webs" that consist of only a single "trapeze line", which they patrol. They also construct a bolas made of a single thread, tipped with a large ball of very wet sticky silk. They emit chemicals that resemble the pheromones of moths, and then swing the bolas at the moths. Although they miss on about 50% of strikes, they catch about the same weight of insects per night as web-weaving spiders of similar size. The spiders eat the bolas if they have not made a kill in about 30 minutes, rest for a while, and then make new bolas. Juveniles and adult males are much smaller and do not make bolas. Instead they release different pheromones that attract moth flies, and catch them with their front pairs of legs.
The primitive Liphistiidae, the "trapdoor spiders" of the family Ctenizidae and many tarantulas are ambush predators that lurk in burrows, often closed by trapdoors and often surrounded by networks of silk threads that alert these spiders to the presence of prey. Other ambush predators do without such aids, including many crab spiders, and a few species that prey on bees, which see ultraviolet, can adjust their ultraviolet reflectance to match the flowers in which they are lurking. Wolf spiders, jumping spiders, fishing spiders and some crab spiders capture prey by chasing it, and rely mainly on vision to locate prey.Some jumping spiders of the genus Portia hunt other spiders in ways that seem intelligent, outflanking their victims or luring them from their webs. Laboratory studies show that Portia's instinctive tactics are only starting points for a trial-and-error approach from which these spiders learn very quickly how to overcome new prey species. However, they seem to be relatively slow "thinkers", which is not surprising, as their brains are vastly smaller than those of mammalian predators.Ant-mimicking spiders face several challenges: they generally develop slimmer abdomens and false "waists" in the cephalothorax to mimic the three distinct regions (tagmata) of an ant's body; they wave the first pair of legs in front of their heads to mimic antennae, which spiders lack, and to conceal the fact that they have eight legs rather than six; they develop large color patches round one pair of eyes to disguise the fact that they generally have eight simple eyes, while ants have two compound eyes; they cover their bodies with reflective hairs to resemble the shiny bodies of ants. In some spider species, males and females mimic different ant species, as female spiders are usually much larger than males. Ant-mimicking spiders also modify their behavior to resemble that of the target species of ant; for example, many adopt a zig-zag pattern of movement, ant-mimicking jumping spiders avoid jumping, and spiders of the genus Synemosyna walk on the outer edges of leaves in the same way as Pseudomyrmex. Ant-mimicry in many spiders and other arthropods may be for protection from predators that hunt by sight, including birds, lizards and spiders. However, several ant-mimicking spiders prey either on ants or on the ants' "livestock", such as aphids. When at rest, the ant-mimicking crab spider Amyciaea does not closely resemble Oecophylla, but while hunting it imitates the behavior of a dying ant to attract worker ants. After a kill, some ant-mimicking spiders hold their victims between themselves and large groups of ants to avoid being attacked.
DEFENSE
There is strong evidence that spiders' coloration is camouflage that helps them to evade their major predators, birds and parasitic wasps, both of which have good color vision. Many spider species are colored so as to merge with their most common backgrounds, and some have disruptive coloration, stripes and blotches that break up their outlines. In a few species, such as the Hawaiian happy-face spider, Theridion grallator, several coloration schemes are present in a ratio that appears to remain constant, and this may make it more difficult for predators to recognize the species. Most spiders are insufficiently dangerous or unpleasant-tasting for warning coloration to offer much benefit. However, a few species with powerful venoms, large jaws or irritant hairs have patches of warning colors, and some actively display these colors when threatened.
Many of the family Theraphosidae, which includes tarantulas and baboon spiders, have urticating hairs on their abdomens and use their legs to flick them at attackers. These hairs are fine setae (bristles) with fragile bases and a row of barbs on the tip. The barbs cause intense irritation but there is no evidence that they carry any kind of venom. A few defend themselves against wasps by including networks of very robust threads in their webs, giving the spider time to flee while the wasps are struggling with the obstacles. The golden wheeling spider, Carparachne aureoflava, of the Namibian desert escapes parasitic wasps by flipping onto its side and cartwheeling down sand dunes.
SOCIAL SPIDERS
A few spider species that build webs live together in large colonies and show social behavior, although not as complex as in social insects. Anelosimus eximius (in the family Theridiidae) can form colonies of up to 50,000 individuals. The genus Anelosimus has a strong tendency towards sociality: all known American species are social, and species in Madagascar are at least somewhat social. Members of other species in the same family but several different genera have independently developed social behavior. For example, although Theridion nigroannulatum belongs to a genus with no other social species, T. nigroannulatum build colonies that may contain several thousand individuals that co-operate in prey capture and share food. Other communal spiders include several Philoponella species (family Uloboridae), Agelena consociata (family Agelenidae) and Mallos gregalis (family Dictynidae). Social predatory spiders need to defend their prey against kleptoparasites ("thieves"), and larger colonies are more successful in this. The herbivorous spider Bagheera kiplingi lives in small colonies which help to protect eggs and spiderlings. Even widow spiders (genus Latrodectus), which are notoriously cannibalistic, have formed small colonies in captivity, sharing webs and feeding together.
WEB TYPES
There is no consistent relationship between the classification of spiders and the types of web they build: species in the same genus may build very similar or significantly different webs. Nor is there much correspondence between spiders' classification and the chemical composition of their silks. Convergent evolution in web construction, in other words use of similar techniques by remotely related species, is rampant. Orb web designs and the spinning behaviors that produce them are the best understood. The basic radial-then-spiral sequence visible in orb webs and the sense of direction required to build them may have been inherited from the common ancestors of most spider groups. However, the majority of spiders build non-orb webs. It used to be thought that the sticky orb web was an evolutionary innovation resulting in the diversification of the Orbiculariae. Now, however, it appears that non-orb spiders are a sub-group that evolved from orb-web spiders, and non-orb spiders have over 40% more species and are four times as abundant as orb-web spiders. Their greater success may be because sphecid wasps, which are often the dominant predators of spiders, much prefer to attack spiders that have flat webs.
ORB WEBS
About half the potential prey that hit orb webs escape. A web has to perform three functions: intercepting the prey (intersection), absorbing its momentum without breaking (stopping), and trapping the prey by entangling it or sticking to it (retention). No single design is best for all prey. For example: wider spacing of lines will increase the web's area and hence its ability to intercept prey, but reduce its stopping power and retention; closer spacing, larger sticky droplets and thicker lines would improve retention, but would make it easier for potential prey to see and avoid the web, at least during the day. However, there are no consistent differences between orb webs built for use during the day and those built for use at night. In fact, there is no simple relationship between orb web design features and the prey they capture, as each orb-weaving species takes a wide range of prey.
The hubs of orb webs, where the spiders lurk, are usually above the center, as the spiders can move downwards faster than upwards. If there is an obvious direction in which the spider can retreat to avoid its own predators, the hub is usually offset towards that direction.
Horizontal orb webs are fairly common, despite being less effective at intercepting and retaining prey and more vulnerable to damage by rain and falling debris. Various researchers have suggested that horizontal webs offer compensating advantages, such as reduced vulnerability to wind damage; reduced visibility to prey flying upwards, because of the back-lighting from the sky; enabling oscillations to catch insects in slow horizontal flight. However, there is no single explanation for the common use of horizontal orb webs.
Spiders often attach highly visible silk bands, called decorations or stabilimenta, to their webs. Field research suggests that webs with more decorative bands captured more prey per hour. However, a laboratory study showed that spiders reduce the building of these decorations if they sense the presence of predators.
There are several unusual variants of orb web, many of them convergently evolved, including: attachment of lines to the surface of water, possibly to trap insects in or on the surface; webs with twigs through their centers, possibly to hide the spiders from predators; "ladder-like" webs that appear most effective in catching moths. However, the significance of many variations is unclear.
In 1973, Skylab 3 took two orb-web spiders into space to test their web-spinning capabilities in zero gravity. At first, both produced rather sloppy webs, but they adapted quickly.
TANGLEWEB SPIDERS (COBWEB SPIDERS)
Members of the family Theridiidae weave irregular, tangled, three-dimensional webs, popularly known as cobwebs. There seems to be an evolutionary trend towards a reduction in the amount of sticky silk used, leading to its total absence in some species. The construction of cobwebs is less stereotyped than that of orb-webs, and may take several days.
OTHER TYPES OF WEBS
The Linyphiidae generally make horizontal but uneven sheets, with tangles of stopping threads above. Insects that hit the stopping threads fall onto the sheet or are shaken onto it by the spider, and are held by sticky threads on the sheet until the spider can attack from below.
EVOLUTION
FOSSIL RECORD
Although the fossil record of spiders is considered poor, almost 1000 species have been described from fossils. Because spiders' bodies are quite soft, the vast majority of fossil spiders have been found preserved in amber. The oldest known amber that contains fossil arthropods dates from 130 million years ago in the Early Cretaceous period. In addition to preserving spiders' anatomy in very fine detail, pieces of amber show spiders mating, killing prey, producing silk and possibly caring for their young. In a few cases, amber has preserved spiders' egg sacs and webs, occasionally with prey attached; the oldest fossil web found so far is 100 million years old. Earlier spider fossils come from a few lagerstätten, places where conditions were exceptionally suited to preserving fairly soft tissues.
The oldest known exclusively terrestrial arachnid is the trigonotarbid Palaeotarbus jerami, from about 420 million years ago in the Silurian period, and had a triangular cephalothorax and segmented abdomen, as well as eight legs and a pair of pedipalps. Attercopus fimbriunguis, from 386 million years ago in the Devonian period, bears the earliest known silk-producing spigots, and was therefore hailed as a spider at the time of its discovery. However, these spigots may have been mounted on the underside of the abdomen rather than on spinnerets, which are modified appendages and whose mobility is important in the building of webs. Hence Attercopus and the similar Permian arachnid Permarachne may not have been true spiders, and probably used silk for lining nests or producing egg-cases rather than for building webs. The largest known fossil spider as of 2011 is the araneid Nephila jurassica, from about 165 million years ago, recorded from Daohuogo, Inner Mongolia in China. Its body length is almost 25 mm.
Several Carboniferous spiders were members of the Mesothelae, a primitive group now represented only by the Liphistiidae. The mesothelid Paleothele montceauensis, from the Late Carboniferous over 299 million years ago, had five spinnerets. Although the Permian period 299 to 251 million years ago saw rapid diversification of flying insects, there are very few fossil spiders from this period.
The main groups of modern spiders, Mygalomorphae and Araneomorphae, first appear in the Triassic well before 200 million years ago. Some Triassic mygalomorphs appear to be members of the family Hexathelidae, whose modern members include the notorious Sydney funnel-web spider, and their spinnerets appear adapted for building funnel-shaped webs to catch jumping insects. Araneomorphae account for the great majority of modern spiders, including those that weave the familiar orb-shaped webs. The Jurassic and Cretaceous periods provide a large number of fossil spiders, including representatives of many modern families.
WIKIPEDIA
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Nakajima J9N Kitsuka (中島 橘花, "Orange Blossom", pronounced Kikka in Kanji used traditionally by the Japanese) was Japan's first jet aircraft. In internal IJN documents it was also called Kōkoku Nigō Heiki (皇国二号兵器, "Imperial Weapon No.2"). After the Japanese military attaché in Germany witnessed trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a request to Nakajima to develop a similar aircraft to be used as a fast attack bomber. Among the specifications for the design were the requirements that it should be able to be built largely by unskilled labor, and that the wings should be foldable. This latter feature was not intended for potential use on aircraft carriers, but rather to enable the aircraft to be hidden in caves and tunnels around Japan as the navy began to prepare for the defense of the home islands.
Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura laid out an aircraft that bore a strong but superficial resemblance to the Me 262. Compared to the Me 262, the J9N airframe was noticeably smaller and more conventional in design, with straight wings and tail surfaces, lacking the slight sweepback of the Me 262. The triangular fuselage cross section characteristic of the German design was less pronounced, due to smaller fuel tanks. The main landing gear of the Kikka was taken from the A6M Zero and the nose wheel from the tail of a Yokosuka P1Y bomber.
The Kikka was designed in preliminary form to use the Tsu-11, a rudimentary motorjet style jet engine that was essentially a ducted fan with an afterburner. Subsequent designs were planned around the Ne-10 (TR-10) centrifugal-flow turbojet, and the Ne-12, which added a four-stage axial compressor to the front of the Ne-10. Tests of this powerplant soon revealed that it would not produce anywhere near the power required to propel the aircraft, and the project was temporarily stalled. It was then decided to produce a new axial flow turbojet based on the German BMW 003.
Development of the engine was troubled, based on little more than photographs and a single cut-away drawing of the BMW 003. A suitable unit, the Ishikawa-jima Ne-20, was finally built in January 1945. By that time, the Kikka project was making progress and the first prototype made its maiden flight. Due to the worsening war situation, the Navy considered employing the Kikka as a kamikaze weapon, but this was quickly rejected due to the high cost and complexity associated with manufacturing contemporary turbojet engines. Other more economical projects designed specifically for kamikaze attacks, such as the simpler Nakajima Tōka (designed to absorb Japanese stock of obsolete engines), the pulsejet-powered Kawanishi Baika, and the infamous Yokosuka Ohka, were either underway or already in mass production.
The following month the prototype was dismantled and delivered to Kisarazu Naval Airfield where it was re-assembled and prepared for flight testing. The aircraft performed well during a 20-minute test flight, with the only concern being the length of the takeoff run – the Ne 20 only had a thrust of 4.66 kN (1,047 lbf), and the engine pair had barely sufficient power to get the aircraft off the ground. This lack of thrust also resulted in a maximum speed of just 623 km/h (387 mph, 336 kn) at sea level and 696 km/h (432 mph; 376 kn) at 10,000 m (32,808 ft).
For the second test flight, four days later, rocket assisted take off (RATO) units were fitted to the aircraft, which worked and gave the aircraft acceptable field performance. The tests went on, together with a second prototype, but despite this early test stage, the J9N was immediately rushed into production.
By May 1945 approximately forty airframes had been completed and handed over to IJN home defense frontline units for operational use and conversion training. These were structurally identical with the prototypes, but they were powered by more potent and reliable Ne-130 (with 8.826 kN/900 kgf) or Ne-230 (8.679 kN/885 kgf) engines, which finally gave the aircraft a competitive performance and also made the RATO boosters obsolete - unless an 800 kg bomb was carried in overload configuration. Most were J9N1 day fighter single seaters, armed with two 30 mm Type 5 cannons with 50 rounds per gun in the nose. Some operational Kitsukas had, due to the lack of equipment, the 30 mm guns replaced with lighter 20 mm Ho-5 cannon. A few were unarmed two-seaters (J9N2) with dual controls and a second seat instead of the fuselage fuel tank. This markedly limited the aircraft’s range but was accepted for a dedicated trainer, but a ventral 500 l drop tank could be carried to extend the two-seater’s range to an acceptable level.
A small number, both single- and two-seaters, were furthermore adapted to night fighter duties and equipped with an experimental ”FD-2” centimeter waveband radar in the nose with an “antler” antenna array, similar to German radar sets of the time. The FD-2 used four forward-facing Yagi style antennae with initially five and later with seven elements (the sideway facing rods) each. These consisted of two pairs, each with a sending (top and bot) and a receiving antenna (left and right). The set used horizontal lobe switching to find the target, an electrical shifter would continuously switch between the sets. The signal strengths would then be compared to determine the range and azimuth of the target, and the results would then be shown on a CRT display.
In order to fit the electronics (the FD-2 weighed around 70 kg/155 lb) the night fighters typically had one of the nose-mounted guns replaced by a fixed, obliquely firing Ho-5 gun ("Schräge Musik"-style), which was mounted in the aircraft’s flank behind the cockpit, and the 500l drop tank became a permanent installation to extend loiter time, at the expense of top speed, though. These machines received the suffix “-S” and flew, despite the FD-2’s weaknesses and limitations, a few quite effective missions against American B-29 bombers, but their impact was minimal due to the aircrafts’ small numbers and poor reliability of the still experimental radar system. However, the FD-2’s performance was rather underwhelming, though, with an insufficient range of only 3 km. Increased drag due to the antennae and countermeasures deployed by B-29 further decreased the effectiveness, and the J9N2-S’s successes could be rather attributed to experienced and motivated crews than the primitive radar.
Proposed follow-on J9N versions had included a reconnaissance aircraft and a fast attack aircraft that was supposed to carry a single bomb under the fuselage against ships. There was also a modified version of the design to be launched from a 200 m long catapult, the "Nakajima Kikka-kai Prototype Turbojet Special Attacker". All these proposed versions were expected to be powered by more advanced developments of the Ne-20, the Ne-330 with 13 kN (1.330 kg) thrust, but none of them reached the hardware stage.
The J9Ns’ overall war contribution was negligible, and after the war, several airframes (including partial airframes) were captured by Allied forces. Three airframes (including a two-seat night fighter with FD-2 radar) were brought to the U.S. for study. Today, two J9N examples survive in the National Air and Space Museum: The first is a Kikka that was taken to the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Maryland for analysis. This aircraft is very incomplete and is believed to have been patched together from a variety of semi-completed airframes. It is currently still in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, MD. The second Kikka is on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) fuselage only
10.30 m (33 ft 8¾ in) with FD-2 antenna array
Wingspan: 10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 13.2 m² (142 sq ft)
Empty weight: 2,300 kg (5,071 lb)
Gross weight: 3,500 kg (7,716 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,080 kg (8,995 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Ishikawajima Ne-130 or Ne-230 axial-flow turbojet engines
each with 8.83 kN/900 kg or 8.68 kN/885 kg thrust
Performance:
Maximum speed: 785 km/h (487 mph, 426 kn)
Range: 925 km (574 mi, 502 nmi) with internal fuel
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.5 m/s (2,064 ft/min)
Wing loading: 265 kg/m² (54 lb/sq ft)
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.43
Armament:
1× 30 mm (1.181 in) Type 5 cannon with 50 rounds in the nose
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Type Ho-2 cannon with 80 rounds, mounted obliquely behind the cockpit
1× ventral hardpoint for a 500 l drop tank or a single 500 kg (1,102 lb) bomb
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Well, this fictional Kikka night fighter looks quite dry, but that makes it IMHO more credible. The large antler antenna array might look “a bit too much”, and a real night fighter probably had a simpler arrangement with a single Yagi-style/arrow-shaped antenna, but a description of the FD-2 radar suggested the layout I chose – and it does not look bad. The oblique cannon in the flank is another odd detail, but it is not unplausible. However, with all the equipment and esp. the draggy antennae on board, the Kikka’s mediocre performance would surely have seriously suffered, probably beyond an effective use. But this is whifworld, after all. ;-)
In approximately 7 months time (on October 7th, 2016 to be exact), the last Australian-designed & manufactured Ford Falcon will exit the production line at Broadmeadows in Melbourne. This will marktthe end of 57 years of Falcon production, and 92 years of Ford production in Australia.
The Falcon, rather than the Territory (which is also assembled in Broadmeadows) has been chosen due to the many years that this nameplate has been at the forefront of the Australian automotive market.
Unfortunately, increased competition, globalisation and market segmentation have all played their part in reducing the viability of producing cars in Australia. After Ford's exit in October 2016, the two other automotive producers in Australia, Holden (part of General Motors) and Toyota Australia are expected to close within 12 months or so.
The remaining bright spot is that Ford's Product Development activities in Australia have never been stronger.
The office campus in Broadmeadows has been turned over solely to Product Development and Design, becoming the Asia-Pacific Product Development Campus (APPDC) - a bit of a mouthful, such that employees still just call it 'Head Office'.
This facility is supported by full-vehicle testing at the You-Yangs Proving Ground outside Lara, and the Ford Reasearch & Development Centre in Geelong (at one end of the existing vehicle production site).
The model shown the FGX G6-E displays the current Ford 'look' draped over the FG platform, first launched in 2008. the model has a 4.0 litre, inline six-cylinder engine producing 195 kW in standard form, and up to 325 kW in its final turbocharged edition (The XR6 Sprint). An intermediate 270 kW tune is used for the G6-E Turbo, - a luxury-sport model.
+++ DISCLAIMER +++Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Nakajima J9N Kitsuka (中島 橘花, "Orange Blossom", pronounced Kikka in Kanji used traditionally by the Japanese) was Japan's first jet aircraft. In internal IJN documents it was also called Kōkoku Nigō Heiki (皇国二号兵器, "Imperial Weapon No.2"). After the Japanese military attaché in Germany witnessed trials of the Messerschmitt Me 262 in 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy issued a request to Nakajima to develop a similar aircraft to be used as a fast attack bomber. Among the specifications for the design were the requirements that it should be able to be built largely by unskilled labor, and that the wings should be foldable. This latter feature was not intended for potential use on aircraft carriers, but rather to enable the aircraft to be hidden in caves and tunnels around Japan as the navy began to prepare for the defense of the home islands.
Nakajima designers Kazuo Ohno and Kenichi Matsumura laid out an aircraft that bore a strong but superficial resemblance to the Me 262. Compared to the Me 262, the J9N airframe was noticeably smaller and more conventional in design, with straight wings and tail surfaces, lacking the slight sweepback of the Me 262. The triangular fuselage cross section characteristic of the German design was less pronounced, due to smaller fuel tanks. The main landing gear of the Kikka was taken from the A6M Zero and the nose wheel from the tail of a Yokosuka P1Y bomber.
The Kikka was designed in preliminary form to use the Tsu-11, a rudimentary motorjet style jet engine that was essentially a ducted fan with an afterburner. Subsequent designs were planned around the Ne-10 (TR-10) centrifugal-flow turbojet, and the Ne-12, which added a four-stage axial compressor to the front of the Ne-10. Tests of this powerplant soon revealed that it would not produce anywhere near the power required to propel the aircraft, and the project was temporarily stalled. It was then decided to produce a new axial flow turbojet based on the German BMW 003.
Development of the engine was troubled, based on little more than photographs and a single cut-away drawing of the BMW 003. A suitable unit, the Ishikawa-jima Ne-20, was finally built in January 1945. By that time, the Kikka project was making progress and the first prototype made its maiden flight. Due to the worsening war situation, the Navy considered employing the Kikka as a kamikaze weapon, but this was quickly rejected due to the high cost and complexity associated with manufacturing contemporary turbojet engines. Other more economical projects designed specifically for kamikaze attacks, such as the simpler Nakajima Tōka (designed to absorb Japanese stock of obsolete engines), the pulsejet-powered Kawanishi Baika, and the infamous Yokosuka Ohka, were either underway or already in mass production.
The following month the prototype was dismantled and delivered to Kisarazu Naval Airfield where it was re-assembled and prepared for flight testing. The aircraft performed well during a 20-minute test flight, with the only concern being the length of the takeoff run – the Ne 20 only had a thrust of 4.66 kN (1,047 lbf), and the engine pair had barely sufficient power to get the aircraft off the ground. This lack of thrust also resulted in a maximum speed of just 623 km/h (387 mph, 336 kn) at sea level and 696 km/h (432 mph; 376 kn) at 10,000 m (32,808 ft).
For the second test flight, four days later, rocket assisted take off (RATO) units were fitted to the aircraft, which worked and gave the aircraft acceptable field performance. The tests went on, together with a second prototype, but despite this early test stage, the J9N was immediately rushed into production.
By May 1945 approximately forty airframes had been completed and handed over to IJN home defense frontline units for operational use and conversion training. These were structurally identical with the prototypes, but they were powered by more potent and reliable Ne-130 (with 8.826 kN/900 kgf) or Ne-230 (8.679 kN/885 kgf) engines, which finally gave the aircraft a competitive performance and also made the RATO boosters obsolete - unless an 800 kg bomb was carried in overload configuration. Most were J9N1 day fighter single seaters, armed with two 30 mm Type 5 cannons with 50 rounds per gun in the nose. Some operational Kitsukas had, due to the lack of equipment, the 30 mm guns replaced with lighter 20 mm Ho-5 cannon. A few were unarmed two-seaters (J9N2) with dual controls and a second seat instead of the fuselage fuel tank. This markedly limited the aircraft’s range but was accepted for a dedicated trainer, but a ventral 500 l drop tank could be carried to extend the two-seater’s range to an acceptable level.
A small number, both single- and two-seaters, were furthermore adapted to night fighter duties and equipped with an experimental ”FD-2” centimeter waveband radar in the nose with an “antler” antenna array, similar to German radar sets of the time. The FD-2 used four forward-facing Yagi style antennae with initially five and later with seven elements (the sideway facing rods) each. These consisted of two pairs, each with a sending (top and bot) and a receiving antenna (left and right). The set used horizontal lobe switching to find the target, an electrical shifter would continuously switch between the sets. The signal strengths would then be compared to determine the range and azimuth of the target, and the results would then be shown on a CRT display.
In order to fit the electronics (the FD-2 weighed around 70 kg/155 lb) the night fighters typically had one of the nose-mounted guns replaced by a fixed, obliquely firing Ho-5 gun ("Schräge Musik"-style), which was mounted in the aircraft’s flank behind the cockpit, and the 500l drop tank became a permanent installation to extend loiter time, at the expense of top speed, though. These machines received the suffix “-S” and flew, despite the FD-2’s weaknesses and limitations, a few quite effective missions against American B-29 bombers, but their impact was minimal due to the aircrafts’ small numbers and poor reliability of the still experimental radar system. However, the FD-2’s performance was rather underwhelming, though, with an insufficient range of only 3 km. Increased drag due to the antennae and countermeasures deployed by B-29 further decreased the effectiveness, and the J9N2-S’s successes could be rather attributed to experienced and motivated crews than the primitive radar.
Proposed follow-on J9N versions had included a reconnaissance aircraft and a fast attack aircraft that was supposed to carry a single bomb under the fuselage against ships. There was also a modified version of the design to be launched from a 200 m long catapult, the "Nakajima Kikka-kai Prototype Turbojet Special Attacker". All these proposed versions were expected to be powered by more advanced developments of the Ne-20, the Ne-330 with 13 kN (1.330 kg) thrust, but none of them reached the hardware stage.
The J9Ns’ overall war contribution was negligible, and after the war, several airframes (including partial airframes) were captured by Allied forces. Three airframes (including a two-seat night fighter with FD-2 radar) were brought to the U.S. for study. Today, two J9N examples survive in the National Air and Space Museum: The first is a Kikka that was taken to the Patuxent River Naval Air Base, Maryland for analysis. This aircraft is very incomplete and is believed to have been patched together from a variety of semi-completed airframes. It is currently still in storage at the Paul E. Garber Preservation, Restoration and Storage Facility in Silver Hill, MD. The second Kikka is on display at the NASM Udvar-Hazy Center in the Mary Baker Engen Restoration Hangar.
General characteristics:
Crew: 2
Length: 8.13 m (26 ft 8 in) fuselage only
10.30 m (33 ft 8¾ in) with FD-2 antenna array
Wingspan: 10 m (32 ft 10 in)
Height: 2.95 m (9 ft 8 in)
Wing area: 13.2 m² (142 sq ft)
Empty weight: 2,300 kg (5,071 lb)
Gross weight: 3,500 kg (7,716 lb)
Max takeoff weight: 4,080 kg (8,995 lb)
Powerplant:
2× Ishikawajima Ne-130 or Ne-230 axial-flow turbojet engines
each with 8.83 kN/900 kg or 8.68 kN/885 kg thrust
Performance:
Maximum speed: 785 km/h (487 mph, 426 kn)
Range: 925 km (574 mi, 502 nmi) with internal fuel
Service ceiling: 12,000 m (39,000 ft)
Rate of climb: 10.5 m/s (2,064 ft/min)
Wing loading: 265 kg/m² (54 lb/sq ft)
Thrust-to-weight ratio: 0.43
Armament:
1× 30 mm (1.181 in) Type 5 cannon with 50 rounds in the nose
1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Type Ho-2 cannon with 80 rounds, mounted obliquely behind the cockpit
1× ventral hardpoint for a 500 l drop tank or a single 500 kg (1,102 lb) bomb
The kit and its assembly:
This is in fact the second Kikka I have built, and this time it’s a two-seater from AZ Models – actually the trainer boxing, but converted into a personal night fighter interpretation. The AZ Models kit is a simple affair, but that's also its problem. In the box things look quite good, detail level is on par with a classic Matchbox kit. But unlike a Matchbox kit, the AZ Models offering does not go together well. I had to fight everywhere with poor fit, lack of locator pins, ejection marks - anything a short run model kit can throw at you! Thanks to the experience with the single-seater kit some time ago, things did not become too traumatic, but it’s still not a kit for beginners. What worked surprisingly well was the IP canopy, though, which I cut into five sections for an optional open display – even though I am not certain if the kit’s designers had put some brain into their work because the canopy’s segmentation becomes more and more dubious the further you go backwards.
The only personal mods is a slightly changed armament, with one nose gun deleted and faired over with a piece of styrene sheet, while the leftover gun was mounted obliquely onto the left flank. I initially considered a position behind the canopy but rejected this because of CoG reasons. Then I planned to mount it directly behind the 2nd seat, so that the barrel would protrude through the canopy, but this appeared unrealistic because the (utterly tiny) sliding canopy for the rear crewman could not have been opened anymore? Finally, I settled for an offset position in the aircraft’s flanks, partly inspired by “Schräge Musik” arrangements on some German Fw 190 night fighters.
The antennae come from a Jadar Model PE set for Italeri’s Me 210s, turning it either into a night fighter or a naval surveillance aircraft.
Painting and markings:
This became rather lusterless; many late IJN night fighters carried a uniform dark green livery with minimalistic, toned-down markings, e. g. hinomaru without a white high-contrast edge, just the yellow ID bands on the wings’ leading edges were retained.
For this look the model received an overall basis coat of Humbrol 75 (Bronze Green), later treated with a black ink washing, dry-brushed aluminum and post-shading with lighter shades of dark green (including Humbrol 116 and Revell 67). The only colorful highlight is a red fin tip (Humbrol 19) and a thin red stripe underneath (decal). The yellow and white ID bands were created with decal material.
The cockpit interior was painted in a yellowish-green primer (trying to simulate a typical “bamboo” shade that was used in some late-war IJN cockpits), while the landing gear wells were painted in aodake iro, a clear bluish protective lacquer. The landing gear struts themselves became semi-matt black.
The markings are fictional and were puzzled together from various sources. The hinomaru came from the AZ Models’ Kikka single seater sheet (since it offers six roundels w/o white edge), the tactical code on the fin was created with red numbers from a Fujimi Aichi B7A2 Ryusei.
Finally, the kit received a coat of matt acrylic varnish and some grinded graphite around the jet exhausts and the gun nozzles.
Well, this fictional Kikka night fighter looks quite dry, but that makes it IMHO more credible. The large antler antenna array might look “a bit too much”, and a real night fighter probably had a simpler arrangement with a single Yagi-style/arrow-shaped antenna, but a description of the FD-2 radar suggested the layout I chose – and it does not look bad. The oblique cannon in the flank is another odd detail, but it is not unplausible. However, with all the equipment and esp. the draggy antennae on board, the Kikka’s mediocre performance would surely have seriously suffered, probably beyond an effective use. But this is whifworld, after all. ;-)
The new alltours head office building in Düsseldorf stands prominently on the Mannesmannufer, directly on the banks of the Rhine. Designed by HPP Architects, this significant new build aims to be a harmonious addition to its prestigious surroundings, nestled between the historic Behrensbau and the Mannesmann Tower. The building, completed around the first quarter of 2023, is a multi-functional ensemble, featuring not only modern office spaces for alltours but also freehold apartments, retirement housing, and a nursing and care facility, contributing to a vibrant mixed-use urban quarter.
Architecturally, the alltours headquarters is characterized by its elegant and finely structured facade. It features a vertical segmentation made of stone pilaster strips, creating a distinct yet calm architectural language. This design subtly references the nearby Behrensbau, with recurring "floor packages" and vertical window divisions. The main office building, spanning approximately 13,500 square meters over several floors (reportedly up to 10 or 11, with 2 underground), is designed with high transparency to maximize views of the Rhine and integrate naturally into the cityscape.
Inside, the building prioritizes a positive working environment and sustainability. A central, light-flooded atrium serves as the heart of the complex, offering generous communication and meeting zones. One of its most striking features is a massive 28-meter-high indoor green wall, considered one of Europe's largest, featuring over 5,600 plants. This vertical garden not only enhances the aesthetics but also contributes to air purification and a pleasant microclimate. The building also incorporates modern amenities such as a fitness area, chill-out zone, and employee restaurant with an outdoor terrace on the top floor, along with sustainable features like an intelligent energy concept and advanced cooling systems for year-round comfort.
Usually eruptions are attractive as a view of prominences, less so as filaments. But this high-contrast structure showed a fine segmentation. For a few moments the seeing was fair - a lucky moment.
Baader SC 9,25" Triband
Hofdijk housing, Rotterdam, 1977-1983. Architecture by Jan Verhoeven.
Our current exhibition on Dutch structuralism sparked a new interest for this type of architecture. Although I don’t particularly like it from an estheticial point of view, the segmentation, in order to create ‘human scaled’ spaces that invite residents to meet and interact with each other, allows for multiple perspectives and seemingly endless photographic possibilities.
Hofdijk consists of 584 dwellings in the centre of Rotterdam, joint together by a complex network of collective spaces like galleries and courtyards, that give access to individual houses.
I went outside today and found a very long (over a meter in length) icicle hanging off of the roof of the outer genkan. I don't know what caused the segmentation of the ice...
(Further pictures you can see quite easily by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
Vienna 1, The Franciscan Church
The Franciscans go back to St. Francis of Assisi and thus the 13th Century. They were founded as a mendicant orders but soon the arose the question how literally one should take the declaration of poverty. Was it allowed to make financial provision for elderly or sick brothers? Finally it came to the segmentation of the faith community, the more liberal Minoriten (Friars Minor Conventual) made their own order, while the Franciscans followed the old conventions. 1453 came the first Franciscan, John of Capistrano, to Vienna.
He founded the first Franciscan monastery in what is now 6th District. But the monks had to flee when the Turks besieged Vienna in 1529 and the monastery burned down. It took until 1589 until the city of Vienna gave them the at that time vacant monastery together with appendant church. The house, in its place now stands the monastery had already been donated in 1306 by wealthy citizens - namely for "loose women" who wanted give up their trade and convert themselves.
1476 was at the Weichenburg (hence Weihburggasse) inaugurated a church with seven altars, where formerly a "Pfarrheusl (small parsonage)" had stood for the soul welfare of the female residents. At the time of the Reformation, however, moral values in this house went downhill. 1553, the Foundation was dissolved, but it took yet until 1572 before the last resident had died. For eight years, the building was then an educational establishment for girls of poor people.
When the Franciscans now had got the property, they started in 1603 with a reconstruction of the church, which was consecrated in 1611. 1614, the foundation stone was laid for the new monastery.
The statues on the west facade are left Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua right. In the middle, on the pediment of the west portal of the Church stands Jerome, protector of the church. He is surrounded by two angle putti.
But let's go inside the church. Maria with the ax is the altarpiece above the high altar. The statue was carved in 1505 from lime wood and has its own story. She comes from the Green Mountain (Grünberg) in Bohemia, which was under the control the Sternberg family. Since the family in the meantime had become Protestant, it wanted to burn the statue. She were thrown into the fire - but the next day she stood unharmed again in the chapel. Now, the executioner was called who should dismember the effigy. However, even that was impossible, because the ax stuck in the shoulder of Mary and it was not possible to get it out. There it is still today. (You have to look closely, but then you see the great ax with slightly curved stem.) But that's not enough. A few years later the Madonna was lost in the gamble by a gegenreformierten (counter-reformed) Sternberg. The new owner, the Polish Baron Turnoffsky gave she in 1607 the Franciscan monastery. Exactly 100 years later, she got her current stand on the high altar.
The stone structure between altar and the statue of the Madonna also contains a crucifix, which dates from the beginning of the 17th Century. The wooden statues left and right represent the Saints Jerome respectively Francis and are typical examples of the so-called Franciscan carving school. It operated 1690-1730 and was run by lay brothers. The overall concept for the high altar dates back to the Jesuit Andrea dal Pozzo.
A special attraction is the organ by Hans Wöckherl that was already built in 1642 and today is the oldest organ in Vienna. It is, however, disappeared from the visible church, because it is behind the high altar and is only shown every Friday between 15.00 und 15.30 clock. In addition, one demans for that six euro entry...
The single-nave church has to both sides side chapels, of them I want to show two.
On the left we see the Magdalene Chapel, which was consecrated already in 1614 for the first time. 1644 and 1722, however, followed Neustiftungen (new foundings). The stucco decoration stems from 1644. The paintings in the vault are much more recent, from 1893. The altarpiece depicts the grieving Mary Magdalene under the Cross. It was created in 1725 by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. The image above shows Veronica's handkerchief with the face of Christ. It was painted by Wolfram Koeberl and in 1974 installed. The statues beside the altar represent the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. The two above chapels are provided with food grid, so that one could give Communion here.
An Immaculata chapel (pictured above right) is there since the existence of the church, but this was rebuilt in 1722. Previously, since 1642, there was a Michael altar here. From this period dates still the stucco decor on the ceiling. The altarpiece is by Johann Georg Schmidt, who painted it in 1721. The lateral statues depict the Saint Joachim and the mother of Mary.
Also the Capistrano Chapel, which was founded in 1723, is worth mentioning. The lateral stucco decor shows on the left side (picture) the glorification of St. John Capistrano, who, as I said, was the first Franciscan in Vienna. Right you can see him as a standard-bearer of Christian doctrine in the wars against the Turks. Both stucco images date from the time of the foundation. The altarpiece by Franz Xaver Wagenschön originated in 1761 and shows Capistrano in a scene from 1451, in Brescia when he healed a possessed man.
In the picture we see also the statue of Saint George, as he is killing the (admittedly small) dragon.
On the other side of the chapel is the Holy Florian, while Clara and Theresa stand next to the altar. Behind the altar there is a reliquary in glass from about 1720, in which we see a wax image of the Holy Hilaria. The relic shall be imbedded in the wax. Hilaria is rather unknown, but she was a martyr who was converted by Bishop Narcissus. She died in the year 304 in Augsburg, at the behest of the governor Gaius, because she did not want to renounce the Christian faith. About the nature of death, there are different opinions.
In the church there is a plaque that claims that she was burned at the grave of her daughter, while the Holy Encyclopedia states that she was enclosed in her house and this was then set on fire.
In the chapel opposite, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, there is also a glass coffin with a relic. This is the skeleton of the Felix Puer wearing the uniform of a Roman Centurion.
As a counterpart to the pulpit, this just opposite, you will find the monument of Johann Nepomuk. We see how he flows on the water of the Vltava river after he was thrown in Prague there. He actually was called "John from Nepomuk" in Czech "ne Pomuk". The wife of Emperor Wenceslas IV is said to have chosen him as confessor. The Emperor wanted to know then what she had confessed, but Johann Nepomuk did not betray the seal of confession and was therefore thrown into the water. The Empress had then an appearance of five stars.
(We see she also in the water of the monument.) These stars indicated were one could find the body. So much for the legend.
The fact is that Johann Nepomuk was tortured by the king and thrown into the Vltava. The activating moment was a dispute over a new monastery between the emperor and the archbishop of Prague, in which John Nepomuk was trampled underfoot ...
The pulpit was built in 1726 and was executed by the Franciscan carving school. At the parapet there are wooden reliefs of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The relief of the fourth evangelist, John, is attached to the pulpit door. At the parapet you further can see statues of Capistrano and Bonaventura, while on the sounding board are sitting Anthony of Padua and Berhardin of Siena. At the top stands the freeze image of Francis of Assisi.
The pews were 1727 - 1729 by brother Johann Gottfried Hartmann built and carved.
According to Taoist cosmology, Yin-Qi and Yang-Qi – the primordial feminine and masculine energies – produce what are known as the “Five Elements.” The Five Elements, in turn, give birth to the “ten-thousand things,” i.e. all of manifest existence. The Five Elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water.
The Five Elements are Fluid Categories:
To understand the use of the Five Element system in Qigong, Chinese Medicine and other Taoist practices, it’s important to know that the elements – like Yin and Yang – are fluid rather than static categories. For this reason, they’re often referred to as the “Five Phases” or “Five Transformations” or even “Five Orbs” (of influence).
The Five Elements Support and Control Each Other:
Everything we find in our external or internal terrain belongs to one of the Five Elements, each of which has supporting and controlling relationships with the other elements. When the Five Elements – within our bodies or external environments – are balanced, we experience health and prosperity. When they’re out of balance – overacting, counteracting, or failing to properly support one another – we experience dis-ease of one sort or another.
The Five Elements are Fluid Categories:
To understand the use of the Five Element system in Qigong, Chinese Medicine and other Taoist practices, it’s important to know that the elements – like Yin and Yang – are fluid rather than static categories. For this reason, they’re often referred to as the “Five Phases” or “Five Transformations” or even “Five Orbs” (of influence).
The Five Elements Support and Control Each Other:
Everything we find in our external or internal terrain belongs to one of the Five Elements, each of which has supporting and controlling relationships with the other elements. When the Five Elements – within our bodies or external environments – are balanced, we experience health and prosperity. When they’re out of balance – overacting, counteracting, or failing to properly support one another – we experience dis-ease of one sort or another.
Eternal family memories at the door of time and next Generation of Enlightenment
The Evolving Role of Brands for the Millennial Generation
Edelman 8095®, named for the years in which the generation was born, 1980 to 1995, is an insights group studying the Millennial generation and their relationship with brands. Following a benchmark study in 2010 They are growing up, and so too are their building careers – their sphere of influence views of success. Coming of age in the continues to expand – 74% believe they influence AUSTRALIA INDIA global recession has closed many traditional the purchase decisions of those around them. And BRAZIL TURKEY paths to success, forcing them to push back they expect a two-way dialogue: typical stages of adulthood, but has also 7 IN 10 MILLENNIALS THINK IT’S THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO CANADA UAE created a new breed of entrepreneurs. SHARE FEEDBACK WITH COMPANIES AFTER A GOOD OR BAD EXPERIENCE WITH THEM. CHINA UK OF MILLENNIALS SAY THAT OWNING THEIR FRANCE US OWN BUSINESS IS A 90% 90% 82% 81% TOP LIFE GOAL GERMANY INDIA CHINA BRAZIL UAEWHY MILLENNIALS MATTER FRIENDS OF BRANDSTO MARKETERS 75% 72% 67% 66% Millennials are surprisingly open to brand engagement and advertising, but only ifBIG: brands have the right approach. TURKEY GLOBAL AVERAGE US UKThe largest generation alivetoday – 1.8 billion globally 8 IN 10 MILLENNIALS EXPECT BRANDS TO ENTERTAIN THEM. HOW DO THEY WANT TO BE ENTERTAINED? 64% 61% 59% 57%INFLUENTIAL:Impact purchase decisions of ALLOW ME TO CO-CREATE AUSTRALIA FRANCE GERMANY CANADApeers & parents and will outpace 40% YOUR PRODUCTSBoomer earnings by 2018 ANSWER MY QUESTIONS/ CONNECT ME TO OTHERUNIQUE: 33% COMMENTS IN REAL TIME IN SOCIAL MEDIA 21% FANS OF THE BRAND/COMPANYThe first inherently digital I DON’T EXPECT BRANDS/generation that does not know a 32% SPONSOR ENTERTAINING EVENTS 20% COMPANIES TO ENTERTAIN MEworld without the Internet orsmartphones 31% CREATE ONLINE CONTENT SUCH AS VIDEOS, PHOTOS, GAMES AND BLOGS 19% PARTNER WITH A CELEBRITY OR PUBLIC FIGURE I ADMIRE
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR MARKETERS For brands to matter to Millennials, “average” is no longer enough. A whole new level of engagement, authenticity and purpose is necessary. Here are seven implications for marketers coming out of the 8095® study.• MILLENNIALS AREN’T KIDS ANYMORE. • IT’S NOT YOUR BRAND ANYMORE. • “SMART AND FUNNY IS THE NEW ROCK AND ROLL.” The oldest are 33, the youngest 18. They It belongs to your customers. Marketers This quote from Nick Shore at MTV are not the next frontier, they are the here must be willing to give up some brand summarizes an approach more marketers and now generation with spending power, control. Millennials want to co-create with need to take. When we asked Millennials careers and families. As the world’s top you, and have two-way dialogue 24/7/365. what brands need to do to capture their alpha-influencers, every company needs to Be agile, collaborative and prepared to attention, their #1 answer – use humor. see Millennials as influencers for the support the Action Consumers promoting While business is often serious, you don’t purchase of their products or services. your brands. always need to take your message so And we mean EVERY company. seriously. Find opportunities to be humble • EXPERIENCES OVER STUFF. and witty.• SHIFT AWAY FROM TRADITIONAL SEGMENTATION. Focus on how your product or service Wake up, people! The world has changed. enables life experiences. Millennials want “Minority” births now outnumber to buy into new ideas and be able to share Caucasian births in the U.S. and the world those ideas and experiences with friends is more diverse than ever before. Gender and family. Be social, and enable social lines are being blurred, and more men are experiences. taking over traditional female roles, and vice versa. It’s time to lessen the focus on • HELP MILLENNIALS BECOME AN EXPERT ON YOUR gender and other specifics and think about BRAND, PURPOSE AND STORY. messages that appeal to the blurring of the Millennials have a strong desire to share masses. and learn from each other. They want brands to entertain them. Share your• ENGAGE MILLENNIALS IN SURROUND SOUND. back-story, your history, the reasons why While inherently digital and dominant in you make the products you make or social media, they crave face-to-face deliver the service you deliver. It’s not engagement and in-real-life (IRL) enough for brands to be great storytellers. experiences. To successfully engage them, You need to enable your consumers to be you need to reach them from all sides, and powerful storytellers on your behalf. Be make sure your brand story is being told in authentic, transparent and communicate many of the sources of information they your larger purpose. use to make brand purchase decisions.Develop the next generation of leaders
For companies doing business in China, the great leap forward in HR effectiveness occurs when they can boast a truly scalable and sustainable workforce, which requires processes and practices that contribute to the development of future leaders. This concept is not new, of course, but the rapid growth and transformation of China creates challenges for even the most experienced expatriate managers, whose organizations need to be agile enough to enter markets rapidly and respond quickly to changes.As the Asia-Pacific region becomes increasingly important in the global economy, companies must understand China to succeed. MNCs not only need to develop the skills of Chinese leaders and managers through training, development, and overseas rotations, but also cross-pollinate talent by rotating their talent through China to ensure that all future leaders and high-potential employees—not just those in China—know the Chinese market. This does not mean that MNCs should merely staff leadership and management roles in China with expatriate talent. Indeed, MNCs, particularly US firms, are seeking to ensure upward mobility for talented PRC nationals and are often dissatisfied with the pace of “localization” or their overreliance on expatriate leadership. As a result, MNCs are increasingly bringing expatriate talent into China at the professional and technical levels on short-term assignments of less than two years. This two-pronged approach allows all high-potential employees and future global leaders to gain a deeper understanding of China, leaving companies better equipped to deal with the changing global market and the emergence of the Middle Kingdom.
Segment talent successfully. A key practice that companies should carefully examine is talent segmentation—the manner in which companies organize, structure, and reward their talent to achieve specific business results. Rather than being driven by the need to fill particular job vacancies and other immediate factors, companies should take a broader, more strategic view and align their talent management strategies and rewards programs with their specific profit models (for example, a blockbluster profit model yields large global profits over time, while a local leadership profit model earns profits mainly from transactions in local markets). In other words, companies should ensure that the incentive structure and the corresponding rewards programs, such as pay, benefits, and career development, encourage the type of employee performance that supports their business structure and profit models (see Case Studies). As MNCs expand their operational structures in China and make them more complex, using profit models to design HR programs can help ensure a company’s future viability.What is the Five Ghosts Transfer Wealth Technique? In Feng Shui some of you may have heard of it, "The Five Ghosts Transportation Wealth Technique" it's actually a Feng Shui secret technique to enhance your wealth and good fortune. Most Feng Shui practitioners know how to use these theories to enhance their wealth. In religious Taoism, we also have the "Five Ghosts Transportation Wealth Technique" also called "Five Ghosts moving treasure". It's a secret dharma from Taoist lineage, it had the ability to make a practitioner very wealthy by practicing this secret dharma. However to practice this secret dharma there are several criteria that needs to be fulfilled before anyone can practice it. Firstly the date of birth of the practitioner is evaluated to see if he has an affinity with the Five Ghosts, there is an elaborate chart that we need to consult to determine this. Only these with affinity with the Five Ghosts can practice this secret dharma otherwise it will not work. Next a set of rituals need to be perform, practitioners need to follow all procedures and must have the perseverance to practice it consistently for 49 days. If any of the steps in the procedures are omitted you will need to restart the entire rituals again. It may seems very tedious but the rewards gained after the 49 days rituals is very lucrative and rewarding.
What I am revealing to you now is a guarded secret of most Taoist practitioners, which most are reluctant to revealed it. However for the benefits of readers here I shall make it an exception. As I get a lot of people writing to me with this situation, and perhaps this applies to someone you know. They're are constantly encountering a lot of problems in life, which is usually a lack of money. That in turn will cause them further problems and destroyed their mental peace.
In religious Taoism, as you are aware form a part of China’s heritage and traditions incorporating Buddhism, Confucianism, folk’s belief and Shamanism. Ancestor's and Spirits worshipped are practice. This secret dharma actually beseech the retinue of Five Ghosts to assist the practitioners to gain enormous wealth and fortune. Practitioners well versed in this art are mostly wealthy and successful. As the Five Ghosts actually delivers wealth spiritually to the practitioners and indirectly enhancing the chance of the practitioners in gaining material wealth! This happens by enhancing the practitioners luck and affinity with people around him. If the practitioner is a merchant or business person he would be able to generate more revenue with their help. And at times if he were to gamble he would have a sudden windfall. The practitioner will never run out of Cash! Whenever his cash is running out the Five Ghosts will then deliver wealth to him. It's quite unbelievable especially to most skeptics, but I had personally know an acquaintance practicing this dharma and I can attest that he's filthy rich! He just seems to have the Midas touch, whatever he invest he would make good returns while others will lose. Most people will start looking for a cure using some alternative means i.e. feng Shui, astrology, numerology and some spiritual means that will somehow miraculously solve their financial problems. Whether the problem anyone experiences in life is due to actions performed in THIS life or from a Past life, the point is that the troubles are YOUR karma and you have to solve them or work through them. At times no matter whatever means you try be it spiritual, etc...nothing can change them and you must simply bear them as long as is necessary until the time changes and they transform themselves. A life free of problems, troubles, difficulties or challenges is impossible. So it all comes down to KARMA. This is the reason why I always ask people to perform meritorious deeds no matter how small, when accumulated it would be a great field of blessings. NOTE: Before I start let me clarify that viewers discretion is advice as some people may find it disturbing, if you do please leave my website immediately. I had deliberately omitted some of the procedures, mantra's and mudra's. For these interested it's all covered in my book, THE SECRET TO THE MYSTERIOUS WORLD OF TAOIST MAGIC, ISBN 983-3206-02-6 available SOON on the www.taoistsecret.com website.The Five Ghosts originally are spirits from the Five directions each representing the five elements namely; North (Water element), South (Fire element), East (Wood element), Center (Earth element), West (Metal element). Some practitioners even claimed that the Five Ghosts are the denizen of Hades. On another account some practitioners claimed that the Five Ghosts are not human souls, they are the souls of five types of animal i.e. cow, goat, pig, dog and donkey. They claimed the so-called Five Ghosts moving treasure is actually using the spirits of five types of animal to move the treasure. I'll show you some essential Talismans that are needed to be used to practice the Five Ghost Transfer Wealth Technique.
Millipedes live in the leaf litter of forests in most parts of the world and on all continents except Antarctica; because many species of millipede are burrowers, humans have transported them throughout the world in soil and with plants – half of the species native to Britain have been introduced to North America in this way
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American Giant Millipede – 2020SEP27 – Charlotte, NC
Look what I found! A Giant Millipede, Narceus americanus: it grows twice as large as any other North American millipede, a cylindrical millipede (distinguished from flat millipedes), dark reddish-brown or black, a red line on each segmente edge; like all millipedes, they have 2 pairs of legs on most segments, rather than 1 pair of legs on each segment (like a centipede).
Does it bite? No (uniike a centipede). What about cyanide? Although not this species, some secrete hydrogen cyanide, quite poisonous. Remember, millipedes are toxic – but as long as they are not eaten, hands washed after touching them, they're pretty harmless; however, many have a defensive secretion, benzoquinone, that can cause chemical burns on human skin, generally mild, but powerful enough to cause temporary skin discoloration, itching, and blisters – some millipedes’ secretions are much more powerful, though.
The division of an animal into repeating body parts is called segmentation, clearly seen in millipedes, the word meaning “one thousand foot;” despite that name, millipedes with the most legs come up shy of the 1,000-leg mark, only about 750.
Hope you enjoy the 10% of 99 captures I took here this day!
Abstract
To understand the evolutionary significance of geographic variation, one must identify the factors that generate phenotypic differences among populations. I examined the causes of geographic variation in and evolutionary history of number of trunk vertebrae in slender salamanders. Batrachoseps (Caudata: Plethodontidae). Number of trunk vertebrae varies at many taxonomic levels within Batrachoseps. Parallel clines in number occur along an environmental gradient in three lineages in the Coast Ranges of California. These parallel clines may signal either adaptation or a shared phenotypically plastic response to the environmental gradient. By raising eggs from 10 populations representing four species of Batrachoseps, I demonstrated that number of trunk vertebrae can be altered by the developmental temperature; however, the degree of plasticity is insufficient to account for geographic variation. Thus, the geographic variation results largely from genetic variation. Number of trunk vertebrae covaries with body size and shape in diverse vertebrate taxa, including Batrachoseps. I hypothesize that selection for different degrees of elongation, possibly related to fossoriality, has led to the extensive evolution of number of trunk vertebrae in Batrachoseps. Analysis of intrapopulational variation revealed sexual dimorphism in both body shape and number of trunk vertebrae, but no correlation between these variables in either sex. Females are more elongate than males, a pattern that has been attributed to fecundity selection in other taxa. Patterns of covariation among different classes of vertebrae suggest that some intrapopulational variation in number results from changes in vertebral identity rather than changes in segmentation.
Elizabeth L. Jockusch
Evolution
Images in this gallery were captured by:
Mark Smith M.S. Geoscientist mark@macroscopicsolutions.com
Daniel Saftner B.S. Geoscientist and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer daniel@macroscopicsolutions.com
Annette Evans Ph.D. Student at the University of Connecticut annette@macroscopicsolutions.com
(Further pictures you can see quite easily by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
Vienna 1, The Franciscan Church
The Franciscans go back to St. Francis of Assisi and thus the 13th Century. They were founded as a mendicant orders but soon the arose the question how literally one should take the declaration of poverty. Was it allowed to make financial provision for elderly or sick brothers? Finally it came to the segmentation of the faith community, the more liberal Minoriten (Friars Minor Conventual) made their own order, while the Franciscans followed the old conventions. 1453 came the first Franciscan, John of Capistrano, to Vienna.
He founded the first Franciscan monastery in what is now 6th District. But the monks had to flee when the Turks besieged Vienna in 1529 and the monastery burned down. It took until 1589 until the city of Vienna gave them the at that time vacant monastery together with appendant church. The house, in its place now stands the monastery had already been donated in 1306 by wealthy citizens - namely for "loose women" who wanted give up their trade and convert themselves.
1476 was at the Weichenburg (hence Weihburggasse) inaugurated a church with seven altars, where formerly a "Pfarrheusl (small parsonage)" had stood for the soul welfare of the female residents. At the time of the Reformation, however, moral values in this house went downhill. 1553, the Foundation was dissolved, but it took yet until 1572 before the last resident had died. For eight years, the building was then an educational establishment for girls of poor people.
When the Franciscans now had got the property, they started in 1603 with a reconstruction of the church, which was consecrated in 1611. 1614, the foundation stone was laid for the new monastery.
The statues on the west facade are left Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua right. In the middle, on the pediment of the west portal of the Church stands Jerome, protector of the church. He is surrounded by two angle putti.
But let's go inside the church. Maria with the ax is the altarpiece above the high altar. The statue was carved in 1505 from lime wood and has its own story. She comes from the Green Mountain (Grünberg) in Bohemia, which was under the control the Sternberg family. Since the family in the meantime had become Protestant, it wanted to burn the statue. She were thrown into the fire - but the next day she stood unharmed again in the chapel. Now, the executioner was called who should dismember the effigy. However, even that was impossible, because the ax stuck in the shoulder of Mary and it was not possible to get it out. There it is still today. (You have to look closely, but then you see the great ax with slightly curved stem.) But that's not enough. A few years later the Madonna was lost in the gamble by a gegenreformierten (counter-reformed) Sternberg. The new owner, the Polish Baron Turnoffsky gave she in 1607 the Franciscan monastery. Exactly 100 years later, she got her current stand on the high altar.
The stone structure between altar and the statue of the Madonna also contains a crucifix, which dates from the beginning of the 17th Century. The wooden statues left and right represent the Saints Jerome respectively Francis and are typical examples of the so-called Franciscan carving school. It operated 1690-1730 and was run by lay brothers. The overall concept for the high altar dates back to the Jesuit Andrea dal Pozzo.
A special attraction is the organ by Hans Wöckherl that was already built in 1642 and today is the oldest organ in Vienna. It is, however, disappeared from the visible church, because it is behind the high altar and is only shown every Friday between 15.00 und 15.30 clock. In addition, one demans for that six euro entry...
The single-nave church has to both sides side chapels, of them I want to show two.
On the left we see the Magdalene Chapel, which was consecrated already in 1614 for the first time. 1644 and 1722, however, followed Neustiftungen (new foundings). The stucco decoration stems from 1644. The paintings in the vault are much more recent, from 1893. The altarpiece depicts the grieving Mary Magdalene under the Cross. It was created in 1725 by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. The image above shows Veronica's handkerchief with the face of Christ. It was painted by Wolfram Koeberl and in 1974 installed. The statues beside the altar represent the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. The two above chapels are provided with food grid, so that one could give Communion here.
An Immaculata chapel (pictured above right) is there since the existence of the church, but this was rebuilt in 1722. Previously, since 1642, there was a Michael altar here. From this period dates still the stucco decor on the ceiling. The altarpiece is by Johann Georg Schmidt, who painted it in 1721. The lateral statues depict the Saint Joachim and the mother of Mary.
Also the Capistrano Chapel, which was founded in 1723, is worth mentioning. The lateral stucco decor shows on the left side (picture) the glorification of St. John Capistrano, who, as I said, was the first Franciscan in Vienna. Right you can see him as a standard-bearer of Christian doctrine in the wars against the Turks. Both stucco images date from the time of the foundation. The altarpiece by Franz Xaver Wagenschön originated in 1761 and shows Capistrano in a scene from 1451, in Brescia when he healed a possessed man.
In the picture we see also the statue of Saint George, as he is killing the (admittedly small) dragon.
On the other side of the chapel is the Holy Florian, while Clara and Theresa stand next to the altar. Behind the altar there is a reliquary in glass from about 1720, in which we see a wax image of the Holy Hilaria. The relic shall be imbedded in the wax. Hilaria is rather unknown, but she was a martyr who was converted by Bishop Narcissus. She died in the year 304 in Augsburg, at the behest of the governor Gaius, because she did not want to renounce the Christian faith. About the nature of death, there are different opinions.
In the church there is a plaque that claims that she was burned at the grave of her daughter, while the Holy Encyclopedia states that she was enclosed in her house and this was then set on fire.
In the chapel opposite, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, there is also a glass coffin with a relic. This is the skeleton of the Felix Puer wearing the uniform of a Roman Centurion.
As a counterpart to the pulpit, this just opposite, you will find the monument of Johann Nepomuk. We see how he flows on the water of the Vltava river after he was thrown in Prague there. He actually was called "John from Nepomuk" in Czech "ne Pomuk". The wife of Emperor Wenceslas IV is said to have chosen him as confessor. The Emperor wanted to know then what she had confessed, but Johann Nepomuk did not betray the seal of confession and was therefore thrown into the water. The Empress had then an appearance of five stars.
(We see she also in the water of the monument.) These stars indicated were one could find the body. So much for the legend.
The fact is that Johann Nepomuk was tortured by the king and thrown into the Vltava. The activating moment was a dispute over a new monastery between the emperor and the archbishop of Prague, in which John Nepomuk was trampled underfoot ...
The pulpit was built in 1726 and was executed by the Franciscan carving school. At the parapet there are wooden reliefs of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The relief of the fourth evangelist, John, is attached to the pulpit door. At the parapet you further can see statues of Capistrano and Bonaventura, while on the sounding board are sitting Anthony of Padua and Berhardin of Siena. At the top stands the freeze image of Francis of Assisi.
The pews were 1727 - 1729 by brother Johann Gottfried Hartmann built and carved.
I'll have to upload a YouTube video of the automatic tuning in progress...amazing the way it inches along to lock in on a station and stays with it--even when it starts to drift. The magic eye doesn't even flutter, and this is most sensitive EM84 bar I've ever seen. When I first saw it come on, I thought it was flickering along to the music. A lot of 50's sets have a real drift problem...especially with the cramped SW bands. The stretched out segmentation of the Zenith T/O I have doesn't fare so bad at all, however.
What a beautiful set. The classic odors of vintage shellac, wood and lubricating oils are so aromatic; upon opening the box it was diligently packed in, the thin incense wafted through the house. A real contemporary continental design for its day nearly a half-century ago...trading the clutter of the cities and countries listing on the dialplate with more Danish style streamlining and lighter woodgrains. And to make it all full circle--this was an eBay experience actually better then the description.
I really like the action of the depression keys. Smooth and engaging, without the KA-CHUNK and the fear of a reciprocal key popping off its stem up into the air.
EXTRA! How about some SABA history?
SABA (Schwatzwalder Apparate Bau Anstalt) actually began business making cuckoo clocks and music boxes in 1839. SABA didn't begin building radios until 1923, Many of their radios were named after cities in the Black Forest, hence the flagship model was named Freiberg (the capital of Baden Wurttingberg), and others of course were Freudenstadt, Meersburg, and down the line. The company in the late 1950's also diversified into making tape recorders, television sets, consoles, and even a four channel monophonic mixer. SABA went out of business in the 1980's. This information was culled from notes via e-mail and on-line from Frank Karner and Thomas J. Wiegand.
Shakhrisabz is Timur's hometown, and once upon a time it probably put Samarkand itself in the shade.
Ak Saray, Shakhrisabz
Shahrisabz is, above all, associated with the Ak-Saray palace. Many amazing legends are linked with the history of the palace's construction. According to one of them, Timur began to think of building a magnificent edifice, summoned an architect and set out his objective. After listening to the ruler, the architect asked to be allowed into the state exchequer. When permission was granted, the craftsman started to make foundation blocks from clay mixed with gold in full view of Timur. Seeing that the ruler remained impassive, he broke up the blocks and returned the gold to the exchequer. When Timur asked: "Why did you do that?" the architect replied: "So as to make sure of your determination to embark on constructing a building that requires vast expenditure." A second legend recounts that, after the main building work had been completed, Timur began to tell the craftsmen to hurry up and finish the decorative facing of the palace. But they were in no hurry to cover the building with majolica and mosaic. When the angry ruler ordered the chief architect to be brought before him, it emerged that had vanished after hanging a chain in the centre of the palace's main arch. Since no other craftsman of equal stature could be found, the building remained unfinished. Some time later, however, the architect suddenly appeared and, after making sure that the chain on the entrance arch was now considerably lower, embarked on decorating the building. When Timur demanded an explanation of his strange flight and sudden reappearance, the architect replied: "I dared not disobey my sovereign's command, but I could not carry it out either. Stern punishment awaited me in either case, since such a majestic building had to settle and bed down firmly in the ground, otherwise all the decoration on it would be destroyed." The great ruler appreciated the craftsman's wisdom and resourcefulness.
The palace building in Shahrisabz took over a quarter of a century to construct. The Spanish ambassador, Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo, who passed through Shahrisabz in 1404 on his way to the court of Timur in Samarkand, was astounded and charmed by the architectural miracle, and he left a detailed description of it, noting, however, that the splendid artistic decoration of the palace was still unfinished. The overall layout, scale and artistic appearance of Ak-Saray can be reconstituted from the descriptions of contemporaries and eyewitnesses, as well as from the results of archaeological excavation at the site. According to written accounts, the palace consisted of several
stately, living or service quarters, grouped around separate courtyards.The overall scale of the palace is impressive: the main courtyard alone, which has been reconstituted from the microrelief, was 120 - 125 m wide and 240 - 250 m long. The size of the other courtyards and of the outer perimeter of the palace has not been reconstructed owing to severe disturbance of the microrelief in the 15th - 16th centuries. Calculation of the proportions of the surviving elements of the site makes it fairly certain that the height of the main portal reached 70 m. It was topped by arched pinnacles (ko'ngra), while corner towers on a multifaceted pedestal were at least 80 m high. The main entrance portal was 50 m wide, and the arch had the largest span, 22.5 m, in Central Asia.
The architectural decor, featuring a wide variety of designs and colours, is particularly
noteworthy in the artistic appearance of Ak-Saray. When using various techniques,
however, the craftsmen bore in mind that the palace's main portal faced north, towards the capital, Samarkand. Given the poor light, the rchitects used only flat segmentation here and hence a continuous decorative treatment. The use of brick mosaic work, mainly dark and light blue in colour, forming large geometrical and epigraphic designs on a background of polished building brick, gives the portal a special softness of colour and an air of grand mystery.
The various mosaic and majolica work in the niche of the portal is particularly refined and highly coloured. The delicately executed foliate ornamentation incorporates exquisite calligraphic inscriptions of mainly Koranic content, although secular ones are found too. In the midst of the decorative facing, an inscription has survived, giving the date of completion, 798 (1395 - 1396), and the name of the craftsman, Muhammad Yusuf Tebrizi (from the Azeri city of Tabriz). According to Clavijo, who visited Ak-Saray, "in this palace was a very long entrance and a very high portal, and by the
entrance, to right and left, were brick arches covered with tiles painted with various designs. Beneath these arches was what looked like small rooms without doors, and the floor inside them was covered with tiles. This was done so that people could sit there when the king was present. Beyond this was another door and after that a large courtyard, paved with white slabs and surrounded by richly decorated galleries. In the middle of the courtyard was a large pool. The courtyard was some 300 paces wide, and it gave access to a large house, in which was a very high and wide door, decorated with gold, azure and tiles of very fine workmanship. In the middle, above the door, a lion was depicted, lying in the sun, and exactly the same picture was to be found at the edges. This was the device of the king of Samarkand. After this, the envoys were taken to look at the chamber that the king had appointed for sitting and feasting with his wives, very spacious and luxurious. Before it was a large garden with many shady and
assorted fruit trees. Inside it were many pools and artfully sited meadows. By the entrance to this garden there was such a vast space that many people could have enjoyed themselves sitting there in the summertime beside the water and beneath the shade of the trees. The workmanship in the palace is so luxurious that, in order to describe everything well, one has to go and examine it a little at a time."
The Ak-Saray palace is a grandiose piece of civil architecture, and not just by Central
Asian standards. Historical tradition ascribes the destruction of the majestic edifice to
Abdullakhan, who, during one of the sieges of unsubdued Shahrisabz, is supposed to have ordered the splendid structures of Timur and his descendants to be demolished. Be that as it may, of the once luxurious royal palace only the pillars and part of the arch of the main portal remained by the second half of the 18th century.
The fourth generation Ford Focus (C519) launched in 2018 included a new sub-nameplate 'Active', previously introduced on the 7th generation of Ford Fiesta a year earlier. 'Active' represented a number of engineering and design changes, including a marginally taller ride height, roof bars, lower body black plastic cladding and revised front and rear bumper treatments.
Most changes were relatively insignificant, but represented a stylistic shift to associate the vehicles with the growing 'Crossover' vehicle market segmentation. In the case of the Focus, the 'Active' trim was available on the 5-door hatchback (shown) and the wagon/estate model.
This segmentation will be interesting to observe over the next few years, The natural Crossover version of the Focus is the Escape/Kuga, yet Ford has chosen to create a more offroad-oriented version with the Bronco Sport, and electrified version (a significantly re-engineered version of the platform) with the upcoming Mustang Mach-E. Other marques, such as BMW with the X4, and Mazda with the CX30, are blending the higher-riding Crossover wagon sub-type withe a Coupe/Hatch body style.
Day 102 2015
Male Nursery Web spider with his impressive palps.
Pedipalps of spiders have the same segmentation as the legs, but the tarsus is undivided, and the pretarsus has no lateral claws. In sexually mature male spiders, the final segment of the pedipalp, the tarsus, develops into a complicated structure (sometimes called the palpal organ or bulb) that is used to transfer sperm to the female seminal receptacles during mating.
The fourth generation Ford Focus (C519) launched in 2018 included a new sub-nameplate 'Active', previously introduced on the 7th generation of Ford Fiesta a year earlier. 'Active' represented a number of engineering and design changes, including a marginally taller ride height, roof bars, lower body black plastic cladding and revised front and rear bumper treatments.
Most changes were relatively insignificant, but represented a stylistic shift to associate the vehicles with the growing 'Crossover' vehicle market segmentation. In the case of the Focus, the 'Active' trim was available on the 5-door hatchback (shown) and the wagon/estate model.
This segmentation will be interesting to observe over the next few years, The natural Crossover version of the Focus is the Escape/Kuga, yet Ford has chosen to create a more offroad-oriented version with the Bronco Sport, and electrified version (a significantly re-engineered version of the platform) with the upcoming Mustang Mach-E. Other marques, such as BMW with the X4, and Mazda with the CX30, are blending the higher-riding Crossover wagon sub-type withe a Coupe/Hatch body style.
Wallpaper 1920x1200 created with Jan Partys (B&P Type Foundry) »Sang Bleu serif«.
»Sang Bleu« was initiated in 2004 in London as an attempt to create a publication proposing a contemporary and experimental vision of modern culture and style. Rejecting the usual categorizations and segmentations, Sang Bleu’s statement is to use Art, Fashion, Sociology, Literature, but also—more unexpectedly—Tattooing, Body Modification, Fetish and other subcultures to create a carefully composed image of modern urban societies and individuals.
It is distributed worldwide via internet (Sang Bleu Publication)
More details you may find here: »The Sang Bleu Blog«
This »type&color wallpaper« is the result of another little color experiment.
Caves Branch Jungle Lodge, Belize
September 2013
This specimen looks like a lady beetle (family Coccinellidae) at first glance. However, its tarsal segmentation does not appear to match. Lady beetles have four tarsal segments per foot (most insects have five) but have only three segments that are clearly visible. This specimen has four obvious tarsal segments per foot. Perhaps it's a leaf beetle (family Chrysomelidae) mimicking a lady beetle, as leaf beetles have four tarsal segments per foot. The benefit of mimicking a lady beetle is obvious: lady beetles tend to secrete a foul-smelling, foul-tasting substance when disturbed, so visual predators like birds learn to avoid eating anything that looks like a ladybug.
(Further pictures you can see quite easily by clicking on the link at the end of page!)
Vienna 1, The Franciscan Church
The Franciscans go back to St. Francis of Assisi and thus the 13th Century. They were founded as a mendicant orders but soon the arose the question how literally one should take the declaration of poverty. Was it allowed to make financial provision for elderly or sick brothers? Finally it came to the segmentation of the faith community, the more liberal Minoriten (Friars Minor Conventual) made their own order, while the Franciscans followed the old conventions. 1453 came the first Franciscan, John of Capistrano, to Vienna.
He founded the first Franciscan monastery in what is now 6th District. But the monks had to flee when the Turks besieged Vienna in 1529 and the monastery burned down. It took until 1589 until the city of Vienna gave them the at that time vacant monastery together with appendant church. The house, in its place now stands the monastery had already been donated in 1306 by wealthy citizens - namely for "loose women" who wanted give up their trade and convert themselves.
1476 was at the Weichenburg (hence Weihburggasse) inaugurated a church with seven altars, where formerly a "Pfarrheusl (small parsonage)" had stood for the soul welfare of the female residents. At the time of the Reformation, however, moral values in this house went downhill. 1553, the Foundation was dissolved, but it took yet until 1572 before the last resident had died. For eight years, the building was then an educational establishment for girls of poor people.
When the Franciscans now had got the property, they started in 1603 with a reconstruction of the church, which was consecrated in 1611. 1614, the foundation stone was laid for the new monastery.
The statues on the west facade are left Francis of Assisi and Anthony of Padua right. In the middle, on the pediment of the west portal of the Church stands Jerome, protector of the church. He is surrounded by two angle putti.
But let's go inside the church. Maria with the ax is the altarpiece above the high altar. The statue was carved in 1505 from lime wood and has its own story. She comes from the Green Mountain (Grünberg) in Bohemia, which was under the control the Sternberg family. Since the family in the meantime had become Protestant, it wanted to burn the statue. She were thrown into the fire - but the next day she stood unharmed again in the chapel. Now, the executioner was called who should dismember the effigy. However, even that was impossible, because the ax stuck in the shoulder of Mary and it was not possible to get it out. There it is still today. (You have to look closely, but then you see the great ax with slightly curved stem.) But that's not enough. A few years later the Madonna was lost in the gamble by a gegenreformierten (counter-reformed) Sternberg. The new owner, the Polish Baron Turnoffsky gave she in 1607 the Franciscan monastery. Exactly 100 years later, she got her current stand on the high altar.
The stone structure between altar and the statue of the Madonna also contains a crucifix, which dates from the beginning of the 17th Century. The wooden statues left and right represent the Saints Jerome respectively Francis and are typical examples of the so-called Franciscan carving school. It operated 1690-1730 and was run by lay brothers. The overall concept for the high altar dates back to the Jesuit Andrea dal Pozzo.
A special attraction is the organ by Hans Wöckherl that was already built in 1642 and today is the oldest organ in Vienna. It is, however, disappeared from the visible church, because it is behind the high altar and is only shown every Friday between 15.00 und 15.30 clock. In addition, one demans for that six euro entry...
The single-nave church has to both sides side chapels, of them I want to show two.
On the left we see the Magdalene Chapel, which was consecrated already in 1614 for the first time. 1644 and 1722, however, followed Neustiftungen (new foundings). The stucco decoration stems from 1644. The paintings in the vault are much more recent, from 1893. The altarpiece depicts the grieving Mary Magdalene under the Cross. It was created in 1725 by Carlo Innocenzo Carlone. The image above shows Veronica's handkerchief with the face of Christ. It was painted by Wolfram Koeberl and in 1974 installed. The statues beside the altar represent the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist. The two above chapels are provided with food grid, so that one could give Communion here.
An Immaculata chapel (pictured above right) is there since the existence of the church, but this was rebuilt in 1722. Previously, since 1642, there was a Michael altar here. From this period dates still the stucco decor on the ceiling. The altarpiece is by Johann Georg Schmidt, who painted it in 1721. The lateral statues depict the Saint Joachim and the mother of Mary.
Also the Capistrano Chapel, which was founded in 1723, is worth mentioning. The lateral stucco decor shows on the left side (picture) the glorification of St. John Capistrano, who, as I said, was the first Franciscan in Vienna. Right you can see him as a standard-bearer of Christian doctrine in the wars against the Turks. Both stucco images date from the time of the foundation. The altarpiece by Franz Xaver Wagenschön originated in 1761 and shows Capistrano in a scene from 1451, in Brescia when he healed a possessed man.
In the picture we see also the statue of Saint George, as he is killing the (admittedly small) dragon.
On the other side of the chapel is the Holy Florian, while Clara and Theresa stand next to the altar. Behind the altar there is a reliquary in glass from about 1720, in which we see a wax image of the Holy Hilaria. The relic shall be imbedded in the wax. Hilaria is rather unknown, but she was a martyr who was converted by Bishop Narcissus. She died in the year 304 in Augsburg, at the behest of the governor Gaius, because she did not want to renounce the Christian faith. About the nature of death, there are different opinions.
In the church there is a plaque that claims that she was burned at the grave of her daughter, while the Holy Encyclopedia states that she was enclosed in her house and this was then set on fire.
In the chapel opposite, the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, there is also a glass coffin with a relic. This is the skeleton of the Felix Puer wearing the uniform of a Roman Centurion.
As a counterpart to the pulpit, this just opposite, you will find the monument of Johann Nepomuk. We see how he flows on the water of the Vltava river after he was thrown in Prague there. He actually was called "John from Nepomuk" in Czech "ne Pomuk". The wife of Emperor Wenceslas IV is said to have chosen him as confessor. The Emperor wanted to know then what she had confessed, but Johann Nepomuk did not betray the seal of confession and was therefore thrown into the water. The Empress had then an appearance of five stars.
(We see she also in the water of the monument.) These stars indicated were one could find the body. So much for the legend.
The fact is that Johann Nepomuk was tortured by the king and thrown into the Vltava. The activating moment was a dispute over a new monastery between the emperor and the archbishop of Prague, in which John Nepomuk was trampled underfoot ...
The pulpit was built in 1726 and was executed by the Franciscan carving school. At the parapet there are wooden reliefs of Matthew, Mark and Luke. The relief of the fourth evangelist, John, is attached to the pulpit door. At the parapet you further can see statues of Capistrano and Bonaventura, while on the sounding board are sitting Anthony of Padua and Berhardin of Siena. At the top stands the freeze image of Francis of Assisi.
The pews were 1727 - 1729 by brother Johann Gottfried Hartmann built and carved.