An amphibious vehicle, is a vehicle, a means of transport, viable on land as well as on water. Amphibious vehicles include amphibious bicycles, ATVs, buses, military vehicles and hovercraft. Classic landing craft are not amphibious vehicles as they do not offer any real land transportation at all, although they are part of amphibious warfare. Ground effect vehicles, such as ekranoplans, will crash on any but the flattest of landmasses so are not considered to be amphibious vehicles. Apart from the distinction in sizes mentioned above, two main categories of amphibious vehicles are apparent: those that travel on an air-cushion and those that do not. Amongst the latter, many designs were prompted by the desire to expand the off-road capabilities of land-vehicles to an "all-terrain" ability, in some cases not only focused on creating a transport that will work on land and water, but on intermediates like ice, mud, swamp etc; this explains why many designs use tracks in addition to or instead of wheels, in some cases resort to articulated body configurations or other unconventional designs such as screw-propelled vehicles which use auger-like barrels which propel a vehicle through muddy terrain with a twisting motion.

Most land vehicles – lightly armoured ones – can be made amphibious by providing them with a waterproof hull and a propeller. This is possible as a vehicle's displacement is greater than its weight, thus it will float. Armoured vehicles however sometimes have a density greater than water and will need additional buoyancy measures; these can take the form of inflatable floatation devices, much like the sides of a rubber dinghy, or a waterproof fabric skirt raised from the top perimeter of the vehicle, to increase its displacement. For propulsion in or on the water some vehicles make do by spinning their wheels or tracks, while others can power their way forward more using screw propeller or water jet. Most amphibians will work only as a displacement hull when in the water – only a small number of designs have the capability to raise out of the water when speed is gained, to achieve high velocity hydroplaning, skimming over the water surface like speedboats; some of the earliest known amphibious vehicles were amphibious carriages, the invention of, credited to the Neapolitan polymath Prince Raimondo di Sangro of Sansevero in July 1770 or earlier, or Samuel Bentham whose design of 1781 was built in June 1787.

The first known self-propelled amphibious vehicle, a steam-powered wheeled dredging barge, named the Orukter Amphibolos, was conceived and built by United States inventor Oliver Evans in 1805, although it is disputed to have travelled over land or water under its own steam. Inventor Gail Borden, better known for condensed milk and tested a sail-powered wagon in 1849. On testing, it tipped over 50 feet from shore, from an apparent lack of ballast to counteract the force of the wind in the sail. In the 1870s, logging companies in eastern Canada and the northern United States developed a steam-powered amphibious tug called an "Alligator" which could cross between lakes and rivers; the most successful Alligator tugs were produced by the firm of West and Peachey in Ontario. Until the late 1920s, the efforts to unify a boat and an automobile came down to putting wheels and axles on a boat hull, or getting a rolling chassis to float by blending a boat-like hull with the car's frame. One of the first reasonably well-documented cases was the 1905 amphibious petrol-powered carriage of T. Richmond.

Just like the world's first petrol-powered automobile, it was a three-wheeler. The single front wheel provided direction, both in the water. A three-cylinder petrol combustion-engine powered the oversized rear wheels. In order to get the wheels to provide propulsion in the water, fins or buckets would be attached to the rear wheel spokes. Remarkably the boat-like hull was one of the first integral bodies used on a car. Since the 1920s, many diverse amphibious vehicles designs have been created for a broad range of applications, including recreation, search & rescue, military, leading to a myriad of concepts and variants. In some of them, the amphibious capabilities are central to their purpose, whereas in others they are only an expansion to what has remained a watercraft or a land vehicle; the design that came together with all the features needed for a practical all-terrain amphibious vehicle was by Peter Prell of New Jersey. His design, unlike others, could operate not only on rivers and lakes but the sea and did not require firm ground to enter or exit the water.

It combined a boat-like hull with tank-like tracks. In 1931, he tested a scaled down version of his invention. Gibbs Amphibians has developed a new type of amphibian, one capable of high speeds on both land and water; the vehicles use a patented hydraulic system to raise the wheels into the wheel wells, allowing the vehicles to plane on water. These vehicles can transition between water modes in about five seconds; the first Gibbs fast amphibian is the Quadski, introduced in October 2012. It went on sale in January 2013. Iguana Yachts, a French company created in 2008, has developed amphibious motorboats featuring all-terrain tracks. Sealegs Amphibious Craft, a three-wheeled amphibious boat designed in New Zealand, has been in production since 2005. In 2010, a Southern California-based company named WaterCar, set the Guinness World Record for Fastest Amphibious Vehicle, with their prototype, The Python, whic

Scotland was divided into a series of kingdoms in the early Middle Ages, i.e. between the end of Roman authority in southern and central Britain from around 400 CE and the rise of the kingdom of Alba in 900 CE. Of these, the four most important to emerge were the Picts, the Scots of Dál Riata, the Britons of Alt Clut, the Anglian kingdom of Bernicia. After the arrival of the Vikings in the late 8th century, Scandinavian rulers and colonies were established on the islands and along parts of the coasts. In the 9th century, the House of Alpin combined the lands of the Scots and Picts to form a single kingdom which constituted the basis of the kingdom of Scotland. Scotland has vast areas of difficult terrain and poor agricultural land. In this period, more land became marginal due to climate change, resulting in light human settlement in the interior and Highlands. Northern Britain lacked urban centres and settlements were based on farmsteads and around fortified positions such as brochs, with mixed-farming based on self-sufficiency.

In this period, changes in settlement and colonisation meant that the Pictish and Brythonic languages began to be subsumed by Gaelic, and, at the end of the period, by Old Norse. Life expectancy was low, leading to a young population, with a ruling aristocracy and large numbers of slaves. Kingship was multi-layered, with different kings surrounded by their war bands that made up the most important elements of armed forces, who engaged in both low-level raiding and occasional longer-range, major campaigns; the expansion of Christianity from the margins of Scotland was key to the development of this period, as it became the religion of many inhabitants. Influenced by the Celtic tradition originating from what is now Ireland, by the end of the era it had become integrated into the organisational structures of the Catholic Church; this period produced some distinctive monumental and ornamental art, culminating in the development of the Insular art style, common across Britain and Ireland. The most impressive structures included nucleated hill forts and, after the introduction of Christianity and monasteries.

The period saw the beginnings of Scottish literature in British, Old English and Latin languages. As the first half of the period is prehistoric, archaeology plays an important part in studies of early Medieval Scotland. There are no significant contemporary internal sources for the Picts, although evidence has been gleaned from lists of kings, annals preserved in Wales and Ireland and from sources written down much which may draw on oral traditions or earlier sources. From the 7th century there is documentary evidence from Latin sources including the lives of saints, such as Adomnán's Life of St. Columba, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Archaeological sources include settlements and surviving everyday objects. Other aids to understanding in this period include onomastics – divided into toponymy, showing the movement of languages, the sequence in which different languages were spoken in an area, anthroponymy, which can offer clues to relationships and origins. By the time of Bede and Adomnán, in the late seventh century and early eighth century, four major circles of influence had emerged in northern Britain.

In the east were the Picts, whose kingdoms stretched from the river Forth to Shetland. In the west were the Gaelic -speaking people of Dál Riata with their royal fortress at Dunadd in Argyll, with close links with the island of Ireland, from which they brought with them the name "Scots" a term for the inhabitants of Ireland. In the south was the British Kingdom of Alt Clut, descendants of the peoples of the Roman-influenced kingdoms of "The Old North". There were the English or "Angles", Germanic invaders who had overrun much of southern Britain and held the Kingdom of Bernicia, in the south-east, who brought with them Old English; the confederation of Pictish tribes that developed north of the Firth of Forth may have stretched up as far as Orkney. It developed out of the tribes of the Caledonii as a response to the pressure exerted by the presence of the Romans to the south, they first appear in Roman records at the end of the 3rd century as the picti when Roman forces campaigned against them.

The first identifiable king of the Picts, who seems to have exerted a superior and wide-ranging authority, was Bridei mac Maelchon. His power was based in the kingdom of Fidach, his base was at the fort of Craig Phadrig, near modern Inverness. After his death, leadership seems to have shifted to the Fortriu, whose lands were centred on Moray and Easter Ross and who raided along the eastern coast into modern England. Christian missionaries from Iona appear to have begun the conversion of the Picts to Christianity from 563. In the 7th century, the Picts acquired Bridei map Beli as a king imposed by the kingdom of Alt Clut, where his father Beli I and his brother Eugein I ruled. At this point the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Bernicia was expanding northwards, the Picts were tributary to them until, in 685, Bridei defeated them at the Battle of Dunnichen in Angus, killing their king, Ecgfrith. In the reign of Óengus mac Fergusa, the Picts appear to have reached the height of their influence, defeating the forces of Dál Riata, invading Alt Clut and North

Marginal Man was an American hardcore punk band from Washington, D. C. that formed in 1983. Three of its members -- Steve Polcari, Pete Murray, Mike Manos -- had played together in Artificial Peace, considered one of the seminal D. C. hardcore bands. After Artificial Peace disbanded, the trio would join up with Andrew Lee and Kenny Inouye to form Marginal Man. Marginal Man was one of the first D. C. hardcore bands to feature two guitars. The band played together for five years before a final performance at the 9:30 Club on March 24, 1988; the band has reunited for several shows: at the 9:30 Club on August 29, 1991 and December 30, 1995—the second-to-last show at the 9:30 Club's original location—and at the Black Cat on August 20, 2011. Guitarist Kenny Inouye is the son of the late former Representative and Medal of Honor recipient Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii. Identity 12" EP /CD EP Double Image LP /CD Marginal Man LP/CS "Marginal Man" on the "Alive And Kicking" 7" compilation "Stones Of A Wall" on the "State Of The Union" LP compilation "Friends" on the "Going Nowhere Slow" LP compilation "Mainstream" and "Tell Me" on the "...

And The Fun Just Never Ends" CD compilation "Missing Rungs" and "Manipulator" on the "20 Years Of Dischord" 3xCD compilation Steve Polcari - Vocals Pete Murray - Guitar, Vocals Kenny Inouye - Guitar Andre Lee - Bass Mike Manos - Drums Other sourcesSouthern Records web site biography Dischord Records Interview with Kenny Inouye on Dissonance Radio Official Website

James Gilchrist is a British tenor specialising in recital and oratorio singing. He was a treble in the Choir of New College, Oxford and a choral scholar in the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, he trained as a doctor, turning to a full-time music career in 1996. He now lives in Gloucestershire with three children. A prolific recitalist, he has appeared in many venues in the UK and abroad, his operatic repertoire includes roles in Handel's Acis and Galatea, Purcell's King Arthur and Vaughan Williams's Sir John in Love. He took part in the project of Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir to record Bach's complete vocal works. In concert he has performed among others, Benjamin Britten's Serenade for Tenor and Strings with the Manchester Camerata and the Northern Sinfonia, Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Tippett's The Knot Garden with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Sir Andrew Davis, Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra under Ton Koopman, the St Matthew Passion at the Concertgebouw, Pulcinella with the Ensemble orchestral de Paris, Die Jahreszeiten with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and with the Handel and Haydn Society at the BBC Proms.

His extensive discography includes, for Stone Records, volumes 1 and 2 of the complete songs of Hugo Wolf, for Chandos, the title role in Britten's Albert Herring, Amaryllus in Vaughan Williams's The Poisoned Kiss, songs by Grainger, the Mass in E-flat by Schubert and most songs by Lennox Berkeley. In 2008, he collaborated with Ailish Tynan and David Owen Norris to record songs of early 20th-century female composer Muriel Herbert for Linn Records. Philip Campbell, "Messiah returns", Bay Area Reporter, 1 December 2005 Bernard Holland, "Straight From the Joyous Heart and Soul, in a Setting the Composer Would Relish, New York Times, 29 December 2000 Richard Morrison, "Vasari Singers/Backhouse", The Times, 16 May 2006 James Oestreich, "'The Creation' An Early-Music Master Follows Haydn Way Back to the Beginning", New York Times, 19 October 2009 James Gilchrist – Official website James Gilchrist's London Concerts

Polish Radio Experimental Studio - PRES in Warsaw – an experimental music studio, where electronic and utility pieces were recorded. The studio was established in 1957 and operated until 2004. Composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki, Elżbieta Sikora, Włodzimierz Kotoński, Bohdan Mazurek created in the studio; the establishment of the Polish Radio Experimental Studio was conceived by Włodzimierz Sokorski, head of the Radio and Television Committee. Between 1952 and 1956 he was a Minister of Culture, as a strong supporter of socialist realism he fought against any manifestations of modernity in music; the Polish Radio Experimental Studio was founded on the 15th of November 1957, but only in the second half of the following year was it adapted for sound production. It operated until 2004; until 1985, for 28 years the studio was headed by its founder - Józef Patkowski – musicologist and the chairman of the Polish Composers’ Union. The second most important person in the Studio was Krzysztof Szlifirski, an electro-acoustics engineer.

Before founding the studio Józef Patkowski visited similar hubs in Cologne, Paris and Milan. Though the studio was a place where autonomous electronic pieces were recorded, this wasn't its main purpose, it was launched as a space for the creation of independent compositions, sounds illustrations for radio dramas, soundtracks for theatre and dance. The Polish Radio Experimental Studio was visited by cultural delegations coming to Poland and was one of the few electronic music studios operating behind the Iron Curtain. In 1951, the Studio for Electronic Music of the West German Radio and Groupe de Recherche de Musique Concrète in Paris were established. In 1953, they were followed by Elektronisches Studio at the Technical University of Berlin. In 1954, Experimentalstudio in Gravesano, Switzerland was founded; the following year brought the opening of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano and the Nippon Hoso Kyokai studio in Tokyo. The PRES was the seventh radio studio producing electronic music in the world.

The first machines installed to the studio were: a simple tone generator, a rectangular pulse generator, an oscillograph, a high-pass and low pass RFT filters, two Sander-Jansen SJ100K tape recorders, a Poland-produced mixing console with four output limiters. In the following years PRES systematically acquired new gear; the studio's premises were located in the Polish Radio headquarters on Malczewskiego Street in Warsaw, in the 6x6 metre Black Room designed by Zofia and Oskar Hansen. The walls were made of black and red panels, sound proof on one side and sound absorbing on the other; the Black Room was an allusion to Oskar Hansen's open form. In 1986, PRES moved across the city to the Polish Radio building on Woronicza street; the first autonomous track recorded in the Experimental Studio was composed by Włodzimierz Kotoński, titled Study for a Cymbal Stroke from 1959. The starting point for this 2 minute 41 seconds long track was the sound of a Turkish cymbal struck by a soft drumstick. Kotoński drew from Anton Webern's serialism.

Krzysztof Penderecki based his Death Brigade on Leon Weliczker's diary. Wieliczker was a prisoner of Lviv Janowska Concentration Camp, where to cover up the German crimes, he would dig out and burn the bodies of those they had killed; the adaptation of the text comprised recordings of a heartbeat, samples of an orchestra playing both piercing and low frequency sounds, all of, far from illustrative. Eugeniusz Rudnik commented on it: “The greatness of Penderecki was us not getting carried away by naturalism. We didn’t represent skulls breaking in the flames. Instead, we did a subtle and delicate multiplication of the actor’s lines ”. Symphony. Electronic Music by Bogusław Schaeffer is one of the most interesting examples of tracks produced in the PRES. Instead of “working with the sound” in the studio, the composer designed graphic vertical scores, included a detailed legend instructing the sound engineer - Bohdan Mazurek – to act accordingly to the work environment, he was obligated to release no matter what studio he would be working in.

Schaefer did not object to the idea of producing the track in a different place, neither did he define the instrumentation. He only determined the parameters. In recent years, the reinterpretations of Schaeffer's track were performed by Barbara Okoń-Makowska, Dominik Kowalczyk and Thomas Lehn. Skalary by Eugeniusz Rudnik is a multi-version piece - it can be played from start to finish and from finish to start, at different speeds, as well as with altered left and right channel distribution. Any setting is possible; when in 1965, a delegation of Soviet composers were invited to visit Poland during the Warsaw Autumn Festival, they fitted in with the conservative, socialist-realist style, restricted by communist party rules. Polish Radio had appointed Eugeniusz Rudnik to present the PRES's technical capabilities; as he was playing an excerpt from a track, one delegate asked him with a sneer: “Would it sound just as bad, if you played it backwards?”. Rudnik didn't react at the time, but a year he recorded Skalary - a composition sounding well no matter how it's played.

Andrzej Dobrowolski's Passacaglia was an attempt to create a baroque form of inference and sounds considered to be musical scraps. The track is subtitled “for forty out of five", a reference to the forty sound objects derived from

Marie Thérèse Alourdes Macena Champagne Lovinski known as Mama Lola, is the most famous Vodou priestess practicing in the United States, rising to prominence in America following the publication of the anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown's ethnographic account of her life, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. According to Brown, "... Alourdes combines the skills of a medical doctor, a psychotherapist, a social worker, a priest." Mama Lola is a prominent spiritual leader within the religious practice of Vodou in America, serving on occasion as a mambo for a cultural center in New Orleans, Louisiana. Alourdes was born in Haiti, she is the youngest child of a mambo from Jean-Rabel. Her father, Alphonse Margaux, was a lawyer and absent for much of Aldoures' early life. Alourdes became pregnant with Jean-Pierre, at the age of fourteen; the father's name was Abner. When his parents found out about Alourdes' pregnancy they sent him to Chicago and contact between the two ceased. Alourdes's daughter, was born weighing 17 pounds and 10 ounces.

Alourdes remembered. The name of Maggie's father is Charles Desinor, he was a photographer. At age fifteen, Alourdes found her first job earning $62/month as a singer in Haiti's Troupe Folklorique, a career which ended when she got married, she married Antoine Kowalski on December 30, 1954. Kawalksi, although providing well for his family, was jealous which contributed to their breakup. After a brief period of marriage and a violent fight, which caused Alourdes to miscarry, she left Kowalski. After facing economic hardships on her own and her two children went to live with her mother, Phiomise. After losing her job as a tobacco inspector and her children were befallen with economic challenges. In order to buy food, pay for rent, put her two children through school, "she was driven to sell sexual favors more directly and more frequently," and adopted the alias "Marie-Jacques"; when Alourdes was in her twenties, she made the difficult decision to leave Haiti for America in order to work toward creating a better life for her family.

Thus in 1962, she left her three children, Jean-Pierre and William, with her mother, Philomise, in Port-au-Prince and immigrated to Brooklyn, New York. Her early years in the United States were tumultuous. In December 1963, she became ill and was hospitalized twice. After her second discharge, she met a woman named Yvonne Constant, who would provide her with food and shelter. In Haiti, Alourdes would discover the remedy for her illness. Through various means and with the help of Constant, she was able to gather enough funds to finance her trip back to Haiti. During those two weeks in Haiti, she received instruction from her mother, a mambo. During the time between her first and second trip, she worked in the laundry section at the Brooklyn Hebrew Home for two years before quitting. After which, she began to employ the skills her mother had taught her and started making a living from home; because initiation into the Vodou priesthood is an elaborate set of rituals, it took a second trip to Haiti before she was initiated into the priesthood.

As Alourdes was preparing to travel back to Haiti for her initiation into the Vodou priesthood, a fire broke out and destroyed her home. In time, she would be able to return to Haiti and complete her initiation. In 1978, she was introduced to Karen McCarthy Brown by Theodore B. who had met Brown on her first trip to Haiti in 1973. Some time after the publication of Mama Lola, Alourdes "made Ocha". However, this did not mean, she wants more protection for herself and her family... and it keeps her far too busy to worry about abstractions like'the African Americans" and'the Latinos' in Oakland". She practices three religions: Haitian Vodou, Puerto Rican Santeria, Irish Catholicism; as Brown described in her preface to the book, "Alourdes's approach is... pragmatic:"You just got to try". "See if it work for you." In 2007, Mama Lola resurfaced into the media when she made a guest appearance on Tori Spelling's reality TV show and Dean, where we learned about the cleansing ritual that Mama Lola had performed on Tori back in 2005, when Tori believed that'she had an evil eye on her', causing turmoil within her life.

In this episode, Mama Lola and Zaar, a healer, taught Tori and Mehi how to assemble an ancestral altar in their home, by