Deux-Sèvres is a French department. Deux-Sèvres means "two Sèvres": the Sèvre Nantaise and the Sèvre Niortaise are two rivers which have their sources in the department. Deux-Sèvres was one of the 83 original départements created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. Departmental borders were changed in 1973 when the inhabitants of the little commune of Puy-Saint-Bonnet became formally associated with the growing adjacent commune of Cholet. Cholet is in the neighbouring department of Maine-et-Loire. In order to avoid the associated communes being administered in separate departments, Puy-Saint-Bonnet was transferred into Maine-et-Loire. Deux-Sevres features in Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, a novel by Emile Zola in his Rougon-Macquart series, when Rougon visits Niort, the departmental capital, to open a new rail line to Angers; the climate is mild, the annual temperature averaging 11 degrees Celsius. The département remains rural: three-quarters of the area consists of arable land. Wheat and oats are the main products grown, as well as potatoes and walnuts.

Niort is the center for angelica. Some beetroot is grown in the district of Melle. Vineyards are numerous in the north, there are some in the south; the département is well known for the breeding of cattle and horses. The Parthenais breed of cattle is named after the town of Parthenay in the north of the département. Dairy products are produced in significant quantities; some quarries are in operation, as well as lime extraction operations. Textiles, leather-tanning, flour milling were the traditional industries of Niort, the capital and major city. Nowadays, with 60,000 inhabitants, is an important commercial and administrative center. In particular it is one of the main financial centers in France. Niort is the national headquarters of some of the major insurance companies in France and regional headquarters of others such as Groupama; the regional headquarters of several national banks, including Banque Populaire and Crédit Agricole, are located there. The services sector is heavily represented in Niort, in consulting, accounting and software.

Chemistry and aeronautics are the main industries. Textiles and shoe making, mechanics, chemistry, food industry and food packaging are the major industries outside of the capital; the unemployment rate in the département is low in the north-west, where many small and medium companies are developing rapidly. The south-west of the département attracts tourists with the Marais Poitevin natural area. Population development since 1801: Niort in the south of the département is connected to Paris and Bordeaux by the A10 motorway, with Nantes by the A83, with La Rochelle and Poitiers by the N11. Another important road in the north of the département is the Route nationale 149, which runs east–west from Mortagne-sur-Sèvre to Poitiers, passing through Bressuire and Parthenay; the RN149 forms part of the European route E62 from Nantes to Genoa. In Autumn 2008, the Route nationale 249, which ran from Nantes to Cholet, was extended and continued to Bressuire; this will become part of the E62 and bypass the current RN149.

The north and south of the département are connected by minor roads, with the D743 and D748 linking Niort to Parthenay and Bressuire whilst the D938 connects to Thouars. The département has two railway stations on the TGV route between Paris and La Rochelle, with a journey from Niort to Paris taking 2h15, it is served by several TER Nouvelle-Aquitaine regional railway routes, including a route from Poitiers via Niort to La Rochelle, a route from Niort to Saintes, a route from Tours to Thouars and Bressuire. A railway bus service operated as part of the TER Nouvelle-Aquitaine network follows the RN149 from Poitiers to Nantes, calling at Parthenay and Bressuire. Additionally the département provides the Réseau des Deux-Sèvres, an inter-urban bus service that connects the towns and villages of the département. There are no airports with scheduled airline service within the département, although Niort-Souche Airport is used for private movements; the nearest commercial airports are at La Rochelle and Nantes.

Famous births in the département: Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de Maintenon, second wife of Louis XIV Jacques de Liniers Louis-Marcelin, marquis de Fontanes and politician Henri-Georges Clouzot, film director Laurent Cantet, Palme d'Or at the Festival de Cannes 2008, for the movie Entre les murs Catherine Breillat, film maker and novelist Jean-Hugues Anglade, actor René Caillié explorer, the first European to return alive from the town of TimbuktuFamous people related to the département: Jean-Baptiste Baujault, French sculptor Ségolène Royal, former candidate for the 2007 French presidential election, former representative of the department at the National Assembly, former President of the Poitou-Charentes region and Mi

Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss and March, is an English drug policy reformer and research coordinator. In 1998 she founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness renamed to the Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which initiates and supports neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition, she has co-authored over 50 papers published in peer-reviewed journals, according to the Foundation. The central aim of her research is to investigate new avenues of treatment for such mental illnesses as depression and addiction, as well as to explore methods of enhancing well-being and creativity. Feilding has been a proponent of exploiting the cognitive effects of cannabis since the 1960s, she has experimented with trepanning, drilling a hole into the skull to expose the dura mater, a technique used in some cultures to treat mental illness, considered by some to provide a calming effect or a higher state of consciousness. Feilding is a proponent of the use of LSD to trigger long-term improvements in creativity.

Born in 1943, Feilding is the youngest child of Basil Feilding, great-grandson of the 7th Earl of Denbigh and the Marquess of Bath, his wife and cousin, Margaret Feilding. She grew up at Beckley Park, a Tudor hunting lodge with three towers and three moats owned by her father Basil Feilding, situated on the edge of a fen outside Oxford. From an early age, Feilding was interested in states of mysticism. At 16 years old, with just £25 in her pocket, she packed her bags and embarked on a journey to Ceylon, Sri Lanka where her godfather, Bertie Moore, had become a Buddhist monk. Although she did not reach Sri Lanka, Feilding hitchhiked as far as the Syrian border, where she spent time living with Bedouins before returning to the UK. Feilding studied Comparative Religions and Mysticism with Prof. R. C. Zaehner and Classical Arabic with Prof. Albert Hourani, she concentrated on learning about altered states of consciousness, psychology and neuroscience. Feilding had her first psychedelic experience at 22 years of age, when an acquaintance spiked her coffee with a massive dose of then-legal LSD.

The experience nearly broke her, she retreated to her family home for months to recover Feilding gained notoriety in 1970 when she performed trepanation on herself, with a dental drill. She made a short cult art film about the experience, entitled Heartbeat in the Brain; the 1998 documentary A Hole in the Head contains footage from Heartbeat in the Brain. Feilding began to microdose herself with LSD while she was in her 20s. A 2019 Guardian article offers this analysis: "It would be fair to say... that her credibility as an advocate has not always been helped by her storied history with self-experimentation". Trepanation was part of her exploration into the effects of different techniques to alter and enhance consciousness. During this period, she wrote Blood and Consciousness, which hypothesized that changing ratios of blood and cerebrospinal fluid underlie changes in consciousness, described the theory of the "ego" as a conditioned reflex mechanism that controls the distribution of blood in the brain.

During the 1970s and 80s she painted and produced conceptual artworks associated with consciousness, which were exhibited at the ICA in London, PS1 in New York and other galleries in the US.citation neededFeilding holds a longstanding interest in investigating consciousness for the benefit of the individual and society. She has supported research into different ways of altering consciousness from meditation to the use of psychoactive substances and trepanation. In 1998, Feilding founded the Foundation to Further Consciousness renamed Beckley Foundation, a charitable trust which claims to promote a rational, evidence-based approach to global drug policies and initiates and supports pioneering neuroscientific and clinical research into the effects of psychoactive substances on the brain and cognition; the central aim of her research is to investigate new avenues of treatment for such mental illnesses as depression and addiction, as well as to explore methods of enhancing well-being and creativity.

The Foundation states that Fielding has co-authored over 50 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals. Feilding is the Executive Director of the Foundation. Through the Beckley Foundation, Feilding initiates and supports scientific research investigating psychoactive substances, such as cannabis and other psychedelics. Considered one of the pioneers of the renaissance of psychedelic research, with the New Scientist calling her the "Queen of Consciousness", she has initiated several ground-breaking research projects. Of note is a study investigating the efficacy of using psilocybin as an aid to psychotherapy in overcoming depression and nicotine addiction, a brain imaging study investigating the effects of psilocybin and MDMA on cerebral blood supply, an examination of the effects of cannabis on creativity and of the importance of the THC/CBD ratio in mental health, the first brain imaging study investigating the effects of LSD on the brain. Feilding has been active in drug policy reform and was among the first to start building an evidence-base upon which new policies could be formed, arguing that benefits as well as harms should be considered.

In 2007, Feilding convened the Global Cannabis Commission, producing a report authored by a group of leading drug policy analysts, which lays out a plan for possible reforms of cannabis control policies at national and international levels. 2011 saw Feilding bring together members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy Reform (a panel of world leader

Arkanoid DS is a breakout video game developed by Taito and published by Square Enix for the Nintendo DS. It was released on June 18, 2008. Arkanoid DS has 2 modes: an objective based Quest mode. In both of those, the player takes the controls of the Vaus spaceship. Clear mode is made of 28 worlds that are arranged in a pyramid-like shape, each made up to five levels. Like in the other games from Arkanoid series, the main goal of each Clear level is to clear the entire display of blocks at the top of the screen, using a paddle to bounce a ball which destroys them; the ball falls back down, so the player has to make it hit the paddle. Sometimes, power-ups will drop, it is activated. However, in Quest mode, the player can attempt to complete any level in any preferred order, while trying to complete objectives specific for each level. Arkanoid DS supports multiplayer mode through either local wireless or online play for up to four people in two different modes; those are: Bust Color mode. The levels played on are randomly selected and the players can keep an eye on the opponents via small images that appear in the play area.

The game released in Japan with the Paddle Controller, a spinner mimicking the original arcade game's control knob for the left and right motion of the on-screen paddle. The game uses a "two screens-one display" design, it is one of the control schemes, which includes dragging with the stylus and using a directional pad. There is a level and blocks customization option included that uses other games from Taito. For example, the blocks can be changed to look like Space Invaders ones or backgrounds to feature Bubble Bobble characters; the soundtrack was made by Zuntata, Taito's in-house team, using techno music to complement the action on the screen. Arkanoid DS at MobyGames