Hakubun Shimomura is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party, a member of the House of Representatives in the Diet. A native of Takasaki, Shimomura was born on 23 May 1954, he lost his father at the age of nine and endured severe financial hardship in order to complete his education, but obtained scholarships to complete high school and university. He operated a cram school. Shimomura had served in the assembly of Tokyo for two terms since 1989, he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time in 1996. He is a representative of the district of Tokyo No. 11 in the lower house. He was deputy chief cabinet secretary in the first government of Shinzo Abe in 2006. Shimomura was again appointed to the Cabinet by Shinzo Abe as minister of education, sports and technology on 26 December 2012; as minister, Shimomura expanded the ability of local schools to provide Saturday classes and pushed for the globalization of Japanese universities by increasing English skills and hiring more foreign faculty.

He oversaw preparations by the Organising Committee for the 2020 Summer Olympics on behalf of the national government in Tokyo before being replaced by Olympics Minister Toshiaki Endo on June 25, 2015. Following the resignation of Tokyo governor Naoki Inose on 19 December 2013, Shimomura was rumored to be a potential candidate for the gubernatorial election expected to be held in February 2014, along with Yuriko Koike, Hideo Higashikokubaru, Seiko Hashimoto and Yoichi Masuzoe; the LDP excluded his name from consideration in a 20 December poll so that he could focus his efforts on the Tokyo Olympics. Shimomura is affiliated to the revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi, his political views are consistent with the organization's agenda. Prior to the 2012 general election, Shimomura told the magazine Apple Town that "we intend to construct a genuinely conservative administration... has only existed for about three years since the war,"describing tensions with China and South Korea as a "national crisis" and stating that "the 67 years since the end of World War II have been a history of Japan’s destruction."In regards to comfort women, he commented in 2007 that "it is true that there were comfort women.

I believe. But it does not mean the Japanese army was involved." Following his appointment as education minister in 2012, he refused to comment on the issue but stated that "the government has decided to study Japan's interpretation of history, including the Kono Statement, I would like to express my views during that process, if necessary."He refused to intercede in a debate over the censorship of the manga Barefoot Gen, which depicts the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Japan's culpability in World War II, by a school board in Matsue, stating that young students may not be able to understand its depictions properly. Shimomura supported the restarting of nuclear power reactors in Japan following the Fukushima nuclear disaster, stating that "if Japan finds itself losing its power supply, companies would relocate their operations abroad and deindustrialization would spread — and Japan wouldn't be able to revitalize its economy."Shimomura has a son with a learning disability who graduated from the University of the Arts London in 2013.

Shimomura commented to the New York Times that his son would not have been able to enroll in a Japanese university, said "the British system is more open to a broader range of people and talents... I would like to see the system here be revamped so that avenues of opportunities will be open to all children. After all, considering where we want to go, it is less important for us to create 10,000 people with run-of-the mill capabilities than a few with superb talents."In April 2018, Shimomura called it "almost a crime" for the TV reporter who complained of sexually harassment to have secretly taped the former Ministry of Finance top official Junichi Fukuda, her alleged victimizer and "selling" the story to a tabloid weekly. The anonymous reporter was revealed to be affiliated with TV Asahi by the time Shimomura made the statement. Although he retracted his choice of words the next day, he still insisted he had a point to make in that the reporter violated the journalistic principle of speaking off-the-record, he spoke out because he suspected her of staging this with the intention of selling the story to the tabloids from the beginning

The Roman Rig is the name given to a series of earthworks to the north east of Sheffield in South Yorkshire, England that are believed to have formed a single Dyke running from near Wincobank in Sheffield to Mexborough. Its purpose and date of construction are unknown. Thought to have been a Roman road, modern archaeologists think that it was built either in the 1st century AD by the Brigantian tribes as a defence against the Roman invasion of Britain, or after the 5th century to defend the kingdom of Elmet from the Angles; the southernmost end of the dyke is thought to have been close to Lady's Bridge at the River Don in Sheffield, but today it only becomes visible close to the Iron Age fort at Wincobank. The dyke continues in a north-easterly direction following the Don Valley to Kimberworth in Rotherham where it splits into two branches that continue parallel to each other in a sweep starting to the north-east and turning east; the southern branch passes through Greasbrough, intersecting the River Don just south of Swinton at Kilnhurst.

The northern branch passes close to another Iron Age fort at Scholes Coppice and runs to the north of Swinton, meeting the River Don at Mexborough. Part of the western end of the ridge was used in the Middle Ages to demarcate the boundary of Ecclesfield and Sheffield; this western part parallels the Don, a report of 1891 in the Sheffield Independent stated that it had run as far west as Bridgehouses. Part of the northern branch formed the boundary between Wath-on-Dearne on the one side and Rawmarsh and Swinton on the other. Carl Wark Templeborough Brigantes Nation. Roman Rig. Cronk, K A. Journey Along the Roman Ridge: Exploring the Purpose of South-West Yorkshire’ Ancient Dykes; the Clifton and Wellgate Local History Group, 2004. Cronk, K A. South West Yorkshire’s Roman Ridge: A Who-Dug-It Mystery; the Clifton and Wellgate Local History Group, 2004. Hunter, Joseph. An inquiry into the early state and remote history of the Parish of Sheffield. In: Hallamshire; the History and Topography of the Parish of Sheffield in the County of York.

Pp15–23. London: Lackington, Harding, Mayor & Jones.] Leader, R. E.. The Highways and Byways of Old Sheffield. A lecture delivered before the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society

A tephigram is one of four thermodynamic diagrams used in weather analysis and forecasting. The name evolved from the original name "T- ϕ -gram" to describe the axes of temperature and entropy used to create the plot. Temperature and dew point data from radiosondes are plotted on these diagrams to allow calculations of convective stability or convective available potential energy. Wind barbs are plotted at the side of a tephigram to indicate the winds at different heights; the tephigram was invented by Napier Shaw in 1915 and is used in the United Kingdom and Canada. Other countries use similar thermodynamic diagrams for the same purpose however the details of their construction vary. In the tephigram, isotherms are straight and have a 45 degree inclination to the right while isobars are horizontal and have a slight curve. Dry adiabats are straight and have a 45 degree inclination to the left while moist adiabats are curved; the main reason that tephigrams are used by the British Met Office, the Meteorological Service of Canada, Met Éireann is the property that areas contained by the curves have equal energies for equal areas, leading to better comparisons of CAPE and hence convective systems.

Thermodynamic diagrams Skew-T log-P diagram, a variation of the Emagram Stüve diagram M. H. P. Ambaum, Thermal Physics of the Atmosphere, published by 240 pages. ISBN 978-0-470-74515-1 R. R. Rogers and M. K. Yau, Short Course in Cloud Physics, Third Edition, published by Butterworth-Heinemann, January 1, 1989, 304 pages. ISBN 9780750632157 ISBN 0-7506-3215-1 J. V. Iribarne and W. L. Godson, Atmospheric Thermodynamics, 2nd Edition, published by D. Reidel Publishing Company, Holland, 1981, 278 pages, ISBN 90-277-1297-2, ISBN 978-90-277-1296-7 Department of Meteorology, University of Reading page about tephigrams including pdfs of blank printable colour and monochrome tephigrams

Fagus sylvatica, the European beech or common beech, is a deciduous tree belonging to the beech family Fagaceae. Fagus sylvatica is a large tree, capable of reaching heights of up to 50 m tall and 3 m trunk diameter, though more 25–35 m tall and up to 1.5 m trunk diameter. A 10-year-old sapling will stand about 4 m tall, it has a typical lifespan of 150–200 years, though sometimes up to 300 years. In cultivated forest stands trees are harvested at 80–120 years of age. 30 years are needed to attain full maturity. Like most trees, its form depends on the location: in forest areas, F. sylvatica grows to over 30 m, with branches being high up on the trunk. In open locations, it will become more massive; the leaves are alternate and entire or with a crenate margin, 5–10 cm long and 3–7 cm broad, with 6–7 veins on each side of the leaf. When crenate, there is one point at each vein tip, never any points between the veins; the buds are long and slender, 15–30 mm long and 2–3 mm thick, but thicker where the buds include flower buds.

The leaves of beech are not abscissed in the autumn and instead remain on the tree until the spring. This process is called marcescence; this occurs when trees are saplings or when plants are clipped as a hedge, but it often continues to occur on the lower branches when the tree is mature. Small quantities of seeds may be produced around 10 years of age, but not a heavy crop until the tree is at least 30 years old. F. sylvatica male flowers are borne in the small catkins. The female flowers produce beechnuts, small triangular nuts 15–20 millimetres long and 7–10 mm wide at the base. Flower and seed production is abundant in years following a hot and dry summer, though for two years in a row; the natural range extends from southern Sweden to northern Sicily, west to France, southern England, northern Portugal, central Spain, east to northwest Turkey, where it intergrades with the oriental beech, which replaces it further east. In the Balkans, it shows some hybridisation with oriental beech. In the southern part of its range around the Mediterranean, it grows only in mountain forests, at 600–1,800 m altitude.

Although regarded as native in southern England, recent evidence suggests that F. sylvatica did not arrive in England until about 4000 BC, or 2,000 years after the English Channel formed after the ice ages. The beech is classified as a native in the south of England and as a non-native in the north where it is removed from'native' woods. Localised pollen records have been recorded in the North of England from the Iron Age by Sir Harry Godwin. Changing climatic conditions may put beech populations in southern England under increased stress and while it may not be possible to maintain the current levels of beech in some sites it is thought that conditions for beech in north-west England will remain favourable or improve, it is planted in Britain. The nature of Norwegian beech populations is subject to debate. If native, they would represent the northern range of the species. However, molecular genetic analyses support the hypothesis that these populations represent intentional introduction from Denmark before and during the Viking Age.

However, the beech in Vestfold and at Seim north of Bergen in Norway is now spreading and regarded as native. Though not demanding of its soil type, the European beech has several significant requirements: a humid atmosphere and well-drained soil, it prefers moderately fertile ground, calcified or acidic, therefore it is found more on the side of a hill than at the bottom of a clayey basin. It is sensitive to spring frost. In Norway's oceanic climate planted trees grow well as far north as Trondheim. In Sweden, beech trees do not grow as far north as in Norway. A beech forest is dark and few species of plant are able to survive there, where the sun reaches the ground. Young beeches may grow poorly in full sunlight. In a clear-cut forest a European beech will germinate and die of excessive dryness. Under oaks with sparse leaf cover it will surpass them in height and, due to the beech's dense foliage, the oaks will die from lack of sunlight; the root system is shallow superficial, with large roots spreading out in all directions.

European beech forms ectomycorrhizas with a range of fungi including members of the genera Amanita, Cantharellus, Hebeloma and with the species Ramaria flavosaponaria. In the woodlands of southern Britain, beech is dominant over oak and elm south of a line from about north Suffolk across to Cardigan. Oak are the dominant forest trees north of this line. One of the most beautiful European beech forests called Sonian Forest is found in the southeast of Brussels, Belgium. Beech is a dominant tree spec

A black hole starship is a theoretical idea for enabling interstellar travel by propelling a starship by using a black hole as the energy source. The concept was first discussed in science fiction, notably in the book Imperial Earth by Arthur C. Clarke, in the work of Charles Sheffield, in which energy extracted from a Kerr-Newman black hole is described as powering the rocket engines in the story "Killing Vector". In a more detailed analysis, a proposal to create an artificial black hole and using a parabolic reflector to reflect its Hawking radiation was discussed in 2009 by Louis Crane and Shawn Westmoreland, their conclusion was that it was on the edge of possibility, but that quantum gravity effects that are presently unknown will either make it easier, or make it impossible. Similar concepts were sketched out by Bolonkin. Although beyond current technological capabilities, a black hole starship offers some advantages compared to other possible methods. For example, in nuclear fusion or fission, only a small proportion of the mass is converted into energy, so enormous quantities of material would be needed.

Thus, a nuclear starship would deplete Earth of fissile and fusile material. One possibility is antimatter, but the manufacturing of antimatter is hugely energy-inefficient, antimatter is difficult to contain; the Crane and Westmoreland paper states: According to the authors, a black hole to be used in space travel needs to meet five criteria: has a long enough lifespan to be useful, is powerful enough to accelerate itself up to a reasonable fraction of the speed of light in a reasonable amount of time, is small enough that we can access the energy to make it, is large enough that we can focus the energy to make it, has mass comparable to a starship. Black holes seem to have a sweet spot in terms of size and lifespan, ideal. A black hole weighing 606,000 metric tons would have a Schwarzschild radius of 0.9 attometers, a power output of 160 petawatts, a 3.5-year lifespan. With such a power output, the black hole could accelerate to 10% the speed of light in 20 days, assuming 100% conversion of energy into kinetic energy.

Assuming only 10% conversion into kinetic energy would only take 10 times longer to accelerate to 0.1c. Getting the black hole to act as a power source and engine requires a way to convert the Hawking radiation into energy and thrust. One potential method involves placing the hole at the focal point of a parabolic reflector attached to the ship, creating forward thrust, if such a reflector can be built. A easier, but less efficient method would involve absorbing all the gamma radiation heading towards the fore of the ship to push it onwards, let the rest shoot out the back; this would, generate an enormous amount of heat as radiation is absorbed by the dish. It is not clear that a starship powered by Hawking radiation can be made feasible within the laws of known physics. In the standard black hole thermodynamic model, the average energy of emitted quanta increases as size decreases, small black holes emit the majority of their energy in particles other than photons. In the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, Jeffrey S. Lee of Icarus Interstellar states a typical quantum of radiation from a one-attometer black hole would be too energetic to be reflected.

Lee further argues absorption may be infeasible: A titanium "Dyson cap", optimized at 1 cm thickness and a radius around 33 km, would absorb half the incident energy, but the maximum spaceship velocity over the black hole lifetime would be less than 0.0001c, according to Lee's calculations. Govind Menon of Troy University suggests exploring the use of a rotating black hole instead: "With non-rotating black holes, this is a difficult thing...we look for energy exclusively from rotating black holes. Schwarzschild black holes do not radiate in an gamma ray burst point of view, it is not clear if Hawking radiation alone can power starships." Arthur C. Clarke, Imperial Earth Charles Sheffield, "Killing Vector" Peter Watts, "The Freeze Frame Revolution" In the Star Trek Universe, the Romulan D'deridex-class warbird uses an artificial quantum singularity as a power source for its warp propulsion drive. In the 1997 Paul W. S. Anderson science fiction horror film Event Horizon, the eponymous starship uses an artificial black hole drive to achieve faster-than-light travel.

Abraham–Lorentz force Beyond black holes Black hole electron Hawking radiation Kugelblitz List of quantum gravity researchers Micro black hole