A flare sometimes called a fusee, is a type of pyrotechnic that produces a bright light or intense heat without an explosion. Flares are used for distress signaling, illumination, or defensive countermeasures in civilian and military applications. Flares may be ground pyrotechnics, projectile pyrotechnics, or parachute-suspended to provide maximum illumination time over a large area. Projectile pyrotechnics may be dropped from aircraft, fired from rocket or artillery, or deployed by flare guns or handheld percussive tubes; the earliest recorded use of gunpowder for signaling purposes was the'signal bomb' used by the Chinese Song Dynasty as the Mongol-led Yuan Dynasty besieged Yangzhou in 1276. These soft-shelled bombs, timed to explode in mid-air, were used to send messages to a detachment of troops far in the distance. Another mention of the signal bomb appears in a text dating from 1293 requesting their collection from those still stored in Zhejiang. A signal gun appears in Korea by 1600; the Wu I Thu Phu Thung Chih or Illustrated Military Encyclopedia written in 1791 depicts a signal gun in an illustration.

Flares produce their light through the combustion of a pyrotechnic composition. The ingredients are varied, but based on strontium nitrate, potassium nitrate, or potassium perchlorate and mixed with a fuel such as charcoal, sawdust, magnesium, or a suitable polymeric resin. Flares may be colored by the inclusion of pyrotechnic colorants. Calcium flares are used underwater to illuminate submerged objects. Many in-service colored signal flares and spectrally balanced decoy flares contain perchlorate oxidizers. Perchlorate, a type of salt in its solid form and moves in groundwater and surface water. In low concentrations in drinking water supplies, perchlorate is known to inhibit the uptake of iodine by the thyroid gland. While there are no US federal drinking water standards for perchlorate, some states have established public health goals or action levels, some are in the process of establishing state maximum contaminant levels. For example, the US Environmental Protection Agency have studied the impacts of perchlorate on the environment as well as drinking water.

California has issued guidance regarding perchlorate use. US courts have taken action regarding the use of perchlorate in manufacturing pyrotechnic devices such as flares. For example, in 2003, a federal district court in California found that Comprehensive Environmental Response and Liability Act applied because perchlorate is ignitable and therefore a “characteristic” hazardous waste.. In the civilian world, flares are used as signals, may be ignited on the ground or fired as an aerial signal from a pistol-like flare gun, or launched from a self-contained tube. Flares are found in marine survival kits. Red flares, either sent as a rocket or held in the hand, are recognized as a maritime distress signal; the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea has standards for visual signals, including both handheld and aerial flares. Handheld flares must burn for at least 1 minute at an average luminosity of 15,000 candelas, while aerial flares must burn for at least 40 seconds with 30,000-candela average luminosity.

Both should burn in a bright red colour. Nations that are members of SOLAS require vessels to carry visual signals on board. Another type of flare is the fusee. Fusees are used to indicate obstacles or advise caution on roadways at night, they are found in roadside emergency kits. Fusees are known as railroad flares and are used to perform hand signals in rail transport applications. Since they can be used only once, fusees nowadays are intended for emergency use. However, in the days before train radio communications, fusees were used to keep trains apart in dark territory. A railroad fusee was timed to burn for ten minutes and quantities were dropped behind a train to ensure a safe spacing. If a following train encountered a burning fusee it was not to pass. Fusees made for railroad use can be distinguished from highway fusees by a sharp steel spike at one end, used to embed the fusee upright in a wooden railroad tie. In forestry and firefighting, fusees are sometimes used in wildland fire suppression and in the ignition of controlled burns.

They ignite at 191 °C and burn as hot as 1,600 °C. They are effective in igniting burnouts or backburns in dry conditions, but not so effective when fuel conditions are moist. Since controlled burns are done during high humidity levels, the driptorch is more effective and more used. Fusees are commonly carried by wildland firefighters for emergency use, to ignite an escape fire in surrounding fuels in case of being overrun by a fire if no other escape routes are available. Calcium phosphide is used in naval flares, as in contact with water it liberates phosphine which self ignites in contact with air. In 1859, Martha Coston patented the Coston flare based on early work by her deceased husband Benjamin Franklin Coston, it was used extensively by the U. S. Navy during the Civil War and by the United States Life-Saving Service to signal to other ships and to shore. In 1922, a "landing flare" was an aerial candle

The 2010 Western Australian storms were a series of storms that travelled over southwestern Western Australia on 21 and 22 March 2010. One of the more intense storm cells passed directly over the capital city of Perth between 3:30pm and 5:00pm on Monday 22 March 2010, it is the costliest natural disaster in Western Australian history, with the damage bill estimated at A$1.08 billion. The storms brought extensive hail, strong winds and heavy rain, causing extensive damage to vehicles and trees, flash flooding, as well as the first significant rainfall in Perth since 20 November 2009; the hail stones are the largest known to have occurred in Perth and were around 3–6 cm in diameter, which caused extensive damage to property across the city, including schools, hospitals and power infrastructure. Wind gusts were recorded at around 120 km/h. At the peak, around 158,000 homes in Perth and Bunbury lost electric power. Telephone lines were cut to thousands of homes until the next day, the storms led to an estimated A$200 million worth of insurance claims within three days, with $70 million within the first 24 hours.

It was identified as the most expensive natural disaster in Western Australia's history, was declared a natural disaster by the Premier, Colin Barnett, allowing federal and state funds to be used for disaster relief. The storm brought an end to a lengthy dry spell in Perth, with 40.2 millimetres of rain falling at Mount Lawley — the fifth highest daily rainfall recorded for a March day in Perth. Over half of this fell in just 10 minutes; this was the first significant rainfall since 20 November 2009. It was similar to storms which struck Melbourne on 6 March 2010. During the warmer summer months, low-level surface troughs cross over the west coast of Australia, which leads to isolated thunderstorm development in inland Western Australia, only reaching the coast. However, on 21 and 22 March 2010, high surface dew points and temperatures combined with a low to the west of WA caused rare northerly winds to occur; this meant. 21 March 2010 Storms formed in the Geraldton region during the afternoon, putting an end to the city's fourth-longest dry spell, with 14.6 millimetres of rainfall recorded at Geraldton.

The township of Badgingarra bore the brunt of storms on both days. Storms developed in inland parts of the Gascoyne, where Cue got over 80 millimetres of rainfall and Mount Magnet received 57 millimetres. 22 March 2010 The Geraldton storm moved out towards the coast during the morning, skipping Perth, but not before putting an end to nearby Mandurah's dry spell with 2.4 millimetres of rainfall and Bunbury where 9 millimetres fell. Seven pole-top fires cut power to 1,200 homes across both cities. A severe thunderstorm warning was declared for the central west, lower west, central Wheatbelt, Great Southern and southern Gascoyne regions of Western Australia at 9.45am. It was amended at 2.30 pm. As predicted, storms began to develop in the Jurien Bay area around 2pm, bringing another 36.2 millimetres to an sodden Badgingarra. At 3pm, the main storm moved over Gingin, dropping the temperature from 26.3 °C at 3.06pm to 21.4 °C at 3.33pm, delivering 18.2 millimetres to the township. Perth was next in line for the storms, which first hit the northern suburbs around the Cities of Joondalup and Wanneroo, where 62.8 millimetres fell in two hours at the suburb itself.

Hailstones with diameters of 3–5 cm were reported around suburbs like Osborne Park and Craigie, while 6 centimetres hailstones were measured in the inner Perth suburb of Wembley. By 4pm, the Perth storm had reached the southern suburbs and damaging wind gusts had been reported at the suburb of Jandakot. Jarrahdale, to the southeast of Perth, received 44.2 millimetres in half an hour, exceeding the conditions required for a 1 in 100-year flood in terms of a period from 15 to 30 minutes. However, the storm began to lessen in intensity and become larger, forming a multi-squall line as it moved further south. A second wave of storm activity developed behind the first set, delivering further falls to northern Perth. Around 4.30pm, a severe thunderstorm warning was issued for Mandurah and surrounding areas. However, the storm had begun to move further inland, resulting in no hail reported in Mandurah or Rockingham and 17.4/13.4 mm at Garden Island and Mandurah while inland towns such as Dwellingup and Waroona received 30.2 and 26.8mm respectively.

Around 12,000 individual insurance claims were made in the 24 hours after the storms. The damage zone was defined by a loop from Geraldton to Mandurah through Cue and Katanning. A week after the storm, the damage bill was estimated to have reached A$650 million, was still climbing, making it the most expensive catastrophe in Western Australian history. Over 100 people were evacuated from apartments near Kings Park in central Perth after heavy rain cause a large mudslide. Several high schools in Perth's northern suburbs did not open on 23 March due to extensive storm damage. According to the Education Department there was damage to about 70 per cent of classrooms at Ocean Reef High School. Shenton College, Mindarie Senior College, Duncraig

Panzer Front is a World War II tank simulation game first released in 1999 in Japan by Enterbrain for the Sony PlayStation and Sega Dreamcast game consoles. Players perform the role of a tank commander during the war using one of six fictional tanks. Battles are fought on various maps based on actual historical campaigns. During the game, the player can engage the enemy while calling in artillery barrages whenever they are available. Panzer Front takes a realistic approach, some enemies can kill the player's tank with one shot. Reinforcements are available in some missions if allied tanks are lost. Panzer Front has 25 missions, based on real events. Examples include the destruction of a British armored column in the Battle of Villers-Bocage, the US Army's defense against a ferocious German counterattack in Le Dezert, the defense of the Reichstag during the Battle of Berlin, several based on the Battle of Kursk. Panzer Front bis is an updated version of the original game, released for the Sony PlayStation in Japan on February 8, 2001.

Bis features all of the game's tanks and missions, with additional tanks, ten scenarios, a mission editor. It was due to be released in Europe in the middle of 2002, but JVC, the UK publisher, shut down its video game branch before Bis could be converted and released; the PlayStation version received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 30 out of 40 for the Dreamcast version, 29 out of 40 for the PlayStation version. Panzer Front Ausf. B Panzer Front at MobyGames http://panzerw.narod.ru/pfload.html

The Colt OHWS was a semi-automatic pistol created by Colt to compete for the United States Special Operations Command Offensive Handgun Weapon System tender. The winner of this competition would become the standard-issue handgun for most US special forces groups; the OHWS contract was awarded to Heckler & Koch for their MK23 Mod 0 pistol, Colt scrapped the project. The Colt OHWS carried a single-stack 10-round magazine; the handgun was designed to carry a laser aiming module. The handgun was chambered for the.45 ACP cartridge. Colt developed their OHWS handgun during the early 1990s to compete for a contract under the US SOCOM Offensive Handgun Weapon System program; the Colt OHWS was produced to fire.45 ammunition, but was capable of firing most.45 ammunition designed, including SOCOMs intended primary round.45 ACP + P. At the time Colt's pistols were not capable of handling +P ammunition Colt decided that instead of modifying the previous SOCOM weapon the M1911A1 to meet SOCOMs current needs it would be more cost-effective to produce a brand new handgun.

The Colt OHWS was a compilation of combined top features from other Colt firearms including the M1911A1, Double Eagle and All American 2000. Colt used the rotating barrel locking system from the All American 2000 – one of the strongest locking systems designed for handguns; the design was modified from the M1911A1, except machined and slide was made of stainless steel. Colt added a slide lock, to stop cycling of the slide in sound-sensitive cases. To promote reliability Colt decided to use a single-column 10-round magazine instead of a double-column. An interesting feature of the Colt OHWS was mounting muzzle attachments was done through the frame instead of moving barrel, they did this by adding an extension rail and toggle switch; the problem was the silencer. Colt added in an additional rail under the dust cover to attach tactical LAMs. SOCOM found the Colt OHWS to be too bulky, not as durable as expected and the accessories to be too meticulous to use and fit, leading to a loss in the competition for SOCOMs contract to the Heckler and Koch MK23.

List of individual weapons of the U. S. Armed Forces Modern Firearms

The Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle known as the Battle of Athens, was fought near Athens, from September 23 to 25, 1864 as part of the American Civil War. In September 1864, General Nathan Bedford Forrest led his force into northern Alabama and middle Tennessee to disrupt the supply of William Tecumseh Sherman's army in Georgia; the battle's site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973. On the afternoon of 23 September, Union forces engaged Confederate forces five miles south of Athens, near tanner, where they were destroying a railroad trestle. Forrest's Confederate forces moved towards Athens; that evening the Confederate forces gained control of the town, the Union forces had retreated within Fort Henderson. The Confederate forces began an artillery barrage on the morning of the 24th. In a personal meeting, Forrest convinced the Union commander, Colonel Wallace Campbell, that the Confederate forces numbered 8,000-10,000. Campbell surrendered its garrison around noon.

Shortly after the garrison had surrendered, reinforcements consisting of about 350 men from the 18th Michigan and 102nd Ohio, commanded by Jonas Elliott, arrived by train from Decatur. After suffering casualties of one-third their total personnel, these forces surrendered. After defeating the Union forces in Athens, Forrest moved north along the railroad with the intent to destroy a strategic trestle at Sulphur Creek, six miles north of Athens. A fortification, two blockhouses, a force of 1,000 Union soldiers defended the trestle. On the morning of the 25th, the Confederate forces began an artillery bombardment of the fort; the fortification had been built below the summits of adjacent hills, thus provided little defense against the bombardment. 200 Union soldiers were killed, including Colonel William Hopkins Lathrop. By noon, George Spalding had surrendered the remaining 800 soldiers. There were no reported Confederate losses; the Union prisoners were transferred to Confederate prisons. Many of these prisoners died on April 27, 1865, when the steamboat Sultana sank while transporting them home.

20th Tennessee Cavalry, CSA Update to the Civil War Sites Advisory Commission Report on the Nation's Civil War Battlefields - State of Alabama http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/sources/recordView.cfm? Content=077/0514 Limestone County Historical Society, Historical Marker Text for "Battle of Sulphur Creek Trestle". Http://www.marker.limestonecountyhistoricalsociety.org/html/sulphur_battle.html. Erected 1982. Limestone County Historical Society. Historical Marker for "Fort Henderson", http://www.marker.limestonecountyhistoricalsociety.org/html/ft_henderson.html. Erected 2002. Greater Limestone County Chamber of Commerce, "Athens-Limestone County Civil War Trail: Self Guided Driving Tour Featuring the Battles of Athens & Sulphur Creek Trestle", February 2010. Https://web.archive.org/web/20110109114558/http://tourathens.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/civil-war-trail-single-pages-Feb-20101.pdf

Roger Lee Reynolds is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer. He is known for his capacity to integrate diverse ideas and resources, for the seamless blending of traditional musical sounds and those newly enabled by technology, his work responds to text of mythological origins. His reputation rests, in part, upon his “wizardry in sending music flying through space: whether vocal, instrumental, or computerized”; this signature feature first appeared in the notationally innovative theater piece, The Emperor of Ice-Cream. During his early career, Reynolds worked in Europe and Asia, returning to the US in 1969 to accept an appointment in the music department at the University of California, San Diego, his leadership there established it as a state of the art facility – in parallel with Stanford, IRCAM, MIT – a center for composition and computer music exploration. He has addressed the tradition with three symphonies, four string quartets, works that have been performed internationally as well as in North America.

Reynolds won early recognition with Fulbright, National Endowment for the Arts, National Institute of Arts and Letters awards. In 1989, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for a string orchestra composition, Whispers Out of Time, an extended work responding to John Ashbery’s ambitious Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. Reynolds is author of numerous journal articles. In 2009 he was appointed University Professor, the first artist so honored by University of California, his work has been featured at festivals including Warsaw Autumn, the Proms and Edinburgh Festivals, the Suntory International Series, the Helsinki and Venice biennales. The Library of Congress established a Special Collection of his work in 1998, his nearly 100 compositions to date are published by the C. F. Peters Corporation, several dozen CDs and DVDs of his work have been commercially released. Performances by the Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego Symphonies, among others, preceded the most recent large-scale work, george WASHINGTON, written in honor of America' first president.

This work knits together the Reynolds's career-long interest in orchestra, extended musical forms and computer spatialization of sound. Reynolds's work embodies an American artistic idealism reflecting the influence of Varèse and Cage, has been compared with that of Boulez and Scelsi. Reynolds lives with his partner of 50 years, Karen, in Del Mar, overlooking the Pacific. Early influences: piano studies with Kenneth Aiken The seeds for Reynolds' focus on music were planted by accident when his father, an architect, recommended that he purchase some phonograph records; these recordings, including a Vladimir Horowitz performance of Frédéric Chopin's A-flat Polonaise, spurred Reynolds to take up piano lessons with Kenneth Aiken. Aiken demanded that his students delve into the cultural context behind the works of classic keyboard literature they played. Around the time that Reynolds graduated from high school in 1952, he performed a solo recital in Detroit that consisted of the Johannes Brahms Sonata in F minor, some Intermezzi, the Franz Liszt 6th Rhapsody, as well as works by Claude Debussy, Chopin.

Reynolds remembers: I don't recall public performance as being a enjoyable experience. It served to bring what I cared about in music much closer than did mere phonographic idylls, but I did not, could not, feel that what was happening as I played was mine, it was not the applause that the experience of the music itself. University of Michigan: Engineering Physics Reynolds was uncertain about his prospects as a professional pianist, entered the University of Michigan to study engineering physics, in line with his father's expectations. During what would be his first stint at the University of Michigan, he stayed connected to music and the arts because of the "virtual melting pot of disciplinary aspirations that engaged him." Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus and James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man both left marks upon his perception of music and the arts. "I... consumed hungrily, stayed in my dormitory room for weeks, feverish over the allure of its issues, not attending classes and only narrowly escaping academic disaster...".

According to Marquis Who's Who, Reynolds received a B. S. E. in physics from the institution in 1957. Systems Development Engineer and Military Policeman After completing his undergraduate studies, he went to work in the missile industry for Marquardt Corporation, he moved to the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and worked as a systems development engineer. However, he found that he was spending an inordinate amount of time practicing piano, decided to go back to school to study music, with the goal of becoming a small liberal arts college teacher, but prior to returning to school, Reynolds had a one-year obligation as a reservist in the military, which he fulfilled after his short time at Marquardt. As he recalls: Knowing that I was an engineer, I presumed, but in fact my MSOs were military policeman. So I chose military policeman, I learned how to disable people and how to be extraordinarily brutal, it was a rather strange experience. Return to University of Michigan: encounter with Ross Lee Finney Reynolds returned to Ann Arbor in 1957, prepared to commit himself to life as a pianist.

He was diverted from this path upon meeting resident composer Ross Lee Finney, who introduced Reynolds to composition. Reynolds took a composition for non-majors class