John Florian Sowa is an American computer scientist, an expert in artificial intelligence and computer design, the inventor of conceptual graphs. Sowa received a BS in mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962, an MA in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1966, a PhD in computer science from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel in 1999 on a dissertation titled "Knowledge Representation: Logical and Computational Foundations". Sowa spent most of his professional career at IBM, which started in 1962 at IBM's applied mathematics group. Over the decades he has researched and developed emerging fields of computer science from compiler, programming languages, system architecture to artificial intelligence and knowledge representation. In the 1990s Sowa was associated with IBM Educational Center in New York. Over the years he taught courses at the IBM Systems Research Institute, Binghamton University, Stanford University, Linguistic Society of America and Université du Québec à Montréal.

He is a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. After early retirement at IBM Sowa in 2001 cofounded VivoMind Intelligence, Inc. with Arun K. Majumdar. With this company he was developing data-mining and database technology, more specific high-level "ontologies" for artificial intelligence and automated natural language understanding. Sowa is working with Kyndi Inc. founded by Majumdar. John Sowa is married to the philologist Cora Angier Sowa, they live in Croton-on-Hudson, New York. Sowa's research interest since the 1970s were in the field of artificial intelligence, expert systems and database query linked to natural languages. In his work he combines ideas from numerous disciplines and eras modern and ancient, for example, applying ideas from Aristotle, the medieval Scholastics to Alfred North Whitehead and including database schema theory, incorporating the model of analogy of Islamic scholar Ibn Taymiyyah in his works. Sowa invented conceptual graphs, a graphic notation for logic and natural language, based on the structures in semantic networks and on the existential graphs of Charles S. Peirce.

He published the concept in the 1976 article "Conceptual graphs for a data base interface" in the IBM Journal of Research and Development. He further explained in the 1983 book Conceptual structures: information processing in mind and machine. In the 1980s this theory had "been adopted by a number of research and development groups throughout the world. International conferences on conceptual structures have been held since 1993, following a series of conceptual graph workshops that began in 1986. In 1991, Sowa first stated his Law of Standards: "Whenever a major organization develops a new system as an official standard for X, the primary result is the widespread adoption of some simpler system as a de facto standard for X."Like Gall's law, The Law of Standards is an argument in favour of underspecification. Examples include: The introduction of PL/I resulting in COBOL and FORTRAN becoming the de facto standards for scientific and business programming The introduction of Algol-68 resulting in Pascal becoming the de facto standard for academic programming The introduction of the Ada language resulting in C becoming the de facto standard for DoD programming The introduction of OS/2 resulting in Windows becoming the de facto standard for desktop OS The introduction of X.400 resulting in SMTP becoming the de facto standard for electronic mail The introduction of X.500 resulting in LDAP becoming the de facto standard for directory services 1984.

Conceptual Structures - Information Processing in Mind and Machine. The Systems Programming Series, Addison-Wesley 1991. Principles of Semantic Networks. Morgan Kaufmann. Mineau, Guy W. "Conceptual Graphs for Knowledge Representation". LNCS. 699. Doi:10.1007/3-540-56979-0. ISBN 978-3-540-56979-4. 1994. International Conference on Conceptual Structures Conceptual structures, current practices: Second International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS'94, College Park, Maryland, USA, August 16–20, 1994: proceedings. William M. Tepfenhart, Judith P. Dick, John F. Sowa, eds. Ellis, Gerard. "Conceptual Structures: Applications and Theory". LNCS. 954. Doi:10.1007/3-540-60161-9. ISBN 978-3-540-60161-6. Lukose, Dickson. "Conceptual Structures: Fulfilling Peirce's Dream". LNCS. 1257. Doi:10.1007/BFb0027865. ISBN 3-540-63308-1. 2000. Knowledge representation: logical and computational foundations, Brooks Cole Publishing Co. Pacific GroveArticles, a selectionSowa, J. F.. "Conceptual Graphs for a Data Base Interface". IBM Journal of Research and Development.

20: 336–357. Doi:10.1147/rd.204.0336. Sowa, J. F.. A.. "Extending and formalizing the framework for information systems architecture". IBM Systems Journal. 31: 590–616. Doi:10.1147/sj.313.0590. 1992. "Conceptual Graph Summary". E. Nagle et al.. Conceptual Structures: Current Research and Practice. Chichester: Ellis Horwood. 1995. "Top-level ontological categories." In: International journal of human-computer studies. Vol. 43, Iss. 5–6, Nov. 1995, pp. 669–685 2006. "Semantic Networks". In: Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science.. John Wiley & Sons. John Sowa is protagonist of the fantasy novel Great Works: A tale of magic; the epic of John Sowa. John F. Sowa homepage

The Progressive Conservative Party of Saskatchewan is a right-of-centre political party in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. Prior to 1942, it was known as the Conservative Party of Saskatchewan. Members are known as Tories, it was the Saskatchewan successor to the eastern half of the North-West Territories Conservatives. The Conservative Party of Saskatchewan's first leader, Frederick W. A. G. Haultain, was so upset at sections of the federal legislation that created the province relating to immigration and natural resources that he renamed the party the Provincial Rights Party for the 1905 and 1908 general elections; the party reverted to the Conservative name for the 1912 election, after which Haultain left politics to become Chief Justice of Saskatchewan. Its share of the popular vote declined from 32% to 5% between 1905 and 1921; the Conservative Party's fortunes began to improve when James T. M. Anderson became leader in 1924. Anderson united opponents of the governing Liberal Party, led the party to its best performance in the first half of the twentieth century in the 1929 election, when it won 36% of the popular vote and 24 out of 63 seats.

Despite having fewer seats than the Liberals, the Conservatives were able to form a coalition government with Progressive Party Members of the Legislative Assembly and independents, Anderson became Premier. Anderson was able to use the racial and religious animosity created by the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Saskatchewan to gain support for Conservative policies on immigration and education. In 1928, Liberal Premier James Garfield Gardiner claimed that the Klan was a tool of the Conservative Party; the united opposition brought the Liberal government to defeat in the 1929 general election. The Anderson government introduced amendments to the Schools Act banning French as a language of instruction, the display of religious symbols in Catholic schools; the Klan convention in 1930 applauded the Anderson government’s amendments to the School Act. The "Co-operative government", as it was called, was defeated in the 1934 election, the Conservative Party lost all of its seats in the Legislative Assembly of Saskatchewan.

This loss can be attributed to several factors: the controversy over the government's School Act. Bennett. With the rise of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, politics in the province became polarized between the Liberals and the CCF; the CCF became the "New Democratic Party" in 1961. The Conservatives were frozen out of the provincial legislature for decades; the presence of future Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who represented a Saskatchewan riding, was not enough to reverse this trend. No Conservative was elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly until thirty years when the party won a single seat in 1964 election, it lost that foothold three years in the 1967 election. The Tories returned to the legislature in the 1975 election; the Progressive Conservatives won 7 seats to the Liberals' 15 and the NDP's 39. In the 1978 election, the Liberals were wiped out, the Tories became the Official Opposition with 17 seats to the governing NDP's 44. In the 1982 election, the Progressive Conservatives under Grant Devine formed a majority government for the first time, taking 55 out of 64 seats – still the second-biggest majority in Saskatchewan history.

It was only the second Tory-led government in the province's history. They were re-elected with a somewhat reduced majority in the 1986 election, but were defeated in the 1991 election, due to large budgetary deficits, an unpopular imposition of harmonized sales taxes, a scheme entitled "Fair Share Saskatchewan" to decentralize civil service functions from Regina and privatize crown corporations. In the years following their defeat, 14 Progressive Conservative MLAs and two caucus workers were convicted of fraud and breach of trust for illegally diverting hundreds of thousands of dollars from government allowances in a phony expense-claim scam. During inquiry into the scandal, many innocent party members were placed under heavy scrutiny. Jack Wolfe committed suicide when faced with the agony of being scrutinized for wrongdoing himself, or having the testify against his former colleagues. Although one NDP MLA was ensnared in the scandal, the Tories' image was badly damaged by this scandal and has never recovered.

Although they managed to win five seats in the 1995 election, this total was less than both the NDP and the resurgent Liberals. Most former members and supporters joined the Saskatchewan Party in 1997; the new party was derisively called the "Saska-Tories" by Premier Roy Romanow and others who saw it as a repackaged version of the Tories — a perception, attached to the Saskatchewan Party for several years. While the Progressive Conservative Party went dormant at this point, it was not formally dissolved; the party was believed to retain a substantial amount of money, which it would forfeit to the provincial government if it lost its registration. Since Saskatchewan electoral law requires a party to run at least 10 candidates in provincial elections to retain its registration, a hand-picked group under the nominal leadership of Iris Dennis ran paper candidates in the next two provincial elections to ensure that the party stayed alive. In the September 16, 1999 election, the party nominated 14 candidates, who collected 1,609 votes, 0.4% of the provincial total.

Its best result was in Saskatoon Nutana. In the November 5, 2003 provincial election, the party nominated 11 candidates, who receiv

Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U. S. 337, was a United States Supreme Court decision holding that states which provided a school to white students had to provide in-state education to blacks as well. States could satisfy this requirement by allowing blacks and whites to attend the same school or creating a second school for blacks; the Registrar at the Law School of the University of Missouri, Silas Woodson Canada, refused admission to Lloyd Gaines because he was black. At the time, blacks could attend no law school in the state. Gaines cited; the State of Missouri had offered to pay for Gaines's tuition at an adjacent state's law school, which he turned down. The issue was whether Missouri violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by affording whites, not blacks, the ability to attend law school within the state. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes held that when the state provides legal training, it must provide it to every qualified person to satisfy equal protection.

It can neither send them to other states, nor condition that training for one group of people, such as blacks, on levels of demand from that group. Key to the court's conclusion was that there was no provision for legal education of blacks in Missouri so Missouri law guaranteeing equal protection applied. Sending Gaines to another state would have been irrelevant. Justice James C. McReynolds's dissent emphasized a body of case law, with sweeping statements about state control of education before suggesting the possibility that despite the majority opinion, Missouri could still deny Gaines admission; the decision did not quite strike down equal facilities, upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson. Instead, it provided; the decision struck down segregation by exclusion if the government provided just one school, making the decision in this case a precursor to Brown v. Board of Education; this marked the beginning of the Supreme Court's reconsideration of Plessy. The Supreme Court did not overturn Plessy v. Ferguson or violate the "separate but equal" precedents but began to concede the difficulty and near-impossibility of a state maintaining segregated black and white institutions that could never be equal.

Therefore, it can be said that this case helped forge the legal framework for Brown v. Board of Education, which banned segregation in public schools. Despite the initial victory claimed by the NAACP, after the Supreme Court had ruled in Gaines' favor and ordered the Missouri Supreme Court to reconsider the case, Gaines was nowhere to be found; when the University of Missouri soon after moved to dismiss the case, the NAACP did not oppose the motion. List of United States Supreme Court Cases Civil Rights Cases Sipuel v. Board of Regents of Univ. of Okla. - 332 U. S. 631 Sweatt v. Painter - 339 U. S. 629 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka - 347 U. S. 483 Timeline of the civil rights movement Works related to Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada at Wikisource ^ Text of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, 305 U. S. 337 is available from: Cornell CourtListener Findlaw Google Scholar Justia Library of Congress Oyez A profile of Gaines' attorney, Charles Hamilton Houston, the Gaines case PBS's case page in their history of segregation

The Local Bubble, or Local Cavity, is a relative cavity in the interstellar medium of the Orion Arm in the Milky Way. It contains among others, the Local Interstellar Cloud, which contains the Solar System, the G-Cloud, it is at least 300 light years across and is defined by its neutral-hydrogen density of about 0.05 atoms/cm3, or one tenth of the average for the ISM in the Milky Way, one sixth that of the Local Interstellar Cloud. The exceptionally sparse gas of the Local Bubble is the result of supernovae that exploded within the past ten to twenty million years; the gas remains in an excited state, emitting in the X-ray band. Geminga, a pulsar in the constellation Gemini, was once thought to be the remnant of a single supernova that created the Local Bubble, but now multiple supernovae in subgroup B1 of the Pleiades moving group are thought to have been responsible, becoming a remnant supershell; the Solar System has been traveling through the region occupied by the Local Bubble for the last five to ten million years.

Its current location lies in the Local Interstellar Cloud, a minor region of denser material within the Bubble. The LIC formed where the Loop I Bubble met; the gas within the LIC has a density of 0.3 atoms per cubic centimeter. The Local Bubble is not spherical, but seems to be narrower in the galactic plane, becoming somewhat egg-shaped or elliptical, may widen above and below the galactic plane, becoming shaped like an hourglass, it abuts other bubbles of less dense interstellar medium, including, in particular, the Loop I Bubble. The Loop I Bubble was cleared and maintained by supernovae and stellar winds in the Scorpius–Centaurus Association, some 500 light years from the Sun; the Loop I Bubble contains the star Antares. Several tunnels connect the cavities of the Local Bubble with the Loop I Bubble, called the "Lupus Tunnel". Other bubbles which are adjacent to the Local Bubble are the Loop III Bubble. In 2019, researchers found interstellar iron in Antarctica which they relate to the Local Interstellar Cloud, which might be related to the formation of the Local Bubble.

Launched in February 2003 and active until April 2008, a small space observatory called Cosmic Hot Interstellar Plasma Spectrometer examined the hot gas within the Local Bubble. The Local Bubble was the region of interest for the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer mission, which examined hot EUV sources within the bubble. Sources beyond the edge of the bubble were identified but attenuated by the denser interstellar medium. In 2019, the first 3D map of the Local Bubble has been reported using the observations of diffuse interstellar bands. Anderson, Mark. "Don't stop till you get to the Fluff". New Scientist. 193: 26–30. Doi:10.1016/S0262-407960043-8. Lallement, R.. "3D mapping of the dense interstellar gas around the Local Bubble". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 411: 447–464. Bibcode:2003A&A...411..447L. Doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20031214. "Near-Earth Supernovas". Science@NASA Headline News. NASA. January 6, 2003. "A Breeze from the Stars". Science@NASA Headline News. NASA. December 17, 2004. A 3D map of the Milky Way Galaxy and the Orion Arm

See the Sea is a 1997 French film written and directed by François Ozon and starring Sasha Hails as a young British mother living in a small seaside village in France who takes in a malevolent homeless drifter while her husband is away on business. An Englishwoman named Sasha lives on France's Île d'Yeu with her infant daughter Sioffra and her husband, away for business. One day, when Sasha is home alone, a young female drifter appears at Sasha's door and asks her for permission to pitch her tent in the garden. At first reserved and reluctant, Sasha allows her camp in the yard and both women begin to develop a relationship with each other. Sasha decides to go shopping and leaves Sioffra in the care of the drifter though she is irritated by her unusual behavior; when she returns to find everything in order, she invites the woman to sleep inside her house. That night, the drifter sneaks into Sasha's room; when Sasha's husband returns home on the following day, he finds an empty house. In the tent behind the house he finds Sasha bound and dead with her vagina sewn shut.

The drifter, wearing Sasha's dress, holds the crying Sioffra on a ferry, leaving the island. See the Sea received positive reviews from critics. Roger Ebert compared it to the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Sasha Hails as Sasha Marina de Van as Tatiana Samantha as Sioffra, The Baby Paul Raoux as Sasha's Husband See the Sea on IMDb

Michael Henry Nattrass FRICS is a British politician, a Member of the European Parliament, representing the West Midlands constituency, from 2004 to 2014. He was elected as a candidate for the UK Independence Party for the first time in June 2004 and re-elected in June 2009, but resigned from the party in September 2013, he lost his seat in the May 2014 election. In 1994, Nattrass joined the New Britain Party, whose candidates were absorbed into the Referendum Party in 1997. Standing in Solihull, he gained the highest vote in the West Midlands for the Referendum Party at the 1997 general election. In 1998, he accepted an invitation to join UKIP from its leader Michael Holmes and sat on the UKIP National Executive Committee. In 2000 he became Party Chairman under Leader Jeffrey Titford and from 2002 to 2006 he was Deputy Leader under Roger Knapman. Nattrass stood in many by-elections and general elections representing UKIP, including the May 2008 Crewe and Nantwich by-election and in South Staffordshire at the general election in 2010.

He was elected to the European Parliament in 2004, one of 12 seats won by UKIP, with 16.1% of the vote. Nattrass was re-elected in West Midlands in June 2009. Nattrass failed a candidate assessment test in August 2013 and was deselected by the party for the 2014 European election, he lost. He said, he left UKIP in September 2013. Nattrass was in talks with the English Democrats about the possibility of joining them, agreed to speak at their September 2013 conference, but he chose not to after the party prematurely claimed he was joining them, citing concerns about elements in the party. In November 2013, Nattrass announced the creation of his new party, called An Independence Party. At the 2014 European election, the party stood as Independence from Europe but failed to win any seats. Official website Profile at European Parliament website