The Meades Ranch Triangulation Station is a survey marker in Osborne County in the state of Kansas in the Midwestern United States. The marker was placed in 1891. In 1973, the site was listed in the National Register of Historic Places as Geodetic Center of the United States. In surveying, a geodetic datum is a set of points used to establish a coordinate system. By designating the location of one point, the direction from that point to a second point, one can establish a system relative to which other points can be located and mapped; as one surveys a larger area over which the curvature of the Earth becomes significant, it becomes necessary to define an ellipsoid: a curved surface that approximates the shape of the Earth in the area of interest. The first nationwide datum in the United States was established in 1879. At that time, a region of contiguous triangulation existed from Maine to Georgia; the New England Datum was chosen with a benchmark in Maryland, near the middle of this region, as the horizontal datum, a second Maryland mark used to define the azimuth direction.

To account for the Earth's curvature, the datum used a model called the Clarke spheroid, developed in 1866. The U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey established a triangulation station known as the Meades Ranch Triangulation Station, in 1891; the location lay near the intersection of two transcontinental arcs of triangulation: one running from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean following the 39th parallel. In 1901, the Meades Ranch station was chosen as the United States standard horizontal datum: the point relative to which all land measurements in the nation were made; the choice was based on the station's location near the geographic center of the U. S. and near the intersection of the two arcs of triangulation, because it minimized the number of changes in published positions. Its position was set as 39°13'26.686" N and 98°32'30.506" W. In 1913, the chief astronomer of the Dominion of Canada Astronomical Observatory and the director of the Comisión Geodésica Mexicana announced that their organizations would use the Meades Ranch location as their standard datum.

In light of this, its name was changed to the "North American Datum". As more new surveys and isolated survey networks were incorporated into the system, it became difficult to make the necessary corrections. By the mid-1920s, it was realized. From 1927 to 1932, the 25,000 existing control locations were recalculated and a new coordinate system developed, known as NAD27; the new system continued to use the 1901 coordinates of Meades Ranch as its horizontal datum, the Clarke spheroid as its model for the Earth's surface. However, it now defined horizontal directions in terms of 175 Laplace azimuths, which use astronomical azimuths corrected for the difference between the astronomic and geodetic meridians. Under NAD27, the azimuth to the Waldo station changed by about 5". In 1973, the Meades Ranch site was added to the National Register of Historic Places, under the name "Geodetic Center of the United States". Following the establishment of NAD27, it was noted that it produced a discrepancy of about 10 meters in latitudes in the northern part of the northern U.

S. state of Michigan, necessitating a regional adjustment for the states of Wisconsin. As the survey network was extended further north into Canada, similar discrepancies appeared; the problem proved to be systemic: It had been assumed that the differences between the Clarke spheroid and the actual geoid were negligible, whereas these differences introduced significant errors. The small number and large separation of the points used to develop NAD27, the limited computational power available to its designers, the movement of tectonic plates led to inconsistencies in NAD27 coordinates. To address these, a new datum was developed, designated NAD83, it replaced the Clarke spheroid with a new ellipsoid, the Geographic Reference System 1980, centered at the Earth's center of mass as determined by the Bureau International de l'Heure. The new datum was based on adjustment including 600 satellite Doppler stations. NAD83 was adopted by the U. S. government in 1989, by the Canadian government in 1990. Under the new system, Meades Ranch lost its special standing, became one of thousands of stations.

As of 2012, the location of the Meades Ranch station was 39°13′26.71220″N 98°32′31.74540″W. It lies about 12 miles north of Lucas and about 10 miles southwest of Tipton; the station is on a low grassy ridge in a pasture. It is marked by a bronze disc, inscribed "Meades Ranch 1891", embedded in the top of a dome-shaped concrete marker 21 inches in diameter, rising about 4 inches above ground level. Two reference marks and an azimuth mark are located nearby; the Meades Ranch station is with no public access. A replica of the station marker, with a Kansas historical marker explaining its significance, is located at 39.452286°N 98.693542°W / 39.452286. S. Highway 281 at the northern edge of Kansas, 18 miles northwest of the Meades Ranch site. Geodesy 1940 re-installation At the geodetic center of North America two journal essays

Dance Mission Theater is a nonprofit performance venue and dance school located in the Mission District of San Francisco, California. The theatre is operated by a female dance troupe with a focus on social change; the theatre, known for its dance classes and performance art, has been ranked one of the best dance studios in San Francisco, offering around 50 classes and hosting 1,500 students a week. The theatre offers 48 weeks of programming per year; the theatre has been located in its current space since 1998. In December 2014, the theatre announced that it might have to relocate after its landlord increased the theatre's rent; the theatre applied for assistance from the city Government of San Francisco. August 2014: A performance in celebration of the book Can’t Stop Won’t Stop by Jeff Chang, with music and dance. November 2014: A percussion and dance show by the San Francisco Taiko Dojo. January–February 2015: "Dance In Revolt Times", with choreography on political themes. February 2016: The Black Choreographers Festival's annual event, "Next Wave Choreographers Showcase: New Voices/New Works."

Gmina Czernica is a rural gmina in Wrocław County, Lower Silesian Voivodeship, in south-western Poland. Its seat is the village of Czernica, which lies 17 kilometres south-east of the regional capital Wrocław; the gmina covers an area of 84.18 square kilometres, as of 2006 its total population is 9,284. Gmina Czernica is bordered by the city of Wrocław and by the gminas of Bierutów, Długołęka, Jelcz-Laskowice, Oława, Oleśnica and Siechnice; the gmina contains the villages of Chrząstawa Mała, Chrząstawa Wielka, Dobrzykowice, Gajków, Kamieniec Wrocławski, Krzyków, Łany, Nadolice Małe, Nadolice Wielkie and Wojnowice. Polish official population figures 2006

In the predawn hours of August 23, 2009, Toni Sharpless and her friend Crystal Johns left a party at the home of Philadelphia 76er Willie Green in Penn Valley, United States. Not long after leaving, Johns suggested to Sharpless, whose erratic and combative behavior had led Green to ask that they leave, that she was not sober enough to drive. Sharpless has not been seen since then. An early theory, that she might have accidentally driven her car into the nearby Schuylkill River, was discarded when searches of the river were fruitless. An apparent break in the case came two weeks when an automatic license plate reader recorded her 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix's plates among parked vehicles in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia. There had been other reported sightings of Sharpless in Camden, but police there were unable to locate the vehicle or find any information about where it had been found. In 2013, the writer of an anonymous letter sent to Eileen Law, a private investigator handling the case, claimed that he had been hired to take the Pontiac to a shop in the Boston area in exchange for $5,000 in cash and the Grand Prix's license plates after Sharpless was killed during a confrontation with a Camden police officer.

The writer did not know of any details about what had happened to Sharpless but included in his letter the number of her cell phone, missing along with her, the last five digits of the car's vehicle identification number, information that had not been made public. Both were correct. Police dismissed the letter as a hoax despite the details, but Law, whose theory is that Sharpless is alive and being held captive by human traffickers, believes it was genuine and continues to investigate. In 2011 the Investigation Discovery channel's series Disappeared devoted an episode to the case. Toni Sharpless, a native of the Philadelphia suburb of Downingtown, was born in 1979, her father died in an accident. In her late teens Toni had a daughter of her own. Sharpless's childhood and young adulthood were marked by her struggles with bipolar disorder, a condition only diagnosed in her adulthood, she and her family kept that information to themselves, after learning she was bipolar the difficulties caused by the disorder persisted as doctors tried different combinations of different medications to control it.

Her condition had led to problems with drug and alcohol abuse. In 2008 she was convicted of driving while intoxicated. After that she found a drug combination that seemed to work and, contraindicated for alcohol consumption. On weekends during the 2000s, Sharpless worked as a nursing assistant at a local rehabilitation center, living with her daughter and parents in West Brandywine Township; the money she earned from that job went to pay her tuition at Brandywine School of Nursing. After earning her degree in 2007, Sharpless took a job in the infectious disease ward at Lancaster General Hospital. On the evening of August 22, 2009, a Saturday, Sharpless left her home around 9:30 p.m. for a night on the town in Center City with her friend Crystal Johns. After she left, Peter Knebel expressed his reservations about the outing to his wife. Sharpless and Johns had only renewed their friendship after becoming estranged from each other a decade earlier, but they recognized that Sharpless had been working hard for a long time and had not had an evening out in a while.

The two women left in a black 2002 Pontiac Grand Prix sedan. After stopping at Johns' house in West Fallowfield township, they went to Ice, a club in King of Prussia to Center City's G Lounge nightclub. From there they went to a party at the home of Willie Green, a professional basketball player with the NBA's Philadelphia 76ers, in Penn Valley, a neighborhood in Lower Merion Township, one of the city's affluent Main Line suburbs. Accounts differ as to whether Johns, friends with Green's brother, had been invited there before she and Sharpless left for the evening or whether Green met the two at G Lounge and invited them back to his house. Johns and Sharpless left Center City for the party shortly after 3 a.m. on August 23. Unable to sleep that night, Sharpless's daughter had texted her within the previous hour, her phone has not been used since. At Green's, Sharpless and Johns began drinking along with other guests at what has been characterized as more of a small gathering than a party; the group was playing the board game Taboo, during which Sharpless made a remark to Johns that Green took as including an ethnic slur, although it was not intended that way.

Green made it known that he was offended, Sharpless, who felt that other guests were ridiculing her, became angry and erratic. Around 5 a.m. she dumped a bottle of champagne on the kitchen floor and began kicking things. Green went to Johns, who had retreated to the house's swimming pool, told her that it was time for her and Sharpless to go home; as the pair gathered their possessions and left the house, aware that she had had le

Haplogroup L5 is a human mitochondrial DNA clade. It was known as L1e. L5 is a small haplogroup centered in East Africa; the highest frequency is in Mbuti Pygmies from Eastern Central Africa at 15%. It is present in small frequencies in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Nubia and Saudi Arabia. Haplogroup L5 has been observed among specimens at the island cemetery in Kulubnarti, which date from the Early Christian period; this phylogenetic tree of haplogroup L5 subclades is based on the paper by Mannis van Oven and Manfred Kayser Updated comprehensive phylogenetic tree of global human mitochondrial DNA variation and subsequent published research. Most Recent Common Ancestor L1-6 L2-6 L5 L5a L5a1 L5a1a L5a1b L5a1c L5a2 L5c L5c1 L5c2 General Ian Logan's Haplogroups L5. Mannis van Oven's Phylotree

Our Lady of Lourdes Roman Catholic Primary School is a primary school in The Limes Avenue, near Bowes Road, in Arnos Grove in the London Borough of Enfield. The school opened in 1971. An ICT suite was built at the school in 2001, the school won achievement awards from the DfES in 2001, 2002 and 2003; the school has had a rapid increase in the number of after school clubs offered, although it remains a single form entry school. It is strangely but incorrectly, well known in most of Enfield for having no corridors; the school's houses are named after important places in the life of Jesus. Each house has its own colour: Bethany - Red Cana - Blue Emmaus - Green Galilee - Yellow Pupils at Our Lady of Lourdes achieve high results in their KS2 tests and the school ranks among the top schools in the London Borough of Enfield. 2003 aggregate score 2004 aggregate score 2005 aggregate score 2006 aggregate score 2007 aggregate score Our Lady of Lourdes School website