The metropolitan counties are a type of county-level administrative division of England. There are six metropolitan counties, which each cover large urban areas, with populations between 1 and 3 million, they are each divided into several metropolitan districts or boroughs. The metropolitan county councils were abolished in 1986 with most of their functions being devolved to the individual boroughs, making them de facto unitary authorities; the remaining functions were taken over by joint boards. Since however and non-mayoral combined authorities have been created that serve as means of strategic governance in all the metropolitan counties, with various powers allocated depending on the devolution deals negotiated between the borough councils and central government; the metropolitan counties have population densities of between 900 and 3,200 people/km². Individual metropolitan districts range from 4,000 people/km² in Liverpool to only 500 people/km² in Doncaster. Residents of metropolitan counties account for around 22% of the population of England, or 18% of the United Kingdom.

The six metropolitan counties and their metropolitan districts are: The structures of Greater London and Berkshire are similar to the metropolitan counties, but they themselves are not as such. The idea of creating administrative areas based upon the large conurbations outside London, modelled on the County of London or Greater London, was mooted several times in the 20th century. In 1948, the Local Government Boundary Commission proposed several new counties, including'South East Lancashire North East Cheshire',and'South West Lancashire North West Cheshire'. In the 1960s the Local Government Commission for England proposed such an arrangement for Tyneside and draft proposals considered it for Selnec. For the West Midlands conurbation, the commiddion proposed instead a group of contiguous county boroughs with no overall metropolitan authority; the Redcliffe-Maud Report of 1969 proposed the creation of three large "metropolitan areas" based upon the conurbations surrounding Manchester and Birmingham, which were to have both metropolitan councils covering the entire areas, district councils covering parts.

Harold Wilson's government published a white paper broadly accepting these recommendations, adding South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire as metropolitan areas. The proposals were radically altered when Edward Heath's Conservative government came to power in 1970; the Conservatives' local government White Paper was published in February 1971, naming the metropolitan areas "metropolitan counties", giving them as "Merseyside, south-east Lancashire and north-east Cheshire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, the Tyne and Wear area". The proposed counties were far smaller than in the original proposals; the Redcliffe-Maud report had included Chester in Merseyside and Redditch and Stafford in West Midlands. The Conservative policy favoured retaining historic boundaries as far as was practicable, the new White Paper proposals reduced the metropolitan counties to the continuously built up area. Many areas on the edges were excluded from the metropolitan counties when the Bill was passed: Easington, Knaresborough, Ellesmere Port, New Mills, Whaley Bridge and Glossop.

One area, the county borough of Southport, was added to Merseyside in the Bill, at the local council's request. Several other proposals for metropolitan counties were made during the Bill's passage, including a revival of the proposal for Hampshire and central Lancashire. A Thamesside metropolitan county, covering areas of north Kent and south Essex on the Thames Estuary was proposed; the metropolitan counties were created by the Local Government Act 1972. The county councils were first elected in 1973, were formally established in April 1974; the metropolitan counties were first created with a two-tier structure of local government. Local government functions were divided between the metropolitan district councils as lower tier authorities and metropolitan county councils as the upper tier; the structure differed from the non-metropolitan counties in the allocation of powers between the county and district councils. The metropolitan districts had more powers than non-metropolitan districts, in that they were responsible for services such as education, social services.

In the non-metropolitan counties these were the responsibility of the county councils. The metropolitan county councils were intended to be strategic authorities that ran regional services such as main roads, public transport, emergency services, civil protection, waste disposal, strategic town and country planning; the MCCs functioned between 1974 and 1986. Just a decade after they were established, the Labour-controlled metropolitan county councils and the Greater London Council had several high-profile clashes with the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher about overspending and high rates. Government policy on the issue was considered throughout 1982, the Conservative Party put a "promise to scrap the metropolitan county councils", the GLC, in their manifesto for the 1983 general election; the exact details of the reform caused problems. In October 1983, it published a White Paper entitled Streamlining the cities which set out detailed plans for the abolition of the MCCs, together with the abolition of the Greater London Council.

The Bill was announced in the Queen's Speech and was introdu

Rise to the Occasion is reggae, dancehall artist Sizzla's eighteenth studio album. The album was released on September 30, 2003; the album is a mix of dancehall and reggae, with singles such as "Rise to the Occasion" and "Give Me a Try". "Rise to the Occasion" - 3:53 "All Is Well" - 3:34 "Give Me a Try"- 3:40 "Give Praises" - 3:19 "The One" - 3:30 "Don't Trouble Us" - 3:27 "I Was Born" - 2:38 "It's Burning" - 3:29 "Nice & Lovely" - 3:55 "Know Yourself" - 3:40 "In the Mood" - 3:37 "Come On" - 3:26 "These Are the Days" - 3:31 "Fire Blaze" - 3:49 "Hype" - 3:41 "True Love" - 3:34 "All I Need" - 3:23

In scientific visualization the asymptotic decider is an algorithm developed by Nielson and Hamann in 1991 that creates isosurfaces from a given scalar field. It was proposed as an improvement to the marching cubes algorithm, which can produce some "bad" topology, but can be considered an algorithm in its own right; the algorithm first divides the scalar field into uniform cubes. It draws topologically correct contours on the sides of the cubes; these contours can be connected to polygons and triangulated. The triangles of all cubes are thus the output of the algorithm. Sometimes there is more than one way to connect adjacent constructs; this algorithm describes a method for resolving these ambiguous configurations in a consistent manner. Ambiguous cases occur if diagonally opposing points are found on the same side of the isoline, but on a different side to the other points in the square or cube. In a 2D case this means. If we suppose that we mark the corners as positive if their value is greater than that of the isoline, or negative if it is less either the positive corners are separated by two isolines, or the positive corners are in the main section of the square and the negative corners are separated by two isolines.

The correct situation depends on the value at the asymptote of the isolines. Isolines are hyperbolae which can be described using the following formula: f = γ + δ where α is the normalised distance in the square from the left-hand side, β is the normalised distance in the square from the bottom; the values α 0 and β 0 are therefore the coordinates of the asymptotes, δ is the value at the position. This point ought to belong to the section. Therefore, if δ is greater than the value of the isoline the positive corners are in the main section of the square and the negative corners are separated by two isolines, if δ is less than the value of isoline the negative corners are in the main section of the square and the positive corners are separated by two isolines. A similar solution is used the 3D version. Isosurface Marching cubes Science portal Notes Bibliography Charles D. Hansen. Visualization Handbook. Academic Press. Pp. 7–12. ISBN 978-0-12-387582-2. A. Lopes. "Interactive approaches to contouring and isosurfaces for geovisualization".

In Jason Dykes. Exploring Geovisualization. Elsevier. Pp. 352–353. ISBN 978-0-08-044531-1

Tim Benjamin is an Anglo-French composer. He won the Stephen Oliver Trust's Prize for Contemporary Opera, for his first opera The Bridge. Tim Benjamin grew up in North London and attended Christ's Hospital school, he studied composition at the Royal Northern College of Music under Anthony Gilbert with Steve Martland and with Robert Saxton at the University of Oxford. He lives in West Yorkshire. Benjamin composes chamber-sized one-act operas for performance in small theatres and non-standard spaces, his first opera The Bridge won the Stephen Oliver Trust's Prize for Contemporary Opera in 2010. His second opera, The Corley Conspiracy, was performed in September 2007 at the Southbank Centre, London, his opera Emily was first performed at the Todmorden Hippodrome in July 2013. His opera Madame X was performed at the Grimeborn 2014 festival, his twin operas Rest In Silent Jack were performed at the 2015 Tête-à-Tête Festival. In 2015, Benjamin founded the Steve Martland Scholarship for young composers at the Sound and Music Summer School, in honour of his former mentor.

Official website

The LWD Żuraw was a Polish utility and liaison aircraft prototype of 1951, high-wing monoplane with single engine, that did not enter production. The name means crane; the aircraft was designed in 1949 n the LWD as a utility and liaison aircraft for the Polish Air Force. The chief designer was Tadeusz Sołtyk, it was the last LWD design. A prototype first flew on 16 May 1951; because of lack of more powerful engines, it was fitted with the only available license-built Soviet radial Shvetsov M-11FR. In addition to increased airframe weight, the engine appeared too weak. To obtain STOL capabilities, wings had flaps; the wings were thinner near canopy to obtain good view, they were swept towards forward. Despite advantages, like short takeoff and landing and low stall speed, the performance was poor and the plane was not ordered for production, it was considered to use stronger WN-3 or Ivchenko AI-14 engines, but the design was abandoned, because Poland had bought a license to produce Yakovlev Yak-12M.

Unusual feature was triple tail, with two small vertical stabilizers in addition to a main central one. It was meant to improve aircraft stability on high edges of attack; the prototype was painted in Polish Air Force colours and markings, but was not used by the Polish Air Force. In 1951 it was passed to the Aviation Institute to obtain certification of approval, next it was used there for a couple of years. In 1952 it was given a civilian registration SP-GLB; the prototype was withdrawn from use in 1960 and in 1963 given to the Polish Aviation Museum in Kraków, where it remains in a damaged condition. Data from Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1956–57General characteristics Crew: 1 Capacity: 2 Length: 8.26 m Wingspan: 11.70 m Width: 4.42 m Height: 2.56 m Wing area: 21 m2 Aspect ratio: 6.52:1 Airfoil: NACA 23012 Empty weight: 899 kg Gross weight: 1,157 kg Powerplant: 1 × Shvetsov M-11FR air-cooled 5-cylinder radial engine, 120 kW Propellers: 2-bladed wooden, 2.4 m diameterPerformance Maximum speed: 175 km/h Cruise speed: 140 km/h Range: 950 km Service ceiling: 2,500 m Rate of climb: 2.1 m/s Aircraft of comparable role and era Nord 3400 Yak-12 Bridgman, Leonard.

Jane's All The World's Aircraft 1956–57, New York: The McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1956. Krzyżan, Marian: Samoloty w muzeach polskich, Warsaw, 1983, ISBN 83-206-0432-X. Żuraw at Poser site

Stowaway to Mars is a science fiction novel by British writer John Wyndham. It was first published in 1936 as Planet Plane serialised in The Passing Show as Stowaway to Mars and again in 1937 in Modern Wonder magazine as The Space Machine; the novel was written under one of John Beynon. It was published by Coronet Books in 1972 as "Stowaway to Mars by John Wyndham". Reviewer Groff Conklin described the first American edition as "an interesting adventure story."The title novella of the collection Sleepers of Mars was a sequel. Stowaway to Mars title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database