New Gods are a fictional race appearing in the eponymous comic book series published by DC Comics, as well as selected other DC titles. Created and designed by Jack Kirby, they first appeared in February 1971 in New Gods #1; the New Gods are natives of the twin planets of New Apokolips. New Genesis is an idyllic planet filled with unspoiled forests and rivers and is ruled by the benevolent Highfather, while Apokolips is a nightmarish and ruined dystopia filled with machinery and fire pits and is ruled by the tyrannical Darkseid; the two planets were once part of the same world, a planet called Urgrund, but it was split apart millennia ago after the death of the Old Gods during Ragnarök. The characters associated with the New Gods are collectively referred to as "Jack Kirby's Fourth World". Kirby began the "Fourth World" in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #133; the New Gods first appeared in New Gods #1 and Forever People #1. Another "Fourth World" title Mister Miracle was launched in April 1971. Various New Gods, notably Darkseid, went on to interact with other denizens of the DC Universe.

Kirby's production assistant at the time, Mark Evanier, remarked that: Folks forget but the New Gods saga was intended to be a limited series... There was no intention. After Jack's books started getting good sales figures, DC demanded that we keep them going and use guest stars like Deadman, which we were much against doing. So Kirby had this novel he was forever stuck in the middle of – he could never get to the last chapter.... You can spot the issues where Jack kind of gave up trying to advance the story of Darkseid and Orion and was marking time. If those books had been intended from the start to run indefinitely, they would have been done differently. New Gods #1 marks the first appearance of Orion and Metron, among others; the opening sequence alludes to the presence of the "Old Gods" and the "New Gods". In a "Young Gods of Supertown" back-up story in Forever People #5, the explorer Lonar retrieves a helmet from the rubble of what represents the last battle of the Old Gods. Issue #7, "The Pact", sought to explain the backstory of the New Gods.

Eleven issues were published before cancellation by the publisher. Published during this time were the Forever People and Mister Miracle series written and drawn by Kirby. Comics historian Les Daniels observed in 1995 that "Kirby's mix of slang and myth, science fiction and the Bible, made for a heady brew, but the scope of his vision has endured." In 2007, comics writer Grant Morrison commented "Kirby's dramas were staged across Jungian vistas of raw symbol and storm... The Fourth World saga crackles with the voltage of Jack Kirby's boundless imagination let loose onto paper." In 1976, the New Gods were featured in the last issue of 1st Issue Special. The issue featured a new, more mainstream superhero costume for Orion, which he would wear for the next few years, but failed to lead to a relaunch; that same year, Jenette Kahn became DC's new publisher and decided to revive the "Fourth World" lineup in 1977. The New Gods series relaunched in July 1977, with 1st Issue Special still a recent publication, it picked up where the storyline of that issue left off.

Although the title remained "The New Gods" in the indicia and retained its original numbering, launching with #12, the covers used the title "The Return of the New Gods". Gerry Conway wrote Don Newton providing the pencils; the series introduced the character Jezebelle. It was cancelled with issue #19 prior to the "DC Implosion", where a variety of market-related factors caused DC to cancel all of the titles launched the previous year; the final chapters of the series were published as backup features in the Adventure Comics #459–460 featured a climactic battle between Darkseid's forces and the New Gods, culminating in Darkseid's defeat and apparent "death." Conway said that he felt the finale he provided for the New Gods saga was inadequate, though he enjoyed working with Newton on the series. The New Gods met the Flash in Super-Team Family #15. Darkseid's "death" would be overturned in the New Gods' next appearance in Justice League of America #183–185; the three part storyline would tell of Darkseid's return to Apokolips and his scheme to destroy Earth-Two and teleport Apokolips into its place, so that he could conquer a new universe devoid of the New Gods.

The plan would be foiled by the combined power of the New Gods, the Justice League, the Justice Society. A reprint series, this volume packaged two issues apiece per single issue of the original 1971 series; the mini-series' final issue was intended to include a reprint of New Gods vol. 1 #11 and a new 24-page story which would conclude the series and end with both Darkseid and Orion dead. DC editors prevented Kirby from using his original intended ending. Kirby instead turned in a one-off story called "On the Road to Armagetto", rejected, due to the fact that it did not contain a definitive ending to the series. A 48-page new story called "Even Gods Must Die" was published in the sixth issue of the reprint series instead, which in turn served as a prologue for the upcoming The Hunger Dogs graphic novel, which DC editors greenlighted in order to conclude the series. Published as DC Graphic Novel #4, The Hunger Dogs was intended by Kirby and DC to serve as the end to the entire Fourth World saga.

The project was mired in controversy over Kirby's insistence that the series should end with the deaths of the New Gods, which clashed with DC's demands that the

The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic commonly known as Soviet Tajikistan and Tajik SSR, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1929 to 1991 located in Central Asia. The Tajik Republic was created on 5 December 1929 as a national entity for the Tajik people within the Soviet Union, it succeeded the Tajik Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, created on 14 October 1924 as a part of the predominantly Turkic Uzbek SSR in the process of national delimitation in Soviet Central Asia. On 24 August 1990, the Tajik SSR declared sovereignty in its borders; the republic was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991 and declared its independence from the Soviet Union on 9 September 1991. Geographically, at 143,100 km2, it was bordered by Afghanistan to the south, Uzbekistan to the west, Kirghizia to the north, China to the east. Pakistan was to the south, separated by the narrow Wakhan Corridor; the name Tajik refers to the name of a pre-Islamic tribe that existed before the seventh century A.

D. Based on the Library of Congress's 1997 Country Study of Tajikistan, it is difficult to definitively state the origins of the word "Tajik" citing due to its "embroiled in twentieth-century political disputes about whether Turkic or Iranian peoples were the original inhabitants of Central Asia."The name of the country was spelt "Tadzhikistan" in the English language during Soviet times due to it being borrowed directly from the Russian spelling "Таджикистан", where the letters'дж' produce a'j' sound. One of the new states created in the process of national delimitation of Soviet Central Asia in October 1924 was the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic – Uzbek SSR or Soviet Uzbekistan. Soviet Tajikistan was created at the same time within the predominantly Turkic Uzbek SSR as an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic – one rank below a Soviet Socialist Republic in USSR geopolitical hierarchy; the new autonomous republic included what had been eastern Bukhara and had a population of about 740,000, out of a total population of nearly 5 million in the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic as a whole.

Its capital was established in Dyushambe, a village of 3,000 in 1920. In December 1929, Tajik ASSR was detached from the Uzbek SSR and given full status as a Soviet Socialist Republic – Tajik Socialist Soviet Republic. At that time, its capital was renamed Stalinabad, after Joseph Stalin, the territory, now northern Tajikistan was added to the new republic. With the additional territory, the Tajik SSR remained the smallest Central Asian republic. On 5 December 1936, it was renamed to the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic. With the creation of a Tajik republic defined in national terms came the creation of institutions that, at least in form, were national; the first Tajik-language newspaper in Soviet Tajikistan began publication in 1926. New educational institutions began operation at about the same time; the first state schools, available to both children and adults and designed to provide basic education, opened in 1926. The central government trained a small number of Tajiks for public office, either by putting them through courses offered by government departments or by sending them to schools in the Uzbek SSR.

Under Soviet rule, Tajikistan experienced some social progress. However, living standards in the republic were still among the lowest in the Union. Most people still lived in rural qishlaqs, settlements that were composed of 200 to 700 one-family houses built along a waterway. After Stalin's death in March 1953, Stalinabad was renamed to Dushanbe on 10 November 1961 as part of the De-Stalinization program. In February 1990, tensions between the Tajiks and Armenians squared off in the republic's capital Dushanbe. 26 people died and 565 more were injured and the Soviet troops put down the riots. Both Yaqub Salimov, the Interior Minister and the youth activists were convicted for the participation in the riots. On 24 August 1990, Tajik SSR declared its sovereignty over Soviet laws. By 1991, Tajikistan participated in a referendum in March as part of the attempt to preserve the union with a turnout of 96.85%. However, this did not happen when hardliners took control of Moscow during the next three days in August.

After the failure of the coup, the Tajik SSR was renamed to the Republic of Tajikistan on 31 August 1991. On 9 September 1991, Tajikistan seceded from the Soviet Union months before the country itself ceased to exist on 26 December 1991. Conflicts after independence caused a civil war throughout the country over the next six years. Tajikistan, like all other republics in the Soviet Union, was a soviet republic governed by the Tajik republican branch within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in all organs of government and society; the Supreme Soviet was a unicameral legislature of the republic headed by a Chairman, with its superiority to both the executive and judicial branches and its members convened in the Supreme Soviet building in Dushanbe. Since independence in 1991, it retained the unicameral structure before being replaced by a bicameral system in 1999 using the presidential system; the republic's government structure was similar to those of other republics. Tajikistan was the only Central Asian Republic.

In replacement were the Soviet units under the Ministry of Defence, as well as troops who were subordinates of the Turkestan Military District and the Central Asian Military District in neighboring Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan respectively. In the early 1990s the army was the smallest in the union and had more Russians than native Tajiks in it; the army failed to defend the regime as proven in the 1990 Dus

Archaeology and geology continue to reveal the secrets of prehistoric Scotland, uncovering a complex past before the Romans brought Scotland into the scope of recorded history. Successive human cultures tended to be spread across Europe or further afield, but focusing on this particular geographical area sheds light on the origin of the widespread remains and monuments in Scotland, on the background to the history of Scotland; the extent of open countryside untouched by intensive farming, together with past availability of stone rather than timber, has given Scotland a wealth of accessible sites where the ancient past can be seen. Scotland is geologically alien to Europe, comprising a sliver of the ancient continent of Laurentia. During the Cambrian period the crustal region which became Scotland formed part of the continental shelf of Laurentia still south of the equator. Laurentia was separated from the continent of Baltica by the diminishing Iapetus Ocean; the two ancient continents moved toward one another through the Cambrian and Ordovician periods, with tectonic folding during the Silurian pushing the first Scottish land above water.

The final collision occurred during the Devonian period, with the Scottish segment of the Laurentian plate smashing into Avalonia, a motile subcontinent which had joined with Baltica. This impact threw up a massive chain of mountains and saw the formation of the granitic West Highland and Grampian mountain chains and a period of volcanic activity in central and eastern Scotland. During the Permian and Triassic periods, with the Iapetus Ocean closed, Scotland lay near the centre of the Pangaean supercontinent. At the start of the Tertiary, a constructive plate boundary became active between Laurentia and Eurasia, pushing the two apart; this recession opened the Atlantic Ocean for the first time, the consequent subduction zone at the western plate margin led to a renewed period of volcanism, this time on Scotland's west coast, producing fresh mountains on Skye, Mull, Rùm, Arran. This tectonic activity produced the basis of Scotland's topography: ancient mountains in the North and South of the country eroded by 400 million years of water and ice with a wide fertile valley between them, a newer, wilder western terrain.

With Scotland now in the northern temperate zone, it was subjected to numerous glaciations in the Neogene and Quaternary periods, the ice sheets and their attendant glaciers carving the landscape into a typical postglacial one, overdeepening river valleys into the characteristic U-shape and leaving the upland areas covered with glacial corries and dramatic pyramidal peaks. In lowland areas the ice deposited rich fields of fertile glacial till and eroded the softer material surrounding the extinct volcanoes, leaving many crags. During the last interglacial, around 130,000–70,000 BC, there were times when the climate in Europe was warmer than it is today, after the Neanderthals came to prominence there was another mild spell around 40,000 BC. Neanderthal sites have been found in the south of England from this era, though no traces of early modern humans have been found. Glaciers scoured their way across most of Britain, it was only after the ice retreated about 15,000 years ago that Scotland again became habitable.

As the climate improved, mesolithic hunter-gatherers extended their range into Scotland. The earliest evidence to date is the flint artefacts found at Howburn Farm, near Elsrickle in 2005; this is the first and so far the only evidence of Upper Paleolithic human habitation in Scotland, around 12,000 BC, which appears to fall between the Younger Dryas and Lomond Stadial periods when cold conditions returned briefly. An early settlement at Cramond, near what is today Edinburgh, has been dated to around 8500 BC. Pits and stakeholes suggest a hunter-gatherer encampment, microlith stone tools made at the site predate finds of similar style in England. Although no bones or shells had survived the acid soil, numerous carbonised hazelnut shells indicate cooking in a similar way to finds at other Mesolithic period sites, including the earlier Star Carr and the Howick house in Northumberland, dated to 7600 BC, where post holes indicate a substantial construction, interpreted as a permanent residence for hunting people.

This suggests that hunter-gatherers could have settled down in Scotland. Other sites on the east coast and at lochs and rivers, large numbers of rock shelters and shell middens around the west coast and islands, build up a picture of mobile people using sites seasonally and having boats for fishing and for transporting stone tools from sites where suitable materials were found. Finds of flint tools on Ben Lawers and at Glen Dee show that these people were capable of travelling well inland across the hills. At a rock shelter and shell midden at Sand, Applecross in Wester Ross facing Skye, excavations have shown that around 7500 BC people had tools of bone and antlers, were living off shellfish and deer using "pot-boiler" stones as a cooking method, were making beads from seashells, had ochre pigment and used shellfish which can produce purple dye. Neolithic farming brought permanent settlements. At Balbridie in Aberdeenshire crop markings were investigated, ditches and post holes found, revealing a massive timber-framed building dating to about 3600 BC.

An identical buil

Raymond F. Palmer is an associate professor of family and community medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, a post he has held since 2003, his area of expertise is biostatistics. In one study, Palmer et al. correlated Environmental Protection Agency data about the release of mercury in 254 Texas counties with special education cases and autism diagnoses in the state's 1,200 school districts. At a press conference, Palmer stated that "This is not a definitive study, but just one more that furthers the association between environmental mercury and autism." Thomas Lewandowski stated in a viewpoint that "... the conclusions drawn from the analysis are questionable", Palmer told WebMD that this type of study is not proof of a causative link between mercury and autism. Palmer has studied baby teeth for environmental toxins the children could have been exposed to during the prenatal period, he has studied the differences in autism rates between Hispanic children and white children, has concluded that the former are less to be diagnosed with the disorder than the latter.

He says that this difference is unlikely to be an artifact of socioeconomic factors. Palmer has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Long Beach State University, as well as an M. A. in psychology from California State University, Dominguez Hills and a PhD in preventive medicine from the University of Southern California

Marazion Marsh is a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds reserve situated in a shallow river valley, half a kilometre to the west of Marazion, Cornwall, UK. It is separated from the coast by a shingle bar and small sand dune system and contains Cornwall's largest reed bed. Marazion Marsh lies 3.5 kilometres east of Penzance. The marsh is in an embayed estuary and is separated from Mount's Bay by a fossilised sand and gravel barrier which prevents access to the marsh by the sea. A discontinuous and eroded sand dune system is crossed by the main Penzance to Marazion road; the recent deposits sit on Lower Devonian Mylor Slates. The Red River drains; the most significant threat to the marsh at present is the runoff of soil particles in the area near the wetland. Because of this, the marsh's catchment is recognized as a Catchment Sensitive Farming Area, the UK government works with farmers in the area to help control erosion. A series of boreholes have been drilled into the marsh which found up to 10 metres of unconsolidated sedimentary material over weathered bedrock.

Material from the Holocene was found. From these deposits paleoenvironmental information can be examined which include particle sizes, stratigraphy and diatoms. Evidence from the pollen was used to reconstruct the type of vegetation in the lower organic-rich horizons and samples sent to the Godwin Laboratory, University of Cambridge, for radiocarbon dating; the differing diatom flora show the changes in salinity through time. These deposits enable the reconstruction of the past environment of Marazion Marsh. Between 5500 years and 4500 years BP there is strong evidence, using palaeoecological evidence for a rising water table, increasing salinity and organic-rich sedimentation within the marsh; the combination of the three suggests an increasing marine influence with the presence of a sedimentary barrier protecting the marsh on the seaward side. The barrier was subject to temporary overwash and/or penetration by sea water, which indicates a rise in sea-level; the main marine transgression phase took place after circa 4500 years BP, with substantial, what look to be, rapid deposition of marine sediments on top of organic-rich deposits.

At the bottom of the sequence are high frequencies of herbaceous pollen. As you go up through the sequences there is increasing shrub pollen; the changes in vegetation indicate increasing site wetness as the lower organic-rich layer accumulates. Phragmites becomes established and the number of tree species decease to leave a alder dominated fen-carr and reed-marsh environment. Above the organic-rich deposits are a sequence of sand-dominated sediments containing some gravel and traces of organic matter; the transition from freshwater to marine/brackishwater conditions in organic-rich basal sediments at Marazion Marsh appears to have occurred according to palaeoecological data. There is no evidence on which to argue that the changing character of the deposits was due to large-scale marine water inundation.. About 63 acres were drained for agriculture by Dr Richard Moyle, in May 1793 when he had the first drainage pipes laid. Of this 36 acres of the area was tidal marsh, between the sandy embankment formed by the sea and the croft.

Open trenches were dug across the marsh in June and in one of the drains, at a depth of three feet, was found a pot containing around one thousand copper coins. The corroded coins have been tentatively identified as having been issued by the Emperor Victorinus: ″... these coins were much injured by the corrosion of the marine acid, but several were still perfect enough to trace the outlines of the Emperor″. The Red River has been “streamed” for tin up to its source at Tregilliowe. In 1951 the marsh was designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its biological characteristics; some of the reasons for its designation include providing a feeding ground for passage waders and wintering birds, a breeding pair of the nationally scarce Cetti's warbler, rare plants such as pillwort and a high number of dragonfly species. The site is owned by the St Aubyn Estates and in 1990 they met with the RSPB to draw up a lease for the management of the site. At that time the reed bed was drying out, with the buildup of dead leaves and stems, suffering from natural succession into willow scrub.

In that year the reed bed was in poor condition with the hot dry summer and emergency measures were taken to flood the site. Within three days a large pool appeared and 154 individuals of 11 species of dragonfly were counted in the next few weeks. Reed beds are one of the rarest habitats in the UK with only fifty greater than 20 ha. Marazion Marsh contains the largest reed-bed in Cornwall, the most westerly on mainland Britain and is an important reserve for breeding and over-wintering birds and passage migrants; the reed bed is managed for Eurasian bittern and is maintained by cutting the Phragmites australis, removing dead litter and cutting back the invasive species such as willow. The reserve contains 3 ha of unimproved grassland, open water, willow scrub. Up to five bitterns overwinter at the reserve, although the reed-bed is below the minimum size of twenty ha required by this species for breeding. Funding for the management of the reserve has been received from the EU LIFE Program

This party is not to be confused with any of the other Democratic Labour partiesDemocratic Labour was a minor political party operating in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. It was formed by the Labour MP, Dick Taverne when his Constituency Labour Party asked him to stand down as their candidate at the next general election, he had fallen out with them over Britain's continued membership of the European Economic Community which he supported but they did not. Taverne resigned from Labour on 6 October 1972, forming the Lincoln Democratic Labour Association which his supporters in the CLP joined, his initial ambitions were to re-join the Labour Party, but there were some who attempted to persuade him to try to establish a new party of the political centre. Taverne resigned from parliament at the same time that he resigned from the Labour Party in order to force the issue into the open, he won the ensuing Lincoln by-election, held in March, 1973, his victory was aided by the lack of a Liberal candidate as it decided instead to support his candidacy and the controversial adoption of Jonathan Guinness by the Conservatives.

Shortly after his by-election victory, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social Democracy as a nationally based body. He was re-elected in the February 1974 general election, continued to serve until the October 1974 general election when he was defeated, he did not stand in the seat again, but Democratic Labour continued to organise politically, to the extent that Democratic Labour controlled Lincoln City Council from 1973 until 1979 and across England during the 1973 local elections Democratic Labour candidates achieved some success. At the 1979 general election, Democratic Labour contested two seats: Lincoln and Brigg and Scunthorpe. Taverne campaigned for them anyway. Both were unsuccessful in their attempts to gain seats in the House of Commons, losing their deposits. In 1980, Democratic Labour merged with the Social Democratic Alliance. A social club they had established ran until 1987. In many ways, Democratic Labour can be seen as a forerunner of the Social Democratic Party, formed by many of the viewpoints as Taverne, that broke away from Labour in the early 1980s.

Taverne twice stood as a Social Democratic Party candidate but failed to be elected