In seed plants, the ovule is the structure that gives rise to and contains the female reproductive cells. It consists of three parts: The integument, forming its outer layer, the nucellus, the female gametophyte in its center; the female gametophyte — termed a megagametophyte— is called the embryo sac in angiosperms. The megagametophyte produces an egg cell for the purpose of fertilization. In flowering plants, the ovule is located inside the portion of the flower called the gynoecium; the ovary of the gynoecium produces one or more ovules and becomes the fruit wall. Ovules are attached to the placenta in the ovary through a stalk-like structure known as a funiculus. Different patterns of ovule attachment, or placentation, can be found among plant species, these include: Apical placentation: The placenta is at the apex of the ovary. Simple or compound ovary. Axile placentation: The ovary is divided into radial segments, with placentas in separate locules. Ventral sutures of carpels meet at the centre of the ovary.

Placentae are along fused margins of carpels. Two or more carpels. Basal placentation: The placenta is at the base of the ovary on a protrusion of the thalamus. Simple or compound carpel, unilocular ovary. Free-central placentation: Derived from axile as partitions are absorbed, leaving ovules at the central axis. Compound unilocular ovary. Marginal placentation: Simplest type. There is only one elongated placenta on one side of the ovary, as ovules are attached at the fusion line of the carpel's margins; this is conspicuous in legumes. Simple carpel, unilocular ovary. Parietal placentation: Placentae on inner ovary wall within a non-sectioned ovary, corresponding to fused carpel margins. Two or more carpels, unilocular ovary. Superficial: Similar to axile, but placentae are on inner surfaces of multilocular ovary In gymnosperms such as conifers, ovules are borne on the surface of an ovuliferous scale within an ovulate cone. In some extinct plants and ovules were borne on the surface of leaves. In other extinct taxa, a cupule surrounds the ovule.

Ovule orientation may be anatropous, such that when inverted the micropyle faces the placenta, campylotropous, or orthotropous. The ovule appears to be a megasporangium with integuments surrounding it. Ovules are composed of diploid maternal tissue, which includes a megasporocyte. Megaspores remain inside the ovule and divide by mitosis to produce the haploid female gametophyte or megagametophyte, which remains inside the ovule; the remnants of the megasporangium tissue surround the megagametophyte. Megagametophytes produce archegonia. After fertilization, the ovule contains a diploid zygote and after cell division begins, an embryo of the next sporophyte generation. In flowering plants, a second sperm nucleus fuses with other nuclei in the megagametophyte forming a polyploid endosperm tissue, which serves as nourishment for the young sporophyte. An integument is a protective cell layer surrounding the ovule. Gymnosperms have one integument while angiosperms have two integuments; the evolutionary origin of the inner integument has been proposed to be by enclosure of a megasporangium by sterile branches.

Elkinsia, a preovulate taxon, has a lobed structure fused to the lower third of the megasporangium, with the lobes extending upwards in a ring around the megasporangium. This might, through fusion between lobes and between the structure and the megasporangium, have produced an integument; the origin of the second or outer integument has been an area of active contention for some time. The cupules of some extinct taxa have been suggested as the origin of the outer integument. A few angiosperms produce vascular tissue in the outer integument, the orientation of which suggests that the outer surface is morphologically abaxial; this suggests that cupules of the kind produced by the Caytoniales or Glossopteridales may have evolved into the outer integument of angiosperms. The integuments develop into the seed coat; the integuments do not enclose the nucellus but retain an opening at the apex referred to as the micropyle. The micropyle opening allows the pollen to enter the ovule for fertilization. In gymnosperms, the pollen is drawn into the ovule on a drop of fluid that exudes out of the micropyle, the so-called pollination drop mechanism.

Subsequently, the micropyle closes. In angiosperms, only a pollen tube enters the micropyle. During germination, the seedling's radicle emerges through the micropyle. Located opposite from the micropyle is the chalaza. Nutrients from the plant travel through the phloem of the vascular system to the funiculus and outer integument and from there apoplastically and symplastically through the chalaza to the nucellus inside the ovule. In chalazogamous plants, the pollen tubes enter the ovule through the chalaza instead of the micropyle opening; the nucellus is part of the inner structure of the ovule, forming a layer of diplo

Fort Michie was a United States Army coastal defense site on Great Gull Island, New York. Along with Fort H. G. Wright, Fort Terry, Camp Hero, it defended the eastern entrance to Long Island Sound as part of the Harbor Defenses of Long Island Sound, thus defending Connecticut's ports and the north shore of Long Island; the fort was named after First Lieutenant Dennis Michie, killed at San Juan Hill during the Spanish–American War. Michie is known for being the first person to bring football to the United States Military Academy by organizing the first Army-Navy game, where the football stadium is named after him; the fort was first developed at the turn of the 20th century and was active in World War I and World War II. After World War II it was deactivated as a coast defense fort. Since the 1950s the island has been used by the American Museum of Natural History to study migratory terns. Fort Michie was built as part of the large-scale Endicott Program, which recommended a comprehensive replacement of existing coast defenses.

The forts were designed and built by the Army Corps of Engineers, the weapons were designed by the Army Ordnance Corps, the forts were garrisoned by the Coast Artillery Corps. Construction of gun batteries at Fort Michie began in 1897. By 1908 the following batteries were completed: Following the American entry into World War I in April 1917, changes were made at the stateside forts with a view to putting some coast artillery weapons into the fight on the Western Front. Battery North's pair of 10-inch guns was dismounted in August 1917 for potential use as railway artillery, but the guns did not leave the island during the war. During World War I the new 16-inch gun M1919 was developed, at the time the most powerful weapon in the United States' arsenal; the first of these was deployed at Fort Michie on a unique version of the Buffington-Crozier disappearing carriage, with the elevation increased to 30 degrees and a rare all-around-fire emplacement. This was the largest gun emplacement constructed to date by the United States.

It was named for John Moore Kelso Davis, a general and Civil War veteran who died in 1920. Battery North's guns were shipped to storage and the battery demolished to make room for the new gun emplacement, built 1919-1922. Other weapon transfers took place at Fort Michie between the wars. In 1930 a 12-inch gun of Battery Palmer was dismounted to replace a gun at Fort H. G. Wright. In 1933 the pair of 3-inch guns in Battery Pasco were sent to Fort Mills on Corregidor in the Philippines. Many of the fort's administrative buildings were destroyed in the 1938 New England Hurricane. In 1940, when the United States reviewed its coast defense needs in earnest, Fort Michie was relegated to a secondary role; the fort lacked protection against air attack, its 16-inch gun had a short range due to the obsolescent disappearing carriage. New long-range carriages for 16-inch guns were developed about the time Fort Michie's emplacement was built. However, due to the need for a garrison of 500 men, numerous temporary buildings were constructed in early 1941.

The defense of Long Island Sound centered on building two batteries of two 16-inch guns each at Camp Hero in Montauk, with a third battery at Fort H. G. Wright on Fishers Island that stopped just short of completion. In 1944, with the batteries at Camp Hero complete, Battery Davis was taken out of service; the only battery built at Fort Michie during the war was Anti-Motor Torpedo Boat battery 912 in 1943, with four 90 mm guns on dual-purpose mounts, two fixed and two towed. In 1946 Fort Michie was disarmed and all its guns scrapped; the American Museum of Natural History acquired the island in 1949 to study migratory terns, which it has continued to this day. Seacoast defense in the United States United States Army Coast Artillery Corps Berhow, Mark A. Ed.. American Seacoast Defenses, A Reference Guide, Third Edition. McLean, Virginia: CDSG Press. ISBN 978-0-9748167-3-9. Lewis, Emanuel Raymond. Seacoast Fortifications of the United States. Annapolis: Leeward Publications. ISBN 978-0-929521-11-4. Ordnance Corps, US Army.

American Coast Artillery Materiel. Washington: Government Printing Office. Fort Michie at NY State Div of Military and Naval Affairs List of all US coastal forts and batteries at the Coast Defense Study Group, Inc. website FortWiki, lists most CONUS and Canadian forts

A meshrep is a traditional male Uyghur gathering that includes "poetry, music and conversation within a structural context". Meshreps include music of the Muqam variety and ad-hoc tribunals on moral questions. "Meshrep" may refer to the Islamic youth groups that became a political force in Ili, Xinjiang in the 1990s. The voluntary societies used extralegal means such as boycotts to enforce what they saw as Islamic mores against gambling and drug abuse among young Uyghur men. Amid continuing political campaigns and antigovernment protests launched by these meshrep, the Xinjiang government cracked down on key religious leaders, including meshrep leaders, leading to urban violence in 1997 and the flight of meshrep leaders to Kazakhstan. In November 2010, China petitioned UNESCO to list the traditional meshrep in its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding; the practice of meshrep is diverse among Uyghur communities. Meshrep are held in the courtyard of one of the members' family home.

Traditionally, meshrep were only held on the harvest, on weddings and girls' comings of age. Each meshrep consists of a leader, a disciplinarian, 30 younger men, who sit on a carpet according to seniority; as the meshreps were male bonding events, the women and children of the host's family were to stay inside the house and only interact with the men to bring them food or to otherwise serve them. Music is an essential component of the meshrep, during the meshrep, men play progressively faster muqam melodies on the dutar while others compete to see who could perform whirling circle dances for the longest period of time; some meshrep feature songs and lectures from religious leaders. Aside from the entertainment value of the meshrep, these groups formed part of the informal governance structure of Uyghur communities, still do outside of China. Inside the meshrep, the moral transgressions of the men, such as polygamy, are publicly scolded and the men humiliated by slapping or caning. There is no limit on the length or attendance of the meshrep, the Dolan Uyghurs were famed for hosting meshrep "attended by hundreds of people, last the whole night".

The meshrep is attested to in modern Chinese literature as early as 1942, in the socialist realist play Gulnissa, where the meshrep is portrayed as a secular, coeducational youth culture. During that time, the meshrep in Yining consisted of musical performances and "informal court hearings" for community dissidents. Uyghurs in Kazakhstan began practicing the meshrep as early as the 1970s. After China's economic reforms in the 1980s, a middle class began to develop in China, ordinary Chinese had more leisure time and discretionary income. At the same time and religious controls were loosening, Chinese officials encouraged the building of mosques and the veiling of women. Contemporary developments in the region, including the global Islamic revival and the independence of the Soviet Central Asian states in 1992, inspired Uyghur independence feeling and the establishment of militant groups like the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. Still, in the 1990s, the social and political life in the city of Yining was predominantly secular.

In Yining, young Uyghur men would informally gather once a week, to drink baijiu, perform poetry and music, otherwise socialize. These gatherings, called olturax, grew to perform important political and economic functions in Yining life. Islamic youth groups organized in the evenings grew in opposition to and eclipsed the olturax serving "the foci for Uyghur resistance to Chinese rule". Calling themselves "meshreps", the clubs criticized the secular nature of the olturax and the alcohol consumption within as un-Islamic; these meshreps, which have been compared to the Catholic Knights of Columbus, were more formal than the olturax: tasked with providing "moral guidance", they kept strict membership lists and organized regular meetings, wherein members would read passages from the Quran. Meshrep practitioners were held to a strict code of Islamic conduct in their daily lives, including abstinence from alcohol and hashish. Initiation into the meshrep involved hazing rituals, once admitted, men who did not continue to meet the group's standards of Muslim piety were given corporal punishment, such as caning, or petty fines by the group.

These practices diverged from the meshrep's secular tradition, thus revived the meshrep in Yining with "new religious and nationalist meanings". Both social reformers and the local government supported the meshreps, as they provided an outlet for young Uyghur men in an environment rife with unemployment, drug abuse, gambling, but as the popularity of meshrep grew, meshrep groups became more assertive in their opposition to the government's goals. In the spring and summer of 1995, meshreps started a campaign of boycotts and intimidation against shops that sold liquor in Yining and the surrounding villages. Fearing the meshrep's political potential, Xinjiang authorities banned the gatherings in July 1995. However, most meshrep groups continued to operate in secret, or delegated their morals enforcement duties to legal neighborhood watch groups; when a football game organized by underground meshrep teams was canceled by authorities, the meshrep mobilized several hundred Uyghur men to march across government offices and to gather in Yining's main plaza, although there was no violence and the crowd dispersed after a few days.

Authorities drew a distin