In Greek mythology, Pylades is the son of King Strophius of Phocis and of Anaxibia, the daughter of Atreus and sister of Agamemnon and Menelaus. He is known for his friendship with his cousin Orestes, son of Agamemnon. Orestes had been sent to Phocis during his mother Clytemnestra's affair with Aegisthus. There he was raised with Pylades, so considered him to be his closest friend. While Orestes was away, Clytemnestra killed Orestes' father Agamemnon; as an adult, Orestes returns to Mycenae/Argos to avenge the murder of Agamemnon. With the assistance of his friend Pylades, Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus. While Pylades seems to be a minor character, he is arguably the most vital piece of Orestes' plan to avenge his father. In The Libation Bearers, the second play of Aeschylus' trilogy The Oresteia, Pylades speaks only once, his lines come at the moment Orestes begins to falter and second-guess his decision to kill his mother. It is Pylades who convinces Orestes to follow through with his plan for revenge and carry out the murder.

The significance of Pylades' lines has invited speculation into whether or not he might represent something more than human next to Orestes. In other versions of the revenge of Orestes and Electra, Pylades accompanies Orestes, but does not speak. In the Sophocles version, Orestes pretends to be dead and Pylades carries the urn holding his friend's remains. According to Pausanias, Pylades killed two sons of Nauplius. Pylades was exiled by his father for taking part in the crime, he returned to Orestes' side, where he helped him to come up with a plan to avoid execution. They attempted to murder Helen, wife of Orestes' uncle Menelaus, after he proved to be of no help in protecting Orestes. However, their attempt failed through the intervention of the gods, they took hostage Hermione, daughter of Helen and Menelaus. Apollo arrived to settle the situation and gave them all instructions, including one for Pylades to marry Orestes' sister Electra. Many of these events are depicted in Euripides' play Orestes.

Pylades played a major role in another of Euripides' plays, Iphigeneia in Tauris. In order to escape the persecutions of the Erinyes, Orestes had been ordered by Apollo to go to Tauris, carry off the statue of Artemis which had fallen from heaven, bring it to Athens, he went to Tauris with Pylades and the pair were at once imprisoned by the people, among whom the custom was to sacrifice all strangers to Artemis. Orestes was seized by a mania for fear of the barbarians; the priestess of Artemis, whose duty it was to perform the sacrifice, was Orestes' sister Iphigeneia. She offered to release Orestes. After a conflict of mutual affection, Pylades at last yields, but the letter brought about a recognition between brother and sister, all three escaped together, carrying with them the image of Artemis; the relationship between Orestes and Pylades has been presented by some authors of the Roman era as romantic or homoerotic. The dialogue Erotes, attributed to Lucian, compares the merits and advantages of heterosexuality and homoeroticism, Orestes and Pylades are presented as the principal representatives of a loving friendship: “Phocis preserves from early times the memory between Orestes and Pylades, who taking a god as witness of the passion between them, sailed through life together as though in one boat.

Both together put to death Klytmnestra. Pylades suffered more than his friend by the punishment, he stood by him when condemned, nor did they limit their tender partnership to the bounds of Greece, but sailed to the farthest boundaries of the Scythians – the one sick, the other ministering to him. When they had come into the Tauric land, straightaway they were met by the matricidal fury; when it was determined that one should remain to be put to death, the other should go to Mycenae to convey a letter, each wishes to remain for the sake of the other, thinking that if he saves the life of his friend, he saves his own life. Orestes refuses to take the letter, saying that Pylades was more worthy to carry it, acting more like the older lover than the younger. ‘For,’ he said, ‘the slaying of this man would be a great grief to me, as I am the cause of these misfortunes.’ And he added, ‘Give the tablet to him, for I will send thee to Argos, in order that it may be well with thee. In 1734, George Frederic Handel's opera Oreste, was premiered in London's Covent Garden.

The fame of Lucian's works in the 18th century, as well as the gen

Billy Kim is a prominent Christian evangelist and humanitarian. He was the president of the Baptist World Alliance from 2000 until 2005 when he was succeeded by David Coffey. Billy Kim was born in Korea on July 25, 1934 into a poor farming family with three older brothers and an older sister, his arrival was near the end of the Japanese occupation and life was difficult. He aspired to become a politician; when the Korean War broke out in June 1950, the Kim family could not escape thus enduring the hardships of war in Suwon. Billy worked as a houseboy for the U. S. military under Sgt. Carl Powers, who helped him go to America to get an education, he left Korea on November 1951 filled with fear and excitement. Carl Powers enrolled Billy at Bob Jones Academy in Greenville, South Carolina where Billy converted to Christianity, he excelled in many areas, but early in his education, won a South Carolina speech contest with a speech entitled “I Speak for Democracy”. On weekends, he preached at small country churches impressing the congregation along with his classmates.

He earned top grades in college and in August 1958, Billy married Trudy whom he met at Bob Jones University. In February 1959, Billy was ordained at Dante Baptist Church, in November of that year received his master's degree; the fearful 17-year-old boy who left Korea in 1951 returned to his country with an education, a wife, a passion and vision for ministry. Billy Kim first began to work with Suwon Central Baptist Church on January 1, 1960, when it had only 10 members. In 2005, the congregation has grown to over 15,000, including 100 members in an English speaking congregation founded by Billy and his wife Trudy and led by Pastor Jonathon Futch, he retired from the post of senior pastor on December 19, 2004 and was succeeded by Rev. Myung Jin Koh senior pastor of Osan Baptist Church, on January 2, 2005. Billy is the Chairman of the Far East Broadcasting Company in Korea; when Billy returned to Korea in 1959, he and Trudy began their ministry in Suwon. Evangelism, pastoral work and youth ministry highlighted Billy’s first year.

There were only a dozen members when they began serving at Suwon Central Baptist Church in 1959 and now there are over 15,000. In 1966, Billy Kim began a Youth for Christ ministry in Suwon, Korea following the lead of other Christian leaders and missionaries who had founded Youth for Christ in Seoul in 1960, trained many leaders, he raised $200,000 through an international tour to build a Christian Center for YFC where young people could study and have fellowship. He established a Job Training School, Central Kindergarten, Christian Night School and Capital Baptist Seminary. In 1994, Central Christian Academy was built and in the years that followed, hundreds of children and their parents have become Christians because of the church’s concern for early education in Suwon; as a result of his assistance to the underprivileged, he was the recipient of the Lions Clubs International Humanitarian Award in July 2004. Billy Kim translated for Rev. Billy Graham during the 1973 Crusade, his interpretive skill was marked by speed and enthusiasm.

Each night the crowd grew to a maximum attendance of 1.1 million. Thousands of people gave their lives to Christ through the crusade, which contributed to church growth in Korea. In 2000, Kim became the first Asian to be elected as President of the Baptist World Alliance; as BWA President, he has had the privilege of meeting many world leaders. Continuing an active and broad international ministry he has been invited to many large Christian rallies all over the world and has become a famous speaker, his preaching opportunities include the Billy Graham Evangelists’ Conference in Amsterdam, a crusade in Nagaland, India. Dr. Kim’s schedule is always packed with preaching and meetings, he is willing to meet with whoever needs his help. More than 400 international delegates joined 500 Cuban pastors and Christian leaders in Havana, Cuba for the Baptist World Alliance General Council meeting where Dr. Kim was installed as the President, it was his privilege, along with selected conference delegates, to visit with Fidel Castro, grateful to receive the Spanish Bible, which Dr. Kim presented to him.

Billy Kim and his wife Trudy have three children: Joseph Carl, Mary Kay, John William. They have ten grandchildren. Official website

A signal generator is an electronic device that generates repeating or non-repeating electronic signals in either the analog or the digital domain. These generated signals are used as a stimulus for electronic measurements used in designing, testing and repairing electronic or electroacoustic devices, though it has artistic uses as well. There are many different types of signal generators with different purposes and applications and at varying levels of expense; these types include function generators, RF and microwave signal generators, pitch generators, arbitrary waveform generators, digital pattern generators, frequency generators. In general, no device is suitable for all possible applications. Traditionally, signal generators have been embedded hardware units, but since the age of multimedia PCs, programmable software tone generators have been available. In June 1928, the General Radio 403, was the first commercial signal generator marketed, it supported a frequency range of 500Hz to 1.5MHz.

In April 1929, the first commercial frequency standard was marketed by General Radio with a frequency of 50KHz. A function generator is a device; such devices contain an electronic oscillator, a circuit, capable of creating a repetitive waveform.. The most common waveform is a sine wave, but sawtooth, step and triangular waveform oscillators are available as are arbitrary waveform generators. If the oscillator operates above the audio frequency range, the generator will include some sort of modulation function such as amplitude modulation, frequency modulation, or phase modulation as well as a second oscillator that provides an audio frequency modulation waveform. An arbitrary waveform generator is a sophisticated signal generator that generates arbitrary waveforms within published limits of frequency range and output level. Unlike a function generator that produces a small set of specific waveforms, an AWG allows the user to specify a source waveform in a variety of different ways. An AWG is more expensive than a function generator and has less bandwidth.

An AWG is used in higher-end test applications. New high-speed DACs provide up to 16-bit resolution at sample rates in excess of 1 GS/s; these devices provide the foundation for an AWG with the bandwidth and dynamic range to address modern radio and communication applications. In combination with a quadrature modulator and advanced digital signal processing, high-speed DACs can be applied to create a full-featured vector signal generator with high modulation bandwidth. Example applications include commercial wireless standards such as Wi-Fi, WiMAX and LTE, in addition to military standards such as those specified in the Joint Tactical Radio System initiative. Broad modulation bandwidth allows multi-carrier signal generation, necessary for testing receiver adjacent channel rejection. RF and microwave signal generators are used for testing components and test systems in a wide variety of applications including cellular communications, WiFi, WiMAX, GPS, audio and video broadcasting, satellite communications and electronic warfare.

RF and microwave signal generators have similar features and capabilities, but are differentiated by frequency range. RF signal generators range from a few kHz to 6 GHz, while microwave signal generators cover a much wider frequency range, from less than 1 MHz to at least 20 GHz; some models go as high as 70 GHz with a direct coaxial output, up to hundreds of GHz when used with external waveguide source modules. RF and microwave signal generators can be classified further as vector signal generators. Analog signal generators based on a sine-wave oscillator were common before the inception of digital electronics, are still used. There was a sharp distinction in purpose and design of radio-frequency and audio-frequency signal generators. RFRF signal generators are capable of producing CW tones; the output frequency can be tuned anywhere in their frequency range. Many models offer various types of analog modulation, either as standard equipment or as an optional capability to the base unit; this could include FM, ΦM and pulse modulation.

Another common feature is a built-in attenuator which makes it possible to vary the signal’s output power. Depending on the manufacturer and model, output powers can range from -135 to +30 dBm. A wide range of output power is desirable, since different applications require different amounts of signal power. For example, if a signal has to travel through a long cable out to an antenna, a high output signal may be needed to overcome the losses through the cable and still have sufficient power at the antenna, but when testing receiver sensitivity, a low signal level is required to see how the receiver behaves under low signal-to-noise conditions. RF signal generators are available as benchtop instruments, rackmount instruments, embeddable modules and in card-level formats. Mobile, field-testing and airborne applications benefit from lighter, battery-operated platforms. In automated and production testing, web-browser access, which allows multi-source control, faster frequency switching speeds improve test times and throughput.

RF signal generators are required for servicing and setting up analog radio receivers, are used for professional RF applications. AFAudio-frequency signal generators generate signals in the audio-frequency range