A quango or QUANGO is a quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation. It is an organisation to which a government has devolved power, but, still controlled and/or financed by government bodies; as its name suggests, a quango is a hybrid form of organization, with elements of both non-government organizations and public sector bodies. The concept is most applied in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser degree, Canada, New Zealand, the United States, other English-speaking countries. In the UK, the term quango covers different "arm's-length" government bodies, including "non-departmental public bodies", non-ministerial government departments, executive agencies. One UK example is the Forestry Commission, a non-ministerial government department responsible for forestry in England; the term has spawned the derivative quangocrat. The term "quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation" was created in 1967 by Alan Pifer of the US-based Carnegie Foundation, in an essay on the independence and accountability of public-funded bodies that are incorporated in the private sector.

This essay got the attention of David Howell, a Conservative M. P. in Britain, who organized an Anglo-American project with Pifer, to examine the pros and cons of such enterprises. The lengthy term was shortened to the acronym QUANGO by a British participant to the joint project, Anthony Barker, during one of the conferences on the subject, it describes an ostensibly non-governmental organisation performing governmental functions in receipt of funding or other support from government, while mainstream NGOs get their donations or funds from the public and other organisations that support their cause. Numerous quangos were created from the 1980s onwards. Examples in the United Kingdom include those engaged in the regulation of various commercial and service sectors, such as the Water Services Regulation Authority. An essential feature of a quango in the original definition was that it should not be a formal part of the state structure; the term was extended to apply to a range of organisations, such as executive agencies providing health and other services.

In the UK, this occurred in a polemical atmosphere in which it was alleged that proliferation of such bodies was undesirable and should be reversed. This spawned the related acronym qualgo, a'quasi-autonomous local government organisation'; the less contentious term non-departmental public body is employed to identify numerous organisations with devolved governmental responsibilities. The UK government's definition in 1997 of a non-departmental public body or quango was: A body which has a role in the processes of national government, but is not a government department or part of one, which accordingly operates to a greater or lesser extent at arm's length from Ministers; the Times has accused quangos of bureaucratic excess. In 2005, Dan Lewis, author of The Essential Guide to Quangos, claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others. Quangos are filled with appointed members; this means, unlike governmental bodies, members of quangos do not need to seek re-election.

This is seen as a major criticism in liberal democracy as members of quangos have not been legitimised by the electorate, but have governmental power and influence. They do not have the same level of accountability as elected officials, worsened by the lack of media coverage of their work. In 2006, there were 832 quangos in Ireland - 482 at national and 350 at local level - with a total of 5,784 individual appointees and a combined annual budget of €13 billion; the Irish majority party, Fine Gael, had promised to eliminate 145 quangos should they be the governing party in the 2016 election. Since coming to power they have reduced the overall number of quangos by 17; this reduction included agencies which the former government had planned to remove. Despite a'commitment' from the 1979 Conservative party to curb the growth of unelected bodies, their numbers grew through their time in power throughout the 80s; the Cabinet Office 2009 report on non-departmental public bodies found that there are 766 NDPBs sponsored by the UK government.

The number has been falling: there were 790 in 2008 and 827 in 2007. The number of NDPBs has fallen by over 10% since 1997. Staffing and expenditure of NDPBs have increased, they employed 111,000 people in 2009 and spent £46.5 billion, of which £38.4 billion was directly funded by the Government. Since the coalition government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats was formed in May 2010, numerous NDPBs have been abolished under Conservative plans to reduce the overall budget deficit by reducing the size of the public sector; as of the end of July 2010, the government had abolished at least 80 NDPBs and warned many others that they faced mergers or deep cuts. In September 2010, The Telegraph published a leaked Cabinet Office list suggesting that a further 94 could be abolished, while four would be privatised and 129 merged. In August 2012, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said the government was on course to abolish 204 public bodies by 2015, said this would create a net saving of at least £2.6 billion.

Use of the term quango is less common and therefore more controversial in the United States due to their commitment to limited government and electoral accountability. However, Paul Krugman has stated that the US Federal Reserve is "what the British call a quango... Its complex structure divides power between the federal government and the private banks that are

Craugastor laticeps is a species of frog in the Craugastoridae family. It is found in Belize, Guatemala and southern Mexico. Craugastor laticeps occurs in leaf-litter in premontane tropical forest, it can be found in cacao and coffee plantations. There are some threats to this species due to habitat loss. Craugastor laticeps might be unique among craugastorid frogs: one observation suggests that the species is ovoviviparous, ovipositing eggs with developed young ready to hatch; the female frog in question was 66 mm in snout–vent length and laid 44 eggs, the hatching or newly hatched froglets were about 13–14 mm in snout–vent length

ADC Telecommunications was a communications company located in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, a southwest suburb of Minneapolis. It was ceased to exist as a separate entity, it moved staff and resources to other locations. ADC products were sold by CommScope after it acquired the Broadband Network Solutions business unit from TE Connectivity in August 2015. In 1935, fellow engineers Ralph Allison and Walter Lehnert were each operating business efforts out of their respective basements. In the fall of 1936, the two combined their efforts to form the Audio Development Company; the company was renamed to ADC Telecommunications, Inc. During their first year in business, ADC built hearing aids and audiometers—a machine used for evaluating hearing acuity; the audiometers were built for Maico, but in 1945 ADC began building audiometers under its own name. Additionally, by 1942, the company had designed a sophisticated audio system for the University of Minnesota, the resulting jacks, patch cords and jackfields became the cornerstones for ADC's entry into telecommunications.

In 1949, ADC sold its audiometer product line and Ralph Allison left the company to form a new business in California. With Walter Lehnert remaining as president of the company, ADC diversified and focused its efforts in the area of transformers and filters for power lines, military electronics, telephone jacks and plugs. In 1961, ADC merged with Magnetic Controls Company, a manufacturer of power supplies and magnetic amplifiers with strong ties to the U. S. space program. The resulting company, ADC Magnetic Controls, had a decade of mixed success. Although transformer sales boomed during the 1960s, other new product initiatives failed to materialize; the most significant product innovation during this period was the bantam jack, a miniaturized component that became the standard for telephone circuit access and patching. Building on its growing sales of jacks and plugs in the early 1970s, ADC introduced prewired, connectorized jackfields, wired assemblies and test equipment for telephone operating companies.

By 1974 the company was on solid ground, by 1976, ADC had become the largest independent supplier of test boards in the United States. ADC grew in 1983. By establishing the seven Regional Bell Operating Company carriers as independent entities, the U. S. market for telecommunications expanded by 90 percent. ADC became a supplier for the RBOCs. ADC embarked on some acquisitions in the early 1990s, attempting to move "up the stack" in the datacom field by acquiring companies that manufactured datacom equipment. However, their ability to find synergies between these companies proved limited and ADC was forced to move away from a hardware-only strategy, broadening out into software; this effort resulted in limited success as well, happening about the same time as the dot-com bubble burst, caused ADC stock to plummet. Despite these ups and downs, ADC continued to survive and on July 13, 2010, the company released this announcement: "Tyco Electronics and ADC announced today a definitive agreement under which Tyco Electronics will acquire ADC for $12.75 per share in cash, or an enterprise value of $1.25 billion.

The transaction is expected to be accretive by $0.14 per share in the first full year after closing excluding acquisition-related costs. It will position Tyco Electronics' Network Solutions segment as a leading global provider of broadband connectivity products to carrier and enterprise networks around the world."The acquisition of ADC by TE Connectivity was completed on December 9, 2010 On January 28, 2015, it was publicly announced that the boards of directors of both TE Connectivity and CommScope agreed for CommScope to purchase the Broadband Network Solutions business unit of TE Connectivity in an all-cash deal for US$3.0 billion. The former ADC is a part of this business unit; the purchase of the Broadband Network Solutions business was closed on Aug 31. 2015 In 1993, ADC acquired Fibermux Corp. a manufacturer of LAN Hubs and Data Multiplexers merging the Fibermux division with the Kentrox subsidiary. ADC sold Kentrox to the private equity firm Platinum Equity, LLC in 2001. ADC acquired American Lightwave Systems, a manufacturer of uncompressed video transport equipment for telecom carriers.

This division was sold to C-COR Electronics. In 1996, ADCT has since sold it off. In 1999 ADC acquired Saville sold to Intec Telecom Systems. In FY2005, ADC acquired Fiber Optic Network Solutions to expand its FTTX offerings and OpenCell to enhance its wireless coverage and capacity offerings. In 2007 ADC acquired LGC Wireless to expand its portfolio of wireless coverage and capacity products and services. In 2008, ADC expanded its market presence and manufacturing capacity in China with the acquisition of Century Man Communications. May 1, 1997 - ADC Telecommunications Inc. Minneapolis, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Apex Group Inc. Columbia, MD, in a stock-for-stock purchase worth $26 million; the Apex Group is a software information management company. ADC's customers were served regionally by businesses focused on telecommunications, wireless and enterprise networks. Business units within ADC developing products and services included Global Connectivity Solutions, Network Solutions and Professional Services.

CommScope CommScope In the News ADC Telecommunications S

A Perfect Day is a 2015 Spanish comedy-drama film written and directed by Fernando León de Aranoa. It is based on the novel Dejarse Llover by Paula Farias, it was screened in the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and is the director’s English-language debut. Veteran humanitarian aid workers Mambrú and B, newcomer Sophie, accompanied by their interpreter Damir, try to retrieve a corpse from a well somewhere in former Yugoslavia at the end of the Yugoslav Wars, their first attempt fails because their rope tears, so they set out to find another rope, which turns out to be more difficult than expected. They are joined in their endeavor by a young local boy named Nikola. Benicio del Toro as Mambrú Tim Robbins as B Olga Kurylenko as Katya Mélanie Thierry as Sophie Fedja Štukan as Damir Eldar Residovic as Nikola Sergi López as Goyo On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 73% approval rating, based on 52 reviews; the consensus reads: "Aid workers get their due in A Perfect Day, just different and well-acted enough to overcome its logy pace and narrative clichés".

On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 59 out of 100, sampled from 15 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Benicio del Toro was presented with the honorary award, Heart of Sarajevo, at the Sarajevo Film Festival. Official site A Perfect Day on IMDb

In complex analysis, Gauss's continued fraction is a particular class of continued fractions derived from hypergeometric functions. It was one of the first analytic continued fractions known to mathematics, it can be used to represent several important elementary functions, as well as some of the more complicated transcendental functions. Lambert published several examples of continued fractions in this form in 1768, both Euler and Lagrange investigated similar constructions, but it was Carl Friedrich Gauss who utilized the algebra described in the next section to deduce the general form of this continued fraction, in 1813. Although Gauss gave the form of this continued fraction, he did not give a proof of its convergence properties. Bernhard Riemann and L. W. Thomé obtained partial results, but the final word on the region in which this continued fraction converges was not given until 1901, by Edward Burr Van Vleck. Let f 0, f 1, f 2, … be a sequence of analytic functions so that f i − 1 − f i = k i z f i + 1 for all i > 0, where each k i is a constant.

F i − 1 f i = 1 + k i z f i + 1 f i, so f i f i − 1 = 1 1 + k i z f i + 1 f i Setting g i = f i / f i − 1, g i = 1 1 + k i z g i + 1, So g 1 = f 1 f 0 = 1 1 + k 1 z g 2 = 1 1 + k 1 z 1 + k 2 z g 3 = 1 1 + k 1 z 1 + k 2 z 1 + k 3 z g 4 = ⋯. Repeating this ad infinitum produces the continued fraction expression f 1 f 0 = 1 1 + k 1 z 1 + k 2 z 1 + k 3 z 1 + ⋱ In Gauss's continued fraction, the functions f i are hypergeometric functions of the form 0 F 1, 1 F 1, 2 F 1, the equations f i − 1 − f i = k i z f i +

Emma Kaʻilikapuolono Metcalf Beckley Nakuina was an early Hawaiian female judge and cultural writer. Descended from an American sugar planter and a Hawaiian high chiefess, she was educated in Hawaii and California, she served as curator of the Hawaiian National Museum from 1882 to 1887 and as Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights from 1892 to 1907. In her role as a government commissioner, she is regarded as Hawaii's first female judge. During the early 1900s, she became a supporter of the women's suffrage movement in the Territory of Hawaii. Nakuina was a prolific writer on the topic of Hawaiian culture and folklore and her many literary works include Hawaii, Its People, Their Legends. Nakuina was born March 5, 1847, at her family's homestead in Kauaʻala in the Manoa Valley, at what is now the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, her father Theophilus Metcalf from Ontario County, New York, arrived in Hawaii on May 19, 1842, was naturalized as a citizen on March 9, 1846. He worked as a sugar government land surveyor during the Great Mahele.

Her mother, Kaʻilikapuolono, was a descendant of the aliʻi lineages of Oahu, traditionally associated with the Kūkaniloko Birthstones, where the highest-ranking chiefs of the islands were once born. Her maternal great-grandfather was Nahili, a chief from the island of Hawaii and one of the generals of King Kamehameha I during his conquest of the Hawaiian Islands, her maternal family was considered to be of the Hawaiian kaukau aliʻi class, or lower ranking chiefs in service to the royal family. Nakuina was educated at Sacred Hearts Punahou School in Honolulu, she was sent to the Young Ladies Seminary in Benicia and was privately tutored in many languages by her father including Greek, Hebrew, German and Hawaiian. According to biographies, King Kamehameha IV ordered her to be trained in traditional water rights and customs. On December 3, 1867, she married Frederick William Beckley Sr. a part-Hawaiian noble like herself. She served as the lady-in-waiting of Queen Kapiʻolani, the wife of King Kalākaua, while her husband served as the Chamberlain of the Royal Household and in the Hawaiian government as a member of the House of Representatives and as the Royal Governor of Kauai.

They had seven children, including son Frederick William Beckley Jr. and daughter Sabina Beckley Hutchinson. Beckley Sr. died in 1881. In 1887, she remarried to the Reverend Moses Kuaea Nakuina. A nephew of Minister of Finance Moses Kuaea, he was twenty years her junior and a descendant of Hawaiian nobility, they had two children: a short-lived son named Irving Metcalf Nakuina, born and died in 1888, a daughter who contracted leprosy and was sent to the Kalaupapa Leprosy Settlement. After her first husband's death, Walter Murray Gibson at the suggestion of King Kalākaua, appointed Nakuina as the female curator of the Hawaiian National Museum and Government Library, she used the title curatrix in official documents. The salary from this governmental post helped. During her tenure as the governmental curatrix, Nakuina helped expand the collection of the museum, located on the upper floor of Aliiolani Hale, the governmental building, established herself as an authority on traditional Hawaiian legends and history with a number of publications.

She assisted the writers Thomas G. Thrum and William DeWitt Alexander in many of their works, serving as a cultural advisor and translator. After the downfall of the Gibson administration in 1887, funding to the museum was cut and the collections were incorporated into the Bishop Museum. In 1892, she was appointed Commissioner of Private Ways and Water Rights for the district of Kona, on the island of Oahu, corresponding to the capital city of Honolulu and its surrounding areas. Nakuina was chosen for this post because of her knowledge of traditional water rights, she was tasked with the duties of resolving water usage and rights issues, she held this position from 1892 to 1907, at which point the powers were reassigned to the circuit courts. During her tenure, she worked under the monarchy until the 1893 overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. In order to remain in her governmental post, she took the oath of allegiance to the subsequent regimes of the Provisional Government, the Republic and the Territory of Hawaii.

Although she never held the formal title, she is regarded as Hawaii's first female judge. In March 1893, she became a member of Hui Aloha ʻĀina o Na Hui Aloha ʻĀina for Women; this patriotic group was founded shortly after its male counterpart the Hui Aloha ʻĀina for Men to oppose the overthrow and plans to annex the islands to the United States and to support the deposed queen. Nakuina served as interpreter of the organization for a month until a dispute arose between two factions of the group; the rift centered on the wordings to a memorial seeking the restoration of the monarchy to be presented to the United States Commissioner James Henderson Blount, sent by President Grover Cleveland to investigate the overthrow. The original memorial used the word “Queen” leaving out Liliʻuokalani’s name and was opposed by the small faction consisting of elderly, full-blood Hawaiian women who suspected that it was a ploy by the younger, educated part-Hawaiians to put either Kapiʻolani or Kaʻiulani on the throne instead.

A second memorial was drafted including Liliʻuokalani’s name and the original architects of the first memorial including Nakuina either resigned or were replaced. Nakuina was replaced by Mary Ann Kaulalani Parker Stillman. In 1895, Naku