The RUR-5 ASROC was an all-weather, all sea-conditions anti-submarine missile system. Developed by the United States Navy in the 1950s, it was deployed in the 1960s, updated in the 1990s, installed on over 200 USN surface ships cruisers and frigates; the ASROC has been deployed on scores of warships of many other navies, including Canada, Italy, the Republic of China, Greece and others. ASROC started development as the Rocket Assisted Torpedo program by the Naval Ordnance Test Station at China Lake in the early 1950s to develop a surface warship ASW weapon counter to the new post-World War II submarines which ran quieter, at much higher speed and could attack from much longer range with high speed homing torpedoes. In addition, the goal was to take advantage of modern sonars with a much larger detection range. An extended range torpedo delivered by parachute from the air would allow warships the stand-off capability to attack hostile submarines with little advance notice to the hostile submarine.

The RAT program came in three phases: RAT-A, RAT-B and RAT-C. RAT-A were efforts to develop a compact and economical stand-off ASW for smaller warships, but were found to be either unreliable or had too short a range. RAT-C was a program to develop a stand-off ASW weapon; this would require a range of at least 8,000 yards to escape potential damage from the underwater blast. Unlike the original RAT program rockets, the RAT-C was larger to accomplish the extended range needed and was to be fitted to larger warships. With the failure of both the RAT-A and RAT-B programs, RAT-C was redesigned from a stand-off nuclear ASW weapon to one that could use not only a nuclear depth charge but a homing ASW torpedo. To obtain the accuracy needed, the RAT-C rocket launcher had to be redesigned with larger side fins; this program combined reliability and accuracy, along with the necessary stand-off range. However, before RAT-C reached initial operational status in 1960 aboard the large US Navy destroyer leader USS Norfolk, its name was changed to the present ASROC.

ASROC was first deployed in 1961 and made the vast majority of USN surface combatants nuclear-capable. The first ASROC system using the MK-112 "Matchbox" launcher was developed in the 1950s and installed in the 1960s; this system was phased out in the 1990s and replaced with the RUM-139 Vertical Launch ASROC, or "VLA". After a surface ship, patrol plane or anti-submarine helicopter detects an enemy submarine by using sonar or other sensors, it could relay the sub's position to an ASROC-equipped ship for attack; the attacking ship would fire an ASROC missile carrying an acoustic homing torpedo or a W44 Nuclear Depth Bomb onto an unguided ballistic trajectory toward the target. At a pre-determined point on the missile's trajectory, the payload separates from the missile and deploys a parachute to permit splashdown and water entry at a low speed and with minimum detectable noise. Water entry activates the torpedo, guided by its own sonar system, homes in on the target using either active sonar or passive sonar.

The W44 nuclear depth charge entered service in 1961, but was never used beyond one or two tests before the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty banning underwater nuclear tests went into effect. A total of 575 weapons were produced; the W44 weighed 170 pounds with length of 25.3 inches. Following payload separation, the unguided W44 sank to a predetermined depth where the 10-kiloton warhead detonated; the nuclear-armed ASROC was never used in combat. W44-armed ASROC missiles were retired by 1989, when all types of nuclear depth bombs were removed from deployment. One of the first ASROC installations was on USS Norfolk in 1960; the first large group of ships to receive ASROC were 78 Gearing-class destroyers, modified under the Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization Mark I program in the early 1960s. A Mark 112 8-tube ASROC launcher was added along with other major modifications. ASROC reloads were handled by a small crane; the 31 U. S. Navy Spruance-class destroyers were all built with the Mark 16 Mod 7 ASROC Launching Group and MK 4 ASROC Weapons Handling System reload system.

These had one standard Mark 112 octuple ASROC launcher, located above a reload system holding an additional 16 assembled rounds. Thus, each Spruance-class destroyer carried a maximum total of 24 ASROC. Most other US Navy and allied navy destroyers, destroyer escorts and several different classes of cruisers only carried the one ASROC "matchbox" MK 112 launcher with eight ASROC missiles; the "matchbox" Mk 112 launchers were capable of carrying a mixture of the two types. Reloads were carried in many classes, either on first level of the superstructure abaft the launcher, or in a separate deckhouse just forward or abaft the Mk 112; the MK 16 Launching Group had configurations that supported RGM-84 Harpoon or a variation of the Tartar missile in limited distribution. Ships with the Mk 26 GMLS, late marks of the Mk 10 GMLS aboard the Belknap-class cruisers, could accommodate ASROC in these power-loaded launchers. Most Spruance-class destroyers were modified to include the Mk 41 VLS, these launchers are capable of carrying a mixture of the RUM-139 VL-ASROC, the Tomahawk TLAM, other missiles

Terminalia arjuna is a tree of the genus Terminalia. It is known as arjuna or arjun tree in English, thella maddi in Telugu, kumbuk in Sinhala, marudha maram in Tamil and neer maruthu in Malayalam. Hole Matthi in Kannada; the arjuna grows to about 20–25 metres tall. It has conical leaves which are green on the top and brown below; the arjuna is found growing on river banks or near dry river beds in Bangladesh, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and south and central India. It is known as matthimara in Kannada, neer maruthu in Malayalam'marutha maram' in Tamil, thella maddi in Telugu and kohda in Rajasthan; the arjuna is one of the species whose leaves are fed on by the Antheraea paphia moth which produces the tassar silk, a wild silk of commercial importance. The arjuna was introduced into siddha by saint Agastiyar through his prose Gunavakatam and in Ayurveda as a treatment for heart disease by Vagbhata, it is traditionally prepared as a milk decoction. In the Ashtānga Hridayam, but was mentioned in many ancient Indian vedas, was a known practice for thousands of years, passed down by tradition, before vagbhata mentioned it in his writings.

Vagbhata mentions arjuna in the treatment of wounds and ulcers, applied topically as a powder. The Arjuna plant has traditionally been used to treat heart disease for centuries, why it got the nickname “Guardian of the heart.” The hero of the famous epic “Mahabharata”, was named after this tree because of its protective effects. In Theravada Buddhism, Arjuna is said to have been used as the tree for achieved enlightenment, or Bodhi by the tenth Buddha called "Anomadassi Buddha". Dwivedi S. "Terminalia arjuna Wight & Arn.—A useful drug for cardiovascular disorders". Journal of Ethnopharmacology. 114: 114–29. Doi:10.1016/j.jep.2007.08.003. PMID 17875376. Karthikeyan K, Bai BR, Gauthaman K, Sathish KS, Devaraj SN. "Cardioprotective effect of the alcoholic extract of Terminalia arjuna bark in an in vivo model of myocardial ischemic reperfusion injury". Life Sciences. 73: 2727–39. Doi:10.1016/S0024-320500671-4. PMID 13679240. Meghwani H, Prabhakar P, Mohammed SA, Seth S, Hote MP, Banerjee SK, Arava S, Ray R, Maulik SK.

"Beneficial effects of aqueous extract of stem bark of Terminalia arjuna, An ayurvedic drug in experimental pulmonary hypertension". J. Ethnopharmacol. 16. Doi:10.1016/j.jep.2016.07.029. PMID 27401289

Xiuxiong Chen is a Chinese-American mathematician whose research concerns differential geometry and differential equations. A professor at Stony Brook University since 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2015 and awarded the Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry in 2019. Chen was born in Qingtian County, China, he entered the Department of Mathematics of the University of Science and Technology of China in 1982, graduated in 1987. He subsequently studied under Peng Jiagui at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he earned his master's degree. In 1989, he moved to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania; the last doctoral student of Eugenio Calabi, he obtained his Ph. D. in mathematics in 1994, with his dissertation on "Extremal Hermitian Matrices with Curvature Distortion in a Riemann Surface". Chen was an instructor at McMaster University in Canada from 1994 to 1996. For the next two years he was a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University.

He was an assistant professor at Princeton University from 1998 to 2002, before becoming an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was promoted to full professor in 2005. Since October 2010 he has been a professor at Stony Brook University. In 2006, he founded the Pacific Rim Conference on Complex Geometry at the University of Science and Technology of China; as of 2019, Chen has advised 17 Ph. D. students, including Song Sun and Bing Wang. He was elected a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2015 "for contributions to differential geometry the theory of extremal Kahler metrics", he was an invited speaker at the 2002 International Congress of Mathematicians, in Beijing. In 2019, Chen was awarded the prestigious Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry, together with Simon Donaldson and Chen's former student Song Sun, for proving a long-standing conjecture on Fano manifolds, which states "that a Fano manifold admits a Kähler–Einstein metric if and only if it is K-stable".

It had been one of the most investigated topics in geometry since its proposal in the 1980s by Shing-Tung Yau after he proved the Calabi conjecture. It was generalized by Gang Tian and Donaldson; the solution by Chen and Sun was published in the Journal of the American Mathematical Society in 2015 as a three-article series, "Kähler–Einstein metrics on Fano manifolds, I, II and III"

Emilie Christine Schroeder known as Christa Schroeder was one of Adolf Hitler’s personal secretaries before and during World War II. She was moved to Nagold after her parents died. There she worked for a lawyer from 1929 to March 1930. After leaving Nagold for Munich, Schroeder was employed as a stenotypist in the Oberste SA-Führung, the Sturmabteilung high command. There she got to know Hitler in early 1933, he took a liking to Schroeder and hired her in June 1933. Schroeder lived at the Wolfsschanze near Rastenburg, Adolf Hitler's World War II Eastern Front military headquarters from 1941 until he and his staff departed for the last time on 20 November 1944; when Hitler withdrew his headquarters to the Führerbunker in Berlin in January 1945, she went with him and his staff. Before late April 1945, Hitler would have lunch with Schroeder and fellow secretary Johanna Wolf. On 20 April 1945, during the Battle of Berlin, Wolf, Albert Bormann, Admiral Karl-Jesko von Puttkamer, Dr. Theodor Morell, Dr. Hugo Blaschke, six stenographers and several others were ordered by Hitler to leave Berlin by aircraft for the Obersalzberg.

The group flew out of Berlin on different flights by aircraft of the Fliegerstaffel des Führers over the following three days. Her account of her service as Hitler's secretary is an important source in the study of the Nazi years, she was arrested on 28 May 1945 in Hintersee near Berchtesgaden. Schroeder was interrogated by the French liaison officer Albert Zoller serving in the 7th US Army, she was released on 12 May 1948. The interrogation and interviews in 1948 formed the basis for the first book published about Hitler after World War II in 1949, Hitler privat. An English translation of Schroeder's book Er war mein Chef was published in 2009 under the title He Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary; the book includes Anton Joachimsthaler's introduction from the original German edition and a new introduction by Roger Moorhouse. The book was serialised in The Sunday Telegraph magazine "Seven", The Week magazine and the New York Post newspaper. After the war Schroeder worked as a secretary for a construction company in Munich.

Schroeder died on 28 June 1984 in Munich aged 76. Traudl Junge Gerda Christian Joachimsthaler, Anton; the Last Days of Hitler: The Legends, The Evidence, The Truth. Brockhampton Press. ISBN 1-86019-902-X. Kershaw, Ian. Hitler: A Biography. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-06757-6. Schroeder, Christa, he Was My Chief: The Memoirs of Adolf Hitler's Secretary. Barnsley, Yorkshire: Frontline. ISBN 978-1-84832-536-4. Schroeder, Christa. Er war mein Chef. Herbig, 2002 Zoller, Albert. Hitler privat

The Economic Cooperation Foundation was founded by Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, former Minister of Justice Dr. Yossi Beilin at the end of 1990 as a non-profit, non-governmental track II think tank, whose objectives are to build and support Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab cooperation in the political and civil society spheres in support of creating a sustainable Permanent Status based on a two-state solution. Based in Tel-Aviv, the ECF is led today by Dr. Hirschfeld, Dr. Beilin and its Treasurer Mr. Boaz Karni. Dr. Nimrod Novik is Chairman of the ECF Executive Board. Over the years, ECF has developed a unique network of intimate relations with all the relevant players – Israel, Egypt, America and others. In turn, this has enabled the ECF to create coalitions, design concepts, suggest creative solutions and build structures that have been translated into agreed-upon agendas and specific proposals. These, in turn, have offered policy makers, local and international players practical tools, mechanisms and means to facilitate progress in practical as well as political issues related to the strengthening of the peace process.

ECF's professional input can be found in every initiative for Palestinian-Israeli peace since the inception of the Oslo Process. The ECF began and led the secret talks in Oslo, Norway that resulted in the signing of the Declaration of Principles in September 1993; the ‘Architects of Oslo’ developed the ‘Beilin–Abu Mazen Understanding’, the first jointly developed detailed concept of a comprehensive Permanent Status Understanding between Israel and a Palestinian State. Though not affiliated, Dr. Yossi Beilin as well as other members of ECF were central to the drafting of the Geneva Accord, the most detailed proposal for a Permanent Status Accord negotiated by those with close relations to both the Israeli and Palestinian political establishments. ECF played a noticeable role in preparing for the Israeli Disengagement Plan from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank in August–September 2005; the best known ECF contribution was in facilitating the successful purchase of the settlers greenhouses, which were be turned over to the Palestinians in order to provide an economic outlet for the struggling Palestinian economy.

Despite the destruction of many of these by Arab groups, these greenhouses have provided a critical employment opportunity for nearly 3000 Palestinians, from the 4000, employed there, serve as a first step in the expansion of the Palestinian agricultural export industry, the most viable economic sector for the Palestinians. Official website

Klaus Siegfried Luft is a German executive and entrepreneur. He is the founder and Chairman of the and known for being a board member of leading technology companies. From March 1986 to November 1989, Klaus Luft was Chief Executive Officer of Nixdorf Computer AG, where he served for more than 17 years in a variety of executive positions in marketing and finance, he served as Board Member of Dell Inc. from March 1995 through October 2013. In 1999, Klaus Luft founded Artedona, an exclusive mail order e-commerce company, offering tableware and home décor products of well-known luxury brands, he is owner and President of Munich-based MATCH — Market Access Services GmbH & Co. KG. From 1990 until 2010, Luft served as Vice Chairman and International Advisor to Goldman Sachs Europe Limited. Luft is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Estonia in the State of Bavaria. In March 2000, Klaus Luft established the Klaus Luft Foundation, which focuses on supporting young students’ causes in education, performing arts, science, as well as contributing to other foundations with the same mission in Germany, India and the United States.

Biography at Dell.com Official Website Interview with Klaus Luft