The thalamus is a large mass of gray matter located in the dorsal part of the diencephalon. Nerve fibers project out of the thalamus to the cerebral cortex in all directions, allowing hub-like exchanges of information, it has several functions, such as relaying of sensory signals, including motor signals to the cerebral cortex, the regulation of consciousness and alertness. Anatomically, it is a midline symmetrical structure of two halves, within the vertebrate brain, situated between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain, it forms during embryonic development as the main product of the diencephalon, as first recognized by the Swiss embryologist and anatomist Wilhelm His Sr. in 1893. The thalamus is a paired structure of gray matter located in the forebrain, superior to the midbrain, near the center of the brain, with nerve fibers projecting out to the cerebral cortex in all directions; the medial surface of the thalamus constitutes the upper part of the lateral wall of the third ventricle, is connected to the corresponding surface of the opposite thalamus by a flattened gray band, the interthalamic adhesion.

The lateral part of the thalamus is the phylogenetically newest part of the thalamus, includes the lateral nuclei, the pulvinar and the medial and lateral geniculate nuclei. There are areas of white matter in the thalamus including the stratum zonale that covers the dorsal surface, the external and internal medullary laminae; the external lamina covers the lateral surface and the internal lamina divides the nuclei into anterior and lateral groups. The thalamus derives its blood supply from a number of arteries: the polar artery, paramedian thalamic-subthalamic arteries, inferolateral arteries, posterior choroidal arteries; these are all branches of the posterior cerebral artery. Some people have the artery of Percheron, a rare anatomic variation in which a single arterial trunk arises from the posterior cerebral artery to supply both parts of the thalamus. and metathalamus. Derivatives of the diencephalon include the dorsally-located epithalamus and the perithalamus containing the zona incerta and the thalamic reticular nucleus.

Due to their different ontogenetic origins, the epithalamus and the perithalamus are formally distinguished from the thalamus proper. The metathalamus is made up of medial geniculate nuclei; the thalamus comprises a system of lamellae separating different thalamic subparts. Other areas are defined by distinct clusters of neurons, such as the periventricular nucleus, the intralaminar elements, the "nucleus limitans", others; these latter structures, different in structure from the major part of the thalamus, have been grouped together into the allothalamus as opposed to the isothalamus. This distinction simplifies the global description of the thalamus; the thalamus has many connections to the hippocampus via the mammillothalamic tract, this tract comprises the mammillary bodies and fornix. The thalamus is connected to the cerebral cortex via the thalamocortical radiations; the spinothalamic tract is a sensory pathway originating in the spinal cord. It transmits information to the thalamus about pain, temperature and crude touch.

There are two main parts: the lateral spinothalamic tract, which transmits pain and temperature, the anterior spinothalamic tract, which transmits crude touch and pressure. The thalamus has multiple functions believed to act as a relay station, or hub, relaying information between different subcortical areas and the cerebral cortex. In particular, every sensory system includes a thalamic nucleus that receives sensory signals and sends them to the associated primary cortical area. For the visual system, for example, inputs from the retina are sent to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus, which in turn projects to the visual cortex in the occipital lobe; the thalamus is believed to both process sensory information as well as relay it—each of the primary sensory relay areas receives strong feedback connections from the cerebral cortex. The medial geniculate nucleus acts as a key auditory relay between the inferior colliculus of the midbrain and the primary auditory cortex; the ventral posterior nucleus is a key somatosensory relay, which sends touch and proprioceptive information to the primary somatosensory cortex.

The thalamus plays an important role in regulating states of sleep and wakefulness. Thalamic nuclei have strong reciprocal connections with the cerebral cortex, forming thalamo-cortico-thalamic circuits that are believed to be involved with consciousness; the thalamus plays a major role in regulating arousal, the level of awareness, activity. Damage to the thalamus can lead to permanent coma; the role of the thalamus in the more anterior pallidal and nigral territories in the basal ganglia system disturbances is recognized but still poorly understood. The contribution of the thalamus to vestibular or to tectal functions is ignored; the thalamus has been thought of as a "relay" that forwards signals to the cerebral cortex. Newer research suggests. Many different functions are linked to various regions of the thalamus; this is the case for many of the sensory systems, such as the auditory, visceral and visual systems where localized lesions provoke specific sensory deficits. A major role of the thalamus is support of motor and language systems, much of the circuitry implica

Grass Wood is an ancient woodland of 88 hectares in Wharfedale, North Yorkshire, that has an exceptional ground flora of woodland wildflowers. The area was notified as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1955 for upland broadleaved woodland; the site is listed in A Nature Conservation Review under the entry for "Conistone Old Pasture and Bastow Wood". The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust completed the purchase of the site in 1983 and manages it as a nature reserve; the whole of the area of the SSSI is registered common land. Two adjacent sites Bastow Wood and Conistone Old Pasture are notified as SSSIs, the former for broadleaved woodland and calcareous grassland, the latter for calcareous grassland and limestone pavement. Grass Wood is the last surviving native site in Britain for the Lady's Slipper Orchid. Grass Wood is on the west and south-facing slopes of a Carboniferous Limestone spur in Upper Wharfedale, to the south of Conistone Moor. Rock outcrops and limestone pavement areas occur throughout the wood, along with two significant scar precipices.

The original woodland would have been ash Fraxinus excelsior dominating over the limestone soils, with Wych elm Ulmus glabra and oak Quercus petraea and with an understorey of hazel Corylus avellana. Felling and replanting has altered the dominant woodland structure, extensively modifying its composition and making it a less natural woodland than the adjacent Bastow Wood. During the 19th century the lower slopes were interplanted with beech Fagus sylvatica and sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus, in the 1960s the north-eastern part of the site was replanted with Norway spruce, European larch, Scots pine and beech. A management objective now is to remove areas of non-native tree species and replant with broadleaves from local seed sources; as well as these areas cleared through selective felling, many areas of the woodland have the appearance of an early successional stage of advance natural regeneration through saplings of ash and sycamore, this enclosed within a variable canopy of ash, beech and with some birch.

Shrubs and small trees in the understorey include bird cherry Prunus padus, spindle Euonymus europaeus, buckthorn Rhamnus cathartica, wild privet Ligustrum vulgare, blackthorn Prunus spinosa and guelder-rose Viburnum opulus. The underlying geology ensures that most of the site is well drained, favouring lime-loving plants – the calcicoles. There are, localised areas with poorer drainage and in which some lime-hating plants can be found – the calcifuges - such as bracken Pteridium aquilinum, as well as plants associated with water-logged conditions such as common valerian Valeriana officinalis and wild angelica Angelica sylvestris; the floristic interest of Grass Wood is described and explained in a book by Sylvia Arnold on the wildflowers of the Yorkshire Dales, there is a description of a wildflower walk that points out the location of particular wildflowers as the walk progresses around and through the wood. The woodland is served by one public footpath, as a registered commons is open access within its boundaries.

There is however an extensive network of paths. It is a popular location for dog walkers, which limits the chance of seeing the local roe deer feeding in the woodland. An extensive remnant upland woodland area of this size is uncommon on limestone in the Yorkshire Dales, hence the notification of Grass Wood as a SSSI; the woodland element is unsettled and is atypical of its location—Bastow Wood is more settled since it has not been replanted - but the rich ground flora of Grass Wood is characteristic of an ancient woodland on limestone. This floristic value owes its continuing existence to the continuity of the woodland cover, which gives it recognition as ancient woodland, but because of the lack of sheep grazing in the wood that has evidently in the past cleared through the woodland ground flora of the adjacent Bastow Wood. There is a good variety of vascular plants that are considered to be indicators of undisturbed, ancient woodland; these include Herb Paris, Lily-of-the-valley, Wood Sorrel, Wood Anemone (, Dog's Mercury and Wood-sedge.

There is an extraordinary range of geophytes, the plants that have bulbs or bulbous growths that make them adapted to woodland. These include the ancient woodland indicators of lily-of-the-valley, herb paris and ramsons, but the uncommon in angular Solomon'-seal as well as the common in bluebells and lord-and-ladies; the one patch of Solomon's-seal is considered to be of garden origin. Early-purple Orchid, another geophyte, is found under the lighter shade of sparser woodland cover in Grass Wood; this shows its ability to occupy a range of habitat since it is more associated with open grassland, can be seen in profusion in the nearby Conistone Old Pasture. The conditions in Grass Wood would seem ideal for a rare and endangered orchid, the Lady's-slipper, known to have grown in the limestone area of the Yorkshire Dales, it is found in continental Europe growing in the decomposed humus of semi-shaded woodland cover on limestone. While the virtual extinction of the Lady's-slipper orchid from its historical range is blamed on uprooting by gardeners and botanists, it is the case that its preferred habitat shrunk markedly with human clearance of woodland from the limestone landscape, the grazing of sheep will have fin

Jason C. Ruff is a former professional ice hockey player. Ruff was the third choice, 96th overall selection of the St. Louis Blues in the 1990 NHL Entry Draft; the following year he was part of the WHL East First All-Star Team. Ruff is a graduate of the Western Hockey League, where he spent four seasons as a member of the Lethbridge Hurricanes before joining the NHL with St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning. Ruff has played for the Belfast Giants since the 2001–2002 season, with one year sojourns to Ingolstadt in the DEL and Kansas City Outlaws, he was captain of the Giants in 2003–2004 and in the 2006–2007 season he was a Player/Assistant Coach. Ruff retired from professional ice hockey and returned to Canada in 2007 to become Assistant Coach of the Lethbridge Hurricanes of the Western Hockey League. Biographical information and career statistics from Eurohockey.com, or Hockey-Reference.com, or Legends of Hockey, or The Internet Hockey Database

Sones GraphDB was a graph database developed by the German company sones GmbH, available from 2010 to 2012. Its last version was released in May 2011. Sones GmbH, based in Erfurt and Leipzig, was declared bankrupt on January 1, 2012. GraphDB was unique in; the open source edition was released in July 2010. The commercially available enterprise version offered a wider variety of functions. GraphDB ran on Microsoft's. NET Framework and on the open source reimplementation Mono. GraphDB was available as software as a service on the Microsoft cloud Azure Services Platform. GraphDB was a component of an open source solution stack. In 2014 the trademark "GraphDB" was acquired by Ontotext. OWLIM, Ontotext's graph database and RDF triplestore, was renamed GraphDB. GraphDB had index-free adjacency, which meant that it not necessary to manage a global index for relationships between nodes/entities; the linked objects contained direct reference to their adjacent neighboring nodes. The sones graph database was able to store and retrieve unstructured properties in any node of the graph.

The idea was to transfer unstructured data to structured data and vice versa. Structured data could be dynamically extended with high performance in nodes and edges during runtime. Additional properties could be entered or deleted from vertex types in a short amount of time. GraphDB used its own query language, GraphQL, similar to SQL, it could be dynamically extended during runtime using plugins such as aggregates. GraphDB used an object-oriented concept, which enabled better integration into object-oriented programming languages. In addition to providing a number of interfaces the sones graph database offers a REST API; this enables simpler interaction with state-of-the-art web technologies. A REST-query is all, needed to execute CRUD operations directly on the database; the Traverser API makes it possible to analyze local data. Based on a number of nodes, neighboring nodes can be searched recursively. GraphDB has a modular structure consisting of 4 application layers; the storage engines act as the interface to different storage media.

The GraphFS operates the available storage engines. The actual graph-oriented database logic as well as all functionalities specific to the database are implemented in the GraphDB; the GraphDS provides the interface for using the database. The interfaces between the application layers are generic, which makes it possible to update components separately. Graph databases Graph theory Glossary of graph theory Download of community edition 2.1 German Interview with Alexander Oelling on RadioTUX Presentation on the GraphDB at the 2010 NoSQL conference in Frankfurt Sones at TechCrunch

Paul Gregory Bardacke is the former Attorney General of New Mexico, having served from 1983-1986. Mr. Bardacke attended the University of California at Santa Barbara and University of California at Berkeley. Paul Bardacke is an attorney who has practiced law in the public and private sectors for over 40 years, his current practice focuses on mediation and arbitration, Paul has mediated over 1000 cases in the past 18 years and has tried over 25 jury trials as first chair in the areas of commercial, natural resources and environmental law. He is a founding member of the bipartisan think tank Think New Mexico. Paul served as Chairman of Governor Bill Richardson's successful gubernatorial campaigns in 2002. In 2005, he served as a member of a small US delegation to North Korea to negotiate civil rights issues. In 2010 he was appointed by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to the National Park Service Advisory Board for a three year term. Bardacke has been the recipient of the Reginald Heber Smith Fellowship, an instructor in Evidence and Trial Practice at the University of New Mexico Law School, adjunct faculty member of the National Institute of Trial Advocacy, Attorney General of the State of New Mexico, Special U.

S. Attorney for District of New Mexico and Special Counsel to State of New Mexico on Windfall Profits Tax Litigation

Indicates Void is the fifth studio album released by British musician and producer Steven Wilson under the pseudonym Bass Communion, was limited to 300 12-inch LP copies in handmade sleeves, 100 copies in a silver sleeve, 100 copies in a gold sleeve, 100 copies as part of a box set of the first 3 "C" releases. The album consists of Steven Wilson's 2005 recordings based on one instrument source each, except for track 4, recorded with Theo Travis in 1998. All songs by Steven Wilson except track 4 by Steven Wilson and Theo Travis Guitar - 10:27 Clarinet - 7:48 Voice / Musical box - 10:49 Piano / Soprano saxophone - 8:52 Bass Communion Site at Steven Wilson Headquarters