Tigris and Euphrates is a tabletop eurogame designed by Reiner Knizia and first published in 1997 by Hans im Glück. Before its publication, it was anticipated by German gamers hearing rumors of a "gamer's game" designed by Knizia. Tigris and Euphrates won first prize in the 1998 Deutscher Spielepreis. A card game version was released in 2005; the game is set as a clash between neighboring dynasties at the dawn of civilization and is named after the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, in the region now called the Middle East. The rivers together formed natural borders for an area which harboured several grand ancient civilizations, including Sumer and Assyria; the Greeks called this area Mesopotamia, which means "between the rivers". The game can be played by three, or four people. Play offers both strategic objectives; as with many games, short-term objectives gain prominence when more players participate, as players have fewer chances to follow up on previous moves. Luck plays a role, as players draw tiles from a bag, but it is decisive.
Players may selectively discard and redraw their tiles at the cost of one "action point", of which each player has two per turn. The game does not use dice; the board is a map of the two rivers, marked with a square grid. There are four types of tiles with corresponding leaders: temples and priests and farmers, markets and merchants, settlements and kings; the game starts with ten isolated temple tiles placed on the board. Players play tiles and leaders onto the board and expanding regions and kingdoms. Monuments may be built on the board when four tiles of the same color are played into a square pattern. Two leaders of the same type cannot coexist in the same kingdom. Internal conflicts are caused by players adding a second leader of a type to a kingdom. External conflicts are caused by players playing tiles to merge two existing kingdoms. During the game, players collect points in each of the four colors as a result of playing tiles, resolving conflicts and controlling monuments. After the final round each player sorts his or her points by color, including any "treasures" which they have acquired, which count as any color the player wishes.
In order to limit specialization the player with the most points in their weakest category wins. For example: Alice has 6 black, 8 red, 12 green, 12 blue points. Bob has 9 black, 10 red, 7 green, 15 blue points. Charlie has 14 black, 14 red, 5 green, 20 blue points. Players must avoid overspecializing. Knizia used this mechanism as the basis for Ingenious. Thomas Lehmann comments: "If you are looking for a tactically rich, intense strategy game with lots of conflict, try Tigris & Euphrates and see why so many players consider this game Reiner Knizia's masterpiece." Tigris and Euphrates and the card game version at BoardGameGeek
In mathematics, the Freidlin–Wentzell theorem is a result in the large deviations theory of stochastic processes. Speaking, the Freidlin–Wentzell theorem gives an estimate for the probability that a sample path of an Itō diffusion will stray far from the mean path; this statement is made precise using rate functions. The Freidlin–Wentzell theorem generalizes Schilder's theorem for standard Brownian motion. Let B be a standard Brownian motion on Rd starting at the origin, 0 ∈ Rd, let Xε be an Rd-valued Itō diffusion solving an Itō stochastic differential equation of the form { d X t ε = b d t + ε d B t, X 0 ε = 0, where the drift vector field b: Rd → Rd is uniformly Lipschitz continuous. On the Banach space C0 = C0 equipped with the supremum norm ||·||∞, the family of processes ε>0 satisfies the large deviations principle with good rate function I: C0 → R ∪ given by I = 1 2 ∫ 0 T | ω ˙ t − b | 2 d t if ω lies in the Sobolev space H1, I = +∞ otherwise. In other words, for every open set G ⊆ C0 and every closed set F ⊆ C0, lim sup ε ↓ 0 ≤ − inf ω ∈ F I and lim inf ε ↓ 0 ≥ − inf ω ∈ G I.
Freidlin, Mark I.. Random perturbations of dynamical systems. Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften 260. New York: Springer-Verlag. Pp. xii+430. ISBN 0-387-98362-7. MR1652127 Dembo, Amir. Large deviations techniques and applications. Applications of Mathematics 38. New York: Springer-Verlag. Pp. xvi+396. ISBN 0-387-98406-2. MR1619036
WNBA Top 20@20 are the Women's National Basketball Association's Top 20 Players of All Time, chosen in 2016 on the occasion of the twentieth season of the WNBA from amongst 60 nominees compiled by the league. The group was to comprise the 20 best and most influential players of the first twenty years of the WNBA, with consideration accorded to sportsmanship, community service and contribution to the growth of women's basketball; the Top 20 players were announced on June 2016 at ESPN's SportsCenter. Dawn Staley was the only member of both the WNBA's All-Decade Team and the WNBA's Top 15 Players of All Time absent from the Top 20 list. Note: all information only pertains to the first twenty years of the league's existence; the inaugural WNBA All-Star Game took place during the 1999 season, the game has been contested yearly since, although the 2004 edition was supplanted by a game between WNBA players from both conferences and the 2004 United States Olympic team and the 2010 edition was a game between WNBA players from both conferences and the USA National Team.
For the purposes of this article, appearances in the 2004 and 2010 games for both participating teams are considered All-Star appearances. This differs from the WNBA's practice, which does not count Team USA players in 2004 and 2010 as All-Stars though all members of Team USA except for Maya Moore in 2010 were WNBA players at the time of the two games. From 2008 to the present, no All-Star Game has been held in any Summer Olympic year. Players who were voted to start in all-star games but were unable to play due to injury are considered to have been starters. 1 Still active at time of Top 20 Team announcement.2 Was in both the All-Decade and Top 15 teams.3All-Decade honorable mention, Top 15 nominee.4Nominated for both All-Decade and Top 15 teams.5All-Decade nominee.6Top 15 nominee.7Deceased. Official announcement on WNBA.com
Stanislav Vasilyevich Kurilov was a Soviet and Israeli oceanographer. He escaped from the Soviet Union by jumping overboard from a cruise liner in the open ocean, swimming to the Philippines. Stanislav Kurilov was born in 1936 in Vladikavkaz, he grew up in Soviet Kazakhstan. As a young child, he learned to swim in secret from his own parents, at the age of 10, on a dare, he swam across the Irtysh. Many years in one of his stories, he described the negative environmental and public health effects of the nuclear test site, constructed near the city during his teenage years. From his early years, Kurilov dreamed of a life of sailing the seas. However, doctors told him that due to a vision problem he would not be eligible for either a Soviet Navy or merchant marine career. After doing his military service, as a chemical warfare instructor of a sapper battalion, he graduated from the Leningrad Meteorology Institute as an oceanographer. While a student, he learned scuba diving, he became interested in yoga and meditation.
Kurilov worked at the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences, at the Marine Biology Institute in Vladivostok. Though the Soviet Union operated a large number of research vessels on a worldwide scale, the authorities decided that Kurilov was not eligible for any overseas expeditions, either because of him learning about chemical warfare during his military service, because his father had been a prisoner of war during World War II, or because of Kurilov's "foreign connection": his sister had married an Indian citizen and immigrated to India, to Canada. Kurilov's field work, was restricted to the Soviet Union's coastal waters, such as the Black Sea and Sea of Japan. In particular, he worked at Soviet underwater research stations in the Black Sea. Kurilov came to resent the Soviet state more when, starting in 1970, two of his team's joint underwater projects with Jacques-Yves Cousteau fell through one after the other, because he was refused a passport. Instead, the Soviets sent another group, "without diving experience, but with visas", with whom Cousteau refused to work.
In December 1974, Kurilov boarded Soviet cruise liner Sovetsky Soyuz, leaving for a tour advertised as a "Cruise from the winter into the summer". It was a popular "cruise to nowhere", where a ship would depart Vladivostok, sail toward the equator, come back without entering any foreign ports; because of the absence of port calls, the trip visas. It was known that the ship would pass within view of several foreign countries, after studying its planned route, Kurilov decided that the best chance for an escape would be in the Philippine Sea, off the coast of Siargao Island. After sunset on December 13, in a stormy weather, Kurilov jumped overboard from the stern of the cruise ship, with a snorkeling mask and fins. Luckily, he was neither noticed by the crew, nor struck by the ship's propeller. However, because of the strong currents, it two days to reach the land. In his own memoir, he recalls reaching the Philippine shore by swimming all the way. Kurilov spent over 10 years in Canada. Although not Jewish, in 1986 he moved to Israel, where he married an Israeli citizen and became employed at the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institute in Haifa.
He wrote the story of his escape, as well as a number of other stories. Stanislav Kurilov died in a diving accident on Lake Kinneret, he was buried in the Alliance Church International Cemetery in Jerusalem's German Colony neighborhood. Although Stanislav Kurilov's method of escape is remarkable, it is not unique. In his study of defections from the Soviet Union, Vladislav Krasnov mentions at least two other similar escapes from a Soviet cruise ship on a "cruise to nowhere" in Southeast Asia. An unnamed member of the biology faculty at Moscow University, 26 at the time, escaped from another Soviet cruise liner off the Philippines, in a rubber raft, he was picked by Filipino fishermen. Yuri Vetokhin, a former computer programmer from Leningrad, escaped in a similar way to Indonesia in December 1979, he gave an account of his escape in his memoir. In 2017 the Ukrainian music band Antytila published a music video of the song TDME dedicated to Kurilov. Slava Kurilov: Alone at Sea. An Unbelievable Way to Escape the Iron Curtain
Calf Island, between 27.5-acre and 31.5-acre island about 3,000 feet from the Byram shore of Greenwich, Connecticut in Long Island Sound. It is connected at low tide to the Greenwich Land Trust's Shell Island; the size of the island is a best estimate. The island is the largest one in Greenwich waters. More than half of the island is a bird sanctuary off-limits to members of the public without permission to visit; the island is available for overnight stays for those with permits, otherwise the east side is open from dawn till dusk. The island is home to cowbirds, yellow warblers, catbirds, diamondback terrapins, great blue herons and canada geese. Great and snowy egrets can be seen there. Sassafras, hickory and beech trees, along with oriental bittersweet and multiflora roses, grow there; the Boys and Girls Club of Greenwich, Audubon Greenwich, SoundWaters, church groups and high school athletic teams all have scheduled trips to the island. In 2006, the Greenwich parks department scheduled four of its "Cruise to Nowhere" trips to the island.
When the federal government bought the island in 2003, it joined the Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge, a collection of federally owned islands along 70 miles of Connecticut coastline from Greenwich to Westbrook; the Calf Island Community Trust, Inc. opposed the transfer of the island from the Greenwich Family YMCA to the federal government, in part because a permit would be required for some activities on the island. Calf Island Conservation, Inc. a volunteer group, helps improve the island. The group spent $65,000 on the island in 2005 and 2006. Upgrades of bathrooms, buildings and docking facilities are planned. President: Paul Barbian Secretary Treasurer: Franklin Bloomer Directors: Lloyd Bankson, Paul Barbian, Franklin Bloomer, Anthony Carvette, Nancy Dickinson, George Friend, Alan Gilbert, Lucy Guillet, Lisette Henrey, Rosemary Loudin Advisory: Sue H. Baker Ex Officio: Denise Savageau, Craig Whitcomb U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service Web page on Stewart B. McKinney National Wildlife Refuge http://www.calfisland.org/ http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2006/06/05/1/?nc=1 http://www.topix.com/forum/city/rye-brook-ny/THC6E58JV19QGS93Q
Craig Ronaldson is a rugby union player from Ireland. His primary position is at fly half, though he plays as a centre. Ronaldson most played professionally for Irish provincial side Connacht in the Pro14, where he spent six seasons from 2013 to 2019. Before joining Connacht, Ronaldson played amateur rugby in the All-Ireland League, he played with Lansdowne, in the 2012–13 season was the league's top scorer. He kicked 206 points in 16 games. Born in Kildare, Ronaldson came from a rugby playing family, with his father Tim having played for Leinster at Junior level, his grandfather, Bill Tector, being an Ireland international. Ronaldson's first club in the sport was Naas. In addition to rugby, Ronaldson has played cricket, he lined out for Halverstown Cricket Club, where his father has served as a chairman. Ronaldson attended Kilkenny College, he was part of the team that beat Blackrock College in the 2007 Leinster Senior Cup quarter-finals in a shocking upset. The following year saw. After finishing secondary school, Ronaldson studied Sports Management at University College Dublin.
When he moved to Dublin to attend university, Ronaldson joined city club Lansdowne in the All-Ireland League, the country's top level amateur competition. After graduating university, he remained with Lansdowne and began working at Wesley College as a housemaster and PE teacher, his performances with Lansdowne saw him included in Leinster development squads, he was called up to the Ireland Clubs side. In the 2012–13 season, Ronaldson was the league's top scorer, helping Lansdowne to reach the Division 1A decider, he was prominent in the final, as Lansdowne beat Clontarf 32–27 to claim their first title. In total, Ronaldson scored 206 points in 16 games, his contributions to the team's victory saw. Ronaldson's form in Lansdowne's title-winning season earned him a move to Connacht, he signed a one-year contract with the province in 2013, his first competitive game for Connacht was in the first round of the Pro12, as he came on as a substitute in a 25–16 win over Zebre. His first start for the province came against the Ospreys on 28 September 2013.
Ronaldson kicked 4 out of his 5 penalties in a 26-43 defeat. Ronaldson made his Heineken Cup debut against Saracens, playing at inside centre as Connacht came close to an upset before losing 17–23. Injuries saw his number of appearances trail off as the season went on, but Ronaldson played a total of 14 times in his first year, scoring 38 points. In November 2013, it was announced that he had signed an extension to his contract, keeping him with Connacht until 2016. Ronaldson continued playing in his second season, featuring at out-half. An injury against Munster in January 2015 disrupted his season, but he made a total of 12 appearances in the league and five in the Challenge Cup. In the 2015–16 season Ronaldson continued to appear primarily playing as an inside centre alongside Bundee Aki, he was named the team's Player of the Month for November 2015 in recognition of these performances. Ronaldson suffered a knee injury in the end-of-season run in as Connacht chased a place in the knockout stages of the league.
He missed out on playing in the team's Pro12 triumph, making a total of 20 appearances in the season. In April 2016, it was announced that Ronaldson had signed a further extension to his deal, taking him through to summer 2018. Ronaldson made his first appearance of the 2016–17 season against Ulster in October 2016, after 6 months out injured and was a starter for the team at inside centre for the next two months, he was injured again in late November however, didn't return until mid-January. After returning from injury Ronaldson was a mainstay in the side for the remainder of the season, made a total of 17 appearances in all competitions for 2016–17, scoring 100 points in the process; the form of Tom Farrell at centre in the 2017–18 season saw Ronaldson used more as a replacement than in previous seasons, he returned to playing at fly-half as cover for Jack Carty. Of his 17 appearances in all competitions, 11 came from the bench. In March 2018, it was announced. Ronaldson suffered a serious injury early in the 2018–19 season, subsequently missed the remainder of the season.
He left the province at the end of the season. In total, Ronaldson scored 368 points in 89 competitive games for Connacht across his six seasons with the team. Connacht profile EPCR profile Pro14 profile