A tunnel boring machine known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They may be used for microtunneling, they can be designed to bore through anything from hard rock to sand. Tunnel diameters can range from one metre to 17.6 metres to date. Tunnels of less than a metre or so in diameter are done using trenchless construction methods or horizontal directional drilling rather than TBMs. TBMs can be designed to excavate non-circular tunnels, including u-shaped/horseshoe and square or rectangular tunnels. Tunnel boring machines are used as an alternative to drilling and blasting methods in rock and conventional "hand mining" in soil. TBMs have the advantages of limiting the disturbance to the surrounding ground and producing a smooth tunnel wall; this reduces the cost of lining the tunnel, makes them suitable to use in urbanized areas. The major disadvantage is the upfront cost. TBMs are expensive to construct, can be difficult to transport.

The longer the tunnel, the less the relative cost of tunnel boring machines versus drill and blast methods. This is because tunneling with TBMs is much more efficient and results in shortened completion times, assuming they operate successfully. Drilling and blasting however remains the preferred method when working through fractured and sheared rock layers; the first successful tunnelling shield was developed by Sir Marc Isambard Brunel to excavate the Thames Tunnel in 1825. However, this was only the invention of the shield concept and did not involve the construction of a complete tunnel boring machine, the digging still having to be accomplished by the standard excavation methods; the first boring machine reported to have been built was Henri-Joseph Maus's Mountain Slicer. Commissioned by the King of Sardinia in 1845 to dig the Fréjus Rail Tunnel between France and Italy through the Alps, Maus had it built in 1846 in an arms factory near Turin, it consisted of more than 100 percussion drills mounted in the front of a locomotive-sized machine, mechanically power-driven from the entrance of the tunnel.

The Revolutions of 1848 affected the funding, the tunnel was not completed until 10 years by using less innovative and less expensive methods such as pneumatic drills. In the United States, the first boring machine to have been built was used in 1853 during the construction of the Hoosac Tunnel in northwest Massachusetts. Made of cast iron, it was known as Wilson's Patented Stone-Cutting Machine, after inventor Charles Wilson, it drilled 10 feet into the rock before breaking down. Wilson's machine anticipated modern TBMs in the sense that it employed cutting discs, like those of a disc harrow, which were attached to the rotating head of the machine. In contrast to traditional chiseling or drilling and blasting, this innovative method of removing rock relied on simple metal wheels to apply a transient high pressure that fractured the rock. In 1853, the American Ebenezer Talbot patented a TBM that employed Wilson's cutting discs, although they were mounted on rotating arms, which in turn were mounted on a rotating plate.

In the 1870s, John D. Brunton of England built a machine employing cutting discs that were mounted eccentrically on rotating plates, which in turn were mounted eccentrically on a rotating plate, so that the cutting discs would travel over all of the rock face, to be removed; the first TBM that tunneled a substantial distance was invented in 1863 and improved in 1875 by British Army officer Major Frederick Edward Blackett Beaumont. In 1875, the French National Assembly approved the construction of a tunnel under the English Channel and the British Parliament allowed a trial run to be made; the cutting head of English's TBM consisted of a conical drill bit behind which were a pair of opposing arms on which were mounted cutting discs. From June 1882 to March 1883, the machine tunneled, through chalk, a total of 6,036 feet. A French engineer, Alexandre Lavalley, a Suez Canal contractor, used a similar machine to drill 1,669 m from Sangatte on the French side. However, despite this success, the cross-Channel tunnel project was abandoned in 1883 after the British military raised fears that the tunnel might be used as an invasion route.

In 1883, this TBM was used to bore a railway ventilation tunnel — 7 feet in diameter and 6,750 feet long — between Birkenhead and Liverpool, through sandstone under the Mersey River. During the late 19th and early 20th century, inventors continued to design and test TBMs in response to the need for tunnels for railroads, sewers, water supplies, etc. TBMs employing rotating arrays of drills or hammers were patented. TBMs that resembled giant hole saws were proposed. Other TBMs consisted of a rotating drum with metal tines on its outer surface, or a rotating circular plate covered with teeth, or revolving belts covered with metal teeth. However, all of these TBMs proved expensive and unable to excavate hard rock. TBM development continued in potash and coal mines, where the rock was softer. A TBM with a bore diameter of 14.4 m was manufactured by The Robbins Company for Canada's Niagara Tunnel Project. The machine was used to bore a hydroelectric tunnel beneath Niagara Falls; the machine was named "Big Becky" in reference to

Elem Germanovich Klimov was a Soviet Russian film director. He studied at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, was married to film director Larisa Shepitko. Klimov is best known in the West for his final film, 1985's Come and See, which follows a teenage boy in German-occupied Byelorussia during the Great Patriotic War and is considered one of the greatest war films made, he directed dark comedies, children's movies, historical pictures. Elem Klimov was born in Stalingrad into a Russian family of German Stepanovich Klimov, an investigator who worked at the Central Control Commission of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Kaleria Georgievna Klimova, his parents were staunch communists and his first name was an acronym derived from the names of Engels and Marx. His brother German Klimov stated that his name comes from Elam Harnish — a character of the Burning Daylight novel by Jack London, since their mother was a fan of his. During the Battle of Stalingrad, he, his mother and his baby brother were evacuated from their home and crossed the Volga on a makeshift raft.

Klimov would draw on these experiences for his 1985 film Come and See. In 1957, Klimov graduated from the Higher Institute of Aviation in Moscow, he considered a career in journalism before settling on cinema. He enrolled at the state film school, the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, where he studied under acclaimed director Efim Dzigan. While a student at the institute, Klimov met Larisa Shepitko, whom he would marry. In 1983, he was a member of the jury at the 33rd Berlin International Film Festival, he died in October 2003 from brain hypoxia after six weeks in a coma. He was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery. Klimov's first feature film, the 1964 Welcome, or No Trespassing was a satire on Soviet bureaucracy in the guise of a children's summer camp adventure story; the film was banned, having been deemed an insult to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Klimov's second film, Adventures of a Dentist, was a dark comedy about a dentist, derided by his colleagues for his natural talent of painlessly pulling out teeth.

The implication, that society ostracizes those that are gifted, horrified the censors who told Klimov to change it. When Klimov refused, the film was given the lowest classification, "category three", which meant that it was shown in only 25–78 movie theatres. Next, Klimov began making a film about Grigori Rasputin called Agony; the road to screening took him many rewrites. Although finished in 1975, the final edit was not released in the USSR until 1985, due to suppressive measures because of its orgy scenes and because of its nuanced portrait of Emperor Nicholas II, it had been shown in western Europe a few years before. In 1976, Klimov finished a film begun by his teacher Mikhail Romm before the latter's death called And Still I Believe.... In 1979, Klimov's wife Larisa Shepitko died in a car accident while directing an ecological fable based on a famous novel by Valentin Rasputin called Farewell to Matyora. A year after her death Klimov filmed a 25-minute tribute to his wife entitled "Larisa" went on to finish the film she had started.

Despite being shelved for two years after completion, Farewell was still released in 1983. His wife's death had a profound impact on Klimo. All his subsequent films were tragedies, his next film and See, was released in 1985 to worldwide acclaim and won the Golden Prize at the 14th Moscow International Film Festival. The film depicts the experiences of a 15-year-old boy joining the resistance in German-occupied Byelorussia in 1943. Speaking of how the film drew on his own childhood experience of the war, Klimov said, "As a young boy, I had been in hell... Had I included everything I knew and shown the whole truth I could not have watched it."In 1986, fresh from the success of Come and See, with the changes brought by perestroika in the air, Klimov was chosen by his colleagues to be the First Secretary of the Filmmakers' Union following the V Congress of the Soviet Filmmakers. During the congress all previous heads of the Filmmakers' Union — including Lev Kulidzhanov, Sergei Bondarchuk, Stanislav Rostotsky and others — were overthrown in favour of "liberal" activists.

According to some critics and filmmakers, the congress was conducted by Alexander Yakovlev, one of the grey cardinals of Perestroika, unofficially presented there, consulting the activists from time to time. Klimov's leadership saw the belated release of many of the banned films and the reinstatement of several directors who had fallen out of political favour; this period is considered as the start of decline of Soviet cinema and the rise of the so-called "chernukha", namely artists and journalists, freed by Glasnost, exposed Soviet reality in the most pessimistic possible light. Klimov was still frustrated by the obstacles that still remained in his way and gave up his post in 1988 to Andrei Smirnov, saying that he wanted to make films again. Klimov completed no more films after See. In 2000, he declared, "I've lost interest in making films. Everything, possible I felt I had done." Beware: Vulgarity "The Groom" Look, the Sky! Welcome, or No Trespassing Adventures of a Dentist Fitil Sport, Sport "'Larisa" Agony Farewell Come and Se

Caladenia hillmanii known as purple-heart fingers, is a plant in the orchid family Orchidaceae and is endemic to New South Wales. It is a ground orchid with a single leaf and one or two bright pink flowers with a reddish-purple labellum with darker bars. Caladenia hillmanii is a terrestrial, deciduous, herb with an underground tuber and a single, sparsely hairy, dark green linear leaf, 60–120 mm long and 3–4 mm wide. One or two bright pink flowers about 25 mm across are borne on a spike 150–250 mm tall; the backs of the sepals and petals are greenish and densely covered with brownish glands. The dorsal sepal is linear to lance-shaped, 13 -- 18 mm long and 2 -- 3.5 mm wide. The lateral sepals and petals are 12–20 mm long, 3–6 mm wide, lance-shaped and sickle-shaped; the labellum is egg-shaped, 6–8 mm long, 8–10 mm wide with the sides turned up and the tip rolled under. It is dark reddish-pink to reddish-purple, with darker, narrow red stripes and two rows of yellow calli along its mid-line; the tip of the labellum is bright yellow with two dark yellow blunt teeth.

Flowering occurs in October. Caladenia hillmanii was first formally described in 1994 by David Jones and the description was published in Muelleria from a specimen collected at Shoal Bay; the specific epithet honours George Hillman of Nelson Bay. Purple-heart fingers grows in coastal forest in sandy soil from Nelson Bay to Ulladulla