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A currency (from Middle English: curraunt, "in circulation", from Latin: currens, -entis) in the most specific use of the word refers to money in any form when in actual use or circulation as a medium of exchange, especially circulating banknotes and coins. A more general definition is that a currency is a system of money (monetary units) in common use, especially in a nation. Under this definition, US dollars, British pounds, Australian dollars, and European euros are examples of currency. These various currencies are recognized stores of value and are traded between nations in foreign exchange markets, which determine the relative values of the different currencies. Currencies in this sense are defined by governments, and each type has limited boundaries of acceptance.
- Early currency
- Coinage
- Paper money
- Banknote era
- Modern currencies
- Alternative currencies
- Control and production
- Currency convertibility
- Local currencies
- List of Major World Payments Currencies
- Proposed currencies
- References
Other definitions of the term "currency" are discussed in their respective synonymous articles banknote, coin, and money. The latter definition, pertaining to the currency systems of nations, is the topic of this article. Currencies can be classified into two monetary systems: fiat money and commodity money, depending on what guarantees the value (the economy at large vs. the government's physical metal reserves). Some currencies are legal tender in certain political jurisdictions, which means they cannot be refused as payment for debt. Others are simply traded for their economic value. Digital currency has arisen with the popularity of computers and the Internet.
Early currency
Currency evolved from two basic innovations, both of which had occurred by 2000 BC. Originally money was a form of receipt, representing grain stored in temple granaries in Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, then Ancient Egypt.
In this first stage of currency, metals were used as symbols to represent value stored in the form of commodities. This formed the basis of trade in the Fertile Crescent for over 1500 years. However, the collapse of the Near Eastern trading system pointed to a flaw: in an era where there was no place that was safe to store value, the value of a circulating medium could only be as sound as the forces that defended that store. Trade could only reach as far as the credibility of that military. By the late Bronze Age, however, a series of treaties had established safe passage for merchants around the Eastern Mediterranean, spreading from Minoan Crete and Mycenae in the northwest to Elam and Bahrain in the southeast. It is not known what was used as a currency for these exchanges, but it is thought that ox-hide shaped ingots of copper, produced in Cyprus, may have functioned as a currency.
It is thought that the increase in piracy and raiding associated with the Bronze Age collapse, possibly produced by the Peoples of the Sea, brought the trading system of oxhide ingots to an end. It was only with the recovery of Phoenician trade in the 10th and 9th centuries BC that saw a return to prosperity, and the appearance of real coinage, possibly first in Anatolia with Croesus of Lydia and subsequently with the Greeks and Persians. In Africa, many forms of value store have been used, including beads, ingots, ivory, various forms of weapons, livestock, the manilla currency, and ochre and other earth oxides. The manilla rings of West Africa were one of the currencies used from the 15th century onwards to sell slaves. African currency is still notable for its variety, and in many places various forms of barter still apply.
These factors led to the metal itself being the store of value: first silver, then both silver and gold, and at one point also bronze. Now we have copper coins and other non-precious metals as coins. Metals were mined, weighed, and stamped into coins. This was to assure the individual taking the coin that he was getting a certain known weight of precious metal. Coins could be counterfeited, but they also created a new unit of account, which helped lead to banking. Archimedes' principle provided the next link: coins could now be easily tested for their fine weight of metal, and thus the value of a coin could be determined, even if it had been shaved, debased or otherwise tampered with (see Numismatics).
Most major economies using coinage had three tiers of coins: copper, silver and gold. Gold coins were used for large purchases, payment of the military and backing of state activities. Silver coins were used for midsized transactions, and as a unit of account for taxes, dues, contracts and fealty, while copper coins were used for everyday transactions. This system had been used in ancient India since the time of the Mahajanapadas. In Europe, this system worked through the medieval period because there was virtually no new gold, silver or copper introduced through mining or conquest. Thus the overall ratios of the three coinages remained roughly equivalent.
Paper money
In premodern China, the need for credit and for a medium of exchange that was less physically cumbersome than large numbers of copper coins led to the introduction of paper money, i.e. banknotes. Their introduction was a gradual process which lasted from the late Tang dynasty (618–907) into the Song dynasty (960–1279). It began as a means for merchants to exchange heavy coinage for receipts of deposit issued as promissory notes by wholesalers' shops. These notes were valid for temporary use in a small regional territory. In the 10th century, the Song dynasty government began to circulate these notes amongst the traders in its monopolized salt industry. The Song government granted several shops the right to issue banknotes, and in the early 12th century the government finally took over these shops to produce state-issued currency. Yet the banknotes issued were still only locally and temporarily valid: it was not until the mid 13th century that a standard and uniform government issue of paper money became an acceptable nationwide currency. The already widespread methods of woodblock printing and then Pi Sheng's movable type printing by the 11th century were the impetus for the mass production of paper money in premodern China.
At around the same time in the medieval Islamic world, a vigorous monetary economy was created during the 7th–12th centuries on the basis of the expanding levels of circulation of a stable high-value currency (the dinar). Innovations introduced by Muslim economists, traders and merchants include the earliest uses of credit, cheques, promissory notes, savings accounts, transactional accounts, loaning, trusts, exchange rates, the transfer of credit and debt, and banking institutions for loans and deposits.
In Europe, paper money was first introduced on a regular basis in Sweden in 1661 (although Washington Irving records an earlier emergency use of it, by the Spanish in a siege during the Conquest of Granada). As Sweden was rich in copper, its low value necessitated extraordinarily big coins, often weighing several kilograms.
The advantages of paper currency were numerous: it reduced the need to transport gold and silver, which was risky; it facilitated loans of gold or silver at interest, since the underlying specie (gold or silver) never left the possession of the lender until someone else redeemed the note; and it allowed a division of currency into credit and specie backed forms. It enabled the sale of stock in joint-stock companies, and the redemption of those shares in paper.
But there were also disadvantages. First, since a note has no intrinsic value, there was nothing to stop issuing authorities from printing more notes than they had specie to back them with. Second, because it increased the money supply, it increased inflationary pressures, a fact observed by David Hume in the 18th century. Thus paper money would often lead to an inflationary bubble, which could collapse if people began demanding hard money, causing the demand for paper notes to fall to zero. The printing of paper money was also associated with wars, and financing of wars, and therefore regarded as part of maintaining a standing army. For these reasons, paper currency was held in suspicion and hostility in Europe and America. It was also addictive, since the speculative profits of trade and capital creation were quite large. Major nations established mints to print money and mint coins, and branches of their treasury to collect taxes and hold gold and silver stock.
At that time, both silver and gold were considered legal tender, and accepted by governments for taxes. However, the instability in the ratio between the two grew over the course of the 19th century, with the increases both in supply of these metals, particularly silver, and in trade. The parallel use of both metals is called bimetallism, and the attempt to create a bimetallic standard where both gold and silver backed currency remained in circulation occupied the efforts of inflationists. Governments at this point could use currency as an instrument of policy, printing paper currency such as the United States Greenback, to pay for military expenditures. They could also set the terms at which they would redeem notes for specie, by limiting the amount of purchase, or the minimum amount that could be redeemed.
By 1900, most of the industrializing nations were on some form of gold standard, with paper notes and silver coins constituting the circulating medium. Private banks and governments across the world followed Gresham's Law: keeping the gold and silver they received, but paying out in notes. This did not happen all around the world at the same time, but occurred sporadically, generally in times of war or financial crisis, beginning in the early part of the 20th century and continuing across the world until the late 20th century, when the regime of floating fiat currencies came into force. One of the last countries to break away from the gold standard was the United States in 1971, an action known as the Nixon shock. No country has an enforceable gold standard or silver standard currency system.
Banknote era
A banknote (more commonly known as a bill in the United States and Canada) is a type of currency, and commonly used as legal tender in many jurisdictions. With coins, banknotes make up the cash form of all money. Banknotes are mostly paper, but Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation developed the world's first polymer currency in the 1980s that went into circulation on the nation's bicentenary in 1988. Now used in some 22 countries (over 40 if counting commemorative issues), polymer currency dramatically improves the life span of banknotes and prevents counterfeiting.
Modern currencies
Currency use is based on the concept of lex monetae; that a sovereign state decides which currency it shall use. Currently, the International Organization for Standardization has introduced a three-letter system of codes (ISO 4217) to define currency (as opposed to simple names or currency signs), in order to remove the confusion that there are dozens of currencies called the dollar and many called the franc. Even the pound is used in nearly a dozen different countries; most of these are tied to the Pound Sterling, while the remainder have varying values. In general, the three-letter code uses the ISO 3166-1 country code for the first two letters and the first letter of the name of the currency (D for dollar, for instance) as the third letter. United States currency, for instance is globally referred to as USD.
The International Monetary Fund uses a variant system when referring to national currencies.
Alternative currencies
Distinct from centrally controlled government-issued currencies, private decentralized trust networks support alternative currencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Peercoin or Dogecoin, as well as branded currencies, for example 'obligation' based stores of value, such as quasi-regulated BarterCard, Loyalty Points (Credit Cards, Airlines) or Game-Credits (MMO games) that are based on reputation of commercial products, or highly regulated 'asset backed' 'alternative currencies' such as mobile-money schemes like MPESA (called E-Money Issuance).
Currency may be Internet-based and digital, for instance, Bitcoin and not tied to any specific country, or the IMF's SDR that is based on a basket of currencies (and assets held).
Control and production
In most cases, a central bank has a monopoly right to issue of coins and banknotes (fiat money) for its own area of circulation (a country or group of countries); it regulates the production of currency by banks (credit) through monetary policy.
An exchange rate is the price at which two currencies can be exchanged against each other. This is used for trade between the two currency zones. Exchange rates can be classified as either floating or fixed. In the former, day-to-day movements in exchange rates are determined by the market; in the latter, governments intervene in the market to buy or sell their currency to balance supply and demand at a fixed exchange rate.
In cases where a country has control of its own currency, that control is exercised either by a central bank or by a Ministry of Finance. The institution that has control of monetary policy is referred to as the monetary authority. Monetary authorities have varying degrees of autonomy from the governments that create them. In the United States, the Federal Reserve System operates without direct oversight by the legislative or executive branches. A monetary authority is created and supported by its sponsoring government, so independence can be reduced by the legislative or executive authority that creates it.
Several countries can use the same name for their own separate currencies (for example, dollar in Australia, Canada and the United States). By contrast, several countries can also use the same currency (for example, the euro or the CFA franc), or one country can declare the currency of another country to be legal tender. For example, Panama and El Salvador have declared U.S. currency to be legal tender, and from 1791 to 1857, Spanish silver coins were legal tender in the United States. At various times countries have either re-stamped foreign coins, or used currency board issuing one note of currency for each note of a foreign government held, as Ecuador currently does.
Each currency typically has a main currency unit (the dollar, for example, or the euro) and a fractional unit, often defined as 1⁄100 of the main unit: 100 cents = 1 dollar, 100 centimes = 1 franc, 100 pence = 1 pound, although units of 1⁄10 or 1⁄1000 occasionally also occur. Some currencies do not have any smaller units at all, such as the Icelandic króna.
Mauritania and Madagascar are the only remaining countries that do not use the decimal system; instead, the Mauritanian ouguiya is in theory divided into 5 khoums, while the Malagasy ariary is theoretically divided into 5 iraimbilanja. In these countries, words like dollar or pound "were simply names for given weights of gold." Due to inflation khoums and iraimbilanja have in practice fallen into disuse. (See non-decimal currencies for other historic currencies with non-decimal divisions.)
Currency convertibility
Convertibility of a currency determines the ability of an individual, corporate or government to convert its local currency to another currency or vice versa with or without central bank/government intervention. Based on the above restrictions or free and readily conversion features, currencies are classified as:
Local currencies
In economics, a local currency is a currency not backed by a national government, and intended to trade only in a small area. Advocates such as Jane Jacobs argue that this enables an economically depressed region to pull itself up, by giving the people living there a medium of exchange that they can use to exchange services and locally produced goods (in a broader sense, this is the original purpose of all money). Opponents of this concept argue that local currency creates a barrier which can interfere with economies of scale and comparative advantage, and that in some cases they can serve as a means of tax evasion.
Local currencies can also come into being when there is economic turmoil involving the national currency. An example of this is the Argentinian economic crisis of 2002 in which IOUs issued by local governments quickly took on some of the characteristics of local currencies.
One of the best examples of a local currency is the original LETS currency, founded on Vancouver Island in the early 1980s. In 1982, the Canadian Central Bank's lending rates ran up to 14% which drove chartered bank lending rates as high as 19%. The resulting currency and credit scarcity left island residents with few options other than to create a local currency.
List of Major World Payments Currencies
The following table are estimates for 15 most frequently used currencies in World Payments from 2012 to 2015 by SWIFT.


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I hereby agree to purchase, and McHenry County Food Cooperative doing business as Food Shed Co-op, a cooperative corporation organized under the laws of Illinois, agrees to transfer to me at least two (2) and no more than ten (10) shares of common stock in the Cooperative, at a price of $100 per share. With this purchase of stock, I will become a member and part owner of the Cooperative. I certify that I am a resident of the State of Illinois or Wisconsin and that I am at least 18 years old.
I understand and acknowledge that a minimum purchase of two shares is all that is required to become an owner of the Cooperative, and that any additional purchase of shares is optional and will not result in any additional rights, voting or otherwise, or any additional patronage dividends. If I buy more than two shares, I am making that equity investment solely to help the Cooperative succeed in its mission.
My owner rights and responsibilities will begin immediately upon payment. If electing the payment plan, all payments must be completed within one year.
Owner Rights
Voting. One owner equals one vote. Shares may be owned by an individual or a household (multiple adults sharing a kitchen). Each owner, whether individual or household, has one vote per issue/candidate. Each household must decide how it wants to cast its single vote; no fractional votes are allowed.
Patronage dividends. In any year in which the Board determines that the Cooperative has sufficient earnings, the Cooperative will issue a patronage dividend to each owner in proportion to that owner's spending. The patronage dividends may be in the form of cash or store credit, at the Board's discretion. The Board may keep some of the Cooperative's income in a reserve fund. I understand that a portion of the patronage dividend allocated to me may be retained by the Cooperative in order to operate and expand the Cooperative's business, and in any given year there may be no patronage dividend.
All patronage dividends and allocations will be issued in a form so as to qualify as "patronage dividends" within the meaning of Subchapter T of the Internal Revenue Code (26 U.S.C. §§ 1381-1388). I acknowledge that I will be liable for income tax on any income received from the Cooperative that is not attributable to my purchases of personal, living, or family items.
Owner Responsibilities
I accept the duties of ownership in the Cooperative, including:
I understand that if my contact information changes and I fail to notify the Cooperative, I forfeit any right to receive notice of meetings, patronage dividends, and any other amount that would have been due to me from the Cooperative. If the Cooperative determines that I have not shopped at the Cooperative's store (once opened) for 12 months, and the Cooperative does not have my current contact information, the Cooperative may terminate my ownership without notice.
Limits on Equity
I understand that the Cooperative's stock will not increase in value, and that I will receive no dividends or other monetary return on my capital contribution. (Patronage dividends are based on purchases made, not capital contribution.) Therefore, this stock is not a security.
When I leave the Cooperative, the Cooperative will buy back my stock for its original price, less a reasonable processing fee, and only if the Board determines that the Cooperative is able to re-purchase the stock. The Cooperative may also owe me money if it has retained some of my patronage dividends (see Bylaw 9.4). My shares of the Cooperative's stock may not be sold or transferred to anyone except that they may be sold back to the Cooperative.
I understand that my investment is subject to the same risks inherent in any business enterprise, and that I may lose part or all of my investment.
Other Acknowledgements
I hereby waive my right to receive written notice of owner meetings by mail or personal delivery. I agree to receive notice of meetings exclusively by email. If I do not have an email, I will visit the Cooperative's website to check for posted notifications.
My ownership interest is governed by the Cooperative's Articles of Incorporation, Bylaws, and Board Resolutions, which are available online or by request.

subset: commoncrawl


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Arizona State University is teaming up with seven other research universities to establish a new Science and Technology Center (STC), sponsored by the National Science Foundation with an initial five-year, $25-million grant (extendable for another five years). The STC award is one of three granted by NSF in 2013, the others going to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The center will be based at the University at Buffalo (UB). It is expected to transform the field of structural and dynamic molecular biology, including drug development, by using X-ray lasers to peer into biological molecules.
The BioXFEL center will focus on developing a new bio-imaging technique —including an advanced form of x-ray crystallography called snapshot serial femtosecond nanocrystallography — to analyze a vast array of molecules at which drug molecules can be targeted. This exciting new technique, the focus of several recent papers published in Science and Nature, has shown the potential to spur much needed innovation in the pharmaceutical field because it will provide scientists with new insights into how biological molecules function, what might be happening when disease occurs and help determine what compounds could modify this activity.
Researchers at BioXFEL also will develop "crystallography without crystals," in which x-ray snapshots (which are so brief that they avoid damaging the samples) can be used to image single viruses and large molecules, which currently cannot be crystallized for conventional crystallography.
"The NSF's Science and Technology Center competition is very intense, with 270 applications this year alone, and few outstanding ideas are chosen nationally for this prestigious award," said Sethuraman "Panch" Panchanathan, senior vice president for Arizona State University's Office of Knowledge Enterprise Development. "The award of this center testifies to the world-class research conducted by our exemplary faculty and scientific leaders. It will significantly accelerate this activity and establish Arizona State University as the leader in developing new bio-imaging techniques to address health challenges and improve the quality of life."
Eaton Lattman, a professor in the UB Department of Structural Biology in the School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and chief executive officer of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, will be director of the new center. John Spence, a Regents' Professor of Physics at Arizona State University (which has the largest concentration of researchers in the consortium), will serve as the center's director of science.
"With this new bio-imaging technique developed at the BioXFEL center, we will be able to analyze crystals 1,000 times smaller than the ones we can use now," Lattman said. "These are crystals we could never use before and, in fact, we may not have known existed. A whole new universe of drug targets will become accessible for study as a result."
For ASU's Spence, the center will open new realms in biological research.
"We will be developing new techniques for making movies of molecular machines at work, and of viruses and biomolecules in their natural wet environment undergoing chemical change," said Spence. "Some of the work, with Prof. Petra Fromme at ASU, will attempt to image the detailed atomic processes responsible for photosynthesis. This age-old process occurs when sunlight falls on green plants, allowing them to split water, creating the oxygen we breathe and converting the carbon dioxide responsible for global warming into carbohydrates."
Spence said ASU's contributions to BioXFEL primarily will be in four areas – research in biophysics aimed at improving the techniques of delivering the wet submicron-sized bioparticles across a pulsed x-ray beam in vacuum (with ASU professors Bruce Doak and Uwe Weierstall of the Department of Physics); application of the method to the molecular mechanisms of photosynthesis (in professor Fromme's group in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry); development of new data analysis methods; and work on the structure of individual viruses (lead by professor Brenda Hogue of the School of Life Sciences and ASU's Biodesign Institute).
UB also will manage the large technology transfer, diversity and education programs, for which Prof. Carole Greenes at Arizona State University will lead the West Coast component. Labs will be set up to demonstrate the principle of the research for Arizona high school students and undergraduates.
The femtosecond nanocrystallography technique could enable researchers to view molecular dynamics at a time-scale never observed before. Spence said the method basically operates by collecting the scattering for the image so quickly that images are obtained before the sample is destroyed by the x-ray beam.
By 'outrunning' radiation-damage processes in this way, the researchers can record the time-evolution of molecular processes at room temperature, Spence said. "This opens the way to future experiments on laser-excited samples, 3-D image reconstruction and a host of other experiments on fast imaging, all directed at the grand challenge of obtaining movies showing molecular machines at work."
Following the construction of the world's first hard x-ray laser, the LINAC Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, near Stanford University, the Arizona State University researchers and a group from Hamburg, Germany, led the first biological experiments to demonstrate the technique in 2009.
Spence said researchers at the new center will use the x-ray beam at SLAC and will focus on breaking new ground in biological molecular analysis.
"We are enormously excited about the opportunity, which the recent invention of the pulsed hard x-ray laser gives us, to make movies of molecules in action and to image molecular reactions in solution as they happen," said Spence. "We are extremely fortunate to be one of only three centers supported from a pool of hundreds of applicants," he added.
Other partner institutions are the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, Cornell University, Rice University, the University of California at San Francisco, and Stanford University. The University of California at Davis will also help with creating and managing the educational program.
Source: ASU


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Tough new bill, surprise political alliance boost chances
Some lawmakers are looking to make cannabis available for people seeking relief from symptoms of maladies that include multiple sclerosis, cancer and HIV/AIDS.
To pick up support, they must allay fears by opponents concerned that the measure is the first step toward decriminalizing marijuana and worried that Illinois will end up like California, where pot is easily available to anyone with a doctor's note and complaints about headaches or anxiety.
In Illinois, doses would be dispensed from a limited number of highly regulated not-for-profits, rather than drugstores. Penalties including potential prison time would discourage attempts to turn a medical prescription into dime bags on the street.
In January, the issue fell four votes shy during a lame-duck session where lawmakers approved such controversial measures as a major income-tax increase, civil unions for same-sex couples and a death penalty abolition.
This time, House Republican Leader Tom Cross has dropped his opposition. He came on board after being approached by several constituents who pressed him to allow marijuana use for "the worst-of-the-worst medical conditions," a spokeswoman said.
Sponsoring Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, who has championed the issue for three years, said he thinks he can finally pass a medical marijuana bill out of the House. The Senate approved a less restrictive version last year.
Whatever the final form, an Illinois law can't come too soon for residents who now use medical marijuana illegally. Julie Falco said she's been using cannabis since 2004 to manage symptoms of multiple sclerosis.
Falco said she felt she had no other choice because prescription drugs left her feeling lethargic and depressed and came with side effects such as hearing loss.
"I was contemplating taking my own life," said Falco, who lives on the Far North Side. "I didn't have any hope."
Scientists and physicians say medical research has shown scant evidence that marijuana is a safe and effective treatment for many of the afflictions the Illinois bill would cover.
A handful of uses in the bill — like pain suffered by people with AIDS and cancer — are supported by some solid scientific evidence. But none meets the standards, such as large, well-designed clinical trials, required by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in approving new drugs.
Fifteen states, including Michigan, have legalized medical marijuana. The sponsors of Illinois' bill are trying to make it the most restrictive in the nation.
Those with a prescription would not be allowed to grow their own marijuana but would have to buy it from a state-licensed dispensary. The bill would limit the number of outlets to 59 — one per Senate district.
The latest version would legalize medical marijuana for three years, then lawmakers would review how it went. Democratic Sen. Bill Haine, a former state's attorney in Madison County, said the new safeguards should help the legislation gain support.
"Many people just flat don't accept that marijuana can do any good, but it's a natural substance that can be good, just as many prescription drugs are good for some uses and not for others," Haine said.
For Cross, the House GOP leader from Oswego, supporting the measure represents a change from January, when he voted against the idea.
Cross, who has a child with diabetes, sponsored a law that ensures researchers could work with embryonic stem cells in Illinois.
"I've seen him evolve on this thing," said Rep. Angelo "Skip" Saviano, R-Elmwood Park. "It fits his philosophy on not limiting tools to the medical community to treat these diseases."
Saviano has long supported legalizing marijuana for medical use. He watched his father die of cancer in 2001 after suffering side effects of chemotherapy. Saviano said he believed that marijuana could have helped reduce his father's nausea and increase his appetite at a time when he lost a lot of weight.
Supporters can't exhale yet. The lame-duck lawmakers are no longer in office and the measure needs to pass the House, Senate and be signed by Gov. Pat Quinn if it's to become law.
Rep. Jim Durkin, R-Western Springs, said this is not an issue Cross or Republican leadership will "twist arms" on to get support. Durkin, a former prosecutor, voted "no" in January but said he is keeping an open mind on the new version.
A law has been on the books since the late 1970s allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana in pill or plant form to treat glaucoma, the side effects of chemotherapy or radiation therapy for cancer patients or other procedures deemed medical necessities. But the physician must get authorization from the Department of Human Services and written approval from the state police.
A state human services spokeswoman and a state medical society representative say they're not aware that any doctor has ever asked permission to prescribe marijuana in Illinois.
Lang, the House sponsor, said he's aware of the existing law but argues his proposal is a tighter and more workable measure.
"What we have done is take the best ideas on the topic from America and in Illinois during debate to gauge the tolerance of colleagues and make the best and tightest bill in the country," Lang said.


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The quality of the health care that you just receive can have a significant impression on your health and nicely-being; it is stunning, then, to discover that many people don't know the first thing about determining the quality of the health care that they receive from their medical facilitators. My interpersonal and communication abilities are demonstrated in my current function as an Administration Officer (AO2) for Victoria Health (Linen Companies) where I am the first port of call for all enquiries about customer linen orders for all Victorian Health Hospitals, Nursing Properties, Dental Clinics, Dental Cell Vans and College Dental Clinics.
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The Environmental Health occupation had its fashionable-day roots in the sanitary and public health movement of the United Kingdom This was epitomized by Sir Edwin Chadwick, who was instrumental in the repeal of the poor laws and was the founding president of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
Health (Magazine)
Social health, along with mental and physical health, is likely one of the key features to determine the final nicely-being of a person. Marilyn Aldana-Rojas President and CEO of Awakened Wellness, guide creator, corporate health and wellness promoter, lifetime athlete, a swimmer, runner, and cycle enthusiast. Quick-term health insurance coverage: Quick-term health insurance coverage do not comply with the Obamacare legislation.
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Digital object identifier
A digital object identifier (DOI) is a character string (a "digital identifier") used to uniquely identify an object such as an electronic document. Metadata about the object is stored in association with the DOI name and this metadata may include a location, such as a URL, where the object can be found. The DOI for a document remains fixed over the lifetime of the document, whereas its location and other metadata may change. Referring to an online document by its DOI provides more stable linking than simply referring to it by its URL, because if its URL changes, the publisher need only update the metadata for the DOI to link to the new URL.[1][2][3]
A DOI name differs from standard identifier registries such as the ISBN and ISRC. The purpose of an identifier registry is to manage a given collection of identifiers, whereas the primary purpose of the DOI system is to make a collection of identifiers actionable and interoperable.
Organizations that meet the contractual obligations of the DOI system and are willing to pay to become a member of the system can assign DOIs.[4] The DOI system is implemented through a federation of registration agencies coordinated by the International DOI Foundation,[5] which developed and controls the system. The DOI system has been developed and implemented in a range of publishing applications since 2000; by late April 2011 more than 50 million DOI names had been assigned by some 4,000 organizations.[6] By April 2013 this number had grown to 85 million DOI names assigned through 9,500 organizations. The DOI system uses, but is not formally part of, the Handle System.[7]
A DOI name takes the form of a character string divided into two parts, a prefix and a suffix, separated by a slash. The prefix identifies the registrant of the name, and the suffix is chosen by the registrant and identifies the specific object associated with that DOI. Most legal Unicode characters are allowed in these strings, which are interpreted in a case-insensitive manner.
For example, in the DOI name
10.1000/182, the prefix is
10.1000 and the suffix is
182. The "10." part of the prefix identifies the DOI registry,[upper-alpha 1] and the characters
1000 in the prefix identify the registrant; in this case the registrant is the International DOI Foundation itself.
182 is the suffix, or item ID, identifying a single object (in this case, the latest version of the DOI Handbook). The official DOI Handbook explicitly states that DOIs should display on screens and in print in the format "doi:10.1000/182".[8][upper-alpha 2]
DOI names can identify creative works (such as texts, images, audio or video items, and software) in both electronic and physical forms, performances, and abstract works[11] such as licenses, parties to a transaction, etc.
The names can refer to objects at varying levels of detail: thus DOI names can identify a journal, an individual issue of a journal, an individual article in the journal, or a single table in that article. The choice of level of detail is left to the assigner, but in the DOI system it must be declared as part of the metadata that is associated with a DOI name, using a data dictionary based on the indecs Content Model.
Major applications of the DOI system currently include:
- persistent citations in scholarly materials (journal articles, books, ebooks, etc.) through CrossRef, a consortium of around 3,000 publishers;
- research datasets through DataCite, a consortium of leading research libraries, technical information providers, and scientific data centers;
- European Union official publications through the EU publications office;
- Permanent global identifiers for commercial video content through the Entertainment ID Registry, commonly known as EIDR.
In the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's publication service OECD iLibrary, each table or graph in an OECD publication is shown with a DOI name that leads to an Excel file of data underlying the tables and graphs. Further development of such services is planned.[12]
A multilingual European DOI registration agency activity, mEDRA, Traditional Chinese content thru Airiti Inc. and a Chinese registration agency, Wanfang Data, are active in non-English language markets. Expansion to other sectors is planned by the International DOI Foundation.[citation needed]
Features and benefits
The DOI system was designed to provide a form of persistent identification, in which each DOI name permanently and unambiguously identifies the object to which it is associated. And, it associates metadata with objects, allowing it to provide users with relevant pieces of information about the objects and their relationships. Included as part of this metadata are network actions that allow DOI names to be resolved to web locations where the objects they describe can be found. To achieve its goals, the DOI system combines the Handle System and the indecs Content Model with a social infrastructure.
The Handle System ensures that the DOI name for an object is not based on any changeable attributes of the object such as its physical location or ownership, that the attributes of the object are encoded in its metadata rather than in its DOI name, and that no two objects are assigned the same DOI name. Because DOI names are short character strings, they are human-readable, may be copied and pasted as text, and fit into the URI specification. The DOI name resolution mechanism acts behind the scenes, so that users communicate with it in the same way as with any other web service; it is built on open architectures, incorporates trust mechanisms, and is engineered to operate reliably and flexibly so that it can be adapted to changing demands and new applications of the DOI system.[13] DOI name resolution may be used with OpenURL to select the most appropriate among multiple locations for a given object, according to the location of the user making the request.[14] However, despite this ability, the DOI system has drawn criticism from librarians for directing users to non-free copies of documents that would have been available for no additional fee from alternative locations.[15]
The indecs Content Model is used within the DOI system to associate metadata with objects. A small kernel of common metadata is shared by all DOI names and can be optionally extended with other relevant data, which may be public or restricted. Registrants may update the metadata for their DOI names at any time, such as when publication information changes or when an object moves to a different URL.
The International DOI Foundation (IDF) oversees the integration of these technologies and operation of the system through a technical and social infrastructure. The social infrastructure of a federation of independent registration agencies offering DOI services was modelled on existing successful federated deployments of identifiers such as GS1 and ISBN.
Comparison with other identifier schemes
A DOI name differs from commonly used Internet pointers to material, such as the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), in that it identifies an object itself as a first-class entity, rather than the specific place where the object is located at a certain time. It implements the Uniform Resource Identifier (Uniform Resource Name) concept and adds to it a data model and social infrastructure.[16]
A DOI name also differs from standard identifier registries such as the ISBN, ISRC, etc. The purpose of an identifier registry is to manage a given collection of identifiers, whereas the primary purpose of the DOI system is to make a collection of identifiers actionable and interoperable, where that collection can include identifiers from many other controlled collections.[17]
The DOI system offers persistent, semantically-interoperable resolution to related current data and is best suited to material that will be used in services outside the direct control of the issuing assigner (e.g., public citation or managing content of value). It uses a managed registry (providing social and technical infrastructure). It does not assume any specific business model for the provision of identifiers or services and enables other existing services to link to it in defined ways. Several approaches for making identifiers persistent have been proposed. The comparison of persistent identifier approaches is difficult because they are not all doing the same thing. Imprecisely referring to a set of schemes as "identifiers" doesn't mean that they can be compared easily. Other "identifier systems" may be enabling technologies with low barriers to entry, providing an easy to use labeling mechanism that allows anyone to set up a new instance (examples include Persistent Uniform Resource Locator (PURL), URLs, Globally Unique Identifiers (GUIDs), etc.), but may lack some of the functionality of a registry-controlled scheme and will usually lack accompanying metadata in a controlled scheme. The DOI system does not have this approach and should not be compared directly to such identifier schemes. Various applications using such enabling technologies with added features have been devised that meet some of the features offered by the DOI system for specific sectors (e.g., ARK).
A DOI name does not depend on the object's location and, in this way, is similar to a Uniform Resource Name (URN) or PURL but differs from an ordinary URL. URLs are often used as substitute identifiers for documents on the Internet (better characterised as Uniform Resource Identifiers) although the same document at two different locations has two URLs. By contrast, persistent identifiers such as DOI names identify objects as first class entities: two instances of the same object would have the same DOI name.
DOI name resolution is provided through the Handle System, developed by Corporation for National Research Initiatives, and is freely available to any user encountering a DOI name. Resolution redirects the user from a DOI name to one or more pieces of typed data: URLs representing instances of the object, services such as e-mail, or one or more items of metadata. To the Handle System, a DOI name is a handle, and so has a set of values assigned to it and may be thought of as a record that consists of a group of fields. Each handle value must have a data type specified in its "<type>" field, that defines the syntax and semantics of its data.
To resolve a DOI name, it may be input to a DOI resolver (e.g., at www.doi.org) or may be represented as an HTTP string by preceding the DOI name by the string
https://dx.doi.org/or just
For example, the DOI name
10.1000/182 can be resolved at the address "https://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182". Web pages or other hypertext documents can include hypertext links in this form. Some browsers allow the direct resolution of a DOI (or other handles) with an add-on, e.g., CNRI Handle Extension for Firefox. The CNRI Handle Extension for Firefox enables the browser to access handle or DOI URIs like hdl:4263537/4000 or doi:10.1000/1 using the native Handle System protocol. It will even replace references to web-to-handle proxy servers with native resolution.
Organizational structure
The International DOI Foundation (IDF), a non-profit organisation created in 1998, is the governance body of the DOI system.[18] It safeguards all intellectual property rights relating to the DOI system, manages common operational features, and supports the development and promotion of the DOI system. The IDF ensures that any improvements made to the DOI system (including creation, maintenance, registration, resolution and policymaking of DOI names) are available to any DOI registrant. It also prevents third parties from imposing additional licensing requirements beyond those of the IDF on users of the DOI system.
The IDF is controlled by a Board elected by the members of the Foundation, with an appointed Managing Agent who is responsible for co-ordinating and planning its activities. Membership is open to all organizations with an interest in electronic publishing and related enabling technologies. The IDF holds annual open meetings on the topics of DOI and related issues.
Registration agencies, appointed by the IDF, provide services to DOI registrants: they allocate DOI prefixes, register DOI names, and provide the necessary infrastructure to allow registrants to declare and maintain metadata and state data. Registration agencies are also expected to actively promote the widespread adoption of the DOI system, to cooperate with the IDF in the development of the DOI system as a whole, and to provide services on behalf of their specific user community. A list of current RAs is maintained by the International DOI Foundation.
Registration agencies generally charge a fee to assign a new DOI name; parts of these fees are used to support the IDF. The DOI system overall, through the IDF, operates on a not-for-profit cost recovery basis.
The DOI system is an international standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization in its technical committee on identification and description, TC46/SC9.[19] The Draft International Standard ISO/DIS 26324, Information and documentation – Digital Object Identifier System met the ISO requirements for approval. The relevant ISO Working Group later submitted an edited version to ISO for distribution as an FDIS (Final Draft International Standard) ballot,[20] which was approved by 100% of those voting in a ballot closing on 15 November 2010.[21] The final standard was published on 23 April 2012.[22]
DOI is a registered URI under the info URI scheme specified by IETF RFC 4452. info:doi/ is the infoURI Namespace of Digital Object Identifiers.[23]
The DOI syntax is a NISO standard, first standardised in 2000, ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2005 Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier.[24]
See also
- ↑ Other registries are identified by other strings at the start of the prefix. Handle names that begin with "100." are also in use, as for example in the following citation: Hammond, Joseph L., Jr.; Brown, James E.; Liu, Shyan-Shiang S. (May 1975). Development of a Transmission Error Model and an Error Control Model. Bibcode 1975STIN...7615344H. hdl:100.2/ADA013939. http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA013939.
- ↑ Contrary to the DOI Handbook, CrossRef, a major DOI registration agency, recommends displaying a URL (for example, http://dx.doi.org/10.1000/182) instead of the officially specified format (for example,
doi:10.1000/182)[9] This URL provides the location of an HTTP proxy server which will redirect web accesses to the correct online location of the linked item.[4][10] This recommendation is primarily based on the assumption that the DOI is being displayed without being hyper-linked to its appropriate URL – the argument being that without the hyperlink it is not as easy to copy-and-paste the full URL to actually bring up the page for the DOI, thus the entire URL should be displayed, allowing people viewing the page containing the DOI to copy-and-paste the URL, by hand, into a new window/tab in their browser in order to go to the appropriate page for the document the DOI represents.
- ↑ Witten, Ian H., David Bainbridge and David M. Nichols (2010). How to Build a Digital Library (2nd ed.). Amsterdam; Boston: Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 352–253. ISBN 978-0-12-374857-7.
- ↑ Langston, Marc; Tyler, James (2004). "Linking to journal articles in an online teaching environment: The persistent link, DOI, and OpenURL". The Internet and Higher Education 7 (1): 51–58. doi:10.1016/j.iheduc.2003.11.004.
- ↑ "How the 'Digital Object Identifier' works". BusinessWeek (BusinessWeek). 23 July 2001. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/01_30/b3742032.htm. Retrieved 20 April 2010. "Assuming the publishers do their job of maintaining the databases, these centralized references, unlike current Web links, should never become outdated or broken."
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Davidson, Lloyd A.; Douglas, Kimberly (December 1998). "Digital Object Identifiers: Promise and problems for scholarly publishing". Journal of Electronic Publishing 4 (2). doi:10.3998/3336451.0004.203.
- ↑ "Welcome to the DOI System". Doi.org. 28 June 2010. http://www.doi.org/index.html. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "DOI® News, April 2011: 1. DOI System exceeds 50 million assigned identifiers". Doi.org. 20 April 2011. http://www.doi.org/news/DOINewsApr11.html#1. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ↑ "The Handle System". http://handle.net/.
- ↑ "DOI Handbook – Numbering". doi.org. 13 February 2014. Section 2.6.1 Screen and print presentation. Archived from the original on 30 June 2014. http://www.doi.org/doi_handbook/2_Numbering.html#2.6.1. Retrieved 30 June 2014.
- ↑ "CrossRef Revises DOI Display Guidelines". http://www.crossref.org/01company/pr/news080211.html.
- ↑ Powell, Andy (June 1998). "Resolving DOI Based URNs Using Squid: An Experimental System at UKOLN". D-Lib Magazine. ISSN 1082-9873. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june98/06powell.html.
- ↑ Frequently asked questions about the DOI system: 2. What can be identified by a DOI name?. International DOI Foundation. 17 February 2010 [update of earlier version]. http://www.doi.org/faq.html#1. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- ↑ Green, T. (2009). "We Need Publishing Standards for Datasets and Data Tables". Research Information. doi:10.1787/603233448430.
- ↑ Timmer, John (6 March 2010). "DOIs and their discontents". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/03/dois-and-their-discontents-1/. Retrieved 5 March 2013.
- ↑ DeRisi, Susanne; Kennison, Rebecca; Twyman, Nick (2003). "Editorial: The what and whys of DOIs". PLoS Biology 1 (2): e57. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0000057. PMC 261894. PMID 14624257. //www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC261894/.
- ↑ Franklin, Jack (2003). "Open access to scientific and technical information: the state of the art". In Grüttemeier, Herbert; Mahon, Barry. Open access to scientific and technical information: state of the art and future trends. IOS Press. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-58603-377-4. http://books.google.com/?id=2X3gW1lUvN4C&pg=PA74#v=onepage&q.
- ↑ "DOI System and Internet Identifier Specifications". Doi.org. 18 May 2010. http://www.doi.org/factsheets/DOIIdentifierSpecs.html. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "DOI System and standard identifier registries". Doi.org. http://www.doi.org/factsheets/DOIIdentifiers.html. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "DOI Handbook, Chapter 7: The International DOI Foundation". Doi.org. 10 October 1997. http://www.doi.org/handbook_2000/governance.html. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "Digital object identifier (DOI) becomes an ISO standard". iso.org. 10 May 2012. http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1561. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
- ↑ "about_the_doi.html DOI Standards and Specifications". Doi.org. 28 June 2010. http://www.doi.org/about_the_doi.html#TC46. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "Overviews & Standards – Standards and Specifications: 1. ISO TC46/SC9 Standards". Doi.org. 18 November 2010. http://www.doi.org/about_the_doi.html#TC46. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
- ↑ "ISO 26324:2012". iso.org. 23 April 2012. http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail?csnumber=43506. Retrieved 10 May 2012.
- ↑ "About "info" URIs – Frequently Asked Questions". Info-uri.info. http://info-uri.info/registry/docs/misc/faq.html#which_namespaces. Retrieved 7 August 2010.
- ↑ "ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2000 Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier". Techstreet.com. http://www.techstreet.com/standards/NISO/Z39_84_2005?product_id=1262088. Retrieved 7 August 2010.


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A clean up helps improve the appearance of Orange County's neighborhoods and increases neighborhood pride among residents. The Orange County Community Clean Up Program assists residents in removing excessive trash, junk, and household hazardous waste material from private residential property and common areas in neighborhoods.
Assistance is provided to any neighborhood group or organization within Unincorporated Orange County that would like to host a Community Clean Up in the Spring or Fall. We also offer assistance with small neighborhood clean ups; call us to find out more.
Orange County Neighborhood Services Division:
*No refrigerators, air conditioners, yard waste or tree trimmings.
Interested neighborhoods or organizations are required to:
Orange County Neighborhood Services Division
450 E. South Street, Third Floor
Orlando, FL 32801
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Phone: (407) 836-5606
All e-mail sent to this address becomes part of Orange County public record. Comments received by our e-mail subsystem can be read by anyone who requests that privilege. In compliance with "Government in the Sunshine" laws, Orange County Government must make available, at request, any and all information not deemed a threat to the security of law enforcement agencies and personnel.


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The ongoing WikiLeaks exposé not only circulated hundreds of thousands of secretive government documents, it has also swiftly prompted changes to the system designed to share access to them. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department cut off a military computer network's access to its files, dramatically curtailing data sharing intended to help thwart future disasters like the September 11 terrorist attacks.
In response to the leaks, the State Department announced it would cut access to its database of embassy cables via the U.S. Defense Department's Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), a system of dedicated and encrypted lines and servers set up by the Pentagon in the 1990s to globally transmit material up to and including "secret," the government's second-highest level of classified information. "Top secret" information may be shared electronically via the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), another group of interconnected computer networks used by Defense and State to securely transmit classified information.
"We have temporarily severed the connection between this database and one classified network," department spokesman Philip Crowley said Tuesday during a press briefing. "Steps are being made to correct weaknesses in the system that have become evident because of this leak." Whereas diplomats and other officials generally have had access to State Department cables, Crowley added that the department has "temporarily narrowed" access to these documents.
After the September 11 attacks, SIPRNet was expanded to help U.S. agencies share classified information more easily, with virtually all embassies and consulates on the system. A 1993 GAO report estimated more than 3 million U.S. military and civilian personnel had the clearance to access SIPRNet, although it remains unclear as to how many people now actually have roles that allow them to do so. The hope was to spur communication of the kind of vital clues that might have prevented that catastrophe. These links, ironically, probably helped WikiLeaks's informant get access to confidential diplomatic messages.
The Defense Department claims to be enhancing its security in the wake of the WikiLeaks fiasco, implementing two-person handling rules for moving data from classified to unclassified systems and establishing "insider threat" working groups to prevent further leaks. The Pentagon says it is using the methods credit card companies use to detect suspicious or anomalous behavior and that 60 percent of its SIPRNet is now equipped with a host-based security system (HBSS) that can monitor unusual data access or usage. The department also claims to be accelerating HBSS deployment to the rest of its SIPRNet systems.
The Defense Department's HBSS includes a firewall, a network intrusion prevention system, antivirus software and other security components designed to monitor, detect and counter known cyber threats to the department's information technology systems. The HBSS is also said to have a device control module designed to restrict system access to peripheral devices such as thumb drives, compact discs and other removable storage.
U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning was arrested in May on suspicion that he sent to WikiLeaks a video depicting a U.S. military helicopter killing a group of people in Iraq (including two journalists). Manning, in custody at the Quantico Marine base in Virginia, is now also suspected to be the source of the embassy cables that WikiLeaks has been publishing over the past several days. Manning, an intelligence analyst once stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad, had clearance to access SIPRNet and reportedly removed the documents by compressing them and copying them to CDs.
Despite speculation that Manning is responsible for the leaks, there has been no official explanation of how the official documents were accessed and released. Until it becomes clear how this was done, any claim that HBSS would have prevented or limited access to sensitive material or could identify the culprit is premature, says Amit Yoran, former director of the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) and National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security. "I'm unconvinced at this point that HBSS answers the mail on that question," he adds.
To prevent authorized insiders such as Manning from stealing information, many classified networks have historically relied on strong access controls and encryption, says Yoran, currently a member of President Obama's CSIS Commission on Cyber Security and CEO of network security firm NetWitness Corp. These networks typically can be accessed via a computer terminal located within a secure facility and only by workers who have gone through an extensive background investigation and clearance process.
"However, once you have access to these classified systems and are inside their tough perimeter, they have historically been very trusting," Yoran says. "And when you have a trusted insider who is interested in causing harm or inappropriately accessing and divulging information, that sort of architecture with strong perimeters is quite flawed."
Government, and for that matter corporate (reports have WikiLeaks supposedly targeting banks next), reliance on digital environments makes it easier for insiders to inflict the kind of damage that the State and Defense departments are dealing with now. "You don't have to carry reams of paper and boxes outside a facility," Yoran says (a reference to former RAND analyst Daniel Ellsberg's efforts to publish the Pentagon Papers). "There is a need to revamp how we do security in the digital age and to be able to provide the same level of assurance and even higher levels of assurance with digital information as has been provided in the analog world."
WikiLeaks Breach Highlights Insider Security Threat
Even the toughest security systems sometimes have a soft center that can be exploited by someone who has passed rigorous screening
The ongoing WikiLeaks exposé not only circulated hundreds of thousands of secretive government documents, it has also swiftly prompted changes to the system designed to share access to them. On Tuesday, the U.S. State Department cut off a military computer network's access to its files, dramatically curtailing data sharing intended to help thwart future disasters like the September 11 terrorist attacks.


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This post has been sponsored by Eggland's Best Eggs. All opinions are 100% our own, and honest as always!
Monster Cookies are a family favorite treat at our house! They're the most perfect flavor and texture combo on the planet!
With Spring on the horizon, I wanted to share this fun little gem of a recipe with you. I also wanted to share this fun Eggland's Best Foodtography contest with you — but first thing's first! Below is the yummy Monster Cookies recipe!
3 Eggland's Best Eggs
1 1/4 cup Brown Sugar
1 cup Sugar
12 oz Peanut Butter
1/2 cup softened Butter
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Vanilla
1 1/2 cup M&M's
1 cup Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips
2 tsp Baking Soda
4 1/2 cup Quick Oats
Preheat the oven to 350.
Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Combine eggs, vanilla, salt, sugar, brown sugar and baking soda in a large bowl.
Add in peanut butter, and butter. Mix until well incorporated.
Stir in the M&M's, chocolate chips and oatmeal.
Place about tablespoon size chunks on the prepared sheets several inches apart.
Bake for about 9 minutes.
Leave on cookie sheet for about 3 minutes before moving to rack to cool completely.
More about the Eggland's Best Foodtography Contest:
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– (1) Grand Prize Winner: $5,000 and a year's supply of Eggland's Best eggs
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What delicious recipes will YOU be submitting?!


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A Memorable Race at Henley Women's Regatta
By Thomas E Weil
June 21, 2012
In rowing, there are many matches, but few real races, and many winners, but few real champions. I recently had the privilege of following a race from the umpire's launch at Henley Women's Regatta. It was a battle for the ages, and it showcased eighteen young champions.
Boat racing is pretty straightforward and unforgiving, sheer repetitive hard labor from start to finish. If each boat rowed every stroke at equal intensity from beginning to end, you could theoretically know after the first one who the winner would be. Every stroke contributes a little, more or less, to the result, and that is how the contest unfolds. The outcome of most other team sport events can be changed instantly with one or two swings of the foot, the bat or the stick, or one or two throws of the ball. This is rarely the case in rowing, at least not on the upside – one bad stroke can cost you the race, but it takes the cumulative hundreds or thousands of good individual strokes to win one.
Yes, there is the always exciting start, with high rates for varying periods. There may be currents and wind gusts, and errant steering and collisions. There may be power tens and the rising din of spectators on the banks. There may be the occasional equipment breakage, or debris, or the collapse of a rower. There may be favored lanes. But when all is said and done on the Henley reach, there are two boats trying to get to the finish line first. Barring unusual circumstances, the work is done by putting the oar in the water and pulling, over and over, unrelentingly. The outcome is often predictable before the contestants are half way down the course. Boat races tend not to be events pregnant with excitement until the last moment.
Even in the 2012 Henley Women's Regatta finals, by which time the heats had pretty much sorted out the slower boats, and left two of the best of the entries to vie for the medals, the average margin of victory (counting a verdict of "Easily" as only four lengths, which decreases the actual margins) was almost exactly two lengths. Only nine (of 27) contests had separations of less than one length. Only four were closer than a half length at the finish. Two races over the 1500 meter course ended with the crews two feet apart. I was in the umpire's launch for one of them.
The 25th Henley Women's Regatta was memorable for much more than reaching the quarter century history mark. Torrents of rainfall in the preceding weeks had left the Thames in an engorged state, with high, fast water that could quickly amplify a small steering error and made the upstream course a real struggle, especially for the smaller boats. Those conditions were further aggravated by headwinds that gusted throughout Saturday, June 16, at well over 25mph, but eased off somewhat for Sunday's rowing.
Event 358, the junior eights final for the Peabody Cup, was scheduled to go off at 3pm. It was an all-American match, pitting New Hampshire boarding school Phillips Exeter Academy against the Lerro boat from Mount Saint Joseph Academy of Philadelphia.
Their respective paths to the finals varied somewhat. Exeter was scheduled to race Pangbourne College (a high school in Reading) on Saturday, but Pangbourne declined to go on the water because of the marginal conditions, leaving Exeter with a bye for the day. The Mount, on the other hand, rowed a Saturday heat against Sir William Borlase's Grammar School from Marlow, dispatching them by two lengths in 6:39.
Semi-final heats for the junior eights were set for Sunday morning, with the finals scheduled for the afternoon. Exeter went off at 10:40 in its morning heat, and defeated Headington School from Oxford (who had won the Junior Eight in the UK National Schools Regatta in May) by two lengths in 5:50. The Mount's heat followed at 10:45, and that crew took special pleasure in beating Green Lake of Seattle by three and a quarter lengths in 5:44, since Green Lake had been listed as fifth in the US school crew rankings, while The Mount was placed ninth. (That The Mount's Sunday morning time was almost a minute faster over the same course than their Saturday afternoon time is indicative of how truly awful Saturday's winds and current were.)
Then the decisive Sunday afternoon was upon us. Events on the course delayed the start of the final race for the Peabody Cup, but even when the boats were on the starting platform below Temple Island, which lies mid-river to the right of the starting area, Father Thames was still playing his games. Exeter had the left hand Berkshire (Berks) station as we headed upstream, and The Mount the right hand Buckinghamshire (Bucks) slot. Just upstream from the start, the Berks bank has a concave curve. As the fast current sluiced down the bank, it would dip into the curve, and then rush back out into and across the stream, so that, with sterns being held at the starting platform, bows were pushed towards Temple Island, more so on the Berks than Bucks side. Needless to say, it was frustrating for both the crews and the umpire to try to straighten the boats and then get them off before the bows were swept out of line again.
Two Mount families, one Exeter family and I had the good fortune to be seated in the elegant long umpire's launch then idling behind the starting platform. The umpire, dressed in blazer, stood attentively in the bow, the launch driver sat amidships at the great engine console, and radio commentator Judith Howell stood in the stern, providing a running race report to spectators and officials alike. Built 99 years before by Hobbs and Company, who still ply their trade above Henley bridge, our boat was one of several similar craft used at the regattas that are iconically emblematic of Henley rowing. Every picture down the course of a regatta race along the reach shows the same essential ingredients – the long lines of booms which define the lanes, the two boats in the event, and the umpire's regal launch following watchfully behind. There are few greater thrills for a regatta spectator than to be perched on those polished mahogany seats running fore and aft inside the hull, to feel the engines kick in as the race starts, and to witness the entire contest from beginning to end.
"Attention," cried the umpire. With a quick downward swipe of her red flag, and a shout of "Go!", the boats leapt off. The Mount's racing start held at over fifty strokes a minute, for much longer than Exeter's, which gave The Mount an initial lead of a few seats. Exeter's earlier settle was powerful, however, and ate up the river as the two boats battled it out. The Mount eventually settled their rating, and the duel was on.
At the outset of the struggle, The Mount still maintained a higher rate than Exeter, propelling their shell with a seemingly continuous and unbroken cycle of catch, drive, release and recover, while Exeter pounded away at a lower rate – catch, drive, release and send, and recover. Which style would prevail?
It was not possible to tell from the seats in the launch, especially with the other passengers sitting directly in front of me, whether the crews took tens, or when one boat might have had a few seats on the other. My frame of reference was principally the two sterns ahead of us, the flash of blades at release, recovery and catch, and the roiling puddles left in their wake. The race provided none of the drama that comes from a major break in tempo, a surge or a crab; at one point the umpire warned Exeter back into its lane, but no clash appeared imminent. Instead, the tension and excitement that built in the launch was driven by the rising crescendo of every stroke taken by the two crews as each strained for an advantage while the distance to the finish grew inexorably shorter.
It was obvious from the start that these very evenly matched boats were there to race. Two of the clearest measures of intensity in rowing are the grimaces and concentration written over and in a competitor's face, and the controlled fury with which the blade takes the water, levers the boat past the point of the catch, and comes out hungry for the next stroke. Racing at times at the same rating, sixteen women pulled as one, neither boat giving any quarter, every stroke in both shells exploding into and out of the river, two batteries of port and starboard howitzers firing full bore in close proximity, power coated with grace, and flaming desire, confidence and pride sending the thin hulls flying up the course.
For those in the launch, it would have been normal, and desirable, under other circumstances, to have paid some attention to the fabled venue, to the cheering spectators, to the tents, and to the festive and historic atmosphere that makes Henley such a magical experience . That is one of the great privileges that a launch ride offers. And there are always the historic distance markers to note on the way down the reach – the Women's Regatta passes The Barrier, the Bushes, Fawley and the Remenham Club. But the magnetic draw of the monumental struggle taking place in front of us left no wish or time for such distractions. All eyes were fixed on the race.
Like great presses hammering down the declaration, "Here we come. What are you going to do about it?", eighteen women fought for every inch of reach, and every inch of run. We sat mesmerized in pursuit, not daring to miss a single instant of what was a classic contest, watching two snarling jaguars stretching to catch the same prey. It was a display of furious athletic drive, skill and competition at its finest.
Stroke for stroke, the two crews surged up the Thames in cadence, each throwing down its best, neither able to break the other. Side by side, head to head, bow ball to bow ball, they raced 1500 meters together to the finish.
At first just a blur on the Berkshire bank, the white crown of the finish line judges tent came quickly into focus, and the excitement of the first five minutes of racing turned into the gripping tensions of hopes and uncertainty, of the last few strokes, of the deciding push. Each of us in the launch had been transported into one or the other of those two boats, teeth clenched, fists tight, eyes fixed on the shells, willing the outcome. Let it be … The Mount … or Exeter!
Then the line flashed by. Oars which had a moment before been savagely ripping the river now trailed listlessly in the water. The shells drifted to a halt. The umpire raised her white flag to indicate a clean race.
Who had crossed first? None of us in the launch could tell. Indeed, in the moments before the finish line judges announced the result, a spectator could bask in the pleasure of the realization that this had been a very special occasion, and that, while there would have to be a winner, there was no loser. We were privileged to have seen greatness unveiled in this memorable, flashing, all-consuming charge up the Henley reach.
Each of the two crews had earned the title of champion before the contest was done and the outcome settled.
And then the announcement came. Exeter had won by two feet in 5:33.
The launch trip back down to the boarding point at the start was one of murmured commiseration and congratulations, all tucked gently into the wrappings of pride and admiration for what both boats had accomplished. We shared a sense of awe and gratitude for having been able to witness this memorable spectacle at such close and intimate quarters. It takes two great crews to serve up a great race. This was a truly superb race between two extraordinary crews.
How special was it? The 5:33 finishing time for these schoolgirl eights, filled with 16-18 year-olds, was remarkable under the prevailing conditions. Only two finals had faster times, the elite quad, in which Leander defeated Vesper in 5:29, and the elite eight, in which Radcliffe was beaten by a British composite in 5:20. The time achieved by both Exeter and The Mount in their junior (ie high school) final was faster than the final times in the other 24 Women's Henley events, including the senior (i.e. university) eights, the intermediate A (i.e. academic / university) eights and the intermediate C (i.e. club) eights.
Now that was racing, and that Sunday, on the River Thames in Henley, every woman in each of those two boats earned the title of champion.
The crew of Mount Saint Joseph Academy (Lerro), from bow to stern: (bow) Kiera McCloy, (2) Rose Ehrlich, (3) Julie McGlynn, (4) Dana Zielinski, (5) Darian DiCianno, (6) Kathleen O'Connell, (7) Emily Carbone, (stroke) Dana Lerro, (cox) Mary Raggazino. Coaches Megan Kennedy and Mike McKenna.
The crew of Phillips Exeter Academy, from bow to stern: (bow) Cory Johnson, (2) Cassian Corey, (3) Emily Ball, (4) Forrest Barker, (5) Catherine Closmore, (6) Kerrick Edwards, (7) Jennifer DiPietro, (stroke) Mary Reichenbach, (cox) Jessica Michaels. Spare Millicent Dethy. Coach Sally Morris.
Tom Weil, PA '66 and Yale '70 is an ex-lightweight and Henley competitor turned rowing collector, historian, lecturer and archivist who lives in Woodbridge CT. When he is not practicing law or teaching at Yale, he is practicing life as a trustee of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, a trustee of the National Rowing Foundation, a founding member and director of The Friends of Rowing History, a Visiting Curator for Rowing History at Mystic Seaport, the Secretary and a director of the Yale Crew Association, and a life member of Leander Club, USRowing and the North American Society for Sport History. He is the author of "Beauty and the Boats – art & artistry in early British rowing" (2005) and numerous articles on rowing history, literature and art.