We will introduce you to the great benefits of wine consumption. Apart from the pleasure of pouring yourself a glass of good wine (preferably red), it also has many benefits for our health. Here they are:
Longer life
Yes exactly. On the island of Icarios, they recently discovered an area where people live longer than anywhere else in the world. Guess what they consume daily – a glass of red wine, which they combine with healthy food.
A 2007 study found that procyanidins, compounds found in red wine tannins, help promote cardiovascular health. Wines produced in areas of southwestern France and Sardinia where people live longer have particularly high concentrations of the compound.
You get smarter
Resveratrol contained in wine can help improve short-term memory. After only 30 minutes of testing, researchers found that participants taking resveratrol had a significant increase in memory, and its intake was associated with the formation of new memories, learning and emotions.
Lower cholesterol levels
Reservoir also reduces high cholesterol levels, which can cause coronary artery disease if consumed in excess. One of the best ways to actively control harmful cholesterol levels – and ultimately prevent heart disease – is to limit your intake of saturated fats, especially red meat, and add a glass of red wine in the evening.
Reduces the risk of depression
In 2013, researchers from Spain discovered a possible link between wine consumption and depression. The study followed 5,500 men and women between the ages of 55 and 80 over seven years. Those who drank between two and seven glasses of wine each week were less likely to be depressed than those who did not drink wine. However, this drink should not be overdone.
Instead of fitness
Which would you prefer to drink wine or work out in the gym? Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada have found that resveratrol improves heart, brain and bone function; in the same way these parts improve when you go to the gym. Now imagine the benefits of doing both!
Healthy heart
Red wine also reduces the risk of heart disease and stroke, as the tannins present in it protect against heart disease, while resveratrol is responsible for a healthy heart and helps eliminate chemicals responsible for blood clots.
9 interesting facts about wine and winemaking
As in any field of human knowledge and skills, there are curious facts and circumstances in wine production and wine in general that are not known to everyone.
1. Tartar. This is a deposit that settles on the walls of the wooden barrel after the processed grape juice is poured out of it. It is also called tartaric or tartaric acid and is a potassium salt.
2. You can make white wine from red grapes – but you can’t make red wine from white grapes. The juice of all grape varieties, in fact, has no color. The red color of the wine is due to the fact that the skin of the black or red grapes, which gives the color, is left in the marc until the juice turns red.
3. For wine storage it is best to buy a wine cabinet, which is desirable to be equipped with carbon filters (to remove foreign odors). But this is for everyday use. Long-term storage of wine is allowed only in the cellar. Storage temperature should not exceed 13 degrees Celsius.
4. The French insist that the prototype of the famous champagne glasses is the bust of Queen Marie Antoinette. However, the Greeks assure that this is in memory of the bust of the Beautiful Helen, known to us from the history of the Trojan War. It is not yet known whose version is more reliable.
5. The largest wine producer in the world is Italy (12%), not France, as many people think. The second place is occupied by America and France (11% of world production). The third position is in Spain – it provides the world with 9% of this high-quality alcoholic beverage.
6. Wine barrels are quite expensive vessels. For example, a barrel of French oak can cost up to $ 1,300. And from American oak – 300-500 dollars. But the high price is justified. The oak barrel has the ability to saturate the drink with a woody aroma for up to three fillings with wine. And even if you fill it for the fourth and fifth time, the aroma will still be there, albeit less pronounced.
7. Wine bottle stoppers are made from cork oak bark. This tree lives long enough – from 150 to 200 years, sometimes more. The bark is first collected when the tree is 25 years old. The bark of a tree is peeled once every 9-12 years, approximately 17 times, with an average annual harvest of 60 kg – and part of the bark is left intact. The date of the next peeling is written in red paint. And so after each harvest. The highest quality corks are produced in Portugal.
8. The largest cork oak in the world is the Whistling Tree in Portugal, which is more than 215 years old. Its bark has been peeled since 1820, and about 100,000 wine bottle caps have been made from it so far. Peel its bark once every 9 years. By the way, the tree got its name not by chance, but because of the many birds of different species that nest in its crown.
9. Approximately 600 grapes are needed to produce one bottle of wine.
Hunger is a useful feeling that signals that it is time to recharge our batteries. It supports the functioning of the brain, builds muscle, allows the body to recover from exercise and stress of the day.
It is normal to feel hungry every few hours. However, it is not normal if this happens too often, although we have eaten relatively recently.
What could be the causes of hunger soon after eating?
You are not consuming enough protein
Protein breakdown takes a little longer, which delays hunger over time. If your diet does not contain enough protein, you will become hungry soon after eating.
You do not eat enough fiber
Fiber also provides satiety for longer, unlike carbohydrates, for example. Fiber-free foods pass through the digestive tract much faster, leaving you hungry again soon after eating.
Your meals are too infrequent
Avoid starvation, because it brings a lot of difficulties to the body and puts it in a state of energy saving. This causes stress levels in the body to increase. Instead, divide your meals every 3-4 hours into small portions so that you recharge with energy-bearing nutrients at the optimal time.
You have insomnia
The longer you sleep, the more energy your body will need to control all the processes in cells, tissues and organs. This confusing process leads to exhaustion and the appearance of wolf hunger, especially at night, when the body should switch to a completely different mode.
Chronic stress
When you have high levels of stress, the body prepares for war with an unknown enemy. One of the first signs of this is the frequent occurrence of hunger. The body struggles to compensate for high levels of stress and find a source of energy to help it cope. Elevated stress levels are associated with high levels of cortisol in the blood. This hormone causes the accumulation of fat instead of releasing energy after a meal, which further contributes to the frequent manifestations of hunger.
What makes us eat when we are not hungry?
You have diabetes
When diabetes is not controlled, it affects not only blood sugar but also energy in the body. Sugar is mainly used to get fast energy, but in diabetes the body believes that it is very hungry, so it wants more. At high levels of insulin in the blood (as in type 2 diabetes) there are also frequent outbursts of hunger, as again the metabolism is disrupted and no energy is released due to the accumulation of adipose tissue in reserve.
Decreased thyroid function causes weight gain. Accelerated function – weight loss. Weight loss will be followed by rapid metabolism, in which nutrients are processed too quickly, causing you to become hungry again soon after eating.
Side effects of medications
If you are taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, read their instructions carefully. Some of them can cause unexplained hunger. Most often these are antidepressants, B vitamins, contraceptives.
Different types of hunger
And how to deal with them
Does your stomach ache? Usually, when we reach the end point of hunger, where our stomachs are so scraped that we feel sick, we tend to eat a whole elephant! Or at least food equal to his weight!
Joke aside. Each extreme bears its own harm. Abuse of harmful and high-calorie foods does not lead to anything good. Excessive use of healthy products will also not preserve your figure.
People tend to turn to food at many different times. To stay slim or to be able to fit into your old jeans, see what types of hunger you need to overcome! Don’t give in to them!
Natural hunger
When you haven’t eaten for too long, natural hunger strikes like a whirlwind. It is no coincidence that people say they are hungry like a wolf. In such cases, the risks of ingesting high-calorie foods are much higher. The quantities we eat are also larger. Then it gets hard for us.
Don’t let yourself get hungry. This will prevent you from overeating.
Hunger for nutrients
Even if this wording seems complete nonsense, this kind of hunger exists. Nutrient hunger is hunger for certain groups of nutrients, such as carbohydrates.
You know how sometimes you suddenly get terribly tired of sweets. This is because women tend to exclude whole groups of nutrients, thus the body experiences a frantic hunger for them at some point.
Hunger for anxiety
This is not really a form of hunger, but a way to calm the nerves. If you do not have to deal with this type of hunger, you risk starting to gain weight uncontrollably, because you will want to eat something every time you feel bad.
Hunger from addiction
This type of hunger is associated with food addiction. It could even be classified as a mental disorder, such as anorexia. If you are addicted to food, you will turn to it every time you feel helpless and sad. In such moments, food becomes the only consolation that makes you feel good.
Hunger from boredom
Have you ever eaten something simply because you have nothing else to do? It has happened to all of us, but it gets used to the wrong diet, which leads not only to weight gain, but also to various diseases associated with overweight.
Emotional hunger
Emotional hunger is not really real hunger. In moments of sadness and hopelessness, many people tend to dull the pain with high-calorie and forbidden foods, most often various delicacies.
If you had failed in love, what would you turn to? We are sure that the massive answers would be “to chocolate” or “to ice cream”.
Visual hunger
This hunger occurs when you are not really hungry, but you get tired of something tasty only at the sight of it. Do not give in to desire. Be strong! Only with will will you fight all these types of uncontrolled eating!
Undoubtedly, the fear of death and the retribution that follows in life after it is a kind of faith, but purely medieval in nature. The painters then depicted the Last Judgment, the flames of hell, the devils who torment sinners and kidnap them with a satanic giggle in the underworld.
In the Middle Ages, the religion of the majority (not the holy fathers of the Church) was based on the fear of post-mortem and even lifelong punishment. “Fear created the gods,” exclaims a Roman poet, and he was right in his own way, because he did not mean God but pagan deities. From the pagans this fear was inherited by Christians, especially those whose faith did not rely on the Gospel of Christ, but on the natural desire of men to insure themselves in the face of an incomprehensible and generally hostile world, where everyone is threatened with trouble and danger. .
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, under the influence of rapidly evolving natural religions and as a result of people’s awareness of their human rights and the need to reject their slavery in social terms, this fear began to subside. Thus the man, already freed from fear (which is joyful, because fear is slavery, oppression and confinement, and our Lord calls us to freedom), at the same time begins to lose his faith (which is the trouble!), Precisely because this belief was mixed with purely pagan fear. The fear brought into the temples in the 4th century by those nominal Christians of whom Blaz speaks. Augustine, people who were baptized and accepted the appearance of Christians, but remained pagans in their innermost being.
From here in the West appears the French atheism of the era of Voltaire, Diderot and D’Alembert, and in the East – the Russian atheism of Pisarev, Dobrolyubov and others.
People who felt free from the fear of punishment and drove God out of their lives. The tragedy of the people of that time, among whom were brilliant thinkers, scholars and poets, was that they renounced God at the moment when they had the wonderful opportunity to feel Him, to rediscover Him for themselves and for the future. Along with the medieval prejudices that were inevitably to be abandoned (and thank God, for the most part, they have already been overcome), humanity has lost faith in God. It was as the saying goes: “Along with the water from the trough, the child was thrown out” – only this child turned out to be the Infant born in Bethlehem.
When children are brought up in fear of God (in the sense that He will punish them if they sin), at some point in their lives they will experience the same thing that happened in the time of D. Diderot with our entire civilization. They will stop being afraid, they will become atheists, and they will give up all morality. J.-P. Sartre describes how in his childhood, playing with matches, he burned a carpet. At first he waited for the All-Seeing God to punish him, and then, when no punishment followed, he realized that he did not need to fear God, so – “everything is allowed”. Thus, in the heart of the future existentialist philosopher, unbelief sprouted for the first time.
Three ways to God
Even the ancient fathers said that three paths lead to God: the slave, the mercenary and the son. When one abstains from sin only out of fear of hellish torment, this is the path of the slave who is guided by fear of punishment. The mercenary’s path is connected with the desire to earn some reward.
If one even performs feats out of a desire to be like the Kingdom of heaven, the holy fathers call his work mercenary. God wants us to take the path of sonship, that is, out of love and zeal for Him, to act honestly and enjoy the saving union with Him in our souls and hearts. In the past, all three paths probably led to God, but at the end of the twentieth century it became clear that the first and second are dead-end roads, because walking on them only leads to a nervous breakdown, destroying ourselves and many people around. us.
However, we ourselves are still afraid of each other that God will punish us for something. “God punished him” – we say about someone to whom something happened when we think he deserved punishment for something. In fact, we fear God as the Greeks fear Zeus, the Egyptians fear Amon, and the Romans fear Jupiter. At the same time, we do not even notice how we become pagans ourselves.
And yet, you can not do without the fear of God! This expression is found many times in the Bible, which is not accidental. We just need to understand what this fear is, which teaches us wisdom (Prov. 15:33), protects us from evil (Prov. 16: 6) and leads us to life (Prov. 19:23); he is pure (Ps. 18:10) and, among other things, is to hate evil (Proverbs 8:13). This is not a fear of God and it is not a fear of possible punishment. God does not persecute us, but we could too easily hurt Him with our disobedience.
Some children are afraid of their mother scolding him, but something else is afraid of upsetting or upsetting her. This is the difference between human fears of something dangerous and the fear of God, which for us is the most precious of all treasures.
Since the 1990s, we have seen some angry Orthodox young people, for whom religion is associated primarily with fear of the Typikon, the Statute – lest they break the fast or commit some sin, gloomy, harsh, even the outward behavior of which is monastic. I’m afraid they haven’t chosen the path of slavery for themselves. It is understandable why – during the totalitarian regime we were slaves for a long time and now it is difficult, even almost impossible, to get rid of slave psychology. But it is necessary so that one day we do not lose our faith, like our great-grandparents who renounced God because they saw in God lack of freedom. By renouncing God through their minds, they stretched out their hearts to Him; rejecting non-freedom, they sought God, only they did not know that the One they needed so much, the one they lacked, was He and not someone else.
Servants of God
Believing that we go to church only for fear of punishment, unbelievers think that religiosity humiliates man, suppresses his “I” and makes us slaves in general. This is true if we see in the fear of God only the fear of punishment or retribution. Those who understand our faith in this way darken and become slaves to religion. When we understand the true nature of the Lord’s fear, our faith inspires us, opens before us new opportunities and new horizons, gives us new strength. It is in Christianity that the impossible becomes possible. According to Jesus the Savior, this is impossible for men, but not for God; for with God all things are possible” (Mark 10:27).
In connection with the above, it is appropriate to recall the meaning of the Hebrew word for “servant of the Lord” (Ebed Yahweh). “Ev(b)ed” means a servant or co-worker of God and at the same time a child, ie a child who has grown up, but not quite. We can treat him like an adult, even though we still have to look after him and take care of him – that’s what a “servant of God” is!
Christianity begins with kneeling! These words, no matter how important and true the thesis behind them in the eyes of the Orthodox Christian, arouse bewilderment in people who know nothing about Christianity, worship, the mystical experience in Orthodoxy. For a person who knows nothing about Christianity from the inside, but only about the outside, this phrase depicts a man crushed by religious dogma or a slave kneeling before the icon in the dark temple.
Yes, this is how the Christian kneeling, viewed from the side, is understood. In fact, it expresses not slavish dependence, obedience or fear, but a radically different feeling – enthusiasm: “How many are Your works, Lord! You have done all things wisely” (Ps. 103: 24). The same feeling is astonishingly accurate in the prokimena of the Sabbath evening: “The Lord has reigned, he has put on beauty” and other liturgical texts.
This feeling has been experienced by every doctor who has seen a hopelessly ill child recover; from every mother who met her son alive from war; and, after all, from every child who finds on the morning of his birthday a toy or gift he has long dreamed of. And love, and gratitude, and happiness, and a sense of His presence with us, in general – fullness, this is it, our kneeling, nothing else; in any case, not fear. “We have known the love that God has for us, and we have believed in it … There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4: 16-18).
Theology of fear
However, religion based on fear is still attractive to some. Today, old books are indiscriminately republished, conductors of this theology of fear. It would be normal to assume that interested groups and forces give instructions for photo type editions of such books in order to instill in the Orthodox people an atmosphere of fear, slavish obedience, obedience, while aiming to weaken the Church’s influence among the people, to the discredit it in the eyes of the population, etc. Often these publications are the result of the efforts of honest people, without any malicious intentions – the trouble is that their publishers, like us sometimes, prefer the position of slaves instead of Son-ship.
The use of religion as a tool is becoming a tragedy for all. And for the people, and for those who use it, and for religion itself. This led first to the cultivation of absolute religious indifference, then to an explosion of ungodliness, and finally to the emergence of new denominations and new religions. Thus a new religion in the late twentieth century became Marxism, which took in the hearts of many people, no matter good or bad, the place of God, expelled from there by the obligation of fasting, confession and the atmosphere of fear fueled by some to this day.
Most of us grew up in the age of slavery and we were slaves from diapers, and at the age of 3-4 we realized the universality of this fact. We are so accustomed to our slavish role that on the way to God we also choose to be slaves (instead of slaves). The Jews in the wilderness saw Moses as an enemy precisely because he freed them from bondage (Exodus 16: 2-3). We also consider the enemy to be the one who reminds us that we are called to freedom (Gal. 5:13), just because we are used to lack of freedom and it is psychologically closer to us.
It is this lack of freedom that stiffens our hearts that prevents us from feeling Jesus and seeing in the Church only commandments, ordinances, prohibitions, and not feeling His burning presence and the joy that Church writers have witnessed.
In Soviet times, children were taught knowledge in schools, oriented to facts, developed their memory. They were taught to read fast, and they had to be taught slowly but thoroughly. No one developed their feelings. And today, coming to the Church, they again want to learn everything about God, about the truth, about the Orthodox faith. And they do not understand that in this area the main thing is not so much knowledge, but feelings. The orientation to knowledge makes us inanimate, and combined with the slavish psyche it makes us slaves to our own mind and its limited possibilities, which is why we are not able to immerse ourselves in God as in the ocean, as described by the holy fathers.
We are constantly and everywhere looking for enemies, we check our faith according to the canons as students, checking the answers to the tasks in the textbook; we threaten each other with God, seeing in Him perhaps a good but slaveholder and ourselves slaves. It seems to us that everything around us is bad and terrible, as bad as ever. That is why we still do not have the strength to exclaim together with Archbishop John (Shakhovsky): “The earth is shrouded in the dust of the Lord’s love.” And this is completely true.
Source: Fr. Georgy Chistyakov – Russian Thought Magazine, 1996 (in Russian).
Note: Father Georgy Chistyakov was a theologian, philologist and historian. Parish was a priest in the Moscow church “St. Kozma and Damyan” and the head of the church “Protection of the Mother of God” in the Children’s Republican Clinical Hospital. Member of the Board of the Russian Bible Society and the International Association for the Study of the Church Fathers, Rector of the Public Free University, founded by Fr. Alexander Maine, Head of the Department of Cultural History at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. Since 1995 he has been lecturing on the history of Christianity and theological thought.
The fear of punishment is central to the religiosity of many people today. In the days of state atheism, there was a belief that believers professed God only to avoid the torments of hell. It was as a fear of the hellish torments prepared for sinners in the afterlife that the Orthodox faith was presented by the atheistic propaganda, to which we must acknowledge the high professionalism in this direction.
Outrage among Orthodox Christians around the world has sparked a new ad in which the famous Panagia Sumela Monastery in Turkey was used as a disco. A video from the creation of the ad shows dancing people and a DJ playing electronic music in the courtyard of the monastery, where the Divine Liturgy is celebrated annually on the Feast of the Assumption.
The creators of the video point out that the advertisement, intended to promote the monastery as a tourist attraction, was made with the permission of the Turkish authorities.
“Many comments on social networks talk about the desecration of the monastery and how the church bells are heard in the background along with the music. Some even asked for an explanation from the Turkish authorities, because the holy monastery was practically turned into a nightclub “, Greek Reporter writes.
However, the competent international bodies have not yet paid due attention to the events that took place last week. The blasphemous act provoked both sadness and a sharp reaction. His Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew sent a letter of protest to Turkish Minister of Culture and Sports Mehmet Nuri Ersoy on the use of the monastery for purposes that do not correspond to its religious character and history.
The incident was also condemned by the Holy Synod of the Greek Orthodox Church at yesterday’s meeting. His Beatitude Archbishop Jerome II of Athens and All Greece shared: “What happened is sad and indicative of impunity not only in Turkey but also in our country. We can only meet this challenge if we are more serious and responsible and pay more attention to the meaning of life. ”
The President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakelaropoulou, expressed her regret and disappointment at the incident: “I am shocked by the recent desecration of this World Heritage Site, which the Greek world and especially the Pontians consider an integral part of their identity.”
Metropolitan Hilarion (Alfeev), chairman of the External Church Relations Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, commented on the sad event: his famous frescoes. These holy places were visited by pilgrims from all over the world and served as a symbol of mutual respect and understanding between the two world religions. At the moment, these Christian unifying holy places are virtually inaccessible to them.
Today, religious peace in the country has been disrupted again, as local authorities have authorized the creation of a disco in the main historical shrine of the Pontic Greeks – the monastery of Panagia Sumela in the province of Trabzon. It is said that this was done to attract tourists. I am convinced that Russian tourists, who make up the majority of visitors to Turkey, would never agree to such a cynical trampling on a holy Christian place. In Russia, such treatment of a church or mosque would result in punishment for violators. It is good to see that at least the locals and representatives of the tourism industry are protesting against what happened. The Russian Orthodox Church has done much to make this once glorious monastery accessible to worshipers and to make it possible to worship there. We strongly protest against the desecration of Orthodox holy sites in Turkey and hope that its leadership will not turn a blind eye to this outrage, especially in light of the strengthening of Russian-Turkish relations. “
For centuries the rock monastery, which is believed to have been built in the IV century under Emperor St. Theodosius I was the cradle of Pontic Hellenism. On August 15, 2010, a new tradition was set there to celebrate the patron saint’s day, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, with a Divine Liturgy celebrated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew. The Holy Monastery is also a religious monument of cultural heritage, and since 2000 it has been included in the UNESCO list.
Tsars and their deeds, destructive wars and scientific discoveries, complex geopolitics and ingenious diplomacy – these are all “dishes” for well-fed gourmets. Most people are concerned about questions: how much bread, how much to pay for housing and communal services, how to save money and live up to the salary. The Russian Empire was also inhabited not by incorporeal angels. Compare prices and salaries?
Measure of greatness
Any value is conditional. To understand whether a person has a lot or a little, you need to decide on a system of measures. How to measure – in grams or meters? And, having decided, to compare. Same story with countries. How to calculate the greatness of the state, to determine its “weight”?
But let’s look from a different angle. Let’s be patient and compile a table of indicators of the standard of living: the average salary, the size of pensions, the level of provision of residents with medical and educational services. Let’s look at the level of debt load of the population, the interest on mortgages, the index of the growth of serious crimes, the main food basket.
And let’s compare, say, with the Russian Federation or “independent and Europeanized” Ukraine. The picture of “greatness” emerges differently.
“Nice” intelligentsia
The intelligentsia, which we usually treat with contempt, became “lousy” under the Soviet regime – intellectual work was initially estimated underestimated, physical – overestimated. A doctor, teacher, engineer in the Russian Empire – the elite, which affected incomes. A paramedic had 35 rubles, a full-fledged doctor – 120. A high school teacher – 80, a teacher at a university – 160.
Many or few? In the royal ruble 0.7742 g. gold. It turns out that 1 gram was estimated at approximately 129 kopecks. At the rate of 2021, one gram of gold can be bought for an average of 4.5 thousand rubles. Therefore, 1 ruble of 1913 is equal to 5805 modern. The calculation is rough, one can argue, but it reflects the general trend.
You can see the level of salaries yourself, depending on your profession. But it is wrong to estimate salaries without the price level, so let’s move on to them.
Spool of thread – 300 rubles!
With laptops and electric kettles in Nikolaev Russia, it was not a lot, but the level of tariffs is amazing. On average, 1 ruble for electricity (light and telephone) plus 3 for heating – 17,000 in today’s money. Robbery in broad daylight! This is for a simple tradesman in a small town.
• The shirt went for the ruble (5805),
• Boots for 5 (29000),
• A pair of socks for 31 kopecks (1800).
• Spool of thread – 5 kopecks. This, for a minute, 290 rubles! Do not clear up, because you still need to eat.
• 10 chicken eggs with our money – 1857 rubles!
• A kilo of potatoes – 140 rubles,
• Cabbage – 424, and tomato – 2600.
It is worse with meat: pork (kg) – 2700, lamb – 2900, beef – 3256 in modern money.
It is not surprising that many preferred taverns: for 10 kopecks (580) rubles you could overeat to death if you were not squeamish.
But the cheapest restaurant offered lunch for 2 rubles (10 thousand). The price of a “minibus” (tram) would also surprise you – 5 kopecks (290) one way. Better on foot. You can take the numbers out of the bag for a long time, but the essence does not change – the level of wages was almost completely eaten up by prices.
About starving workers
You involuntarily ask yourself the question – why was the revolution of 1917 needed? So that the cook could run the state? So in the Empire, she received 8-9 rubles a month, that is, 46-47 thousand rubles of the Russian Federation. The laborer received in the “capitals” 16, that is, 90 thousand in terms.
A skilled worker received more than an example. An ordinary locksmith from Yuzefovka will write in his memoirs: “before the revolution, I was better off financially than when I was the secretary of the city committee of Moscow.”
The head of the city committee is, translating into modern language, the mayor of the city. This locksmith received 30-40 (175,000) rubles a month, enough for a family. He even bought a curiosity that he had dreamed of since childhood – a motorcycle. It is difficult to suspect a Donetsk locksmith of love for the tsar and the “crunch of a French roll”. His name was Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev.
If the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU did not hesitate to write such things in his memoirs, you understand a lot about the essence of the revolution. But it is not worth singing hosanna to “golden times” – this is biased in comparisons. It turns out that the level of prices for products and services of housing and communal services is an age-old problem in Russia?
Photo: It is not surprising that many preferred taverns: for 10 kopecks (580) rubles you could overeat to death if you are not squeamish.
Two of the Spanish fighters, who arrived to guard the Bulgarian sky, were alerted yesterday morning. They took off from Graf Ignatievo Air Base and carried out a mission against violators of our airspace in the Black Sea. This was announced by the Chief of Defense Admiral Emil Eftimov and the Spanish Commander Jesus Salazar, quoted by Nova TV. The two spoke after the certification ceremony of the Bulgarian and Spanish crews, which will be on joint duty to protect Bulgarian airspace.
Foreign planes traveling in the eastern zone over the Black Sea were spotted. However, the Spanish pilots were unable to identify them as they withdrew quickly.
Later in the day, the Ministry of Defense clarified that “today there was air activity on the border of our area of responsibility.” This was necessary due to “activity in the international airspace over the Black Sea”.
“Similar actions are performed weekly by the Bulgarian MiG-29 when approaching foreign aircraft to a regulated perimeter near the Bulgarian airspace. We categorically state that there are no grounds for concern because the Bulgarian air borders have not been violated in any way,” reads the position. the ministry.
Four Eurofighter EF-2000 Typhoon II aircraft from the Spanish Air Force landed in Bulgaria on 11 February. 130 Spanish servicemen will perform tasks on enhanced air policing together with their colleagues from the Bulgarian Air Force. The crews arrived from the air base in Albasate. They are the blade of the Strela aerotactic squad. When performing the joint tasks of Air Policing, the Bulgarian fighters on duty will be used as a priority. The mission is implementing measures to ensure the security of NATO member countries on the Eastern Flank, and will be implemented under the plans and procedures of the Alliance’s Integrated Air and Missile Defense System (NATINAMDS).
Romanian Patriarch Daniel has published the report of the Romanian Patriarchate on what has been done in the past 2021 in various areas of church life. Interesting statistics are given in the section on religious education in schools and universities.
In the 2021-2022 school year, 6,220 teachers taught in the schools of Religion in Romanian schools, of which 4,488 were full-time teachers, 173 were teachers in other specialties, had a religion class in addition to the norm, and 1,559 were substitute teachers. 1195 of them are clergy, 4933 have a theological education and 92 have another. In terms of qualifications, 1,339 have a second didactic degree, 2,919 have a first didactic degree, and 213 have a doctorate in theology.
The district school inspectorates employ 42 inspectors of Religion, forty of whom have a theological education and two have another. In order to develop the cooperation for the improvement of the work of the Religion classes, 4822 partnerships have been concluded between parishes and schools throughout the country, in which various school and extracurricular activities are carried out.
The Romanian Patriarchate has (organized and maintained) 26 theological seminaries with different specializations: Orthodox theology, theology of cultural heritage, religious tourism, church music, philology, natural sciences, social sciences, one Orthodox college, nine Orthodox theological high schools and one technological , which also teaches theology.
In the school year 2020-2021, 4361 high school students were enrolled in them. 101 students from abroad are enrolled in pre-university theological education units, including 81 from Moldova, thirteen from Ukraine, four from Serbia, one from Spain and two from Italy.
There are 1,116 teachers in pre-university theological schools. Of these, 684 are full-time, 432 are substitutes and 113 are professors of theology.
In the school year 2020-2021, the funds allocated for these schools amounted to a total of 4,176,568 lei, of which 3,488,668 lei were invested by the Diocesan Centers.
Within the Romanian Patriarchate there are 11 theological faculties (in Bucharest, Iasi, Sibiu, Craiova, Cluj, Constanţa, Targovishte, Pitesti, Alba Iulia, Arad and Oradea) and three theological departments included in other faculties (Timisoara, Bacía) .
In the academic year 2020-2021, 4381 students were enrolled in them. In 2021, 894 students graduated, and in the academic year 2021-2022, 1,310 were enrolled. 3,088 students were enrolled in the specialty of Pastoral Theology, and 555 graduates received a bachelor’s degree.
In the academic year 2020-2021 there are 1826 masters, of which 777 graduated, and in the academic year 2021-2022 973 are enrolled. Doctoral studies are organized in eight university centers, and currently 653 doctoral students are enrolled, of which 104 in the academic year 2021 -2022 (first year). In the academic year 2020-2021, 74 doctoral students received the title of Doctor of Theology.
In the 2020-2021 academic year, 375 teachers worked in higher theological education.
A new accelerator chip called “Hiddenite” that can achieve state-of-the-art accuracy in the calculation of sparse “hidden neural networks” with lower computational burdens has now been developed by Tokyo Tech researchers. By employing the proposed on-chip model construction, which is the combination of weight generation and “supermask” expansion, the Hiddenite chip drastically reduces external memory access for enhanced computational efficiency.
Deep neural networks (DNNs) are a complex piece of machine learning architecture for AI (artificial learning) that require numerous parameters to learn to predict outputs. DNNs can, however, be “pruned,” thereby reducing the computational burden and model size. A few years ago, the “lottery ticket hypothesis” took the machine learning world by storm. The hypothesis stated that a randomly initialized DNN contains subnetworks that achieve accuracy equivalent to the original DNN after training. The larger the network, the more “lottery tickets” for successful optimization. These lottery tickets thus allow “pruned” sparse neural networks to achieve accuracies equivalent to more complex, “dense” networks, thereby reducing overall computational burdens and power consumptions.
Figure 1. HNNs find sparse subnetworks which achieve equivalent accuracy to the original dense trained model. Credit: Masato Motomura from Tokyo Tech
One technique to find such subnetworks is the hidden neural network (HNN) algorithm, which uses AND logic (where the output is only high when all the inputs are high) on the initialized random weights and a “binary mask” called a “supermask” (Fig. 1). The supermask, defined by the top-k% highest scores, denotes the unselected and selected connections as 0 and 1, respectively. The HNN helps reduce computational efficiency from the software side. However, the computation of neural networks also requires improvements in the hardware components.
Traditional DNN accelerators offer high performance, but they do not consider the power consumption caused by external memory access. Now, researchers from Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), led by Professors Jaehoon Yu and Masato Motomura, have developed a new accelerator chip called “Hiddenite,” which can calculate hidden neural networks with drastically improved power consumption. “Reducing the external memory access is the key to reducing power consumption. Currently, achieving high inference accuracy requires large models. But this increases external memory access to load model parameters. Our main motivation behind the development of Hiddenite was to reduce this external memory access,” explains Prof. Motomura. Their study will feature in the upcoming International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) 2022, a prestigious international conference showcasing the pinnacles of achievement in integrated circuits.
Figure 2. The new Hiddenite chip offers on-chip weight generation and on-chip “supermask expansion” to reduce external memory access for loading model parameters. Credit: Masato Motomura from Tokyo Tech
“Hiddenite” stands for Hidden Neural Network Inference Tensor Engine and is the first HNN inference chip. The Hiddenite architecture (Fig. 2) offers three-fold benefits to reduce external memory access and achieve high energy efficiency. The first is that it offers the on-chip weight generation for re-generating weights by using a random number generator. This eliminates the need to access the external memory and store the weights. The second benefit is the provision of the “on-chip supermask expansion,” which reduces the number of supermasks that need to be loaded by the accelerator. The third improvement offered by the Hiddenite chip is the high-density four-dimensional (4D) parallel processor that maximizes data re-use during the computational process, thereby improving efficiency.
Figure 3. Fabricated using 40nm technology, the core of the chip area is only 4.36 square millimeters. Credit: Masato Motomura from Tokyo Tech
“The first two factors are what set the Hiddenite chip apart from existing DNN inference accelerators,” reveals Prof. Motomura. “Moreover, we also introduced a new training method for hidden neural networks, called ‘score distillation,’ in which the conventional knowledge distillation weights are distilled into the scores because hidden neural networks never update the weights. The accuracy using score distillation is comparable to the binary model while being half the size of the binary model.”
Based on the hiddenite architecture, the team has designed, fabricated, and measured a prototype chip with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) 40nm process (Fig. 3). The chip is only 3mm x 3mm and handles 4,096 MAC (multiply-and-accumulate) operations at once. It achieves a state-of-the-art level of computational efficiency, up to 34.8 trillion or tera operations per second (TOPS) per Watt of power, while reducing the amount of model transfer to half that of binarized networks.
These findings and their successful exhibition in a real silicon chip are sure to cause another paradigm shift in the world of machine learning, paving the way for faster, more efficient, and ultimately more environment-friendly computing.
Illustration of Artemis astronauts on the Moon. NASA’s new Tipping Point opportunity and Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity seek to mature space technology, including those that could be used for living and working on the Moon for NASA’s Artemis astronauts. Credit: NASA
Companies with technologies that may advance exploration but need a little extra push to finalize development have two new opportunities to partner with NASA to make it over the finish line.
Through Tipping Point, NASA seeks to support space technologies that can foster the growth of commercial space capabilities and benefit future agency missions. NASA is also offering businesses a chance to work with agency experts or use facilities to complete their work through a separate Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity.
“NASA’s investment and support at this pivotal stage in development can be the key to ultimately bringing new technologies to market,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “Public-private partnerships established through these opportunities will combine agency resources with industry contributions, a benefit that will unlock new ideas to advance how we live and work in space while providing greater value to the American people.”
These opportunities focus on technology development for space infrastructure and capabilities for the Moon and near-Earth space. Selected proposals for working on and near the Moon could include infrastructure for power distribution on the lunar surface, solutions for using lunar resources, or autonomous construction – key components for long-term lunar exploration under Artemis. NASA will also consider proposals for infrastructure and capabilities in Earth orbit – which could range from climate research tools to in-space manufacturing and advanced propulsion.
“Forging strong partnerships with the commercial space economy is critical for driving our nation’s space exploration further and faster,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington, which manages the new opportunities. “I look forward to the new slate of public-private partnerships that will come from these new opportunities.”
Under the Tipping Point opportunity, NASA will award a total of up to $200 million to multiple companies using funded Space Act Agreements. The opportunity also includes incentives for small businesses, allowing companies with fewer than 500 employees to contribute less to the cost of the technology development.
“A funded Space Act Agreement provides more flexibility for commercial partners in intellectual property, private sector contribution, and accounting requirements,” said LK Kubendran, STMD lead on Tipping Point and Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity.
More than half a billion dollars have been awarded to 50 projects since NASA announced the first Tipping Point opportunity in 2015. Space technologies advanced through this funding are now part of current and future mission plans. They include:
Maxar’s Space Infrastructure Dexterous Robot aboard NASA’s On-orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing Mission-1 mission will demonstrate in-space assembly to form a communications antenna following OSAM-1’s launch
Tethers Unlimited’s Hydros thruster flew on NASA’s first Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator CubeSat mission to demonstrate the use of liquid water as fuel in space
Two technologies will be aboard the second Intuitive Machines flight to the Moon under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative: Nokia of America Corporation’s lunar LTE/4G communications system and Intuitive Machines’ hopper robot
The Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity allows companies to use NASA facilities and expertise to aid in technology development without a monetary award.
The deadline to submit initial proposals is March 31, 2022. Companies interested in submitting proposals can also attend an industry information session on Feb. 28. Details on the event are available online.
It is my honour to join you at the WORLD EXPO DUBAI and to introduce today’s conference.
First of all, I would like express my warm thanks to my colleague, Commissioner Kyriakides, who kindly agreed to launch this Conference with me, despite the fact that her schedule did not allow her to travel.
I am grateful to be here in person, to exchange directly with my fellow speakers and with you in the audience.
As you know, we are in the middle of the week dedicated to “Agriculture and Livelihoods”.
To me, this is a very fitting title. It reminds us that agriculture supports our livelihoods; not only our farmers and their families, but every one of us across society: our everyday lives rest on a secure supply of safe and nutritious food.
Our food and farming is more than just a sector of the economy; it is a way of life.
If we want to continue this way of life, then we cannot continue with “business as usual”.
The United Nations Food Systems Summit has made it very clear that we need bold actions to transform the ways we produce, process and consume food across the world.
In the European Union, we have developed a clear roadmap with the Farm to Fork Strategy, which is at the heart of our European Green Deal.
From the beginning, let me say that the Farm-to-Fork Strategy is a Strategy of cooperation. The EU stands ready to cooperate with all countries who want to work towards sustainable food systems.
Together, we must work for global food systems that are environmentally sustainable: that have a neutral or positive climate impact; that work with natural resources, not against them; andreverse the loss of biodiversity;
We must work for systems that are socially sustainable: that ensure food security and public health, making sure that everyone has access to sufficient levels of nutrition;
And finally, we must work for food systems that are economically sustainable: that preserve the affordability of food, and also generate rewarding incomes for farmers, foster competitiveness, and promote fair trade.
To achieve each of these goals, research and innovation will be crucial.
That is why I am extremely happy to be here today, to discuss with you how we can use research and innovation to create modern and sustainable food systems together: through Green Alliances and research initiatives at the highest levels, as well as innovative projects and nature-based solutions that we can put in place on the ground.
With this in mind, I thank you for your attention, and I look forward to our discussion.
