Sao civilisation

The Sao civilization flourished in Middle Africa from ca. the sixth century BC to as late as the sixteenth century AD. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that later became part of Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have left clear traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Sometime around the 16th century, conversion to Islam changed the cultural identity of the former Sao. Today, several ethnic groups of northern Cameroon and southern Chad but particularly the Sara, Kotoko claim descent from the civilization of the Sao.

Origins and decline

The Sao civilization may have begun as early as the sixth century BC, and by the end of the first millennium BC, their presence was well established south of Lake Chad and near the Chari River. The city states of the Sao reached their apex sometime between the ninth and fifteenth centuries AD.

The Sao's demise may have come about due to conquest, Islamization, or both. Traditional tales say that the Sao west of Lake Chad fell to "Yemenites" from the east. These invaders made several unsuccessful attempts to conquer the Sao before finally succeeding by resorting to trickery. If true, the newcomers may have been Arab Bedouin or Sayfuwa raiders coming from the east who moved into the region in the fourteenth century . Although some scholars estimate that the Sao civilization south of Lake Chad lasted until the fourteenth or fifteenth century, the majority opinion is that it ceased to exist as a separate culture sometime in the 16th century subsequently to the expansion of the Bornu Empire. The Kotoko are the inheritors of the former city states of the Sao.

SAO (biscuit)

SAO biscuits are a savoury cracker biscuit that was launched in Australia in 1906 by Arnott's. The term SAO was trade marked in 1904.

The origin of the name "SAO" is unclear. A widely held belief is that the name is an acronym for "Salvation Army Officer", and was named for Arthur, one of the Arnott brothers, who was indeed an officer in the Salvation Army. The Salvation Army Australia somewhat cautiously mentions this on its website, calling it "Arguably Fact" and saying "...it is understood they named it in honour of their brother Arthur Arnott, a Salvation Army Officer. In the 1993 book The Story of Arnott's Famous Biscuits, Ross Arnott states that Sao was the name of a sailing boat which his grandfather [Arnott's founder William Arnott] saw on Lake Macquarie, of which he said "That would make a good name for a biscuit."

SAOs were also one of the first biscuits to be heavily advertised in magazines and newspapers in the early part of the 1900s. In the 1960s, the famous SAO song was launched. SAOs light texture is achieved by rolling the dough into thin sheets, then carefully layering it to give distinctive bubbles and crumbs.

AB Pictoris

AB Pictoris (abbreviated AB Pic, also catalogued as HD 44627) is a K-type star, approximately 148 light-years away in the constellation of Pictor. It has been identified as a member of the young (30 million years old) Tucana–Horologium association. The star has also been classified as a BY Draconis variable. In 2005 it was announced that an astronomical object (AB Pictoris b, abbreviated AB Pic b) had been imaged in 2003 and 2004 close to and apparently in orbit around the star. Its mass suggests that it is at the borderline between being a brown dwarf or a planet.

Possible planetary system

In 2003 and 2004, an object (now catalogued as AB Pictoris b) was observed close to the star by a team of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory. Since it had common proper motion with AB Pictoris, it was concluded that it was physically close to the star. Its spectral type was estimated as between L0V and L3V. Using evolutionary models, its mass was estimated as from 13 to 14 Jupiter masses. However, because modelling such young objects is difficult, this estimate is very uncertain; some models give masses as low as 11 Jupiter masses or as high as 70 Jupiter masses. Temperature estimates range from 1600 K to 2400 K. As it is not known if the mass of the object exceeds the deuterium burning limit of 13 Jupiter masses, it is not clear whether the object should be classified as an extrasolar planet or a brown dwarf.

MTV Plus

MTV Plus was a digital entertainment television channel available in Greece and an Italian version also aired until it was replaced with MTV Music on March 1, 2011.

MTV Plus in Greece

The channel was launched in Greece on October 18, 2009. The launch party was held in "Vogue" Club in Thessaloniki 17 December 2009, with a guest appearance from British dance band Freemasons, as well as Greek band as C Real, Stavento and other Greek acts. MTV+ is available in Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. Its programming is similar to its sister channel MTV Greece. MTV+ utilizes MTV's current global branding. The Greek version has closed on December 12, 2011, replaced by Nickelodeon Plus.

MTV+ in Italy

The channel launched Free-to-air in Italian DTT in May 2010 and on Sky Italia on October 18, 2010. The Italian version has closed on March 1, 2011, replaced by MTV Music.

Former logos

This version was used in Greece.

This version was used in Greece.

This version was used in Italy.

This version was used in Italy.

MTV Tres

MTV Tres (stylized as tr3́s, and taken from the Spanish word for the number three, tres) is an American broadcast, digital cable and satellite television network that is owned by Viacom Music and Entertainment Group, a division of the Viacom Media Networks subsidiary of Viacom. Programming on Tr3s includes lifestyle series, customized music video playlists, news documentaries that celebrate Latino culture, music and artists, and English-subtitled programming in Spanish imported from the MTV España and MTV Latin America channels as well as Spanish-subtitled programming from MTV. The channel is targeted toward bilingual Latinos and non-Latino Americans aged 12 to 34.

The channel is headed by executive vice president and general manager Jose Tillan. As of August 2013, Tr3s is available to approximately 36 million pay television households (totaling 32% of households with television) in the United States.

History

MTV en Español

On August 1, 1998, MTV Networks launched a 24-hour digital cable channel, MTV S (the "S" standing for "Spanish"). On October 1, 2001, the channel was relaunched as MTV en Español, focusing on music videos by Latin rock and pop artists. The rebranded network mainly utilized the eight-hour automated music video playlist wheel used by sister networks MTV2, MTV Hits and MTVX (later MTV Jams) without any original programming, except for repurposed content from MTV's Latin America networks.

MTV3

MTV3 (Finnish: MTV Kolme; Swedish: MTV Tre) is a Finnish commercial television station owned by Bonnier. It had the biggest audience share of all Finnish TV channels until Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Yle TV1 took the lead. The letters MTV stand for Mainos-TV (advertisement television), due to the channel getting its revenue from running commercials. Number 3 was added later, when the channel was allocated the third nationwide television channel and it generally became known as "Channel Three" – Finnish Broadcasting Company’s Yle TV1 and Yle TV2 being the first two – and also to distinguishing it from the later MTV Finland. The channel's logo was a stylized owl, changed to an owl's eye after an image renewal in 2003. MTV3 currently has about 500 employees. It is also known as Maikkari (a slang of word "Mainos-TV").

History

MTV3 started on 13 August 1957, the first commercial television network in Finland, and one of the earliest nationwide commercial TV stations in Europe. In Finland it was preceded by the regional TES-TV commercial channel. It was originally known as MTV with programmes broadcast on the two channels of Yle. MTV was allocated its own channel after 1986, when Kolmoskanava (TV3) was born as a joint venture between Yle, MTV, and Nokia. MTV3 was born in 1993 when MTV took over the shares of TV3 from Yle and Nokia and MTV programming switched from the Yle frequencies to the TV3 transmitters. The same year MTV Oy was admitted as a full active member of the European Broadcasting Union.