A flashbulb memory is a memory that was laid down in great detail during a personally significant event, often a shocking event of national or international importance. These memories are perceived to have a "photographic" quality. The term was coined by Brown and Kulik (1977), who found highly emotional memories (e.g. hearing bad news) were often vividly recalled, even some time after the event. For example, a great many people can remember where they were when they heard of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 or the assassination of U.S president John F. Kennedy or musician John Lennon.
Despite the great vividness of such memories, some research suggests that flashbulb memories are no more likely to be remembered than ordinary memories, if the ordinary memories are consistently returned to in a similar way (e.g., Weaver, 1993 and Talarico, 2003). The most pronounced difference between ordinary and flashbulb memory is that people believe flashbulb memories to be more accurately and vividly remembered. Part of the reason for this may be that people discuss such significant events frequently, and the after-the-fact discussion can modify what people believe they remember about the event. Neisser (1982) believes that flashbulb memories are enduring because they are constantly being reinforced by, for example, the media.
Some biologists believe that the hormone Cortisol, which is released in response to stressful incidents, causes the formation of flashbulb memories by the brain. Another theory proposes flashbulb memory is an artifact of synaptic plasticity tagging whereby memory of unimportant events share or 'steal' some of the strengthening synaptic tag of the important event.

Wind instrument
This article is part of the Saxophone series.
The saxophone (colloquially referred to as sax) is a conical-bored instrument of the woodwind family.
It is usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece like the clarinet. The saxophone is commonly associated with popular music, big band music, blues, and jazz - but was originally intended as both an orchestral and military band instrument. Saxophone players are called saxophonists.

Saxophone family
Clarinet
List of saxophonists
Adolphe Sax
Saxophonists History
The saxophone's bore is effectively conical, giving it acoustic properties more similar to the oboe than to the clarinet. However, unlike the oboe, whose tube is a straight-line cone, most saxophones have a number of curves. In the smallest sizes (soprano and sopranino), straight instruments are more common than curved ones, but larger-sized instruments all appear with the familiar curve in the instrument's neck and bow. This shape, with its large, upward-facing bell and bent neck, was taken from the bass clarinet, which had been in existence from 1807 (though similar instruments had existed from as early as 1772). (A few straight alto and tenor saxophones have been made as novelties. A few straight baritone and C melody saxophones have occasionally been made as custom instruments, but were never mass-produced.) There is some debate amongst players as to whether the curve affects the tone or not.
Construction
Saxophones have a "normal" range of approximately two and a half octaves. Any notes above this range are considered to be part of the altissimo register. Notes are fingered using a key system of tone holes, keys, and pads. A saxophone has 21 to 23 keys, depending on whether it has a high F♯, a high G, or a low A key. (Since 1970, the high F♯ key has become common among intermediate- and professional-level instruments, while the high G key is found on only a few modern sopranos.) The low A note can also be achieved by playing a low B♭ and covering the bell(usually with the inside of the left leg). When pressure is applied to a key it opens or closes one or more of the tone holes by lifting or lowering a pad. The pads, usually made of leather with a felt interior and plastic on the bottom to reflect some sound, cover the tone holes when depressed, forming an airtight seal and thereby lengthening or shortening the vibrating air column, thus raising or lowering the pitch produced. The fingering for the saxophone is very similar to the flute.

Key system
Nearly all saxophones are made from brass. (They are categorized as woodwind instruments, however, not as brass instruments; despite the categories' names, an instrument's category is determined not by the materials used, but by the method of tone production.)
Brass is used to make the body of the instrument; the pad cups which hold leather pads; the rods that connect the pads to the brass keys, and the posts that hold the rods and keys in place. The screw pins that connect the rods to the posts, and the springs that cause keys to return to their place after being released, are generally made of steel, or on inexpensive saxophones, aluminum. Since 1920, nearly all saxophones have key touches (smooth decorative pieces placed where the fingers will touch the instrument) made of either plastic or mother of pearl.
Other materials have been tried with varying degrees of success, as with the 1950s plastic saxophones made by the Grafton company and the rare wooden saxophones. A few companies, such as Yanagisawa, have made some saxophone models from bronze, which is claimed to produce a warmer sound. Some manufacturers have made saxophone necks or entire instruments out of sterling silver.
Nickel silver also has been used; some manufacturers, including Selmer, Yanagisawa, P.Mauriat, Keilwerth, and BG, have made instruments of nickel silver. Some say these instruments have a brighter or more powerful sound.

Materials
After completing the instrument, manufacturers apply a thin coating (of clear or colored acrylic lacquer, or silver plating) over the bare brass. The lacquer or plating serves to protect the brass from corrosion, and gives the instrument a very pleasing appearance. Several different types and colors of surface finish have been used over the years.
Clear or gold-colored acrylic lacquer is the most common finish used for saxophones today. Lacquer can also be other colors; sometimes a black or brightly colored lacquer is used for visual effect. Most manufacturers will accept special orders regarding plating and color of lacquer, allowing a player to obtain a uniquely colored instrument.
It is possible that the type of lacquer or plating may enhance an instrument's tone quality; the possible effects of different finishes on tone is a hotly debated topic. Many say that lacquer or plating has no effect on the sound,
A bare brass instrument will naturally tarnish, turning a dark brown and/or green color. The tarnishing of the brass affects only the appearance; tarnish has no effect on the saxophone's playability. If the owner desires to change the instrument's finish, the instrument can be disassembled and chemically stripped of its lacquer or plating, then "relacquered" or replated with the same or different material. Opinions vary on whether this process harms the instrument or affects its tone.

Prior to 1930, instruments were typically available with three types of finishes:

• bare brass,
  silver plating, or
  gold plating. (Since gold will not adhere to bare brass, gold plating requires that the instrument first be plated with silver; the gold plating is then applied on top of the silver.)
  Some 1920s instruments were made with a silver plated body, and bell and/or keys that were gold-plated.
  Between 1940 and 1960, some instruments were plated with nickel as a cheaper (and non-tarnishing) alternative to silver.
  Between 1970 and 1990, some King brand instruments were made with lacquered body and silver-plated neck and bell. Surface finish
  
  
  Main article: Mouthpiece (woodwind) Mouthpiece
  
  

  Main article: Reed (instrument) Reed
  The saxophone was originally patented as two families, each consisting of seven instruments. The "orchestral" family consisted of instruments in the keys of C and F, and the "military band" family in E♭ and B♭. Each family consisted of sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass and contrabass, although some of these were never made; Sax also planned--but never made--a subcontrabass (Bourdon) saxophone.
  
  Members of the saxophone family
  In music written since 1930, only the soprano in B♭, alto in E♭, tenor in B♭ and baritone in E♭ are in common use - these form the typical saxophone sections of concert bands, military bands, and big-band jazz ensembles. The bass saxophone (in B♭) is occasionally used in band music (especially music by Percy Grainger) and big band orchestrations (especially music performed by the Stan Kenton "Mellophonium Orchestra").
  The vast majority of band and big-band music calls only for E♭ alto, B♭ tenor, and E♭ baritone instruments. A typical saxophone section in a concert band might consist of four to six altos, one to three tenors, and one or two baritones. A typical saxophone section in a jazz band consists of two altos, two tenors, and a baritone. Occasionally a band or jazz ensemble will perform a piece that calls for soprano saxophone - in this case it is common practice for one of the players from the alto section to switch to soprano for that piece.
  Most saxophone players begin learning on the alto, branching out to tenor, soprano or baritone after gaining competency. The alto saxophone is the most popular among classical composers and performers; most classical saxophonists focus primarily on the alto. In jazz, alto and tenor are predominantly used by soloists. Many jazz saxophonists also play soprano on occasion, but nearly all of them use it only as an auxiliary instrument.
  The soprano has regained a degree of popularity over recent decades in jazz/pop/rock contexts, beginning with the work of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane in the 1960s. The soprano is often thought of as more difficult to play, or to keep in tune, than the more common alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. A few bass, sopranino, and contrabass saxophones are still manufactured; these are mainly for collectors or novelty use, and are rarely heard - they are mostly relegated to large saxophone ensembles.
  
  Common saxophones
  Of the orchestral family, only the tenor in C, soprano in C, and mezzo-soprano in F (similar to the modern alto) ever gained popularity. The tenor in C, generally known as the C melody saxophone, became very popular among amateurs in the 1920s and early 1930s, because its players could read music in concert pitch (such as that written for piano, voice, or violin) without the need to transpose. Although the instrument was popularized by players such as Rudy Wiedoeft and Frankie Trumbauer, it did not secure a permanent place in either jazz or classical music. The C-Melody was manufactured well into the 1930s long after its initial popularity had waned, although it became a special order item in the catalogs of some makers. The instrument is now a commonly encountered attic or garage sale relic, though since the 1980s a few contemporary saxophonists have begun to utilize the instrument once again. A similarly sized instrument, the contralto saxophone,
  Construction difficulties mean that only recently has a true sopranissimo saxophone been produced. Nicknamed the Soprillo, this piccolo-sized saxophone is an octave above the soprano, and its diminutive size necessitates an octave key on the mouthpiece.
  
  Rare saxophones and novelty sizes
  A number of saxophone-related instruments have appeared since Sax's original work, most enjoying no significant success. These include the saxello, straight B♭ soprano, but with a slightly curved neck and tipped bell; the straight alto; and the straight B♭ tenor (currently not in production; until recently, made only by a Taiwanese firm and imported to the United States by the L.A. Sax Company plays the same range, and with the same fingering, as the E♭ contrabass saxophone; its bore, however, is narrower than that of a contrabass saxophone, making for a more compact instrument with a "reedier" tone (akin to the double-reed contrabass sarrusophone). It can be played with the smaller (and more commonly available) baritone saxophone mouthpiece and reeds. Eppelsheim has also produced subcontrabass tubaxes in C and B♭, the latter being the lowest saxophone ever made.
  Another unusual variant of the saxophone was the Conn-O-Sax, a straight-bore instrument in F (one step above the E♭ alto) with a slightly curved neck and spherical bell. The instrument, which combined a saxophone bore and keys with a bell shaped similar to that of a heckelphone, was intended to imitate the timbre of the English horn and was produced only in 1929 and 1930. The instrument had a key range from low A to high G. Fewer than 100 Conn-O-Saxes are in existence, and they are eagerly sought by collectors.
  Among the most recent developments is the aulochrome, a double soprano saxophone invented by Belgian instrument maker François Louis in 2001.
  
  Bamboo "saxophones"
  Music for all sizes of saxophone is notated using treble clef. The standard written range extends from a B♭ below the staff to an F or F♯ three ledger lines above the staff. There are a few models of soprano saxophone that have a key for high G, and several models of baritone saxophone have an extended bore and key to produce low A. Notes above F are considered part of the "altissimo range" of any sax, and can be produced using advanced embouchure techniques and fingering combinations. Sax himself had mastered these techniques; he demonstrated the instrument as having a range of just beyond three octaves up to a (written) high B4.
  In the mid-twentieth century, some players resisted learning how to play in the altissimo register; many articles written during this period referred to the use of altissimo notes as a stunt, "faking," or employing "false fingerings." The altissimo register, like any other woodwind instrument, employs the third and subsequent harmonics to extend the instrument's range. On the saxophone, however, the mastery of these harmonics takes more effort than on other woodwinds. There was a historical belief that the saxophone's range ends at high F and that Adolphe Sax had stopped promoting the extended range only due to its perceived difficulty.
  Nearly all saxophones are transposing instruments: Sopranino, alto, baritone, and contrabass saxophones are pitched in the key of E♭, and soprano, tenor and bass saxophones are in the key of B♭. Because all instruments use the same key arrangement and fingering to produce a given notated pitch, it is not difficult for a competent player to switch among the various sizes. When a saxophonist reads and fingers a written C on the staff on an E♭ alto, the note sounds as E♭ a major sixth below the written pitch. A C played on a B♭ tenor, however, sounds as B♭ a major ninth below. The E♭ baritone is an octave below the alto, and the B♭ soprano is an octave above the tenor. The following discussion refers entirely to the notes as written, and therefore applies equally to all members of the saxophone family.
  Since the baritone and alto are pitched in E♭, players can read concert pitch music notated in bass clef by reading it as if it were treble clef and adding three sharps to the key signature. This process, referred to as clef substitution, makes it possible for the baritone saxophone (or any other saxophone in the key of E♭) to play from parts written for bassoon, tuba, trombone or string bass. This can be useful if a band or orchestra lacks one of those instruments.
  Most baritone saxophones produced since 1980 have an extra key that allows the player to play a low A (concert C), but earlier baritones and other sizes of saxophone do not (except for some basses and a few rare altos made by The Selmer Company). Composers who call for a low A when writing for baritone saxophone should be aware that many players will not be able to play the note for lack of the necessary key.
  Early on, most composers stayed away from composing for the saxophone due to their misunderstanding of the instrument. However, around the turn of the twentieth century, some people (many from the United States) began to commission compositions for the instrument. One prominent commissioner was Elise Hall, a wealthy New England socialite who took up playing the saxophone to aid in her battles with asthma (at the behest of her husband, a doctor). Though she did commission many pieces, the works didn't originally feature the saxophone very well (probably because she decided to demonstrate herself the saxophone's ability - her skills were less than admirable by most accounts). Subsequent versions, however, have been arranged to better feature the saxophone, such as the "Rhapsodie" by Claude Debussy.
  
  Writing for the saxophone
  Arguably, the most famous Saxophone solo in the concert repertoire may be The Old Castle from the orchestral work Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. Originally written for piano, an orchestral arrangement was realized by Maurice Ravel in 1922.
  
  Pictures at an Exhibition - The Old Castle
  The Australian composer Percy Grainger championed the Saxophone during his career, using different saxophones in his many compositions and arrangements.
  Classical music for the saxophone became more common during the course of the twentieth century. Many present-day composers have written for the instrument. For example, American composer Philip Glass wrote a Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra in the 1990s. Percy Grainger also went on to write the Lincolnshire Posy which included a variety of solos specifically made for the soprano saxophone. This class of saxophone was according to Percy Grainger his favorite of all instruments because of its beautiful singing voice that most closely resembled that of a human voice. Today Lincolnshire Posy is considered to be one of the best literatures ever written for Wind Ensemble.
  
  Percy Grainger
  Besides functioning as a solo instrument, the saxophone is also an effective ensemble instrument, particularly when several members of the saxophone family are played in combination. Although only occasionally called for in orchestral music, saxophone sections (usually encompassing the alto, tenor, and baritone instruments, but sometimes also the soprano and/or bass) are an important part of the jazz big band, as well as military, concert, and marching bands.
  Ensembles made up exclusively of saxophones are also popular, with the most common being the saxophone quartet.
  
  Use in ensembles
  The saxophone quartet is usually made up of one soprano, one alto, one tenor, and one baritone. This instrumentation is often referred to as "SATB." The second most common quartet instrumentation (found most often at the middle school level) is two altos, a tenor, and a baritone (referred to as "AATB"). A few professional saxophone quartets feature non-standard instrumentation, such as James Fei's Alto Quartet Amstel, and Rova Saxophone Quartets are among the best known groups. Historically, the quartets led by Marcel Mule and Daniel Deffayet, saxophone professors at the Conservatoire de Paris, were started in 1928 and 1953, respectively, and were highly regarded. The Mule quartet is often considered to be the prototype for all future quartets due the level of virtuosity demonstrated by its members and its central role in the development of the quartet repertoire. Organized quartets did indeed exist prior to Mule's ensemble, the prime example being the quartet headed by Eduard Lefebre (1834-1911), former soloist with the Sousa band, in the United States circa 1904-1911. Other ensembles most likely existed at this time as part of the saxophone sections of the many touring "business" bands that existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  In jazz music, saxophones are usually heard as members of a jazz combo or a big band, but one professional avant-garde jazz group, the World Saxophone Quartet, has become known as the preeminent jazz saxophone quartet. The Rova Saxophone Quartet, based in San Francisco, is noted for its work in the fields of contemporary classical music and improvised music.
  
  Saxophone quartets
  There are a few larger all-saxophone ensembles as well. The most prominent include the 12-member Raschèr Saxophone Orchestra Lörrach,
  
  Larger saxophone ensembles
  Many believe it is relatively easy to become a competent saxophonist, especially when transferring from other woodwind instruments, but a considerable amount of practice is usually required to develop a pleasing tone color and fluent technique.
  Playing technique for the saxophone is subjective based upon the intended style (classical, jazz, rock, funk, etc.) and the player's idealized sound. The design of the saxophone allows for a big variety of different sounds, and the "ideal" saxophone sound and keys to its production are subjects of debate. However, there is a basic underlying structure to most techniques.
  
  Technique
  
  

  Main article: Saxophone embouchure Embouchure
  Saxophone vibrato is much like a vocal or string vibrato, except the vibrations are made using the jaw instead of the diaphragm or fingers. The jaw motions required for vibrato can be simulated by saying the syllables "wah-wah-wah" or "tai-yai-yai." The method which is easiest and brings the best vibrato depends on the player. While most will say vibrato is not vital to saxophone performance (as its importance is inferior to proper tone quality), many argue it as being integral to the distinct saxophone color. Classical vibrato can vary between players (soft and subtle, or wide and abrasive). Many Classical players look to violinists as a model for their sound. It has been suggested that this follows the example of Marcel Mule of the Paris Conservatory, one of the early proponents of Classical Saxophone playing. Jazz vibrato varies even more amongst its users. Fast and wide vibrato is used by older "swing" style players, while some modern players use almost no vibrato except on slow ballads. Typically, less vibrato is used at faster tempos. Players just starting out with vibrato will usually start out slow with exaggerated jaw movements. As they progress, the vibrato becomes quicker until the desired speed is reached. A vibrato can be produced also by controlling the air stream with the tongue. This is more difficult than the jaw vibrato, but often produces better results.
  
  Vibrato
  A number of effects can be used to create different or interesting sounds.
  
  Growling is a technique used whereby the saxophonist sings, hums, or growls, using the back of the throat while playing. This causes a modulation of the sound, and results in a gruffness or coarseness of the sound. It is rarely found in classical or band music, but is often utilized in jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, and other popular genres. Some notable musicians who utilized this technique are Earl Bostic, Boots Randolph, Gato Barbieri, Ben Webster, Clarence Clemons and King Curtis.
  Glissando is a sliding technique where the saxophonist bends the note using voicing (tongue placement)and at the same time slides up or down to another fingered note. This technique is sometimes heard in big band music (for example, Benny Goodman's "Sing Sing Sing") and, rarely, in orchestral music, e.g., George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." A glissando can also be created using the tongue to control the airstream and holding the embouchure immobile.
  Multi phonics is the technique of playing more than one note at once. A special fingering combination causes the instrument to vibrate at two different pitches alternately, creating a warbling sound.
  The use of overtones involves fingering one note but altering the air stream to produce another note which is an overtone of the fingered note. For example, if low B♭ is fingered, a B♭ one octave above may be sounded by manipulating the air stream. Other overtones that can be obtained with this fingering include F, B♭, and D. The same air stream techniques used to produce overtones are also used to produce notes above high F# (the "altissimo register").
  The technique of manipulating the air stream to obtain various effects is commonly known as "voicing." Voicing technique involves varying the position of the tongue and throat, causing the same amount of air to pass through either a more or less confined oral cavity. This causes the air stream to either speed up or slow down, respectively. As well as allowing the saxophonist to play overtones/altissimo with ease, proper voicing also helps the saxophonist develop a clear, even and focused sound throughout the range of the instrument. For a thorough discussion of voicing technique see "Voicing" by Donald Sinta and Denise Dabney. Tone effects
  The use of electronic effects with the saxophone began with innovations such as the Varitone system, which Selmer introduced in 1965. The Varitone included a small microphone mounted on the saxophone neck, a set of controls attached to the saxophone's body, and an amplifier and loudspeaker mounted inside a cabinet. The Varitone's effects included echo, tremolo, tone control, and an octave divider. Two notable Varitone players were Eddie Harris and Sonny Stitt. Similar products included the Hammond Condor.
  In addition to playing the Varitone, Eddie Harris experimented with looping techniques on his 1968 album Silver Cycles.
  David Sanborn and Traffic member Chris Wood employed effects such as wah-wah and delay on various recordings during the 1970s.
  In more recent years, the term "saxophonics" has been used to describe the use of these techniques by saxophonists such as Skerik, who has used a wide variety of effects that are often associated with the electric guitar, and Jeff Coffin, who has made notable use of an envelope follower.
  
  Brands
  
  List of saxophonists
  EWI
  Lyricon
  Microtuner
  Saxophone embouchure

The Florida Heartland is a region of Florida located to the north and west of Lake Okeechobee, composed of six inland, non-metropolitan counties — DeSoto, Glades, Hardee, Hendry, Highlands, and Okeechobee. In 2000, The US Census Bureau recorded the population of the region at 229,509. A 2005 US Census Bureau estimate places the region's population at 249,837, a five year growth rate of 9.0%. The most populous county in the region is Highlands County, and the region's largest city is Sebring. Unlike the coastal areas to the east and west, the rural nature of the Florida Heartland is culturally closer to the Deep South than the rest of peninsular Florida.

Development
Each county in the region has its own county government. Within each county, there are also self-governing cities and towns. The majority of land in each county is controlled directly by the county government. It is common for incorporated municipalities to contract county services in order to save costs and avoid redundancy.

Government
Each of the six counties has its own school board, with four of the county school systems consisting of one high school, one alternative school and no more than two middle schools. Highlands County has three high schools while Hendry County has two.
South Florida Community College, the largest post-secondary institution based within Florida's Heartland, is located in Avon Park and has campuses in Lake Placid, Bowling Green and Arcadia.
Other community colleges that have campuses in the Florida Heartland include the Indian River Community College's Dixon Hendry Campus in Okeechobee, and the Fort Myers-based Edison Community College with its Hendry/Glades Center in LaBelle.

Regional Transportation
There are no interstate Highways in the Florida Heartland. The Ronald Reagan Turnpike passes through the northeastern corner of Okeechobee County, and includes the Fort Drum service plaza, but there are no exits along that segment.
United States Highways in the region:
Florida State Roads in the region include:

US 17
US 27
US 441
US 98
State Road 17
State Road 29
State Road 64
State Road 66
State Road 70
State Road 710
State Road 78
State Road 80 Highways
There is no scheduled airline service in the Florida Heartland. The following General Aviation airports operate in the region:

Arcadia Municipal Airport
Avon Park Executive Airport
Airglades Airport (Clewiston)
Labelle Municipal Airport
Okeechobee County Airport
Sebring Regional Airport
Wauchula Municipal Airport Airports
There are no seaports, as there is neither a seacoast nor navigable rivers.

Seaports
There are three freight lines operating in the Florida Heartland, with approximately 190 miles of track: CSX Transportation, Seminole Gulf Railway, and South Central Florida Express.
Amtrak service operates on CSX tracks, with stops in Sebring and Okeechobee.

Railway
Tourism is an economic driver in the area, but far less so than most of the rest of the state. The lack of development and amenities results in fewer tourists visiting the area, and there are no oceanfront beaches to attract nearby residents. The largest tourist attraction is the Sebring International Raceway, southeast of Sebring in Highlands County. There, the 12 Hours of Sebring, an American Le Mans Series race usually held in the second week of March, drew a "paying crowd" of more than 169,000 in 2006. Many seasonal residents live in the area during the winter months only, as temperatures in south Florida stay very moderate during that time of year. Lake Okeechobee and Lake Istokpoga attract fishers to the area.

Tourism
Area code 863 is used throughout the region.

Area codes

Regional Media
There are two daily newspapers published in the Heartland, the Okeechobee News (Okeechobee), and Highlands Today (Sebring).
Other daily newspapers that serve the Heartland include:

The Ledger (Lakeland)
The News-Press (Fort Myers)
The Miami Herald (Miami)
The Orlando Sentinel (Orlando)
The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach)
The Tampa Tribune (Tampa)
Charlotte Sun (Port Charlotte) Newspapers
There are no local television stations in the Florida Heartland. TV service originates in Fort Myers, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach.

Television Stations
The following radio stations operate in the Heartland:

WAFC-AM Clewiston
WAFC-FM Clewiston
WAPQ-LP Avon Park
WAUC Wauchula
WBIY La Belle
WFHT Avon Park
WFLN Arcadia
WGSE-LP Sebring
WITS Sebring
WJCB Clewiston
WJCM Sebring
WJFH Sebring
WOKC Okeechobee
WREH Cypress Quarters
WWLL Sebring
WWOJ Avon Park
WWTK Avon Park
WWWP-LP Arcadia (off air)
WZSP Nocatee
WZZS Zolfo Springs Radio Stations

Florida Heartland Population Data

Incorporated Municipalities
There are no United States Census Bureau-designated Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the Florida Heartland. However, the Census Bureau has identified five Micropolitan Statistical Areas:

Arcadia, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area (DeSoto County, Florida)
Clewiston, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area (Hendry County, Florida)
Okeechobee, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area (Okeechobee County, Florida)
Sebring, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area (Highlands County, Florida)
Wauchula, FL Micropolitan Statistical Area (Hardee County, Florida)

This is a list of major companies based in India. Please note that the list is highly incomplete and does not have every company of all sizes. More information about the companies can be found in the links to the company articles.

A

Aditya Birla Group B

Bajaj Auto D

Dabur India Limited E

Eicher Motors F

Federal Bank G

GAIL H

HDFC Bank I

IBP J

Jain Irrigation Systems K

Keltron L

Larsen & Toubro M

Madras Rubber Factory N

National Aluminium Company O


ONGC P, Q

Pawan Hans R

Ramco Systems S

Sahara India Pariwar T

TAFE Tractors U

Union Bank of India W


Wadia Group conglomerate; holdings include Bombay Dyeing (textiles) , Britannia Industries (food) and Go Air (passenger airline)

Prometheus Books is a publishing company founded in August 1969 by Paul Kurtz and publishes scientific, educational, and popular books, especially those of a secular humanist or scientific skepticism nature. Their headquarters are located in Amherst, New York and they publish worldwide. They have published books by personages such as Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman, Martin Gardner, Antony Flew, Ibn Warraq, George H. Smith, James Randi, Isaac Asimov, Molefi Asante and Philip J. Klass. The founder, Paul Kurtz, maintains a role as the chairman of the company.
Prometheus Books obtained the bulk of the books and manuscripts of Humanities Press International

Flickr is a photo sharing website and web services suite, and an online community platform, which is generally considered an early example of a Web 2.0 application.
In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository. Its popularity has been fueled by its innovative online community tools that allow photos to be tagged and browsed by folksonomic means. Flickr has a repository of well over 1 billion images.

History

Features
Flickr allows photo submitters to categorize images by use of keyword "tags" (a form of metadata), which allow searchers to easily find images concerning a certain topic such as place name or subject matter. Flickr provides rapid access to images tagged with the most popular keywords. Because of its support for user-generated tags, Flickr repeatedly has been cited as a prime example of effective use of folksonomy, although Thomas Vander Wal suggested Flickr is not the best example of folksonomy. Also, Flickr was the first website to implement tag clouds.
Flickr also allows users to categorize their photos into "sets", or groups of photos that fall under the same heading. However, sets are more flexible than the traditional folder-based method of organizing files, as one photo can belong to one set, many sets, or none at all. (The concept is directly analogous to the "labels" in Google's Gmail.) Flickr's "sets", then, represent a form of categorical metadata rather than a physical hierarchy. Sets may be grouped into "collections", and collections further grouped into higher-order collections.
Finally, Flickr offers a fairly comprehensive web-service API that allows programmers to create applications that can perform almost any function a user on the Flickr site can do.

Organization
Organizr is a web application for organizing photos within a Flickr account. It allows users to modify tags, descriptions, and set groupings, and to place photos on a world map (a feature provided in conjunction with Yahoo! Maps). It uses Ajax to closely emulate the look, feel, and quick functionality of desktop-based photo-management applications. Because of this, Organizr greatly simplifies the batch organization of photos, which is more cumbersome with the web interface.

Organizr
Flickr provides both private and public image storage. A user uploading an image can set privacy controls that determine who can view the image. A photo can be flagged as either public or private. Private images are visible by default only to the uploader, but they can also be marked as viewable by friends and/or family. Privacy settings also can be decided by adding photographs from a user's photostream to a "group pool". If a group is private then all the members of that group can see the photo. If a group is public then the photo becomes public as well. Flickr also provides a "contact list" which can be used to control image access for a specific set of users in a way similar to that of LiveJournal.
In Fall 2006 Flickr created a "guest pass" system that allows for private photos to be shared with non Flickr members. For instance, a person could email this pass to parents who may not have an account to allow them see the photos otherwise restricted from public view. This setting allows sets to be shared, or all photos under a certain privacy category (friends or family) to be shared.
In March 2007, Flickr added new content filtering controls that permit members to specify by default what types of images they generally upload (photo, art/illustration, or screenshot) and how "safe" (i.e. unlikely to offend others) their images are, as well as to specify that information individually for specific images. In addition, users can specify the same criteria when searching for images. There are some restrictions on searches for certain types of users: non-members must always use SafeSearch, which omits images noted as potentially offensive, while members whose Yahoo! accounts indicate that they are underage may use SafeSearch or moderate SafeSearch, but cannot turn SafeSearch off completely.
Many of its users allow their photos to be viewed by anyone, forming a large collaborative database of categorized photos. By default, other users can leave comments about any image they have permission to view, and in some cases can add to the list of tags associated with an image.

Access control
Flickr's functionality includes RSS and Atom feeds and an API that allows independent programmers to expand its services.
The core functionality of the site relies on standard HTML and HTTP features, allowing for wide compatibility among platforms and browsers. Organizr uses Ajax, with which most modern browsers are compliant, and most of Flickr's other text-editing and tagging interfaces also possess Ajax functionality.
Images can be posted to the user's collection via email attachments, enabling direct uploads from many cameraphones and applications with email capabilities.
Flickr has increasingly been adopted by many web users as their primary photo storage site, especially members of the weblog community. In addition, it is popular with Macintosh and Linux users, who are often locked out of photo-sharing sites because they require the Windows/Internet Explorer setup to work.
Flickr uses the Geo microformat on the pages for over 3 million geotagged images.

Interaction and compatibility
With an active free account, each user only has access to the most recent 200 images he or she has uploaded. Older images are not deleted, and are still accessible via their URLs (e.g. linked from another website); however, they will no longer be accessible to tag or edit from the user's Flickr account. Free accounts which are inactive for 90 consecutive days are automatically deleted.

Archiving
In spring of 2007 Flickr introduced mandatory filtering of all photos and a process of central review of photos by staff to set levels of appropriateness. By default all Flickr accounts are set to the status appropriate for a minor and must be changed by the user in their account.
Fickr has since used this setting to change the level of accessibility to "unsafe" content for entire nations, including South Korea, Hong Kong, and Germany. German users staged a "revolt" over being assigned to the user rights of a minor in the summer of 2007.
The filter system of Flickr essentially assumes that everything is unsafe and should not be public until a staff person has validated that the material is safe. Until this happens material can not be viewed by persons without a valid Yahoo and Flickr account. There is no work around to this issue other than insuring that Flickr administration staff makes a site as safe. At time of writing this could take a month.
A Flickr site not marked as safe can only be viewed by people in the community who have set their filters beyond the default status of that of a "minor".

Flickr Filter
Yahoo has announced that they will be shutting down Yahoo! Photos during summer 2007, after which all photos will be deleted. During the interim, users will have the ability to migrate their photos to Flickr. All who migrate to Flickr will have given three months of Flickr PRO account until September in time to officially close Yahoo! Photos.

Yahoo! Photos
Flickr offers users the ability to release their images under certain common usage licenses. The licensing options primarily include the Creative Commons 2.0 attribution-based and minor content-control licenses - although jurisdiction and version-specific licenses cannot be selected. As with "tags", the site allows easy searching of only those images that fall under a specific license.

Integration with Yahoo Web Search
Cal Henderson, a Flickr developer, revealed much of the service's backend in a 2005 PowerPoint presentation at the Vancouver PHP Association. The platform consisted of:

PHP for core application logic
Smarty Template Engine
PEAR for XML & Email
Perl for "controlling"
ImageMagick
MySQL 4.0
Java for the node service
Apache Web Server 2
Adobe Flash Censorship controversy

Graham, Jefferson. "Flickr of idea on a gaming project led to photo website", USA Today, 2006-02-27. Retrieved on 2006-09-04. 

The RS-27A is a medium-sized rocket engine developed by Rocketdyne for use on the Delta II and Delta III rockets. It is fueled by a kerosene / LOX mixture in a gas-generator cycle. The engine is a modified version of its predecessor, the RS-27; its thrust nozzle has been extended to increase its area ratio from 8:1 to 12:1, which provides greater efficiency at altitude.

Joseph Kosma (born Kozma József October 22, 1905 in Budapest, died August 7, 1969 outside Paris) was a Hungarian composer, of Jewish background. His parents taught stenography and typing. He had a brother, Akős. He was related on his mother's side to László Moholy-Nagy.
Kosma started to play the piano at age 5, and later took piano lessons. After completing his education at the Gymnasium Franz-Jőszef, he attended the Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Leó Weiner. He also studied with Béla Bartók in Academy Liszt. He earned diplomas in composition and conducting. He won a grant to study in Berlin in 1928. There, he met Lilli Apel, another musician, whom he later married. Kosma also met and studied with Hanns Eisler in Berlin. He also made acquaintance with Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel.
Kosma and his wife emigrated to Paris in 1933. Eventually, he met Jacques Prévert, who introduced him to Jean Renoir, which led to his contributions to French cinema music of the mid-century. During World War II and the Occupation of France, Kosma was placed under house arrest in the Alpes-Maritimes region, and was banned from composition. However, Prevert managed to arrange for Kosma to contribute music for films, with other composers fronting for him. Among his credits are the scores to these classic French films: La Grande Illusion, Les Enfants du Paradis, and The Rules of the Game. He is also known for writing the standard classical-Jazz piece "Les feuilles mortes" "Autumn Leaves" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer), which was derived from music in Carne's film Les Portes de la Nuit.
Kosma's mother and brother were killed by the Arrow Cross Nazi auxiliaries in 1944. Kosma himself was wounded in an explosion in August 1944 in France. Kosma's father survived the war, and died in 1957. Joseph Kosma died in 1969 and was buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.

Closure may refer to:
In music:
Closure (computer science), an abstraction binding a function to its scope
Closure (mathematics), the smallest object that both includes the object as a subset and possesses some given property
Closure (topology), the set of all points intuitively "close to" a given set
Closure (philosophy), a philosophical description of the world put forward by Hilary Lawson
Closure (psychology), the state of experiencing an emotional conclusion to a difficult life event, or, a point in the development of an artifact where social understanding and interpretation reaches consensus
Closure (comics), the process by which the mind fills in missing details between the panels of a comic
Deductive closure, the application of the mathematical concept to formal logic
Cloture, a motion in parliamentary procedure to bring debate to a quick end
Law of Closure, a principle in Gestalt psychology
Closure (law), an act of closing a public trial
a stage in the social construction of technology
Closure (Nine Inch Nails VHS), a Nine Inch Nails video set
Closure (band), a Canadian rock band
"Closure" (Chevelle song), a song by Chevelle from their album Wonder What's Next
"Closure", a song by Hood from their album Outside Closer
"Closure", a song by Opeth from their album Damnation
Resolution (music), in music theory

History of ASL
ASL is a natural language as proved to the satisfaction of the linguistic community by William Stokoe, and contains phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax and pragmatics just like spoken languages. It is a manual language or visual language, meaning that the information is expressed not with combinations of sounds but with combinations of handshapes, palm orientations, movements of the hands, arms and body, location in relation to the body, and facial expressions. While spoken languages are produced by the vocal cords only, and can thus be easily written in linear patterns, ASL uses the hands, head and body, with constantly changing movements and orientations. Like other natural sign languages, it is "three dimensional" in this sense. ASL is used natively and predominantly by the Deaf and hard-of-hearing of the United States and Canada.

Linguistics
Although it often seems as though the signs are meaningful of themselves, in fact they can be as arbitrary as words in spoken language. For example, a child may often make the mistake of using the word "you" to refer to themselves, since others use that word to refer to him or her. Children who acquire the sign YOU (pointing at one's interlocutor) make similar mistakes – they will point at others to mean themselves, indicating that even something as seemingly explicit as pointing is an arbitrary sign in ASL, like words in a spoken language.
However, Edward Klima and Ursula Bellugi have modified the common theory that signs can be self-explanatory by grouping signs into three categories:
Klima and Bellugi used American Sign Language in formulating that classification. The theory that signs are self-explanatory can be conclusively disproved by the fact that non-signers cannot understand fluent, continuous sign language. The majority of signs are opaque.
Generally, signs that are "Transparent" are signs of objects or words that became popular after the basics of ASL were established. There are, of course, exceptions to this.

Transparent: Non-signers can usually correctly guess the meaning
Translucent: Meaning makes sense to non-signers once it is explained
Opaque: Meaning cannot be guessed by non-signers Iconicity
Stokoe started a phonological analysis and devised a phonemic alphabet rather like the International Phonetic Alphabet. Other linguists have since extended sign language research to the morphology and syntax of ASL as well as other sign languages.

Grammar
Stokoe called the building blocks of signs 'cheremes', from the Greek cheir- 'hand' by analogy with the word phoneme. However, it has since been recognized that they are cognitively equivalent to the phonemes of oral languages, and since Stokoe's time the terms 'phoneme' and 'phonology' have been used for all languages, oral and sign.
These linguists have divided ASL signs into several elements or features: hand shape, palm orientation, hand movement, hand location, and non-manual features such as facial expression. In early theoretical approaches, movement was treated as simultaneous and/or sequential motions of the hand, on par with other features; while in many more recent approaches, movement is treated as the tempo of the language rather than as a feature per se: Signs are divided into segments of movement and hold, each of which consists of a set of the other features of hand shape, orientation, location, plus any non-manual features.

Phonology
In addition to linear movement in the six fundamental palm directions of up, down, in (toward the signer), out (away from the signer), center, facing opposite your dominant hand is (contralateral), and the same side as your dominant hand (ipsilateral), of which diagonal movement is considered to be comprised, phonologically distinctive sign movements include twisting of the wrist, bending of the wrist or fingers, touching a location, crossing hands or fingers, grasping, entering (inserting the hand or fingers between the fingers of the other hand), opening the hand, closing the hand, approaching a location (or the hands to each other), separating from a location (or the hands from each other), brushing a location, wriggling the fingers, exchanging hands, and circling motion of the hand or arm. These may involve 'salient' forearms, so that crossing the hands is realized as crossing extended arms. Palm orientations are, by the simple fact of being static, necessarily a subset of these.
When both hands are actively used for motion (as opposed to the 'weak' hand acting as a passive location for the 'dominant' hand), their motions may be parallel (both to the left or right), mirror images (approaching or separating), or alternating (180° out of phase, like legs pedaling a bicycle).
Stokoe et al. (1965) describe motion as a sequence, each segment of which is composed of one or more of the movement phonemes listed above, such as a fist moving outward while opening and then moving downward while closing again. Orientation is conflated with handshape, the combination being called a designator or dez. However, since that time there has been a variety of other approaches. Orientation is now generally considered a feature in its own right, separate from handshape. Liddell (1982) divides signs into phonological segments, which may be either movements or holds. Liddell likens this to the division of spoken language into consonants and vowels, with the Stokoe approach likened to the division of speech into syllables. For Liddell and those who follow him, each movement or hold consists of a set of the other features: Shape, orientation, location, and non-manual. A sign may consist of just a hold (that is, it may be without movement), or of movement plus a hold, or a hold plus movement, or more complex sequences. This simplifies the description of ASL morphology considerably.

Orientation, movement, and hold
While it can be approximated that there are around 150 handshapes, not all are phonemically distinct in ASL. This is very similar to how there are hundreds of linguistically producible sounds, but only some are considered phonemically distinct in English. The seventeen ASL handshapes that are considered phonemically distinct (not considering finger spelling) are:
These handshapes are constrained in their interactions. For example, the 5 and F handshapes only make contact with another part of the body through the tip of the thumb, whereas the K and Y/8 handshapes only make contact through the tip of the middle finger, and the X handshape with the flexed joint of the index finger. The L hand always makes contact by means of the thumb, though contact with the index finger would be just as easy: when contact is made with the index finger, the position of the thumb is unimportant, so the same signer may sometimes use a handshape closer to a letter G, and sometimes closer to a letter L; the G shape is considered more basic, and therefore these are considered allophones of the G hand.

the fist (the shape of the ASL letters A, S, T, or 10),
the flat hand (the shape of B or 4),
the spread (and sometimes clawed) hand (5 or E),
the cupped hand (the C hand),
thumb touching fingertips (as in O or M),
a pointing index finger (as in 1, D, G, Z, or Q),
a hooked index finger (the X hand),
a pointing pinky finger (I or J),
the index and middle fingers together (U, H, or N),
the index and middle fingers apart (V or 2),
the 'chopsticks' hand (K or P),
the thumb and index finger apart (the L hand),
the thumb, index, and middle finger extended (the 3 hand),
thumb touching pinkie (6 or W),
the 'okay' hand (thumb touching index: F or 9),
crossed fingers (the R hand), and
the pinkie with thumb and/or index finger, or a spread hand with bent middle finger (the Y hand, 8 hand, 'devil's horns', bent middle-finger, and 'I love you'/airplane hands are allophones). Handshape
ASL includes both fingerspelling borrowings from English, as well as the incorporation of alphabetic letters from English words into ASL signs to distinguish related meanings of what would otherwise be covered by a single sign in ASL. For example, two hands trace a circle to mean 'a group of people'. Several kinds of groups can be specified by handshape: When made with C hands, the sign means 'class'; when made with F hands, it means 'family'. Such signs are often referred to as initialized signs because they substitute the first initial an English word as the handshape in order to provide a more specific meaning.
When using alphabetic letters in these ways, several otherwise non-phonemic handshapes become distinctive. For example, outside fingerspelling there is but a single fist handshape, with the placement of the thumb irrelevant, but within fingerspelling the position of the thumb on the fist distinguishes the letters A, S, and T. Letter-incorporated signs which rely on such minor distinctions tend not to be stable in the long run, but they may eventually create new distinctions in the language. For example, due to signs such as 'elevator', which generally requires the E handshape, some argue that E has become phonemically distinct from the 5/claw handshape.
Fingerspelling has also given way to a class of signs known as "loan signs" or "borrowed signs." Sometimes defined as lexicalized fingerspelling, loan signs are somewhat frequent and represent an English word which has, over time, developed a unique movement and shape. Sometimes loan signs are not even recognized as such because they are so frequently used and their movement has become so specialized. Loan signs are sometimes used for emphasis (like the loan sign #YES substituted for the sign YES), but sometimes represent the only form of the sign (e.g., #NO). Probably the most commonly used example of a loan sign is the sign for NO. In this sign, the first two fingers are fused, held out straight, and then tapped against the thumb in a repeated motion. When broken down, it can be seen that this movement is an abbreviated way of fingerspelling N-O-N-O. Loan signs are usually glossed as the English word in all capital letters preceded by the pound sign(#).Other commonly known loan signs include #CAR, #JOB, #BACK, #YES, and #EARLY.

Fingerspelling
Of all the possible locations on the body or in space, twelve are used to distinguish signs in ASL:
In addition, the sign may be made in 'neutral' space in front of the chest (zero location).
For example, a 5 hand tapping the upper face means 'father', tapping the lower face means it 'mother', and tapping the torso (chest) it means 'fine'.
Signs may be made with two active hands, oriented in a specific way both to each other and to the body locations.

the whole face or head,
the upper face (forehead or brow),
the mid face (eyes or nose),
the lower face (chin or mouth),
the side face (cheek, temple, or ear),
the neck,
the trunk (shoulders, chest, and belly),
the upper arm,
the forearm (including the elbow),
the inside of the wrist,
the back of the wrist, and
the other (weak) hand: In this case, the weak hand may take one of the simpler handshapes listed above, such as the A, O, B, G, H, V, or L handshapes, but not others such as X or R. Location
In addition to phonological location, there is also indexic location. For example, the 2nd/3rd-person pronouns point to their referent, or to a point in space (a 'locus') that's been set up to represent that referent. Directional (indexic) verbs [see below] are similar. However, no words are distinguished by such divisions of signing space.
A referent locus may be set up by signing a noun and then pointing to a certain spot in sign space. The signer can later refer back to that noun by pointing to its associated location (that is, by using an indexic pronoun), or by incorporating the location into the motion of an indexic verb. For instance, if you point to a spot over your right shoulder when referring to your grandmother in another city, you can then mention her again by pointing over your shoulder instead of repeating 'my out-of-town grandmother'. Perhaps as many as eight loci may be productively used to distinguish pronouns in a conversation, before the speakers become overloaded, whereas English is restricted to three third-person pronouns: he, she, and they.
Nouns can be set up without the need for initially pointing by making a sign for them at a salient point in space near the signer. This is often accompanied by the facial expression that indicates a topic. (See below.) For example, when discussing football, you can sign 'college' on your left (most likely by signing 'college' in neutral space and extending the final hold to the locus you're setting up), fingerspell P-R-O at a locus on your right (that is, off to one side rather than in neutral space), and then ask whether one prefers collegiate or professional games by signing 'you like which?', with the indexic pronoun 'which' oscillating between the two loci.

Referent locus system
Non-manual elements are extremely important to ASL syntax, more important than intonation is to English syntax. However, they are also phonemic in a small percentage of basic lexical signs. Non-manual features involve the mouth (lips, tongue, jaws, cheeks, and breath; called 'mouthing'), eyes (gaze, lids, and brows), and movement of the head. For example, the sign translated 'not yet' requires that the tongue touch the lower lip and that the head rotate slowly from side to side, in addition to the manual part of the sign. Without these features it is ill formed, and may not be understood.

Non-manual features
ASL morphology is to a large extent iconic. This shows up especially well in reduplication and indexicality.
Many spoken languages have both inflectional and derivational morphology. ASL appears to have only derivational morphology (Liddell 2004). There are no inflections for tense, number, or person. Person is indicated indexically with some verbs, but the form this takes is specific to each verb, and can't be arbitrarily extended to new verbs the way verbal inflections can. A similar situation exists with verbal number.

Morphology
'Mouthing' (making what appear to be speech sounds) is important for fluent signing, and it has morphological uses. For example, one may sign 'man tall' to indicate the man is tall, but by mouthing the syllable cha while signing 'tall', the phrase becomes that man is enormous!
There are other ways of modifying a verb or adjective to make it more intense. These are all more or less equivalent to adding the word "very" in English; which morphology is used depends on the word being modified. Certain words which are short in English, such as 'sad' and 'mad', are fingerspelled rather than signed to mean 'very sad' and 'very mad'. Others are reduplicated. Some signs are produced with an exaggeratedly large motion, so that they take up more sign space than normal. This may involve a back-and-forth scissoring motion of the arms to indicate that the sign ought to be yet larger, but that one is physically incapable of making it big enough. Many other signs are given a slow, tense production. The fact that this modulation is morphological rather than merely mimetic can be seen in the sign for 'fast': both 'very slow' and 'very fast' are signed by making the motion slower and more deliberate than it is in the citation forms of 'slow' and 'fast', not by making it slower for 'very slow' and faster for 'very fast'.

Degree
Reduplication (morphological repetition) is extremely common in ASL. Generally the motion of the sign is shortened as well as repeated. Nouns may be derived from verbs through reduplication. For example, the noun chair is formed from the verb to sit by repeating it with a reduced degree of motion. Similar relationships exist between acquisition and to get, airplane and to fly (on an airplane), also window and to open/close a window.
Reduplication is commonly used to express intensity as well as several verbal aspects (see below). It is also used to derive signs such as 'every two weeks' from 'two weeks', and is used for verbal number (see below), where the reduplication is iconic for the repetitive meaning of the sign.

Reduplication
Many ASL words are historically compounds. However, the two elements of these signs have fused, with features being lost from one or both, to create what might be better called a blend than a compound. Typically only the final hold (see above) remains from the first element, and any reduplication is lost from the second.
An example is the verb 'to agree', which derives from the two signs 'to think' and 'to be alike'. The verb 'to think' is signed by bringing a 1 hand inward and touching the forehead (a move and a hold). 'Alike' is signed by holding two 1 hands parallel, pointing outward, and bringing them together two or three times. The compound/blend 'to agree' starts as 'to think' ends: with the index finger touching the forehead (the final hold of that sign). In addition, the weak hand is already in place, in anticipation of the next part of the sign. Then the hand at the forehead is brought down parallel to the weak hand; it approaches but does not make actual contact, and there is no repetition.

Compounds
Affixes are extremely common in spoken languages, which except for suprasegmental features such as tone are tightly constrained by the sequential nature of voice sounds. In ASL, however, morphemes may be expressed simultaneously, and perhaps consequently there are only a few affixes.
One of these, transcribed as '-er', is made by placing two B or 5 hands in front of the torso, palms facing each other, and lowering them. This suffix cannot occur on its own, but must follow one of a limited set of verbs, which then together with it become the sign for the performer of the action, as in 'drive-er' and 'teach-er'.
An ASL prefix, (touching the chin), is used with number signs to indicate 'years old'. The prefix completely assimilates with the initial handshape of the number. For instance, 'fifteen' is signed with a B hand that bends several times at the knuckles. The chin-touch prefix in 'fifteen years old' is thus also made with a B hand. For 'three years old', however, the prefix is made with a 3 hand.

Affixes
Rather than relying on sequential affixes, ASL makes heavy use of simultaneous modification of signs. One example of this is found in the aspectual system (see below); another is numeral incorporation: There are several families of two-handed signs which require one of the hands to take the handshape of a numeral. Many of these deal with time. For example, drawing the dominant hand lengthwise across the palm and fingers of a flat B hand indicates a number of weeks; the dominant hand takes the form of a numeral from one to nine to specify how many weeks. There are analogous signs for 'weeks ago' and 'weeks from now', etc., though in practice several of these signs are only found with the lower numerals.
ASL also has a system of classifiers which may be incorporated into signs. A fist may represent an inactive object such as a rock (this is the default or neutral classifier), a horizontal Y hand may represent an aircraft, a horizontal 3 hand a motor vehicle, an upright G hand a person on foot, an upright V hand a pair of people on foot, and so on through higher numbers of people. These classifiers are moved through sign space to iconically represent the actions of their referents. For example, a Y hand may 'lift off' or 'land on' a horizontal B hand to sign an aircraft taking off or landing; a 3 hand may be brought down on a B hand to sign parking a car; and a G hand may be brought toward a V hand to represent one person approaching two.

Numeral incorporation and classifiers
Frames are a morphological device that may be unique to sign languages (Liddell 2004). They are incomplete sets of the features which make up signs, and they combine with existing signs, absorbing features from them to form a derived sign. It is the frame which specifies the number and nature of segments in the resulting sign, while the basic signs it combines with lose all but one or two of their original features.
One, the frame (a sideward pan) combines with times of the day, such as 'morning' and 'afternoon', which likewise keep their handshape and location but lose their original movement. Numeral incorporation (see above) also uses frames. However, in ASL frames are most productively utilized for verbal aspect.

Frames
While there is no grammatical tense in ASL, there are numerous verbal aspects. These are produced by modulating the verb: Through reduplication, by placing the verb in an aspectual frame (see above), or with a combination of these means.
An example of an aspectual frame is the unrealized inceptive aspect ('just about to X'), illustrated here with the verb 'to tell'. 'To tell' is an indexical (directional) verb, where the index finger (a G hand) begins with a touch to the chin and then move outward to point out the recipient of the telling. 'To be just about to tell' retains just the locus and the initial chin touch, which now becomes the final hold of the sign; all other features from the basic verb (in this case, the outward motion and pointing) are dropped and replaced by features from the frame (which are shared with the unrealized inceptive aspects of other verbs such as 'look at', 'wash the dishes', 'yell', 'flirt', etc.). These frame features are: Eye gaze toward the locus (which is no longer pointed at with the hand), an open jaw, and a hand (or hands, in the case of two-hand verbs) in front of the trunk which moves in an arc to the onset location of the basic verb (in this case, touching the chin), while the trunk rotates and the signer inhales, catching her breath during the final hold. The hand shape throughout the sign is whichever is required by the final hold, in this case a G hand.
The variety of aspects in ASL can be illustrated by the verb 'to be sick', which involves the Y/8 hand touching the forehead, and which can be modified by a large number of frames. Several of these involve reduplication, which may but need not be analyzed as part of the frame. (The appropriate non-manual features are not described here.)
These modulations readily combine with each other to create yet finer distinctions. Not all verbs take all aspects,and the forms they do take will not necessarily be completely analogous to the verb illustrated here. Conversely, not all aspects are possible with this one verb.
Aspect is unusual in ASL in that transitive verbs derived for aspect lose their transitivity. That is, while you can sign 'dog chew bone' for the dog chewed on a bone, or 'she look-at me' for she looked at me, you cannot do the same in the durative to mean the dog gnawed on the bone or she stared at me. Instead, you must use other strategies, such as a topic construction (see below) to avoid having an object for the verb.

stative "to be sick" is made with simple iterated contact, typically with around four iterations. This is the basic, citation form of the verb.
inchoative "to get sick, to take sick" is made with a single straight movement to contact and a hold of the Y/8 hand on the forehead.
predisposional "to be sickly, to be prone to get sick" is made with incomplete motion: three even circular cycles without contact. This adds reduplication to verbs such as 'to look at' which do not already contain repetition.
susceptative "to get sick easily" is made with a thrusting motion: The onset is held; then there is a brief, tense thrust that is checked before actual contact in made.
frequentative "to be often sick" is given a marcato articulation: A regular beat, with 4-6 iterations, and marked onsets and holds.
susceptive and frequentive may be combined to mean "to get sick easily and often": Four brief thrusts on a marked, steady beat, without contact with the forehead.
protractive "to be continuously sick" is made with a long, tense hold and no movement at all.
incessant "to get sick incessantly" has a reduplicated tremolo articulation: A dozen tiny, tense, uneven iterations, as rapid as possible and without contact.
durative "to be sick for a long time" is made with a reduplicated elliptical motion: Three slow, uneven cycles, with a heavy downward brush of the forehead and an arching return.
iterative "to get sick over and over again" is made with three tense movements and slow returns to the onset position.
intensive "to be very sick" in given a single tense articulation: A tense onset hold followed by a single very rapid motion to a long final hold.
resultative "to become fully sick" (that is, a complete change of health) is made with an accellerando articulation: A single elongated tense movement which starts slowly and heavily, accelerating to a long final hold.
approximative "to be sort of sick, to be a little sick" is made with a reduplicated lax articulation: A spacially extremely reduced, minimal movement, involving a dozen iterations without contact.
semblitive "to appear to be sick" [no description]
increasing "to get more and more sick" [no description] Verbal aspect
Reduplication is also used when expressing verbal number. Verbal number indicates that the action of the verb is repeated; in the case of ASL it is apparently limited to transitive verbs, where the motion of the verb is either extended or repeated to cover multiple object or recipient loci. (Simple plurality of action can also be conveyed with reduplication, but without indexing any object loci; in fact, such aspectual forms do not allow objects, as noted above.) There are specific dual forms (and for some signers trial forms), as well as plurals. With dual objects, the motion of the verb may be made twice with one hand, or simultaneously with both; while with plurals the object loci may be taken as a group by using a single sweep of the signing hand while the verbal motion is being performed, or individuated by iterating the move across the sweep. For example, 'to ask someone a question' is signed by flexing the index finger of an upright G hand is the direction of that person; the dual involves flexing it at both object loci (sequentially with one hand or simultaneously with both), the simple plural involves a single flexing which spans the object group while the hand arcs across it, and the individuated plural involves multiple rapid flexings while the hand arcs. If the singular verb uses reduplication, that is lost in the dual and plural forms.

Verbal number
ASL syntax is primarily conveyed through a combination of word order and non-manual features. Early accounts of word order, among other issues, were often confused because non-manual features were not considered.

Syntax
The basic constituent order of ASL is subject object verb. This is the order of words in a clause; however, either the subject or the object, or both, may be unexpressed in the main clause of an utterance, as ASL is a pro-drop language. In practice there is a great deal of flexibility to ASL word order, made possible by the use of topics and tags. Both are indicated with non-manual features. Within a noun phrase, the word order is noun-number and noun-adjective.
ASL does not have a copula (linking 'to be' verb). For example, my hair is wet is signed 'my hair wet', and my name is Pete may be signed '[name my] P-E-T-E'.

Word order
A topic sets off background information that will be discussed in the following main clause. Topic constructions are not often used in standard English, but they are common in some dialects, as in,
That dog, I never could hunt him.
In ASL, the eyebrows are raised during the production of a topic, and often a slight pause follows:
[meat] I like lamb As for meat, I prefer lamb.
ASL utterances do not require topics, but their use is extremely common. They are used for purposes of information flow, to set up referent loci (see above), and to supply objects for verbs which are grammatically prevented from taking objects themselves (see below).
Without a topic, the dog chased my cat is signed:
dog chase my cat
However, people tend to want to set up the object of their concern first and then discuss what happened to it. In English, we do this with passive clauses: my cat was chased by the dog. In ASL, topics are used with similar effect:
[my cat] chase dog means my cat chased the dog literally, "My cat, it chased the dog."

Topic and main clauses
Information may also be added after the main clause as a kind of 'afterthought'. In ASL this is commonly seen with subject pronouns. These are accompanied by a nod of the head, and make a statement more emphatic:
boy fall "The boy fell down."
versus
boy fall [he] "He fell down, he did."

Subject pronoun tags
As noted above, in ASL aspectually marked verbs cannot take objects. To deal with this, the object must be known from context so that it does not need to be further specified. This is accomplished in two ways:
Of these two strategies, the first is the more common. For my friend was typing her term paper all night to be used with a durative aspect, this would result in
my friend type T-E-R-M paper. type all-night

The object may be made prominent in a prior clause, or
It may be used as the topic of the utterance at hand. Aspect, topics, and transitivity
Negated clauses may be signaled by shaking the head during the entire clause. A topic, however, cannot be so negated; the headshake can only be produced during the production of the main clause. (A second type of negation starts with the verb and continues to the end of the clause.)

Negation
Yes-no questions are signaled by raising the eyebrows, while wh- (information) questions require a lowering of the eyebrows. Raised eyebrows [note how these differ] are also used for rhetorical questions which are not intended to elicit an answer.
Rhetorical questions are much more common in ASL than in English. For example, I don't like garlic may be signed,
[I like], I Italian'
.

Questions
Relative clauses are signaled by tilting back the head and raising the eyebrows and upper lip. This is done during the performance of the entire clause. There is no change in word order. For example, the dog which recently chased the cat came home would be signed
[recently dog chase cat] come home
, where the brackets here indicate the duration of the non-manual features. If the sign 'recently' were made without these features, it would lie outside the relative clause, and the meaning would change to "the dog which chased the cat recently came home".

Relative clauses
In ASL signers set up regions of space (loci) for specific referents (see above); these can then be referred to indexically by pointing at those locations with pronouns and indexical verbs.

Deixis
Personal pronouns in ASL are indexic. That is, they point to their referent, or to a locus representing their referent. Meier 1990 demonstrates that only two grammatical persons are distinguished in ASL: First person and non-first person, as in Damin. Both persons come in several numbers as well as with signs such as 'my' and 'by myself'.
Meier provides several arguments for believing that ASL does not formally distinguish second from third person. For example, when pointing to a person that is physically present, a pronoun is equivalent to either 'you' or '(s)he' depending on the discourse. There is nothing in the sign itself, nor in the direction of eye gaze or body posture, that can be relied on to make this distinction. That is, the same formal sign can refer to any of several second or third persons, which the indexic nature of the pronoun makes clear. In English, indexic uses also occur, as in 'I need you to go to the store and you to stay here', but not so ubiquitously. In contrast,several first person ASL pronouns, such as the plural possessive ('our'), look different from their non-first person equivalents, and a couple of pronouns do not occur in the first person at all, so first and non-first persons are formally distinct.
Personal pronouns have separate forms for singular ('I' and 'you/(s)he') and plural ('we' and 'you/they'). These have possessive counterparts: 'my', 'our', 'your/his/her', 'your/their'. In addition, there are pronoun forms which incorporate numerals from two to five ('the three of us', 'the four of you/them', etc.), though the dual pronouns are slightly idiosyncratic in form (i.e., they have a K rather than 2 handshape, and the wrist nods rather than circles). These numeral-incorporated pronouns have no possessive equivalents.
Also among the personal pronouns are the 'self' forms ('by myself', 'by your/themselves', etc.). These only occur in the singular and plural (there is no numeral incorporation), and are only found as subjects. They have derived emphatic and 'characterizing' forms, with modifications used for derivation rather like those for verbal aspect. The 'characterizing' pronoun is used when describing someone who has just been mentioned. It only occurs as a non-first person singular form.
Finally there are formal pronouns used for honored guests. These occur as singular and plural in the non-first person, but only as singular in the first person.
ASL is a pro-drop language, which means that pronouns are not used when the referent is obvious from context and is not being emphasized.

Pronouns
Within ASL there is a class of indexical (often called 'directional') verbs. These include the signs for 'see', 'pay', 'give', 'show', 'invite', 'help', 'send', 'bite', etc. These verbs include an element of motion that indexes one or more referents, either physically present or set up through the referent locus system. If there are two loci, the first indicates the subject and the second the object, direct or indirect depending on the verb, reflecting the basic word order of ASL. For example, 'give' is a bi-indexical verb based on a flattened M/O handshape. For 'I give you', the hand moves from myself toward you; for 'you give me', it moves from you to me. 'See' is indicated with a V handshape. Two loci for a dog and a cat can be set up, with the sign moving between them to indicate 'the dog sees the cat' (if it starts at the locus for dog and moves toward the locus for cat) or 'the cat sees the dog' (with the motion in the opposite direction), or the V hand can circulate between both loci and myself to mean 'we (the dog, the cat, and myself) see each other'. The verb 'to be in pain' (index fingers pointed at each other and alternately approaching and separating) is signed at the location of the pain (head for headache, cheek for toothache, abdomen for stomachache, etc.). This is normally done in relation to the signer's own body, regardless of the person feeling the pain, but may take also use the locus system, especially for body parts which are not normally part of the sign space, such as the leg.

Indexical verbs
ASL makes heavy use of time-sequenced ordering, meaning that events are signed in the order in which they occur. For example, for I was late to class last night because my boss handed me a huge stack of work after lunch yesterday, one would sign 'yesterday lunch finish, boss give-me work big-stack, night class late-me'. In stories, however, ordering is malleable, since one can choose to sequence the events either in the order in which they occurred or in the order in which one found out about them.

Time-sequenced ordering
ASL is often glossed with English words written in all capital letters. This is, however, a method used simply to teach the structure of the language. ASL is a visual language, not a written language. There is no one-to-one correspondence between words in ASL and English, and much of the inflectional modulation of ASL signs is lost.
There are two true writing systems in use for ASL: a phonemic Stokoe notation, which has a separate symbol or diacritic mark for every phonemic hand shape, motion, and position (though it leaves something to be desired in the representation of facial expression), and a more popular iconic system called SignWriting, which represents each sign with a rather abstract illustration of its salient features. SignWriting is commonly used for student newsletters and similar purposes.

Writing systems

Main article: Baby Sign Primate ASL usage

American Sign Language alphabet
Bimodal Bilingualism in the American Deaf Community
British Sign Language
Child of deaf adult
Gallaudet University
Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf
Signing Exact English
Profanity in ASL
Cued Speech