A vassal or feudatory is a person who has entered into a mutual obligation to a lord or monarch in the context of the feudal system in medieval Europe. The obligations often included military support and mutual protection, in exchange for certain privileges, usually including the grant of land held as a fiefdom. The term can be applied to similar arrangements in other feudal societies. In contrast, a fidelity, or fidelitas, was a sworn loyalty, subject to the king.
In fully developed vassalage, the lord and the vassal would take part in a commendation ceremony composed of two parts, the homage and the fealty, including the use of Christian sacraments to show its sacred importance. According to Eginhard's brief description, the commendatio made to Pippin the Younger in 757 by Tassillo, Duke of Bavaria, involved the relics of Saints Denis, Rusticus, Éleuthère, Martin, and Germain – apparently assembled at Compiègne for the event. Such refinements were not included from the outset when it was time of crisis, war, hunger, etc.. Under feudalism, those who were weakest needed the protection of the knights who owned the weapons and knew how to fight. Feudal society was increasingly based on the concept of "lordship" (French seigneur), which was one of the distinguishing features of the Early Middle Ages and had evolved from times of Late Antiquity.
Aids is a 1987 Indian Malayalam film, directed by VP Mohammed. The film stars Prathapachandran, MG Soman and Gomathi in lead roles.
AIDS is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (London, United Kingdom). It was established in 1987 and is the official journal of the International AIDS Society. It covers all aspects of HIV and AIDS, including basic science, clinical trials, epidemiology, and social science. The editor in chief is Jay A. Levy. Eighteen issues are published annually.
The journal is abstracted and indexed in Chemical Abstracts Service, EMBASE, Index Medicus, Medline, and the Science Citation Index. The journal had a 2013 impact factor of 5.554, making it the most highly cited journal in the HIV/AIDS area; it was ranked fifth of 33 journals in the "Virology" category, seventh of 78 journals in the "Infectious Diseases" category, and 21st of 148 in the category "Immunology".
Fitness may refer to:
A fitness function is a particular type of objective function that is used to summarise, as a single figure of merit, how close a given design solution is to achieving the set aims.
In particular, in the fields of genetic programming and genetic algorithms, each design solution is commonly represented as a string of numbers (referred to as a chromosome). After each round of testing, or simulation, the idea is to delete the 'n' worst design solutions, and to breed 'n' new ones from the best design solutions. Each design solution, therefore, needs to be awarded a figure of merit, to indicate how close it came to meeting the overall specification, and this is generated by applying the fitness function to the test, or simulation, results obtained from that solution.
The reason that genetic algorithms cannot be considered to be a lazy way of performing design work is precisely because of the effort involved in designing a workable fitness function. Even though it is no longer the human designer, but the computer, that comes up with the final design, it is the human designer who has to design the fitness function. If this is designed badly, the algorithm will either converge on an inappropriate solution, or will have difficulty converging at all.
Fitness is a United States-based women's magazine, focusing on health, exercise, and nutrition. It is owned and published by the Meredith Corporation. The editor-in-chief of Fitness is Betty Wong.
Fitness was launched in 1992, and was acquired by the Meredith Corporation from Bertelsmann's Gruner + Jahr in 2005. In 2005, Fitness also launched its web presence, giving readers separate online resources for fitness and health tips alongside the magazine's monthly editorial content. Betty Wong became Editor-in-Chief in September 2008, incorporating several changes to the magazine, creating several new columns and features. In 2009, Fitness posted significant ad page gains according to the Publishers Information Bureau, increasing by 18.4% when overall magazine publishers' counts were down 27.9% industry-wide. It was recognized for several awards, having been awarded "Most Improved Publication" and best "How-To/Instructional" feature in minOnline's Editorial and Design Awards.