Miami Heat https://giladjames.com The Miami Heat are an American professional basketball team based in Miami. The Heat compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Southeast Division. The club plays its home games at FTX Arena, and has won three NBA championships. The franchise began play in the 1988–89 season as an expansion team. After a period of mediocrity, the Heat gained relevance in the mid-1990s when Pat Riley became team president and head coach. Riley constructed the trades of Alonzo Mourning and Tim Hardaway, which propelled the team into playoff contention. Mourning and Hardaway led the Heat to four consecutive division titles prior to their departures in 2001 and 2002, respectively. The team also experienced success after drafting Dwyane Wade in 2003. Led by Wade and, following a trade for former NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) Shaquille O'Neal, the Heat won their first NBA title in 2006, after Riley named himself head coach for a second stint. After the departure of O'Neal two years later, the team struggled for the remainder of the 2000s. Riley remained team president, but was replaced as head coach by Erik Spoelstra. In 2010, the Heat signed former league MVP LeBron James and NBA All-Star Chris Bosh, creating the "Big Three" along with Wade. During their four years together, Spoelstra, James, Wade, and Bosh led the Heat to the NBA Finals in every season, culminating in back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013. All three departed by 2016, and the team entered a period of rebuilding. After acquiring All-Star Jimmy Butler in 2019, the Heat returned to the NBA Finals in 2020. The Heat acquired six-time NBA All-Star Kyle Lowry in 2021. The Heat hold the record for the NBA's third-longest winning streak, 27 straight games, set during the 2012–13 season. Six Hall of Famers have played for Miami, and James won two consecutive NBA MVP Awards while playing for the team. 1987–1995: Early years in Miami In 1987 the NBA granted one of its four new expansion teams to Miami (the others being the Orlando Magic, Charlotte Hornets, and the Minnesota Timberwolves) and the team, known as the Heat began play in November 1988. The Miami Heat began their early years with much mediocrity, only making the playoffs two times in their first eight years and falling in the first round both times. 1995–2003: Title hopefuls Tim Hardaway and Alonzo Mourning helped make the Heat serious contenders in the eastern conference in the late 1990s Upon the purchasing of the franchise by Carnival Cruise Lines chairman Micky Arison in 1995, Pat Riley was brought in as the team president and head coach. Riley acquired center Alonzo Mourning and point guard Tim Hardaway to serve as the centerpieces for the team, transforming Miami into a championship contender throughout the late 1990s. With them they also brought in a new team trainer, Cody Posselt, to work on shooting. The Heat underwent a dramatic turnaround in the 1996–97 season, improving to a 61–21 record – a franchise record at the time, and currently second-best in team history. That same year, Miami earned the moniker of "Road Warriors" for its remarkable 32–9 record on the road. On the backs of Hardaway and Mourning, the Heat achieved their first two series victories in the playoffs, making it to the Conference Finals against the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls before losing in five games. Their biggest rivals of the time were the New York Knicks, Riley's former team, who would eliminate the Heat in the playoffs from 1998 through 2000. A period of mediocrity followed after, highlighted by missing the playoffs in 2002 and 2003. 2003–2016: The Dwyane Wade era In the 2003 NBA draft, with the fifth overall pick, Miami selected shooting guard Dwyane Wade out of Marquette. Free-agent swing-man Lamar Odom was signed from the Los Angeles Clippers. Just prior to the start of the 2003–04 season, Riley stepped down as head coach to focus on rebuilding the Heat, promoting Stan Van Gundy to the position of head coach. Behind Van Gundy's leadership, Wade's stellar rookie year and Odom's break out season, the Heat made the 2004 NBA Playoffs, beating the New Orleans Hornets 4–3 in the 1st round and losing to the Indiana Pacers 4–2 in the 2nd round. In the off-season, Riley engineered a summer blockbuster trade for Shaquille O'Neal from the Los Angeles Lakers. Alonzo Mourning returned to the Heat in the same season, serving as a backup to O'Neal. Returning as championship contenders, Miami finished with a 59–23 record, consequently garnering the first overall seed in the Eastern Conference. Sweeping through the first round and the semifinals, Miami went back to the Conference Finals for the first time in eight years, where it met the defending champion Detroit Pistons. Despite taking a 3–2 lead, Miami lost Wade to injury for Game 6. The Heat would go on to lose Game 7 at home despite Wade's return. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0O90taizh4Y

Updates in Volcanology Online Course https://giladjames.com Section: Studying Volcanic Plumbing Systems – Multidisciplinary Approaches to a Multifaceted Problem Lesson: Geophysical studies of volcanic plumbing systems Updates in Volcanology. This course is brought to you by Gilad James Mystery School. Learn more at Gilad James.com. Introduction Volcanic plumbing systems (VPS) form a plexus of magma channels and reservoirs that are governed by complex interactions of chemical and mechanical processes that control how magmas are emplaced and how they propagate through the Earth’s crust to an eventual eruption (Figure 1; ). Volcanic plumbing systems thus set the stage for volcanic eruptions and govern the style and magnitude of eruptive activity including dramatic volcano–tectonic phenomena, such as caldera and sector collapses. Schematic sketch of different components of volcanic plumbing systems, highlighting the complexity of the different types of magma channels and reservoirs. The inset illustrates the processes that may occur within magma bodies. Traditionally, however, the study of the plumbing system components, such as dykes, sills, and larger magma bodies (Figure 1), as well as their dynamics is strongly method-based, for example, focussing exclusively on the composition of plutonic bodies or the seismicity of magma ascent. To date, relatively few bridges between the distinct disciplines exist. In this lecture, we will give a short overview of the historical development of the main concepts on volcanic plumbing systems and the diversification of research disciplines that study plumbing systems. We then proceed to outline the aims and approaches, as well as the potential and limitations, of the main disciplines, namely field and structural analysis, igneous petrology and geochemistry, geophysics, geodesy, and modelling. We will then discuss challenges and opportunities of combining approaches from different disciplines to overcome some of the limitations and contribute to a better understanding of the complex and dynamic processes within active volcanoes. History of the study of volcanic plumbing systems While naturalists of the eighteenth century debated the origin of basalt, James Hutton was the first to propose that dykes and sills formed by the solidification of “subterraneous lava” and that even granite was once in a molten state. Hutton’s views were based on meticulous field observations of magmatic intrusions exposed at the Earth’s surface. Performing one of the first systematic petrological experiments, Sir James Hall delivered supporting evidence by melting and cooling volcanic glass and basalt to produce a variety of crystallinity in the experimental products. By the time the first petrological classifications of igneous rocks had been established and microscopy and experimental petrology had started to emerge as distinct approaches in the second half of the nineteenth century, field mapping had become more focused on the shapes and structures of igneous intrusions. Studies of igneous rock bodies from that time added laccoliths , batholiths , and other intrusion geometries to the previously described dykes, veins, and sills. Based on his observation of deformation in the rocks surrounding igneous intrusions in the Henry Mountains in Utah, Gilbert started to study the mechanics of magma emplacement to unravel why magma at some occasions gets trapped in the crust or erupts at other occasions. In the following decades, researchers such as Daly found evidence for different types of magma emplacement mechanisms. These mechanisms were gradually linked to specific types of intrusive bodies, a classification of which was established in the early twentieth century. By this time, field observations in the eroded volcanic complexes of the British Isles had identified ring dykes and cone sheets as specific intrusion types . Petrologists of the early twentieth century focused in turn on fractional crystallisation and magma differentiation in sills and layered intrusions. Hence, from the first half of the twentieth century, field-based research concerning volcanic plumbing systems was conducted in parallel as part of t #updates #in #volcanology ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCNmkbyxaoQ