title: Reno 911!

text: On October 9, 2006, Comedy Central confirmed 13 new episodes to make up "Reno 911!" Season Five, though the season actually contained 16 episodes. Production of Season Five started in January and wrapped up in April. "Reno 911!" Season Five premiered on January 16, 2008. On March 27, 2007, Superstation WGN acquired the first four seasons of the half-hour comedy for a two-year run. The syndicated "Reno 911!" is a part of their late night comedy block. Reruns are syndicated to broadcast stations. In 2007, Lennon and Garant later appeared in-character on a comedy compilation CD, "Comedy Death-Ray", released on September 11, singing a song about why not to use drugs.


title: Reno 911!

text: On November 10, 2008, Comedy Central confirmed 10 new episodes to make up "Reno 911!" Season Six, the final season. Principal photography was done between November and December 2008. Carmen Electra was a guest star on an episode filmed December 5, 2008 at Grant High School in Los Angeles. Season Six premiered on April 1, 2009, on Comedy Central. Season Six consisted of fifteen episodes. Cast members Carlos Alazraqui, Wendi McLendon-Covey, and Mary Birdsong did not return for the final season and their characters' absence was explained as fatalities from an explosion in the Season Five finale. In addition, actors Ian Roberts and Joe Lo Truglio were added to the principal cast as Sergeant Jack Declan and Deputy Frank Salvatore Rizzo, respectively.


title: Reno 911!

text: On August 13, 2009, Thomas Lennon announced through Twitter that the show had ended its six-year run. In response to the cancellation, residents and officials of Reno, Nevada petitioned to save the show.


title: Reno 911!

text: In October 2011, a story broke that the producers of "Reno 911!" were in negotiations with the internet streaming website Netflix to revive the cancelled Comedy Central series. The main reason "Reno 911!"s producers wanted to revive the show was because only 88 episodes were produced, and the producers and syndicating networks would have liked for the show to hit the 100 episode milestone. However, at the time, Comedy Central, who still held sole rights to the show, had not been involved in any negotiations. As well, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant were attached to other projects.


title: Reno 911!

text: It was announced on December 6, 2019 that the series would be revived in 2020 on the streaming platform Quibi. The revival will feature the return of the original series creators Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant and Kerri Kenney-Silver. In a statement, Lennon said: ""Reno 911!" holds a special place in our hearts, and it will be a delight to get the original cast back together for 're-boot goofin'. Hopefully Nick Swardson can still roller skate. Quibi's short format seems custom made for our show."


title: Reno 911!

text: Filming of the seventh season started in early 2020, where the production crew was spotted in Piru, California on February 23, 2020. On April 10, 2020, it was announced that a revival of the show set to premiere on May 4, 2020. On September 3, 2020, the show was renewed for an eighth season. On October 23, 2020, it was announced that Quibi would be shutting down. The eighth season, now titled "Reno 911! Defunded", made its debut on The Roku Channel on February 25, 2022.


title: Reno 911!

text: Season six newcomers Joe Lo Truglio and Ian Roberts had appeared as guest stars in past seasons, and both also appeared in "Reno 911: Miami". As a member of "The State", Lo Truglio is an old friend of the three creators and has worked with them on numerous projects. Roberts is a founding member of the popular Upright Citizens Brigade improv comedy troupe, who had their own Comedy Central sketch show from 1998 to 2000. Other remaining members of the troupe (Matt Besser and Matt Walsh) also appeared in recurring guest roles throughout the seasons. Amy Poehler is the only member of the "UCB 4" to have never appeared on the show in any form.


title: Reno 911!

text: Throughout the show's run, all three main cast members from "Stella" (who were also from "The State") made appearances as characters. While Michael Showalter was the exception on the TV series, he appeared in the , along with all of the cast members of "The State".


title: Reno 911!

text: The series spawned a film released in 2007. In the film, the deputies are called in to save the day after a terrorist attack disrupts a national police convention and locks over 2000 police officers in a hotel in Miami Beach during spring break.


title: Reno 911!

text: In December 2017, Nash said another film is in the works, but it is unknown if it evolved into anything that came after.


title: Reno 911!

text: On December 23, 2021, "Reno 911! The Hunt for QAnon" was released on Paramount+. The film involves the deputies of the Reno Sheriff's Department as they hunt for Q, the one behind all the QAnon conspiracies. Their efforts cause them to get stuck at a QAnon convention at sea.


title: Reno 911!

text: On October 28, 2022, a third movie was announced to be released on Comedy Central. A Christmas movie titled "Reno 911! It's a Wonderful Heist", it premiered December 3, 2022.


title: Video game developer

text: A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large business with employee responsibilities split between individual disciplines, such as programmers, designers, artists, etc. Most game development companies have video game publisher financial and usually marketing support. Self-funded developers are known as independent or indie developers and usually make indie games.


title: Video game developer

text: A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles (such as Nintendo's Switch, Microsoft's Xbox Series X and Series S, Sony's PlayStation 5), or may develop for a number of systems (including personal computers and mobile devices). Video game developers specialize in certain types of games (such as role-playing video games or first-person shooters). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games.


title: Video game developer

text: Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts's EA Canada, Square Enix's studios, Activision's Radical Entertainment, Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog). However, since publishing is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well.


title: Video game developer

text: In the video game industry, a first-party developer is part of a company which manufactures a video game console and develops exclusively for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by the console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game in a timely manner. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on a game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft.


title: Video game developer

text: Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios who take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for a first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so upon completion or termination of their contracts are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like the MSX, they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games.


title: Video game developer

text: A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However, the publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer.


title: Video game developer

text: The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct the developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties. Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may be dependent on income from a single publisher; one canceled game may be devastating to a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived.


title: Video game developer

text: A common exit strategy for a successful video-game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in the design and content of a game compared to third-party developers. One reason is that since the developers are employees of the publisher, their interests are aligned with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense.


title: Video game developer

text: Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications, partially over the lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for the console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to the present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform.


title: Video game developer

text: In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition, the primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers.


title: Video game developer

text: A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be a database, Voice over IP, or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware. Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc.


title: Video game developer

text: Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With the advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games.


title: Video game developer

text: Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs).


title: Video game developer

text: Video game development is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with T-shirts and sandals common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon.


title: Video game developer

text: An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining a position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $10,000 and $50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are.


title: Video game developer

text: In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of the entertainment industry (such as films and television) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market which demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause significant deterioration in its employees' quality of life.


title: Video game developer

text: Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch a game on schedule. The complexity of work flow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video-game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within the industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception.


title: Video game developer

text: The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed the use of crunch time at Electronic Arts, a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego. Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media.


title: Video game developer

text: Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to "Variety", women constituted only 3% of the gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development.


title: Video game developer

text: The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture, can create a culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as the target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy. Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games, Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through the Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021.


title: Video game developer

text: There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had the closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made.


title: Video game developer

text: Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide a strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may led women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals.


title: Video game developer

text: There is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries, the IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to the toxic nature of the video game culture.


title: Video game developer

text: This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, development of games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identify toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race.


title: Video game developer

text: In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations, the video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those of LGBT do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to the nature of the video game culture.


title: Video game developer

text: The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given salaries and compensations offered.


title: Video game developer

text: Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for a fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft's past use of "permatemp", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of the workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor.


title: Video game developer

text: Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized. This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and that the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in the news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize.


title: Video game developer

text: In 2016, voice actors in the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and the publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize.


title: Video game developer

text: A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite, was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding a roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018, the movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established.


title: Video game developer

text: Following Activision Blizzard's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including the AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize.


title: Video game developer

text: Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for the video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionized based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better.


title: Video game developer

text: Sweden presents a unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO.


title: Video game developer

text: In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but the first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022.


title: Video game developer

text: In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstruation (also known as a period, among other colloquial terms) is the regular discharge of blood and mucosal tissue from the inner lining of the uterus through the vagina. The menstrual cycle is characterized by the rise and fall of hormones. Menstruation is triggered by falling progesterone levels and is a sign that pregnancy has not occurred.


title: Menstruation

text: The first period, a point in time known as menarche, usually begins between the ages of 12 and 15. Menstruation starting as young as 8 years would still be considered normal. The average age of the first period is generally later in the developing world, and earlier in the developed world. The typical length of time between the first day of one period and the first day of the next is 21 to 45 days in young women. In adults, the range is between 21 and 31 days with the average being 28 days. Bleeding usually lasts around 2 to 7 days. Periods stop during pregnancy and typically do not resume during the initial months of breastfeeding. Menstruation stops occurring after menopause, which usually occurs between 45 and 55 years of age.


title: Menstruation

text: Up to 80% of women do not experience problems sufficient to disrupt daily functioning either during menstruation or in the days leading up to menstruation. Symptoms in advance of menstruation that do interfere with normal life are called premenstrual syndrome (PMS). Some 20 to 30% of women experience PMS, with 3 to 8% experiencing severe symptoms. These include acne, tender breasts, bloating, feeling tired, irritability, and mood changes. Other symptoms some women experience include painful periods and heavy bleeding during menstruation and abnormal bleeding at any time during the menstrual cycle. A lack of periods, known as amenorrhea, is when periods do not occur by age 15 or have not re-occurred in 90 days.


title: Menstruation

text: The first menstrual period occurs after the onset of pubertal growth, and is called menarche. The average age of menarche is 12 to 15 years. However, it may occur as early as eight. The average age of the first period is generally later in the developing world, and earlier in the developed world. The average age of menarche has changed little in the United States since the 1950s.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstruation is the most visible phase of the menstrual cycle and its beginning is used as the marker between cycles. The first day of menstrual bleeding is the date used for the last menstrual period (LMP). The typical length of time between the first day of one period and the first day of the next is 21 to 45 days in young women, and 21 to 31 days in adults. The average length is 28 days; one study estimated it at 29.3 days. The variability of menstrual cycle lengths is highest for women under 25 years of age and is lowest, that is, most regular, for ages 25 to 39 years. The variability increases slightly for women aged 40 to 44 years.


title: Menstruation

text: Perimenopause is when a woman's fertility declines, and menstruation occurs less regularly in the years leading up to the final menstrual period, when a woman stops menstruating completely and is no longer fertile. The medical definition of menopause is one year without a period and typically occurs between 45 and 55 years in Western countries. Menopause before age 45 is considered "premature" in industrialized countries. Like the age of menarche, the age of menopause is largely a result of cultural and biological factors. Illnesses, certain surgeries, or medical treatments may cause menopause to occur earlier than it might have otherwise.


title: Menstruation

text: The average volume of menstrual fluid during a monthly menstrual period is with considered typical. Menstrual fluid is the correct name for the flow, although many people prefer to refer to it as menstrual blood. Menstrual fluid is reddish-brown, a slightly darker color than venous blood.


title: Menstruation

text: About half of menstrual fluid is blood. This blood contains sodium, calcium, phosphate, iron, and chloride, the extent of which depends on the woman. As well as blood, the fluid consists of cervical mucus, vaginal secretions, and endometrial tissue. Vaginal fluids in menses mainly contribute water, common electrolytes, organ moieties, and at least 14 proteins, including glycoproteins.


title: Menstruation

text: Many women and girls notice blood clots during menstruation. These appear as clumps of blood that may look like tissue. If there was a miscarriage or a stillbirth, examination under a microscope can confirm if it was endometrial tissue or pregnancy tissue (products of conception) that was shed. Sometimes menstrual clots or shed endometrial tissue is incorrectly thought to indicate an early-term miscarriage of an embryo. An enzyme called plasmin – contained in the endometrium – tends to inhibit the blood from clotting.


title: Menstruation

text: The amount of iron lost in menstrual fluid is relatively small for most women. In one study, premenopausal women who exhibited symptoms of iron deficiency were given endoscopies. 86% of them actually had gastrointestinal disease and were at risk of being misdiagnosed simply because they were menstruating. Heavy menstrual bleeding, occurring monthly, can result in anemia.


title: Menstruation

text: In most women, various physical changes are brought about by fluctuations in hormone levels during the menstrual cycle. This includes muscle contractions of the uterus (menstrual cramping) that can precede or accompany menstruation. Many women experience painful cramps, also known as dysmenorrhea, during menstruation. Among adult women, that pain is severe enough to affect daily activity in only 2%–28%. Severe symptoms that disrupt daily activities and functioning may be diagnosed as premenstrual dysphoric disorder. These symptoms can be severe enough to affect a person's performance at work, school, and in everyday activities in a small percentage of women.


title: Menstruation

text: When severe pelvic pain and bleeding suddenly occur or worsen during a cycle, this could be due to ectopic pregnancy and spontaneous abortion. This is checked by using a pregnancy test, ideally as soon as unusual pain begins, because ectopic pregnancies can be life‑threatening.


title: Menstruation

text: The most common treatment for menstrual cramps are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). NSAIDs can be used to reduce moderate to severe pain, and all appear similar. About 1 in 5 women do not respond to NSAIDs and require alternative therapy, such as simple analgesics or heat pads. Other medications for pain management include aspirin or paracetamol and combined oral contraceptives. Although combined oral contraceptives may be used, there is insufficient evidence for the efficacy of intrauterine progestogens.


title: Menstruation

text: One review found tentative evidence that acupuncture may be useful, at least in the short term. Another review found insufficient evidence to determine an effect.


title: Menstruation

text: Sexual feelings and behaviors change during the menstrual cycle. Before and during ovulation, high levels of estrogen and androgens result in women having a relatively increased interest in sexual activity, and relatively lower interest directly prior to and during menstruation. Unlike other mammals, women may show interest in sexual activity across all days of the menstrual cycle, regardless of fertility.


title: Menstruation

text: There is no reliable scientific evidence that would advise against sexual intercourse during menstruation based on medical grounds.


title: Menstruation

text: Peak fertility (the time with the highest likelihood of pregnancy resulting from sexual intercourse) occurs during just a few days of the cycle: usually two days before and two days after the ovulation date. This corresponds to the second and the beginning of the third week in a 28-day cycle. This fertile window varies from woman to woman, just as the ovulation date often varies from cycle to cycle for the same woman. A variety of methods have been developed to help individual women estimate the relatively fertile and the relatively infertile days in the cycle; these systems are called fertility awareness.


title: Menstruation

text: Infrequent or irregular ovulation is called "oligoovulation". The absence of ovulation is called "anovulation". Normal menstrual flow can occur without ovulation preceding it: an anovulatory cycle. In some cycles, follicular development may start but not be completed; nevertheless, estrogens will be formed and stimulate the uterine lining. Anovulatory flow resulting from a very thick endometrium caused by prolonged, continued high estrogen levels is called "estrogen breakthrough bleeding". Anovulatory bleeding triggered by a sudden drop in estrogen levels is called withdrawal bleeding. Anovulatory cycles commonly occur before menopause (perimenopause) and in women with polycystic ovary syndrome.


title: Menstruation

text: Very little flow (less than 10 ml) is called "hypomenorrhea". Regular cycles with intervals of 21 days or fewer are "polymenorrhea"; frequent but irregular menstruation is known as "metrorrhagia". Sudden heavy flows or amounts greater than 80 ml are termed "menorrhagia". Heavy menstruation that occurs frequently and irregularly is "menometrorrhagia". The term for cycles with intervals exceeding 35 days is "oligomenorrhea". Amenorrhea refers to more than three to six months without menses (while not being pregnant) during a woman's reproductive years. The term for painful periods is "dysmenorrhea".


title: Menstruation

text: There is a wide spectrum of differences in how women experience menstruation. There are several ways that someone's menstrual cycle can differ from the norm:


title: Menstruation

text: Extreme psychological stress can also result in periods stopping. More severe symptoms of anxiety or depression may be signs of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) with is a depressive disorder.


title: Menstruation

text: Dysfunctional uterine bleeding is a hormonally caused bleeding abnormality. Dysfunctional uterine bleeding typically occurs in premenopausal women who do not ovulate normally (i.e. are anovulatory). All these bleeding abnormalities need medical attention; they may indicate hormone imbalances, uterine fibroids, or other problems. As pregnant women may bleed, a pregnancy test forms part of the evaluation of abnormal bleeding.


title: Menstruation

text: Women who had undergone female genital mutilation (particularly type III- infibulation) a practice common in parts of Africa, may experience menstrual problems, such as slow and painful menstruation, that is caused by the near-complete sealing off of the vagina.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstrual products (also called "feminine hygiene" products) are made to absorb or catch menstrual blood. A number of different products are available – some are disposable, some are reusable. Where women can afford it, items used to absorb or catch menses are usually commercially manufactured products. Menstruating women manage menstruation primarily by wearing menstrual products such as tampons, napkins or menstrual cups to catch the menstrual blood.


title: Menstruation

text: Due to poverty, some women cannot afford commercial feminine hygiene products. Instead, they use materials found in the environment or other improvised materials. "Period poverty" is a global issue affecting women and girls who do not have access to safe, hygienic sanitary products. In addition, solid waste disposal systems in developing countries are often lacking, which means women have no proper place to dispose used products, such as pads. Inappropriate disposal of used materials also creates pressures on sanitation systems as menstrual hygiene products can create blockages of toilets, pipes and sewers.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstruation can be delayed by the use of progesterone or progestins. For this purpose, oral administration of progesterone or progestin during cycle day 20 has been found to effectively delay menstruation for at least 20 days, with menstruation starting after 2–3 days have passed since discontinuing the regimen.


title: Menstruation

text: Hormonal contraception affects the frequency, duration, severity, volume, and regularity of menstruation and menstrual symptoms. The most common form of hormonal contraception is the combined birth control pill, which contains both estrogen and progestogen. Although the primary function of the pill is to prevent pregnancy, it may be used to improve some menstrual symptoms and syndromes which affect menstruation, such as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, adenomyosis, amenorrhea, menstrual cramps, menstrual migraines, menorrhagia (excessive menstrual bleeding), menstruation-related or fibroid-related anemia and dysmenorrhea (painful menstruation) by creating regularity in menstrual cycles and reducing overall menstrual flow.


title: Menstruation

text: Using the combined birth control pill, it is also possible for a woman to delay or eliminate menstrual periods, a practice called menstrual suppression. Some women do this simply for convenience in the short-term, while others prefer to eliminate periods altogether when possible. This can be done either by skipping the placebo pills, or using an extended cycle combined oral contraceptive pill, which were first marketed in the U.S. in the early 2000s. This continuous administration of active pills without the placebo can lead to the achievement of amenorrhea in 80% of users within 1 year of use.


title: Menstruation

text: Breastfeeding causes negative feedback to occur on pulse secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). Depending on the strength of the negative feedback, breastfeeding women may experience complete suppression of follicular development, follicular development but no ovulation, or normal menstrual cycles may resume. Suppression of ovulation is more likely when suckling occurs more frequently. The production of prolactin in response to suckling is important to maintaining lactational amenorrhea. On average, women who are fully breastfeeding whose infants suckle frequently experience a return of menstruation at fourteen and a half months postpartum. There is a wide range of response among individual breastfeeding women, however, with some experiencing return of menstruation at two months and others remaining amenorrheic for up to 42 months postpartum.


title: Menstruation

text: Many religions have menstruation-related traditions, for example: Islam prohibits sexual contact with women during menstruation in the 2nd chapter of the Quran. Some scholars argue that menstruating women are in a state in which they are unable to maintain wudhu, and are therefore prohibited from touching the Arabic version of the Qur'an. Other biological and involuntary functions such as vomiting, bleeding, sexual intercourse, and going to the bathroom also invalidate one's wudhu. In Judaism, a woman during menstruation is called Niddah and may be banned from certain actions. For example, the Jewish Torah prohibits sexual intercourse with a menstruating woman. In Hinduism, menstruating women are traditionally considered ritually impure and given rules to follow.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstruation education is frequently taught in combination with sex education at school in Western countries, although girls may prefer their mothers to be the primary source of information about menstruation and puberty. Information about menstruation is often shared among friends and peers, which may promote a more positive outlook on puberty. The quality of menstrual education in a society determines the accuracy of people's understanding of the process. In many Western countries where menstruation is a taboo subject, girls tend to conceal the fact that they may be menstruating and struggle to ensure that they give no sign of menstruation. Effective educational programs are essential to providing children and adolescents with clear and accurate information about menstruation. Schools can be an appropriate place for menstrual education to take place. Programs led by peers or third-party agencies are another option. Low-income girls are less likely to receive proper sex education on puberty, leading to a decreased understanding of why menstruation occurs and the associated physiological changes that take place. This has been shown to cause the development of a negative attitude towards menstruation.


title: Menstruation

text: In some cultures, women were isolated during menstruation due to menstrual taboos. This is because they are seen as unclean, dangerous, or bringing bad luck to those who encounter them. These practices are common in parts of South Asia including India. A 1983 report found women refraining from household chore during this period in India. Chhaupadi is a social practice that occurs in the western part of Nepal for Hindu women, which prohibits a woman from participating in everyday activities during menstruation. Women are considered impure during this time and are kept out of the house and have to live in a shed. Although chhaupadi was outlawed by the Supreme Court of Nepal in 2005, the tradition is slow to change. Women and girls in cultures which practice such seclusion are often confined to menstruation huts, which are places of isolation used by cultures with strong menstrual taboos. The practice has recently come under fire due to related fatalities. Nepal criminalized the practice in 2017 after deaths were reported after the elongated isolation periods, but "the practice of isolating menstruating women and girls continues."


title: Menstruation

text: Even though the average length of the human menstrual cycle is similar to that of the lunar cycle, in modern humans there is no relation between the two. The relationship is believed to be a coincidence. Light exposure does not appear to affect the menstrual cycle in humans. A meta-analysis of studies from 1996 showed no correlation between the human menstrual cycle and the lunar cycle, nor did data analyzed by period-tracking app Clue, submitted by 1.5million women, of 7.5million menstrual cycles, however the lunar cycle and the average menstrual cycle were found to be basically equal in length.


title: Menstruation

text: Beginning in 1971, some research suggested that menstrual cycles of cohabiting women became synchronized (menstrual synchrony). Subsequent research has called this hypothesis into question. A 2013 review concluded that menstrual synchrony likely does not exist.


title: Menstruation

text: Some countries, mainly in Asia, have menstrual leave to provide women with either paid or unpaid leave of absence from their employment while they are menstruating. Countries with policies include Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and South Korea. The practice is controversial due to concerns that it bolsters the perception of women as weak, inefficient workers, as well as concerns that it is unfair to men, and that it furthers gender stereotypes and the medicalization of menstruation.


title: Menstruation

text: Menstruation activism has become more prominent during third-wave feminism, with a range of arguments being made across global scholarship and cultures. Much of the menstruation activism in the West has centered on arguments against what many feminists believe to be the misuse of menstruation to 'prove' female biological inferiority. While some feminists have argued that Western patriarchy has used the inability for women to control their menstruation as evidence of the female body suffering from limitations, others have focused on historical works that deem menstrual blood 'dirtier' than other blood, because it results from the failed reproductive cycle. Activists in literary fields and gender studies have noted a history of menstruation as being symbolic for evil or secrecy, and argue against the long standing stigmatization of menstruation in order to elevate masculinity. Thus, menstrual activism has grown to include a variety of arguments, including, but not limited to: social, philosophical, political, and theoretical. All of these efforts make up the Menstrual Equity Movement, which seeks to correct menstruation as a driving force for social and political inequality.


title: Menstruation

text: One focus of activism has been to challenge high taxes on menstrual products, otherwise known as period tax. In recent years, activists around the world have turned their attention to lowering and/or abolishing the higher taxes placed on menstrual products, because some states and countries consider them "luxury items". In the US, the tax on menstrual products can reach up to 10%, depending on state legislature. In 2020, Hungary had one of the largest, taxing up to 27% on menstrual products. Still, some activists have raised concerns that the focus on period tax is halting broader, more important activism, like challenging the social and medical stigma that surrounds menstruation. Still, the movement to lower period tax has persisted, and has been deeply connected to another movement against period poverty.


title: Menstruation

text: Period poverty is defined as a lack of access to anything dealing with menstruation, including hygienic products or facilities, education, and waste management. A global study conducted in 2021 showed that roughly 500 million women and girls experience period poverty. The effects of period poverty can range from physically not being able to attend school and/or work while menstruating, as well as negatively impact mental health. A US study conducted in 2021 showed that roughly 68% of women who reported experiencing period poverty monthly, also expressed having feelings of moderate to severe depression. This same study also revealed differences across racial lines in the US, as Latinx women reported the highest rates of period poverty, followed by Black women, and then white women, particularly from low-income communities. Although research into period poverty has focused primarily on cisgender women in low/middle income communities and countries, other scholars have begun examining how period poverty affects non-binary and transgender individuals as well.


title: Menstruation

text: Recent scholarship has argued that menstruation, although a strictly biological function, has been imbued with gender/sex identity. Thus, as advocacy for, and awareness of transgender and non-binary individuals increases across the globe, menstrual activism is evolving as well. Effects of the gendered perceptions of menstruation on the LGBTQIA+ community differ, but current debates about the issue focus primarily on two key topics, transfeminine and transmasculine menstrual pain.


title: Menstruation

text: Transmasculine menstrual pain, like transfeminine, includes both physical and mental components. As trans men and non-binary individuals may still menstruate, they often experience the same negative side-effects of menstruation, like cramping. Similarly some argue that the negative effects it may have on mental health have been underexplored. As menstruating conflicts with conventional ideas about masculinity, activists are concerned about the dysphoric gender identity that can arise from menstruating, after someone has chosen to transition or adopt a gender identity not linked to their sex at birth. Some AFAB individuals (assigned female at birth) and non-binary individuals have expressed concern about the tension between menstruating and affirming their chosen gender identity. Scholars have begun arguing for a non-gendered conception of menstruation in both social and medical settings, in an attempt to alleviate the discomfort AFAB and non-binary individuals feel during menstruation. Examples of this can include but are not limited to: using clinical, non-gendered language to describe menstruation, saying 'cycle' rather than 'period', or 'menstrual products' rather than 'feminine hygiene products'. Finally, researchers have also noted that many AFAB and non-binary individuals who menstruate encounter barriers in public restrooms, as men's restrooms do not have sanitary disposal bins in the stalls, and there are often few cubicles in comparison to urinals. This results in AFAB and non-binary individuals having to wait for access to stalls, and dispose of their menstrual products in the public waste bin. Thus, advocacy for gender-neutral bathrooms has become a more recent part of Menstruation Activism.


title: Menstruation

text: The word "menstruation" is etymologically related to "moon". The terms "menstruation" and "menses" are derived from the Latin "mensis" (month), which in turn relates to the Greek "mene" (moon) and to the roots of the English words "month" and "moon".


title: Menstruation

text: Some organizations have begun to use the term "menstruator" instead of "menstruating women", a term that has been in use since at least 2010. The term menstruator is used by some activists and scholars in order to "express solidarity with women who do not menstruate, transgender men who do, and intersexual and genderqueer individuals". However, use of the term "menstruators" has also been criticized by some feminists who consider sex differences important and the term "woman" to be necessary to resist patriarchy. The term "people who menstruate" is also used.


title: Menstruation

text: Most female mammals have an estrous cycle, but not all have a menstrual cycle that results in menstruation. Menstruation in mammals occurs in some close evolutionary relatives such as chimpanzees.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Gus Green Van Sant Jr. (born July 24, 1952) is an American film director, producer, photographer, and musician. He has earned acclaim as both an independent and mainstream filmmaker. His films typically deal with themes of marginalized subcultures, in particular homosexuality. Van Sant is considered one of the most prominent auteurs of the New Queer Cinema movement.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: His early career was devoted to directing television commercials in the Pacific Northwest. He made his feature-length cinematic directorial debut with "Mala Noche" (1985). His second feature, "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989), was highly acclaimed, and earned him screenwriting awards from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and New York Film Critics Circle and the award for Best Director from the National Society of Film Critics. His next film, "My Own Private Idaho" (1991), was similarly praised, as was the black comedy "To Die For" (1995), the drama "Good Will Hunting" (1997), and the biographical film "Milk" (2008); for the latter two, Van Sant was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director and both films received Best Picture nominations.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In 2003, Van Sant's film about the Columbine High School massacre, "Elephant", won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Van Sant also received the festival's Best Director Award that same year, making him one of only two filmmakers—the other being Joel Coen—to win both accolades at the festival in the same year. Though most of Van Sant's other films received favourable reviews, such as "Finding Forrester" (2000) and "Paranoid Park" (2007), some of his efforts, such as the art house production "Last Days" (2005) and the environmental drama "Promised Land" (2012), have received more mixed reviews from critics, while his adaptation of Tom Robbins's "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" (1993), his 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", and "The Sea of Trees" (2015), were critical and commercial failures.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant wrote the screenplays for several of his earlier works, and is the author of a novel, "Pink". A book of his photography, "108 Portraits", has been published, and he has released two musical albums.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, the son of Betty (née Seay) and Gus Green Van Sant Sr; Gus's father was a clothing manufacturer and traveling salesman, who rapidly worked his way into middle class prosperity, holding executive marketing positions that included being president of the White Stag Manufacturing Company's Apparel Operation. As a result of his father's job, the family moved continually during Van Sant's childhood.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: His paternal family is of partial Dutch origin; the name "Van Sant" is derived from the Dutch name ""Van Zandt"". The earliest Van Zandt arrived in the New Netherland area in the early 17th century, around what is now New York City.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant is an alumnus of Darien High School in Darien, Connecticut, and The Catlin Gabel School in Portland, Oregon. One constant in the director's early years was his interest in visual arts (namely, painting and Super-8 filmmaking); while still in school he began making semi-autobiographical shorts costing between 30 and 50 dollars. Van Sant's artistic leanings took him to the Rhode Island School of Design in 1970, where his introduction to various avant-garde directors inspired him to change his major from painting to cinema.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: After spending time in Europe, Van Sant went to Los Angeles in 1976. He secured a job as a production assistant to filmmaker Ken Shapiro, with whom he developed a few ideas, none of which came to fruition. In 1981, Van Sant made "Alice in Hollywood", a film about a naïve young actress who goes to Hollywood and abandons her ideals. It was never released. During this period, Van Sant began to spend time observing the denizens of the more down-and-out sections of Hollywood Boulevard. He became fascinated by the existence of this marginalized section of L.A.'s population, especially in context with the more ordinary, prosperous world that surrounded them. Van Sant would repeatedly focus his work on those existing on society's fringes, making his feature film directorial debut "Mala Noche".


title: Gus Van Sant

text: It was made two years after Van Sant went to New York to work in an advertising agency. He saved $20,000 during his tenure there, enabling him to finance the majority of his tale of doomed love between a gay liquor store clerk and a Mexican immigrant. The film, which was taken from Portland street writer Walt Curtis' semi-autobiographical novella, featured some of the director's hallmarks, notably an unfulfilled romanticism, a dry sense of the absurd, and the refusal to treat homosexuality as something deserving of judgment. Unlike many gay filmmakers, Van Sant—who had long been openly gay—declined to use same-sex relationships as fodder for overtly political statements, although such relationships would frequently appear in his films.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Shot in black-and-white, the film earned Van Sant almost overnight acclaim on the festival circuit, with the "Los Angeles Times" naming it the year's best independent film. The film's success attracted Hollywood interest, and Van Sant was briefly courted by Universal; the courtship ended after Van Sant pitched a series of project ideas (including what would become "Drugstore Cowboy" and "My Own Private Idaho") that the studio declined to take interest in.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant returned to Portland, Oregon, where he set up house and began giving life to the ideas rejected by Universal. He directed "Drugstore Cowboy" about four drug addicts robbing pharmacies to support their habit. The film met with great critical success and revived the career of Matt Dillon.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: "Drugstore Cowboy"'s exploration of the lives of those living on society's outer fringes, as well as its Portland setting, were mirrored in Van Sant's next effort, the similarly acclaimed "My Own Private Idaho" (1991). Only with the success of "Cowboy" was Van Sant now given license to make "Idaho" (a film he had originally pitched that was knocked back several times because the studios deemed the script 'too risky'). New Line Cinema now gave Van Sant the green light, and he went on a mission to get the "Idaho" script into the hands of River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves, his preferred choice for the two young leads. After months of struggle with agents and managers over the content of the script, Van Sant finally secured Phoenix and Reeves, who played the roles of Mike Waters and Scott Favor, respectively.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Centering around the dealings of two male hustlers (played by Phoenix and Reeves), the film was a compelling examination of unrequited love, alienation, and the concept of family (a concept Van Sant repeatedly explores in his films). The film won him an Independent Spirit Award for his screenplay (he had won the same award for his "Drugstore Cowboy" screenplay), as well as greater prestige. The film gained River Phoenix best actor honors at the Venice Film Festival among others. It helped Reeves—previously best known for his work in the "Bill and Ted" movies—to get the critical respect that had eluded him.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant's next film, a 1993 adaptation of Tom Robbins' "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", was an excessive flop, both commercially and critically. Featuring an unusually large budget (for Van Sant, at least) of $8.5 million and a large, eclectic cast including Uma Thurman, John Hurt, Keanu Reeves and a newcomer in the form of River Phoenix's younger sister Rain (at Phoenix's suggestion), the film was worked and then reworked, but the finished product nonetheless resulted in something approaching a significant disaster.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant's 1995 film "To Die For" helped to restore his luster. An adaptation of Joyce Maynard's novel, the black comedy starred Nicole Kidman as a murderously ambitious weather girl; it also stars Matt Dillon as her hapless husband and, the third Phoenix sibling in as many projects, Joaquin Phoenix, as her equally hapless lover (River had died of a drug overdose a year and half earlier). It was Van Sant's first effort for a major studio (Columbia), and its success paved the way for further projects of the director's choosing. The same year, he served as executive producer for Larry Clark's "Kids"; it was a fitting assignment, due to both the film's subject matter and the fact that Clark's photographs of junkies had served as reference points for Van Sant's "Drugstore Cowboy".


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In 1997, Van Sant gained mainstream recognition and critical acclaim thanks to "Good Will Hunting", which was written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. The film, about a troubled, blue-collar mathematical genius, was a huge critical and commercial success. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Director for Van Sant. It won two, including Best Screenplay for Damon and Affleck, and Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Robin Williams, who, in his acceptance speech, referred to Van Sant as "being so subtle you're almost subliminal." Van Sant, Damon and Affleck parodied themselves and the film's success in Kevin Smith's" Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back."


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant received the opportunity to remake Alfred Hitchcock's classic "Psycho". As opposed to reinterpreting the 1960 film, Van Sant opted to recreate the film shot-for-shot, in color, with a cast of young Hollywood A-listers. His decision was met with equal parts curiosity, skepticism, and derision from industry insiders and outsiders alike, and the finished result met with a similar reception. It starred Anne Heche, Vince Vaughn and Julianne Moore, and met with a negative critical reception and did poorly at the box office.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In 2000, Van Sant directed "Finding Forrester", about a high-school student (Rob Brown) from the Bronx unlikely becoming a friend of a crusty, reclusive author (Sean Connery). Critical response was generally positive and became a box office success.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In addition to directing, he devoted considerable energy to releasing two albums and publishing a novel, "Pink", which was a thinly veiled exploration of his grief over River Phoenix's death.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant traveled to the deserts of Argentina, Utah, and Death Valley for the production of 2002's "Gerry", a loosely devised, largely improvised feature in which stars Matt Damon and Casey Affleck—both playing characters named Gerry—wander through the desert, discussing "Wheel of Fortune", video games, and nothing in particular. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: It took "Gerry" over a year to make it to theaters, in which time Van Sant began production on his next film, "Elephant". Approached by HBO and producer Diane Keaton to craft a fictional film based on the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, the director chose to shoot in his hometown of Portland, employing dozens of untrained, teen actors. Melding improvisational long takes like those in "Gerry" with Harris Savides' fluid camerawork, the film was influenced by Alan Clarke's 1989 film of the same name (see "Elephant"). The finished film provoked strong reactions from audiences at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival. At the Cannes festival, the jury awarded "Elephant" with their top prize, the Palme d'Or, and Van Sant with his first Best Director statue from the festival.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In 2005, Van Sant released "Last Days", the final component of what he refers to as his "Death Trilogy", (the other parts being "Gerry" and "Elephant"). It is a fictionalized account of what happened to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain in the days leading up to his death. In 2006, Van Sant began work on "Paranoid Park" based on the book by Blake Nelson, about a skateboarding teenager who accidentally causes someone's death. The film was released in Europe in February 2008. He also directed the "Le Marais" segment of the omnibus film "Paris, je t'aime".


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Released in 2008, Van Sant's "Milk" is a biopic of openly gay San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, who was assassinated in 1978. The film received eight Oscar nominations at the 81st Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning two for Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sean Penn, who starred as Milk, and Best Original Screenplay for writer Dustin Lance Black. Van Sant was nominated for Best Director. Van Sant later stated that his experience with Sean Penn on the film was "amazing".


title: Gus Van Sant

text: His 2011 film "Restless" was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, and starred Henry Hopper and Mia Wasikowska.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant's film, "Promised Land", was released on December 28, 2012. The film stars Frances McDormand, Matt Damon, and John Krasinski—the latter two co-wrote the screenplay based on a story by Dave Eggers. Filmed in April 2012, the production company, Focus Features, selected the release date so that the film is eligible to qualify for awards consideration.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Following "Promised Land", Van Sant directed a film titled "Sea of Trees", which starred Matthew McConaughey and Ken Watanabe. The film tells the story of a man who travels to the infamous Aokigahara suicide forest in Japan to kill himself, only to encounter another man wishing to kill himself as well, with whom he then embarks on a "spiritual journey". The film was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival but was met with harsh critical reception at the Cannes, being booed and laughed at.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: In December 2016, it was announced Van Sant would direct "Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot", a biopic about cartoonist John Callahan, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Rooney Mara, Jonah Hill, Jack Black and Mark Webber. Principal photography began in March 2017.


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant released two musical albums: "Gus Van Sant" and "18 Songs About Golf". Van Sant played himself in episodes of the HBO series "Entourage" and the IFC series "Portlandia".


title: Gus Van Sant

text: Van Sant directed the pilot for the Starz television program "Boss", starring Kelsey Grammer. Van Sant went onto The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast to discuss filmmaking, writing, film history and their collaborations that never got made ("The Golden Suicides") and the one that did ("The Canyons").


title: Gus Van Sant

text: The moving image collection of Gus Van Sant is held at the Academy Film Archive. The archive has preserved many of Van Sant's short films, including "The Happy Organ", "Ken Death Gets Out of Jail", "Five Ways to Kill Yourself", and others.


title: Radium

text: Radium is a chemical element with the symbol Ra and atomic number 88. It is the sixth element in group 2 of the periodic table, also known as the alkaline earth metals. Pure radium is silvery-white, but it readily reacts with nitrogen (rather than oxygen) upon exposure to air, forming a black surface layer of radium nitride (RaN). All isotopes of radium are radioactive, the most stable isotope being radium-226 with a half-life of 1600 years. When radium decays, it emits ionizing radiation as a by-product, which can excite fluorescent chemicals and cause radioluminescence.


title: Radium

text: Radium, in the form of radium chloride, was discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 from ore mined at Jáchymov. They extracted the radium compound from uraninite and published the discovery at the French Academy of Sciences five days later. Radium was isolated in its metallic state by Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne through the electrolysis of radium chloride in 1911.


title: Radium

text: In nature, radium is found in uranium and (to a lesser extent) thorium ores in trace amounts as small as a seventh of a gram per ton of uraninite. Radium is not necessary for living organisms, and adverse health effects are likely when it is incorporated into biochemical processes because of its radioactivity and chemical reactivity. , other than its use in nuclear medicine, radium has no commercial applications. Formerly, around the 1950s, it was used as a radioactive source for radioluminescent devices and also in radioactive quackery for its supposed curative power. These applications have become obsolete owing to radium's toxicity; , less dangerous isotopes (of other elements) are instead used in radioluminescent devices.


title: Radium

text: Radium is the heaviest known alkaline earth metal and is the only radioactive member of its group. Its physical and chemical properties most closely resemble its lighter congener, barium.


title: Radium

text: Pure radium is a volatile silvery-white metal, although its lighter congeners calcium, strontium, and barium have a slight yellow tint. This tint rapidly vanishes on exposure to air, yielding a black layer of what is probably radium nitride (RaN). Its melting point is either or and its boiling point is ; however, this is not well established. Both of these values are slightly lower than those of barium, confirming periodic trends down the group 2 elements. Like barium and the alkali metals, radium crystallizes in the body-centered cubic structure at standard temperature and pressure: the radium–radium bond distance is 514.8 picometers. Radium has a density of 5.5 g/cm, higher than that of barium, again confirming periodic trends; the radium-barium density ratio is comparable to the radium-barium atomic mass ratio, due to the two elements' similar crystal structures.


title: Radium

text: Radium has 33 known isotopes, with mass numbers from 202 to 234: all of them are radioactive. Four of these – Ra (half-life 11.4 days), Ra (3.64 days), Ra (1600 years), and Ra (5.75 years) – occur naturally in the decay chains of primordial thorium-232, uranium-235, and uranium-238 (Ra from uranium-235, Ra from uranium-238, and the other two from thorium-232). These isotopes nevertheless still have half-lives too short to be primordial radionuclides and only exist in nature from these decay chains. Together with the mostly artificial Ra (15 d), which occurs in nature only as a decay product of minute traces of neptunium-237, these are the five most stable isotopes of radium. All other 27 known radium isotopes have half-lives under two hours, and the majority have half-lives under a minute. At least 12 nuclear isomers have been reported; the most stable of them is radium-205m, with a half-life between 130 and 230 milliseconds; this is still shorter than twenty-four ground-state radium isotopes.


title: Radium

text: In the early history of the study of radioactivity, the different natural isotopes of radium were given different names. In this scheme, Ra was named actinium X (AcX), Ra thorium X (ThX), Ra radium (Ra), and Ra mesothorium 1 (MsTh). When it was realized that all of these are isotopes of the same element, many of these names fell out of use, and "radium" came to refer to all isotopes, not just Ra. Some of radium-226's decay products received historical names including "radium", ranging from radium A to radium G, with the letter indicating approximately how far they were down the chain from their parent Ra. Radium emanation = Rn, RaA = Po, RaB = Pb, RaC = Bi, RaC = Po, RaC = Tl, RaD = Pb, RaE = Bi, RaF = Po and RaG = Pb.


title: Radium

text: Ra is the most stable isotope of radium and is the last isotope in the (4"n" + 2) decay chain of uranium-238 with a half-life of over a millennium: it makes up almost all of natural radium. Its immediate decay product is the dense radioactive noble gas radon (specifically the isotope Rn), which is responsible for much of the danger of environmental radium. It is 2.7 million times more radioactive than the same molar amount of natural uranium (mostly uranium-238), due to its proportionally shorter half-life.


title: Radium

text: A sample of radium metal maintains itself at a higher temperature than its surroundings because of the radiation it emits – alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays. More specifically, natural radium (which is mostly Ra) emits mostly alpha particles, but other steps in its decay chain (the uranium or radium series) emit alpha or beta particles, and almost all particle emissions are accompanied by gamma rays.


title: Radium

text: In 2013, it was discovered at CERN that the nucleus of radium-224 is pear-shaped using a technique called coulomb excitation. This was the first discovery of an asymmetric nucleus. This is a strong circumstantial evidence that certain heavy, unstable atomic nuclei have distorted nuclei, in this case, a pear shape.


title: Radium

text: Radium, like barium, is a highly reactive metal and always exhibits its group oxidation state of +2. It forms the colorless Ra cation in aqueous solution, which is highly basic and does not form complexes readily. Most radium compounds are therefore simple ionic compounds, though participation from the 6s and 6p electrons (in addition to the valence 7s electrons) is expected due to relativistic effects and would enhance the covalent character of radium compounds such as RaF and RaAt. For this reason, the standard electrode potential for the half-reaction Ra (aq) + 2e → Ra (s) is −2.916 V, even slightly lower than the value −2.92 V for barium, whereas the values had previously smoothly increased down the group (Ca: −2.84 V; Sr: −2.89 V; Ba: −2.92 V). The values for barium and radium are almost exactly the same as those of the heavier alkali metals potassium, rubidium, and caesium.


title: Radium

text: Solid radium compounds are white as radium ions provide no specific coloring, but they gradually turn yellow and then dark over time due to self-radiolysis from radium's alpha decay. Insoluble radium compounds coprecipitate with all barium, most strontium, and most lead compounds.


title: Radium

text: Radium oxide (RaO) has not been characterized well past its existence, despite oxides being common compounds for the other alkaline earth metals. Radium hydroxide (Ra(OH)) is the most readily soluble among the alkaline earth hydroxides and is a stronger base than its barium congener, barium hydroxide. It is also more soluble than actinium hydroxide and thorium hydroxide: these three adjacent hydroxides may be separated by precipitating them with ammonia.


title: Radium

text: Radium chloride (RaCl) is a colorless, luminous compound. It becomes yellow after some time due to self-damage by the alpha radiation given off by radium when it decays. Small amounts of barium impurities give the compound a rose color. It is soluble in water, though less so than barium chloride, and its solubility decreases with increasing concentration of hydrochloric acid. Crystallization from aqueous solution gives the dihydrate RaCl·2HO, isomorphous with its barium analog.


title: Radium

text: Radium bromide (RaBr) is also a colorless, luminous compound. In water, it is more soluble than radium chloride. Like radium chloride, crystallization from aqueous solution gives the dihydrate RaBr·2HO, isomorphous with its barium analog. The ionizing radiation emitted by radium bromide excites nitrogen molecules in the air, making it glow. The alpha particles emitted by radium quickly gain two electrons to become neutral helium, which builds up inside and weakens radium bromide crystals. This effect sometimes causes the crystals to break or even explode.


title: Radium

text: Radium nitrate (Ra(NO)) is a white compound that can be made by dissolving radium carbonate in nitric acid. As the concentration of nitric acid increases, the solubility of radium nitrate decreases, an important property for the chemical purification of radium.


title: Radium

text: Radium forms much the same insoluble salts as its lighter congener barium: it forms the insoluble sulfate (RaSO, the most insoluble known sulfate), chromate (RaCrO), carbonate (RaCO), iodate (Ra(IO)), tetrafluoroberyllate (RaBeF), and nitrate (Ra(NO)). With the exception of the carbonate, all of these are less soluble in water than the corresponding barium salts, but they are all isostructural to their barium counterparts. Additionally, radium phosphate, oxalate, and sulfite are probably also insoluble, as they coprecipitate with the corresponding insoluble barium salts. The great insolubility of radium sulfate (at 20 °C, only 2.1 mg will dissolve in 1 kg of water) means that it is one of the less biologically dangerous radium compounds. The large ionic radius of Ra (148 pm) results in weak complexation and poor extraction of radium from aqueous solutions when not at high pH.


title: Radium

text: All isotopes of radium have half-lives much shorter than the age of the Earth, so that any primordial radium would have decayed long ago. Radium nevertheless still occurs in the environment, as the isotopes Ra, Ra, Ra, and Ra are part of the decay chains of natural thorium and uranium isotopes; since thorium and uranium have very long half-lives, these daughters are continually being regenerated by their decay. Of these four isotopes, the longest-lived is Ra (half-life 1600 years), a decay product of natural uranium. Because of its relative longevity, Ra is the most common isotope of the element, making up about one part per trillion of the Earth's crust; essentially all natural radium is Ra. Thus, radium is found in tiny quantities in the uranium ore uraninite and various other uranium minerals, and in even tinier quantities in thorium minerals. One ton of pitchblende typically yields about one seventh of a gram of radium. One kilogram of the Earth's crust contains about 900 picograms of radium, and one liter of sea water contains about 89 femtograms of radium.


title: Radium

text: Radium was discovered by Marie Skłodowska-Curie and her husband Pierre Curie on 21 December 1898, in a uraninite (pitchblende) sample from Jáchymov. While studying the mineral earlier, the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. In July 1898, while studying pitchblende, they isolated an element similar to bismuth which turned out to be polonium. They then isolated a radioactive mixture consisting of two components: compounds of barium, which gave a brilliant green flame color, and unknown radioactive compounds which gave carmine spectral lines that had never been documented before. The Curies found the radioactive compounds to be very similar to the barium compounds, except they were less soluble. This discovery made it possible for the Curies to isolate the radioactive compounds and discover a new element in them. The Curies announced their discovery to the French Academy of Sciences on 26 December 1898. The naming of radium dates to about 1899, from the French word "radium", formed in Modern Latin from "radius" ("ray"): this was in recognition of radium's power of emitting energy in the form of rays.


title: Radium

text: In September 1910, Marie Curie and André-Louis Debierne announced that they had isolated radium as a pure metal through the electrolysis of pure radium chloride (RaCl) solution using a mercury cathode, producing radium–mercury amalgam. This amalgam was then heated in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas to remove the mercury, leaving pure radium metal. Later that same year, E. Eoler isolated radium by thermal decomposition of its azide, Ra(N). Radium metal was first industrially produced at the beginning of the 20th century by Biraco, a subsidiary company of Union Minière du Haut Katanga (UMHK) in its Olen plant in Belgium.


title: Radium

text: The general historical unit for radioactivity, the curie, is based on the radioactivity of Ra: it was originally defined as the radioactivity of one gram of radium-226, but the definition was later slightly refined to be .


title: Radium

text: Radium was formerly used in self-luminous paints for watches, nuclear panels, aircraft switches, clocks, and instrument dials. A typical self-luminous watch that uses radium paint contains around 1 microgram of radium. In the mid-1920s, a lawsuit was filed against the United States Radium Corporation by five dying "Radium Girls" – dial painters who had painted radium-based luminous paint on the dials of watches and clocks. The dial painters were instructed to lick their brushes to give them a fine point, thereby ingesting radium. Their exposure to radium caused serious health effects which included sores, anemia, and bone cancer.


title: Radium

text: During the litigation, it was determined that the company's scientists and management had taken considerable precautions to protect themselves from the effects of radiation, but it did not seem to protect their employees. Additionally, for several years the companies had attempted to cover up the effects and avoid liability by insisting that the Radium Girls were instead suffering from syphilis. This complete disregard for employee welfare had a significant impact on the formulation of occupational disease labor law.


title: Radium

text: As a result of the lawsuit, the adverse effects of radioactivity became widely known, and radium-dial painters were instructed in proper safety precautions and provided with protective gear. In particular, dial painters no longer licked paint brushes to shape them (which caused some ingestion of radium salts). Radium was still used in dials as late as the 1960s, but there were no further injuries to dial painters. This highlighted that the harm to the Radium Girls could easily have been avoided.


title: Radium

text: From the 1960s the use of radium paint was discontinued. In many cases luminous dials were implemented with non-radioactive fluorescent materials excited by light; such devices glow in the dark after exposure to light, but the glow fades. Where long-lasting self-luminosity in darkness was required, safer radioactive promethium-147 (half-life 2.6 years) or tritium (half-life 12 years) paint was used; both continue to be used as of 2004. These had the added advantage of not degrading the phosphor over time, unlike radium. Tritium emits very low-energy beta radiation (even lower-energy than the beta radiation emitted by promethium) which cannot penetrate the skin, rather than the penetrating gamma radiation of radium, and is regarded as safer.


title: Radium

text: Clocks, watches, and instruments dating from the first half of the 20th century, often in military applications, may have been painted with radioactive luminous paint. They are usually no longer luminous; however, this is not due to radioactive decay of the radium (which has a half-life of 1600 years) but to the fluorescence of the zinc sulfide fluorescent medium being worn out by the radiation from the radium. The appearance of an often thick layer of green or yellowish brown paint in devices from this period suggests a radioactive hazard. The radiation dose from an intact device is relatively low and usually not an acute risk; but the paint is dangerous if released and inhaled or ingested.


title: Radium

text: Radium was once an additive in products such as toothpaste, hair creams, and even food items due to its supposed curative powers. Such products soon fell out of vogue and were prohibited by authorities in many countries after it was discovered they could have serious adverse health effects. (See, for instance, "Radithor" or "Revigator" types of "radium water" or "Standard Radium Solution for Drinking".) Spas featuring radium-rich water are still occasionally touted as beneficial, such as those in Misasa, Tottori, Japan. In the U.S., nasal radium irradiation was also administered to children to prevent middle-ear problems or enlarged tonsils from the late 1940s through the early 1970s.


title: Radium

text: Radium (usually in the form of radium chloride or radium bromide) was used in medicine to produce radon gas, which in turn was used as a cancer treatment; for example, several of these radon sources were used in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s. However, many treatments that were used in the early 1900s are not used anymore because of the harmful effects radium bromide exposure caused. Some examples of these effects are anaemia, cancer, and genetic mutations. , safer gamma emitters such as Co, which is less costly and available in larger quantities, are usually used to replace the historical use of radium in this application.


title: Radium

text: Early in the 1900s, biologists used radium to induce mutations and study genetics. As early as 1904, Daniel MacDougal used radium in an attempt to determine whether it could provoke sudden large mutations and cause major evolutionary shifts. Thomas Hunt Morgan used radium to induce changes resulting in white-eyed fruit flies.


title: Radium

text: Nobel-winning biologist Hermann Muller briefly studied the effects of radium on fruit fly mutations before turning to more affordable x-ray experiments.


title: Radium

text: Howard Atwood Kelly, one of the founding physicians of Johns Hopkins Hospital, was a major pioneer in the medical use of radium to treat cancer. His first patient was his own aunt in 1904, who died shortly after surgery. Kelly was known to use excessive amounts of radium to treat various cancers and tumors. As a result, some of his patients died from radium exposure. His method of radium application was inserting a radium capsule near the affected area, then sewing the radium "points" directly to the tumor. This was the same method used to treat Henrietta Lacks, the host of the original HeLa cells, for cervical cancer. As of 2015, safer and more available radioisotopes are used instead.


title: Radium

text: Uranium had no large scale application in the late 19th century and therefore no large uranium mines existed. In the beginning the only large source for uranium ore was the silver mines in Jáchymov, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). The uranium ore was only a byproduct of the mining activities.


title: Radium

text: In the first extraction of radium, Curie used the residues after extraction of uranium from pitchblende. The uranium had been extracted by dissolution in sulfuric acid leaving radium sulfate, which is similar to barium sulfate but even less soluble in the residues. The residues also contained rather substantial amounts of barium sulfate which thus acted as a carrier for the radium sulfate. The first steps of the radium extraction process involved boiling with sodium hydroxide, followed by hydrochloric acid treatment to minimize impurities of other compounds. The remaining residue was then treated with sodium carbonate to convert the barium sulfate into barium carbonate (carrying the radium), thus making it soluble in hydrochloric acid. After dissolution, the barium and radium were reprecipitated as sulfates; this was then repeated to further purify the mixed sulfate. Some impurities that form insoluble sulfides were removed by treating the chloride solution with hydrogen sulfide, followed by filtering. When the mixed sulfates were pure enough, they were once more converted to mixed chlorides; barium and radium thereafter were separated by fractional crystallisation while monitoring the progress using a spectroscope (radium gives characteristic red lines in contrast to the green barium lines), and the electroscope.


title: Radium

text: After the isolation of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie from uranium ore from Jáchymov, several scientists started to isolate radium in small quantities. Later, small companies purchased mine tailings from Jáchymov mines and started isolating radium. In 1904, the Austrian government nationalised the mines and stopped exporting raw ore. Until 1912 when radium production increased, radium availability was low.


title: Radium

text: The formation of an Austrian monopoly and the strong urge of other countries to have access to radium led to a worldwide search for uranium ores. The United States took over as leading producer in the early 1910s. The Carnotite sands in Colorado provide some of the element, but richer ores are found in the Congo and the area of the Great Bear Lake and the Great Slave Lake of northwestern Canada. Neither of the deposits is mined for radium but the uranium content makes mining profitable.


title: Radium

text: The Curies' process was still used for industrial radium extraction in 1940, but mixed bromides were then used for the fractionation. If the barium content of the uranium ore is not high enough it is easy to add some to carry the radium. These processes were applied to high grade uranium ores but may not work well with low grade ores.


title: Radium

text: Small amounts of radium were still extracted from uranium ore by this method of mixed precipitation and ion exchange as late as the 1990s, but as of 2011 they are extracted only from spent nuclear fuel. In 1954, the total worldwide supply of purified radium amounted to about and it is still in this range in 2015, while the annual production of pure radium compounds is only about 100 g in total as of 1984. The chief radium-producing countries are Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The amounts of radium produced were and are always relatively small; for example, in 1918, 13.6 g of radium were produced in the United States. The metal is isolated by reducing radium oxide with aluminium metal in a vacuum at 1200 °C.


title: Radium

text: Radium is seeing increasing use in the field of atomic, molecular, and optical physics. Symmetry breaking forces scale proportional to formula_1, which makes radium, the heaviest alkaline earth element, well suited for constraining new physics beyond the standard model. Some radium isotopes, such as radium-225, have octupole deformed parity doublets that enhance sensitivity to charge parity violating new physics by two to three orders of magnitude compared to Hg.


title: Radium

text: Radium is also promising for a trapped ion optical clock. The radium ion has two subhertz-linewidth transitions from the formula_2 ground state that could serve as the clock transition in an optical clock. Additionally, radium could be particularly well suited for a transportable optical clock as all transitions necessary for clock operation can be addressed with direct diode lasers.


title: Radium

text: Though radium has no stable isotopes, there are eleven radium isotopes with half-lives longer than one minute that could be compared with high precision on a King plot. Isotope shifts could be measured with high precision on either of the radium ion subhertz-linewidth transitions from the ground state, or on the formula_3 to formula_4 intercombination line in neutral radium. The degree of any potential nonlinearities in such a King plot could set bounds on new physics beyond the standard model.


title: Radium

text: Some of the few practical uses of radium are derived from its radioactive properties. More recently discovered radioisotopes, such as cobalt-60 and caesium-137, are replacing radium in even these limited uses because several of these isotopes are more powerful emitters, safer to handle, and available in more concentrated form.


title: Radium

text: The isotope Ra (the chloride is under the trade name Xofigo) was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in 2013 for use in medicine as a cancer treatment of bone metastasis. The main indication of treatment with Xofigo is the therapy of bony metastases from castration-resistant prostate cancer due to the favourable characteristics of this alpha-emitter radiopharmaceutical. Ra has also been used in experiments concerning therapeutic irradiation, as it is the only reasonably long-lived radium isotope which does not have radon as one of its daughters.


title: Radium

text: Radium is still used in 2007 as a radiation source in some industrial radiography devices to check for flawed metallic parts, similarly to X-ray imaging. When mixed with beryllium, radium acts as a neutron source. , radium-beryllium neutron sources are still sometimes used, but other materials such as polonium are more common: about 1500 polonium-beryllium neutron sources, with an individual activity of , have been used annually in Russia. These RaBeF-based (α, n) neutron sources have been deprecated despite the high number of neutrons they emit (1.84×10 neutrons per second) in favour of Am–Be sources. , the isotope Ra is mainly used to form Ac by neutron irradiation in a nuclear reactor.


title: Radium

text: Radium is highly radioactive, and its immediate daughter, radon gas, is also radioactive. When ingested, 80% of the ingested radium leaves the body through the feces, while the other 20% goes into the bloodstream, mostly accumulating in the bones. This is because the body treats radium as calcium and deposits it in the bones, where radioactivity degrades marrow and can mutate bone cells. Exposure to radium, internal or external, can cause cancer and other disorders, because radium and radon emit alpha and gamma rays upon their decay, which kill and mutate cells. At the time of the Manhattan Project in 1944, the "tolerance dose" for workers was set at 0.1 micrograms of ingested radium.


title: Radium

text: Some of the biological effects of radium include the first case of "radium-dermatitis", reported in 1900, two years after the element's discovery. The French physicist Antoine Becquerel carried a small ampoule of radium in his waistcoat pocket for six hours and reported that his skin became ulcerated. Pierre and Marie Curie were so intrigued by radiation that they sacrificed their own health to learn more about it. Pierre Curie attached a tube filled with radium to his arm for ten hours, which resulted in the appearance of a skin lesion, suggesting the use of radium to attack cancerous tissue as it had attacked healthy tissue. Handling of radium has been blamed for Marie Curie's death due to aplastic anemia. A significant amount of radium's danger comes from its daughter radon: being a gas, it can enter the body far more readily than can its parent radium.


title: Radium

text: , Ra is considered to be the most toxic of the quantity radioelements, and it must be handled in tight glove boxes with significant airstream circulation that is then treated to avoid escape of its daughter Rn to the environment. Old ampoules containing radium solutions must be opened with care because radiolytic decomposition of water can produce an overpressure of hydrogen and oxygen gas. The world's largest concentration of Ra is stored within the Interim Waste Containment Structure, approximately north of Niagara Falls, New York. The Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) for radium is 5pCi/L for drinking water, however, the OSHA doesn't set a exposure limit, as there is a radiation limit already set up.


title: Call of Duty: Black Ops II

text: Call of Duty: Black Ops II is a 2012 first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch and published by Activision. It was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on November 12, 2012, and for the Wii U on November 18 in North America and November 30 in PAL regions. "Black Ops II" is the ninth game in the "Call of Duty" franchise of video games, a sequel to the 2010 game "" and the first "Call of Duty" game for the Wii U. A corresponding game for the PlayStation Vita, "", was developed by nStigate Games and also released on November 13.


title: Call of Duty: Black Ops II

text: The game's campaign follows up the story of "Black Ops" and is set in the late 1980s and 2025. In the 1980s, the player switches control between Alex Mason and Frank Woods, two of the protagonists from "Black Ops", while in 2025, the player assumes control of Mason's son, David (codenamed "Section"). Both time periods involve the characters pursuing Raul Menendez, a Nicaraguan cartel leader, who is responsible for kidnapping Woods in the 80s and later sparking a second Cold War in 2025. The campaign features nonlinear gameplay and has multiple endings.