title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: "Color Out of Space" premiered on September 7, 2019 in the Midnight Madness portion of the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival. On September 6, 2019, it was announced that RLJE Films acquired U.S. rights in a low-mid seven figure deal. “Color Out of Space” was financed by Ace Pictures and XYZ Films handled international sales on the film.


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: Following select preview screenings on January 22, the film was released in 81 theaters in the United States on January 24, 2020. With previews and the first weekend box office, the film grossed $358,154 over the four days.


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, "Color Out of Space" holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: "A welcome return for director Richard Stanley, "Color Out of Space" mixes tart B-movie pulp with visually alluring Lovecraftian horror and a dash of gonzo Nicolas Cage." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 70 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: Chris Bumbray from Arrow in the Head rated the film a score of 7/10, praising the film's performances, visual style and effects while noting the film's length. Bumbray summarized his review by writing, "While it's maybe a touch slow and arty for hardcore horror fans, "Color Out of Space" is still a handy comeback for Richard Stanley, who hasn't lost a beat." Mary Beth Andrews from "Daily Grindhouse" gave the film a positive review, writing, "[Richard Stanley's] film successfully captures the madness of Lovecraft's work and is a dazzling modern interpretation. [...] Lovecraft is notoriously hard to adapt, but Stanley walks the fine line between horror and existential dread to create a successful adaptation". Deborah Young from "The Hollywood Reporter" offered the film similar praise, writing, "Hitting the main plot points with well-designed SFX and some impressive night photography, Stanley's film manages to be frightening indeed, even with star Nicolas Cage's semi-farcical leavening adding some nutty laughs." Jonathan Barkan of Dread Central awarded the film 3.5 out of 5 stars, praising the film's visual style, special effects, and soundtrack, while criticizing the film's first and third act. Nevertheless, Barken summarized his review by stating, "Gorgeous, vibrant, and terrifying, "Color Out of Space" is packed with Lovecraftian creatures and cosmic infections galore. It's not perfect but goddamn is it a wild ride."


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: Dennis Harvey from "Variety" gave the film a mostly positive review, noting the film's uneven tone, "full-bore" climax, and Cage's "arbitrarily oddball" performance, while praising the film's otherworldly imagery, cinematography, and direction.


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: "The Skinny"s Katie Goh gave the film a rating of 3 out of 5, stating that: ""Colour Out of Space" is at its best when Stanley goes for this subtle and intelligent filmmaking, gesturing at the horror rather than pushing it in our faces".


title: Color Out of Space (film)

text: Howard Gorman from "NME" praised Stanley's welcome return, underlining the core "intense, unpredictable and harrowing moral tale," and Cage putting in his "most nuanced" turn in the last decade.


title: Gopnik

text: A gopnik (, ; ; ) is a member of a delinquent subculture in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and in other former Soviet republics — a young man (or a woman, a "gopnitsa") of working-class background who usually lives in Russian suburban areas and comes from a family of poor education and income. The collective noun is "gopota" (). The subculture of gopota has its roots in working-class communities in the late Russian Empire and gradually emerged underground during the later half of the 20th century in many cities in the Soviet Union, but it was in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s, during the collapse of the Soviet Union and its associated rise in poverty that saw the gopota subculture truly come to fruition and flourish. These years - between the late 1980s and roughly 2001 - were the time when the gopota subculture was at its greatest extent, though it remained prevalent, albeit in decline, throughout much of the former Soviet space into the 2000s. As of the late 2010s, the subculture has faded for the most part, although youth gangs (such as the A.U.E.) that resemble gopota still exist in Russia and in other Slavic and Baltic countries.


title: Gopnik

text: Gopnik could be related to "GOP", the acronym for the "Gorodskoye Obshezhitie Proletariata". These were almshouses for the destitute created by the Bolshevik government after the October Revolution in 1917. According to the Russian "Dahl's Explanatory Dictionary" (first published in the 19th century), an old slang word for "sleeping on streets" was "гопать" ("<nowiki>gopat'</nowiki>", literally "to gop") something that was related to the "mazuricks" or the criminals of Saint Petersburg.


title: Gopnik

text: Gopniks are often seen wearing Adidas or Puma tracksuits, which were popularized by the 1980 Moscow Olympics Soviet team. Sunflower seeds (colloquially [семки] or [семечки]) are habitually eaten by gopniks, especially in Ukraine and Russia.


title: Gopnik

text: The subculture is stereotypically associated with Russian chanson music, specifically the blatnaya pesnya subgenre; also, since the mid-2010s, in internet memes and viral videos, with hardbass.


title: Gopnik

text: Some gopniks have Russian nationalism or Pan-Slavism as their primary political views, though there are also leftist, far-right and even neo-Nazi gopnik communities. In Russia, some gopniks hold strong anti-Western views and often show admiration to the current government.


title: Gopnik

text: Gopniks are often seen squatting in groups "in court" (на кортах, "na kortakh") or "doing the crab" (на крабе, "na krabe") outside blocks of flats or schools with their heels on the ground. It is described as a learned behavior attributed to Russian and Soviet prison culture to avoid sitting on the cold ground. They are also stereotyped as being prone to substance and alcohol abuse, crime and hooliganism.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: The Lodge is a 2019 psychological horror film directed by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala, written by Franz, Fiala, and Sergio Casci, and starring Riley Keough, Jaeden Martell, Lia McHugh, Alicia Silverstone, and Richard Armitage. Its plot follows a soon-to-be stepmother who, alone with her fiancé's two children, becomes stranded at their rural lodge during Christmas. There, she and the children experience a number of unexplained events that seem to be connected to her past.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: The project was announced in October 2017, with Riley Keough joining the cast of the film and Franz and Fiala directing from a screenplay they wrote alongside Sergio Casci. Much of the cast joined that February 2018 and principal photography began in March 2018 and wrapped that same month.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019, and was initially scheduled to be released in the United States in November 2019 by Neon. However, Neon pushed its released back to the following year. The film was given a limited release in the U.S. on February 7, 2020, which expanded on February 21. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, with many praising the performances, direction, and screenplay, as well as the horror elements.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Laura Hall takes her own life after her estranged husband Richard informs her he plans to marry Grace Marshall, a woman he met while researching a book about an extremist Christian cult. Raised in the cult, Grace was the sole survivor of their mass suicide, led by her father. Laura's death devastates her and Richard's children, teenage Aiden and young Mia.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Six months later, Richard announces that they will spend Christmas with Grace at the family's remote Massachusetts lodge to get to know each other. Aiden and Mia uncover Grace's past, including video footage of the cult, showing the deceased followers draped in purple silk with duct tape across their mouths reading "sin." At the lodge, the children act hostile toward Grace and refuse efforts to bond with her, even after Richard departs back to the city for a work obligation. Grace's unease is compounded by the abundance of Catholic iconography in the cabin, which causes her to have nightmares about her father. After being rebuked for watching her shower, Aiden prepares Grace a cup of cocoa and the group watches a movie; during which the siblings decide to use a gas heater indoors and Grace wonders whether it is safe.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: In the morning, Grace awakens to discover that her belongingsincluding her clothing, psychiatric medication, and pet dogare missing, as well as all the food and Christmas decorations. The generator has gone out, leaving all of their cell phones dead. Grace suspects the children have pranked her but finds their belongings missing as well. She notices the clocks have advanced to January Ninth. Aiden tells Grace he dreamed the gas heater malfunctioned and they all suffocated and expresses fear that they may be in the afterlife.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Over the next several days, Grace succumbs to anxiety, medication withdrawal, hunger, and coldbegins sleepwalking and is tormented by disturbing visions and dreams, including the recurrent voice of her father sermonizing. She attempts to walk to the nearest town, discovering a cross-shaped cabin where she sees her father beckoning to her. She eventually travels in a circle, taking her back to the lodge. Buried in the snow, she discovers a photo of Aiden and Mia in a memorial frame, and inside, finds the children praying over a newspaper article detailing the deaths of all three from carbon monoxide poisoning on December 22, 2019. Aiden insists they are in Purgatory, and hangs himself in the attic as proof that they are dead, only to inexplicably survive.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Grace suffers a nervous breakdown, which intensifies when she finds her dog frozen to death outside. She enters a catatonic state on the porch. Worried she might die of exposure, the children finally admit that they have been gaslighting her the entire time, having drugged her, hidden their possessions in a crawlspace, faked the hanging, and played recordings of her father's sermons via a wireless speaker. With their own phones dead at last, the children unsuccessfully attempt to start the generator and bring Grace her medication, but find her convinced that they are in Purgatory and must do penance to be accepted by God and ascend to Heaven.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: That night, the children witness Grace self-flagellating burning herself on the hearth. They hide in the attic but Grace confronts them in the morning, insisting they must "sacrifice something for the Lord." and begins burning the children's belongings. Richard returns to discover an inconsolable Grace brandishing his gun. In an attempt to prove her belief that they are in purgatory, she fires the gun at him, killing him. Aiden and Mia attempt to flee in the car, but get stuck in the snow. Grace forces the children back into the lodge, where she seats them at the dinner table with their father's corpse and sings "Nearer, My God, to Thee." She affixes duct tape reading "sin" to each of their mouths - similar to her father's cult - while a loaded gun rests on the table.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: The original screenplay for "The Lodge" was written by Scottish screenwriter Sergio Casci, which had been sold to Hammer Films. Hammer offered the screenplay to be directed by filmmaking duo Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala. The two agreed, though they rewrote a significant portion of the script, including the ending, which Franz felt "didn't work."


title: The Lodge (film)

text: In October 2017, Riley Keough joined the cast of the film in the lead role of Grace. Prior to her being cast, Franz and Fiala were considering another unnamed actress for the part, but ultimately chose Keough. Franz stated: "The other actress had already started a journal about the character’s trauma. Then we met Riley, first on Skype and later personally. You know—it’s about meeting someone and connecting. That’s the first step: can you trust this person?"


title: The Lodge (film)

text: In February 2018, Jaeden Martell, Richard Armitage and Lia McHugh joined the cast of the film, with production beginning that same day. To establish chemistry between Martell and McHugh, portraying siblings, directors Franz and Fiala took them on several excursions, including rock climbing and ice skating, to help establish a bond between the two before filming began. Keough was kept separated from the children pre-filming meetings to maintain a distance from them for their onscreen dynamic. Keough's father Danny plays Aaron Marshall, the cult leader and father of Keough's character, Grace.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Filming of "The Lodge" took place outside of Montreal in the winter of 2018. The lodge featured in the film was located on a golf resort which was closed for the winter season. The film was shot in chronological order. Fiala elaborated on the decision to shoot chronologically: "[Riley] was worried that the journey her character takes was a very difficult one, because she has to hit every mark in a way that it still is plausible. And in order to help her walking down the path, we shot the whole film in sequence, not only to help her, but to help us, in order to really make this journey and watch every step we take. We felt it would help all the actors, actually, and could benefit their performances so much that we fought for that a lot."


title: The Lodge (film)

text: The film was shot by cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis, a frequent collaborator of Yorgos Lanthimos. While shooting the interiors, Bakatakis, Franz, and Fiala deliberately chose to not frame shots at eye-level, instead opting for angles positioned from above or below the actors. Fiala commented that they intended to model the film after a haunted house movie, allowing the audience to initially suspect that the children's deceased mother, Laura, may be in fact haunting the home; in this regard, they were inspired specifically by Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940), in which a woman comes to believe her home is haunted by her husband's deceased first wife.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2019. Shortly after, Neon acquired distribution rights to the film, and it made its east coast premiere in the After Hours section of the 28th Philadelphia Film Festival. The film was originally scheduled to be released in the United States on November 15, 2019, but it was delayed until February 7, 2020, when it was given a limited release in Los Angeles and New York City. The theatrical release expanded to 320 theaters in the United States on February 21, 2020.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: During its opening week, "The Lodge" grossed $76,251 in six theaters in the United States. On February 14, the week following its initial release, the film expanded to 21 theaters, and had a weekend gross of $158,047. The film expanded to 322 theaters the following weekend. It concluded its U.S. theatrical run with a total gross of $1,666,564, and an international gross of $1,015,220, making for a worldwide gross of $2,681,784.


title: The Lodge (film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average of . The site's critics consensus reads: "Led by an impressive Riley Keough performance, "The Lodge" should prove a suitably unsettling destination for fans of darkly atmospheric horror." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Dennis Harvey of "Variety" wrote that ""The Lodge" may be best taken on the same terms as ’60s/early ’70s Italian giallos, with their somewhat random manipulations of plot and character logic in service of atmospheric shocks. Genre homage does not appear to be an intention here, but the film is certainly at its best in fostering a sense of stylish dread and orchestrating some harrowing individual sequences." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com echoed a similar sentiment, deeming the film "a truly unsettling movie, the kind of horror film that rattles you on an almost subconscious level, making you more uncomfortable than going for cheap scares. Don’t ask questions or dissect the believability of the plot. Just check in."


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Jeannette Catsoulis of "The New York Times" noted the film's atmosphere as "so wintry in tone and setting that no movie-theater thermostat will banish its chill," but ultimately felt that "despite its visual flair and unrelentingly taut atmosphere, "The Lodge" is more successful in sustaining unease... than in building a convincing narrative." Benjamin Lee, writing for "The Guardian", awarded the film four out of five stars, alternately praising it as "an accomplished beast: poking, prodding and teasing as it throws out potential twists before settling on the most devastating one of all. It’s not an entirely unpredictable revelation but it’s a smart, knowing and nasty way to go, taking the film to a place that’s both staggeringly grim and hopelessly sad."


title: The Lodge (film)

text: Several critics singled out Keough's lead performance with praise, including Michael Roffman of "Consequence of Sound", who deemed it a "career-best... so much of Keough’s performance contends with the bitter silence of reproach, isolation, and abandonment. Keough thrives in these moments, oozing with all kinds of anxious body language. It’s in her glances. Those stares. The way she timidly saunters from room to room. She’s a vessel of tragedy that’s all the more tragic in her vicious attempts to keep on trying." The "Los Angeles Times"s Justin Chang felt the film paled in comparison to Franz and Fiala's previous film, "Goodnight Mommy", but similarly praised Keough's performance as "the movie’s strongest asset... [Keough] can seize and hold the screen with electrifying force... [and] is no less powerful in her quieter, more recessive moments."


title: Queenpins

text: Queenpins is a 2021 American comedy film written and directed by Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly. It stars Kristen Bell, Kirby Howell-Baptiste, Paul Walter Hauser, Bebe Rexha, and Vince Vaughn. Ben Stiller serves as an executive producer under his Red Hour Productions banner.


title: Queenpins

text: Released in the United States on September 10, 2021 by STXfilms, the film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box office bomb, grossing only $1.2 million against a $20 million production budget.


title: Queenpins

text: Dejected and frustrated suburban housewife Connie Kaminski (née Stevens), a three-time gold-medal-winning former Olympic racewalker, has followed the conventional life path set for her by society ever since she was young. Her sacrifices have never been appreciated and she has been overlooked by her husband Rick, an IRS senior audit specialist, her loved ones and the rest of society. Alienated by her uninspiring existence being unemployed and having suffered a miscarriage in an attempt to conceive a child, Connie commiserates with her best friend Joanna "JoJo" Johnson, who has been unable to secure proper employment since having her identity stolen and thus lives with her mother Josephine, attempting to generate revenue by making YouTube videos while being amorously pursued by the local mailman, Earl.


title: Queenpins

text: After a particularly frustrating day, Connie writes a complaint letter to General Mills about the Wheaties she ate being stale, and soon, she receives a coupon for a free box of cereal. Greg Garcia, a cashier at her local A&G Family Marts store, explains to her that companies habitually respond to complaint letters by sending coupons for free items. She and JoJo then learn that the coupons originate from an Advanced Solutions factory in Chihuahua, Mexico, deciding to travel there and collect the coupons to redistribute to other mothers and wives. They encounter married employees Alejandro and Rosa Diaz, who agree to send them the unused coupons. Afterwards, the duo begins their own website and small business "Savvy Super Saver", which helps them sell numerous coupons and generate profit. However, Ken Miller, a hapless loss prevention officer for the A&G Family Marts stores in the Southwestern United States, learns about the coupons and the losses several companies are taking, and pressures his superiors before ultimately deciding to handle the case himself.


title: Queenpins

text: The ladies’ account is frozen due to suspicious activity, so Connie realizes they need to prove their business is legitimate. They contact the hacker who stole JoJo’s identity, Tempe Tina, and are taken to her secret location, where she instructs the pair on how to conceal their operation and secure their money, suggesting they use JoJo’s cosmetics brand Back 2 Black to disguise their coupon business. After six months, the pair figure their money is safe to use, but because the money is dirty, they need to spend and clean it. They start buying things like sports cars, boats, planes, and guns, but Tina then criticizes their overspending and tells them that because their money was always clean, their purchases are just making them look more suspicious, instructing them to withdraw money from the bank in small increments and to sell off all their big purchases.


title: Queenpins

text: Meanwhile, Ken is partnered with U.S. postal inspector Simon Kilmurry. The duo bond on their mission, with Simon sympathizing with Ken's unwavering devotion. They interview people from grocery stores that the ladies frequent, almost all of whom recognize Connie due to her constantly irritating coupon usage, even successfully linking her to the "Savvy Super Saver" website as she uses its slogan while shopping. The duo then interview a group of postal workers, who remember JoJo, especially because Earl is always watching her videos.


title: Queenpins

text: After gathering sufficient evidence, Simon and Ken finally get agents to arrest the pair. While JoJo is released on bail, Rick visits Connie only so he can admonish her, having been informed by Simon that she and JoJo have defrauded over 240 companies of tens of millions of dollars. Having had enough of his lack of support, she declares that she wants a divorce. Though the pair face forty-years-to-life, the companies that they victimized clandestinely press the courts for leniency to avoid bad press, resulting in ten days imprisonment plus one year of probation for JoJo and eleven months incarceration (parole eligible in eight) for Connie. Though most of their fraudulent earnings have been confiscated, the pair have hundreds of thousands of dollars from their illegal activities stashed away, and JoJo starts a relationship with Earl and relocates to Montenegro, a non-extradition country, where the pair can immediately restart the scam upon Connie's release. It is also revealed that Connie, after numerous unsuccessful attempts to conceive following her miscarriage, is finally pregnant through in vitro fertilization.


title: Queenpins

text: In addition, the scenes involving the gun sale include short appearances by co-director Aron Gaudet's brother Nick as a barista, as well as actor and director Nick Cassavetes as the leader of the group buying the guns.


title: Queenpins

text: In May 2019, it was announced Kristen Bell and Leslie Jones had joined the cast of the film, with Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly directing from a screenplay they wrote. In July 2020, it was announced Paul Walter Hauser and Vince Vaughn had joined the cast of the film. In September 2020, Kirby Howell-Baptiste joined the cast of the film, replacing Jones, with Ben Stiller joining as an executive producer under his Red Hour Productions banner, with STX Entertainment set to distribute. In October 2020, Bebe Rexha joined the cast of the film. In December 2020, Dayo Okeniyi, Joel McHale, Nick Cassavetes, Michael Masini, Paul Rust, Eduardo Franco, Marc Evan Jackson, Lidia Porto, Greta Oglesby, Jack McBrayer and Annie Mumolo joined the cast of the film.


title: Queenpins

text: In June 2021, Showtime and Paramount+ acquired U.S. pay TV and streaming rights to the film for about $20 million. It was released on September 10, 2021.


title: Queenpins

text: Netherlands ($200,244), United Arab Emirates ($123,281), Hungary ($88,609), Croatia ($41,810), Lithuania ($18,354), Iceland ($11,774), South Africa ($5,900) and Portugal ($5,501).


title: Queenpins

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 47% based on 62 reviews with an average rating of 5.40/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "Lowbrow humor and inconsistent storytelling undercut "Queenpins" talented cast, making this coupon-clipping comedy a disappointingly poor bargain." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 45 out of 100, based on 20 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Hauser's performance as fraud specialist Ken Miller received praise from critics who praised his onscreen chemistry with Vaughn while noting that the film established him as a comedic actor after his breakthrough role in 2019's "Richard Jewell".


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Last Glacial Period (LGP), also known colloquially as the last ice age or simply ice age, occurred from the end of the Eemian to the end of the Younger Dryas, encompassing the period years ago. The LGP is part of a larger sequence of glacial and interglacial periods known as the Quaternary glaciation which started around 2,588,000 years ago and is ongoing. The definition of the Quaternary as beginning 2.58 million years ago (Mya) is based on the formation of the Arctic ice cap. The Antarctic ice sheet began to form earlier, at about 34 Mya, in the mid-Cenozoic (Eocene–Oligocene extinction event). The term Late Cenozoic Ice Age is used to include this early phase. The previous ice age, the Saalian glaciation, which ended about 128,000 years ago, was more severe than the Last Glacial Period in some areas such as Britain, but less severe in others.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: During this last glacial period, alternating episodes of glacier advance, and retreat occurred. Within the last glacial period, the Last Glacial Maximum was approximately 22,000 years ago. While the general pattern of global cooling and glacier advance was similar, local differences in the development of glacier advance and retreat make comparing the details from continent to continent difficult (see picture of ice core data below for differences). Around 12,800 years ago, the Younger Dryas, the most recent glacial epoch, began, a coda to the preceding 100,000-year glacial period. Its end about 11,550 years ago marked the beginning of the Holocene, the current geological epoch.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: From the point of view of human archaeology, the LGP falls in the Paleolithic and early Mesolithic periods. When the glaciation event started, "Homo sapiens" was confined to lower latitudes and used tools comparable to those used by Neanderthals in western and central Eurasia and by Denisovans and "Homo erectus" in Asia. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic humans survived the LGP in sparsely wooded areas, and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity, while avoiding dense forest cover.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The LGP is often colloquially referred to as the "last ice age", though the term ice age is not strictly defined, and on a longer geological perspective, the last few million years could be termed a single ice age given the continual presence of ice sheets near both poles. Glacials are somewhat better defined, as colder phases during which glaciers advance, separated by relatively warm interglacials. The end of the last glacial period, which was about 10,000 years ago, is often called the end of the ice age, although extensive year-round ice persists in Antarctica and Greenland. Over the past few million years, the glacial-interglacial cycles have been "paced" by periodic variations in the Earth's orbit via Milankovitch cycles.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The LGP has been intensively studied in North America, northern Eurasia, the Himalayas, and other formerly glaciated regions around the world. The glaciations that occurred during this glacial period covered many areas, mainly in the Northern Hemisphere and to a lesser extent in the Southern Hemisphere. They have different names, historically developed and depending on their geographic distributions: "Fraser" (in the Pacific Cordillera of North America), "Pinedale" (in the Central Rocky Mountains), "Wisconsinan" or "Wisconsin" (in central North America), "Devensian" (in the British Isles), "Midlandian" (in Ireland), "Würm" (in the Alps), "Mérida" (in Venezuela), "Weichselian" or "Vistulian" (in Northern Europe and northern Central Europe), "Valdai" in Russia and "Zyryanka" in Siberia, "Llanquihue" in Chile, and "Otira" in New Zealand. The geochronological Late Pleistocene includes the late glacial (Weichselian) and the immediately preceding penultimate interglacial (Eemian) period.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Canada was nearly completely covered by ice, as was the northern part of the United States, both blanketed by the huge Laurentide Ice Sheet. Alaska remained mostly ice free due to arid climate conditions. Local glaciations existed in the Rocky Mountains and the Cordilleran ice sheet and as ice fields and ice caps in the Sierra Nevada in northern California. In northern Eurasia, the Scandinavian ice sheet once again reached the northern parts of the British Isles, Germany, Poland, and Russia, extending as far east as the Taymyr Peninsula in western Siberia.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The maximum extent of western Siberian glaciation was reached by about 18,000 to 17,000 BP, thus later than in Europe (22,000–18,000 BP) Northeastern Siberia was not covered by a continental-scale ice sheet. Instead, large, but restricted, icefield complexes covered mountain ranges within northeast Siberia, including the Kamchatka-Koryak Mountains.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Arctic Ocean between the huge ice sheets of America and Eurasia was not frozen throughout, but like today, probably was covered only by relatively shallow ice, subject to seasonal changes and riddled with icebergs calving from the surrounding ice sheets. According to the sediment composition retrieved from deep-sea cores, even times of seasonally open waters must have occurred.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Outside the main ice sheets, widespread glaciation occurred on the highest mountains of the Alpide belt. In contrast to the earlier glacial stages, the Würm glaciation was composed of smaller ice caps and mostly confined to valley glaciers, sending glacial lobes into the Alpine foreland. Local ice fields or small ice sheets could be found capping the highest massifs of the Pyrenees, the Carpathian Mountains, the Balkan mountains, the Caucasus, and the mountains of Turkey and Iran.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: In the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, there is evidence that glaciers advanced considerably, particularly between 47,000 and 27,000 BP, but the exact ages, as well as the formation of a single contiguous ice sheet on the Tibetan Plateau, is controversial.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Other areas of the Northern Hemisphere did not bear extensive ice sheets, but local glaciers were widespread at high altitudes. Parts of Taiwan, for example, were repeatedly glaciated between 44,250 and 10,680 BP as well as the Japanese Alps. In both areas, maximum glacier advance occurred between 60,000 and 30,000 BP. To a still lesser extent, glaciers existed in Africa, for example in the High Atlas, the mountains of Morocco, the Mount Atakor massif in southern Algeria, and several mountains in Ethiopia. Just south of the equator, an ice cap of several hundred square kilometers was present on the east African mountains in the Kilimanjaro massif, Mount Kenya, and the Rwenzori Mountains, which still bear relic glaciers today.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Glaciation of the Southern Hemisphere was less extensive. Ice sheets existed in the Andes (Patagonian Ice Sheet), where six glacier advances between 33,500 and 13,900 BP in the Chilean Andes have been reported. Antarctica was entirely glaciated, much like today, but unlike today the ice sheet left no uncovered area. In mainland Australia only a very small area in the vicinity of Mount Kosciuszko was glaciated, whereas in Tasmania glaciation was more widespread. An ice sheet formed in New Zealand, covering all of the Southern Alps, where at least three glacial advances can be distinguished. Local ice caps existed in the highest mountains of the island of New Guinea, where temperatures were 5 to 6° C colder than at present. The main areas of Papua New Guinea where glaciers developed during the LGP were the Central Cordillera, the Owen Stanley Range, and the Saruwaged Range. Mount Giluwe in the Central Cordillera had a "more or less continuous ice cap covering about 188 km and extending down to 3200-3500 m". In Western New Guinea, remnants of these glaciers are still preserved atop Puncak Jaya and Ngga Pilimsit.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Small glaciers developed in a few favorable places in Southern Africa during the last glacial period. These small glaciers would have been located in the Lesotho Highlands and parts of the Drakensberg. The development of glaciers was likely aided in part due to shade provided by adjacent cliffs. Various moraines and former glacial niches have been identified in the eastern Lesotho Highlands a few kilometres west of the Great Escarpment, at altitudes greater than 3,000 m on south-facing slopes. Studies suggest that the annual average temperature in the mountains of Southern Africa was about 6°C colder than at present, in line with temperature drops estimated for Tasmania and southern Patagonia during the same time. This resulted in an environment of relatively arid periglaciation without permafrost, but with deep seasonal freezing on south-facing slopes. Periglaciation in the eastern Drakensberg and Lesotho Highlands produced solifluction deposits and blockfields; including blockstreams and stone garlands.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Scientists from the Center for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate at the University of Tromsø, published a study in June 2017


title: Last Glacial Period

text: describing over a hundred ocean sediment craters, some 3,000 m wide and up to 300 m deep, formed by explosive eruptions of methane from destabilized methane hydrates, following ice-sheet retreat during the LGP, around 12,000 years ago. These areas around the Barents Sea still seep methane today. The study hypothesized that existing bulges containing methane reservoirs could eventually have the same fate.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: During the last glacial period, Antarctica was blanketed by a massive ice sheet, much as it is today; however, the ice covered all land areas and extended into the ocean onto the middle and outer continental shelf. Counterintuitively though, according to ice modeling done in 2002, ice over central East Antarctica was generally thinner than it is today.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: British geologists refer to the LGP as the Devensian. Irish geologists, geographers, and archaeologists refer to the Midlandian glaciation, as its effects in Ireland are largely visible in the Irish Midlands. The name Devensian is derived from the Latin "Dēvenses", people living by the Dee ("Dēva" in Latin), a river on the Welsh border near which deposits from the period are particularly well represented.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The effects of this glaciation can be seen in many geological features of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Its deposits have been found overlying material from the preceding Ipswichian stage and lying beneath those from the following Holocene, which is the current stage. This is sometimes called the Flandrian interglacial in Britain.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The latter part of the Devensian includes pollen zones I–IV, the Allerød oscillation and Bølling oscillation, and the Oldest Dryas, Older Dryas, and Younger Dryas cold periods.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Alternative names include "Weichsel glaciation" or "Vistulian glaciation" (referring to the Polish River Vistula or its German name Weichsel). Evidence suggests that the ice sheets were at their maximum size for only a short period, between 25,000 and 13,000 BP. Eight interstadials have been recognized in the Weichselian, including the Oerel, Glinde, Moershoofd, Hengelo, and Denekamp; however, correlation with isotope stages is still in process. During the glacial maximum in Scandinavia, only the western parts of Jutland were ice-free, and a large part of what is today the North Sea was dry land connecting Jutland with Britain (see Doggerland).


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Baltic Sea, with its unique brackish water, is a result of meltwater from the Weichsel glaciation combining with saltwater from the North Sea when the straits between Sweden and Denmark opened. Initially, when the ice began melting about 10,300 BP, seawater filled the isostatically depressed area, a temporary marine incursion that geologists dub the Yoldia Sea. Then, as postglacial isostatic rebound lifted the region about 9500 BP, the deepest basin of the Baltic became a freshwater lake, in palaeological contexts referred to as Ancylus Lake, which is identifiable in the freshwater fauna found in sediment cores. The lake was filled by glacial runoff, but as worldwide sea level continued rising, saltwater again breached the sill about 8000 BP, forming a marine Littorina Sea, which was followed by another freshwater phase before the present brackish marine system was established. "At its present state of development, the marine life of the Baltic Sea is less than about 4000 years old", Drs. Thulin and Andrushaitis remarked when reviewing these sequences in 2003.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: Overlying ice had exerted pressure on the Earth's surface. As a result of melting ice, the land has continued to rise yearly in Scandinavia, mostly in northern Sweden and Finland, where the land is rising at a rate of as much as 8–9 mm per year, or 1 m in 100 years. This is important for archaeologists, since a site that was coastal in the Nordic Stone Age now is inland and can be dated by its relative distance from the present shore.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The term "Würm" is derived from a river in the Alpine foreland, roughly marking the maximum glacier advance of this particular glacial period. The Alps were where the first systematic scientific research on ice ages was conducted by Louis Agassiz at the beginning of the 19th century. Here, the Würm glaciation of the LGP was intensively studied. Pollen analysis, the statistical analyses of microfossilized plant pollens found in geological deposits, chronicled the dramatic changes in the European environment during the Würm glaciation. During the height of Würm glaciation,  BP, most of western and central Europe and Eurasia was open steppe-tundra, while the Alps presented solid ice fields and montane glaciers. Scandinavia and much of Britain were under ice.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: During the Würm, the Rhône Glacier covered the whole western Swiss plateau, reaching today's regions of Solothurn and Aarau. In the region of Bern, it merged with the Aar glacier. The Rhine Glacier is currently the subject of the most detailed studies. Glaciers of the Reuss and the Limmat advanced sometimes as far as the Jura. Montane and piedmont glaciers formed the land by grinding away virtually all traces of the older Günz and Mindel glaciation, by depositing base moraines and terminal moraines of different retraction phases and loess deposits, and by the proglacial rivers' shifting and redepositing gravels. Beneath the surface, they had profound and lasting influence on geothermal heat and the patterns of deep groundwater flow.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Pinedale (central Rocky Mountains) or Fraser (Cordilleran ice sheet) glaciation was the last of the major glaciations to appear in the Rocky Mountains in the United States. The Pinedale lasted from around 30,000 to 10,000 years ago, and was at its greatest extent between 23,500 and 21,000 years ago. This glaciation was somewhat distinct from the main Wisconsin glaciation, as it was only loosely related to the giant ice sheets and was instead composed of mountain glaciers, merging into the Cordilleran ice sheet. The Cordilleran ice sheet produced features such as glacial Lake Missoula, which broke free from its ice dam, causing the massive Missoula Floods. USGS geologists estimate that the cycle of flooding and reformation of the lake lasted an average of 55 years and that the floods occurred about 40 times over the 2,000-year period starting 15,000 years ago. Glacial lake outburst floods such as these are not uncommon today in Iceland and other places.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Wisconsin glacial episode was the last major advance of continental glaciers in the North American Laurentide ice sheet. At the height of glaciation, the Bering land bridge potentially permitted migration of mammals, including people, to North America from Siberia.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: It radically altered the geography of North America north of the Ohio River. At the height of the Wisconsin episode glaciation, ice covered most of Canada, the Upper Midwest, and New England, as well as parts of Montana and Washington. On Kelleys Island in Lake Erie or in New York's Central Park, the grooves left by these glaciers can be easily observed. In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, a suture zone between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets formed the Cypress Hills, which is the northernmost point in North America that remained south of the continental ice sheets.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Great Lakes are the result of glacial scour and pooling of meltwater at the rim of the receding ice. When the enormous mass of the continental ice sheet retreated, the Great Lakes began gradually moving south due to isostatic rebound of the north shore. Niagara Falls is also a product of the glaciation, as is the course of the Ohio River, which largely supplanted the prior Teays River.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: With the assistance of several very broad glacial lakes, it released floods through the gorge of the Upper Mississippi River, which in turn was formed during an earlier glacial period.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: In its retreat, the Wisconsin episode glaciation left terminal moraines that form Long Island, Block Island, Cape Cod, Nomans Land, Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Sable Island, and the Oak Ridges Moraine in south-central Ontario, Canada. In Wisconsin itself, it left the Kettle Moraine. The drumlins and eskers formed at its melting edge are landmarks of the lower Connecticut River Valley.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: In the Sierra Nevada, three stages of glacial maxima (sometimes incorrectly called ice ages) were separated by warmer periods. These glacial maxima are called, from oldest to youngest, Tahoe, Tenaya, and Tioga. The Tahoe reached its maximum extent perhaps about 70,000 years ago. Little is known about the Tenaya. The Tioga was the least severe and last of the Wisconsin episode. It began about 30,000 years ago, reached its greatest advance 21,000 years ago, and ended about 10,000 years ago.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: In northwest Greenland, ice coverage attained a very early maximum in the LGP around 114,000. After this early maximum, ice coverage was similar to today until the end of the last glacial period. Towards the end, glaciers advanced once more before retreating to their present extent. According to ice core data, the Greenland climate was dry during the LGP, with precipitation reaching perhaps only 20% of today's value.


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The name "Mérida" glaciation is proposed to designate the alpine glaciation that affected the central Venezuelan Andes during the Late Pleistocene. Two main moraine levels have been recognized - one with an elevation of , and another with an elevation of . The snow line during the last glacial advance was lowered approximately below the present snow line, which is . The glaciated area in the Cordillera de Mérida was about ; this included these high areas, from southwest to northeast: Páramo de Tamá, Páramo Batallón, Páramo Los Conejos, Páramo Piedras Blancas, and Teta de Niquitao. Around of the total glaciated area was in the Sierra Nevada de Mérida, and of that amount, the largest concentration, , was in the areas of Pico Bolívar, Pico Humboldt [], and Pico Bonpland []. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the moraines are older than 10,000 BP, and probably older than 13,000 BP. The lower moraine level probably corresponds to the main Wisconsin glacial advance. The upper level probably represents the last glacial advance (Late Wisconsin).


title: Last Glacial Period

text: The Llanquihue glaciation takes its name from Llanquihue Lake in southern Chile, which is a fan-shaped piedmont glacial lake. On the lake's western shores, large moraine systems occur, of which the innermost belong to the LGP. Llanquihue Lake's varves are a node point in southern Chile's varve geochronology. During the last glacial maximum, the Patagonian ice sheet extended over the Andes from about 35°S to Tierra del Fuego at 55°S. The western part appears to have been very active, with wet basal conditions, while the eastern part was cold-based. Cryogenic features such as ice wedges, patterned ground, pingos, rock glaciers, palsas, soil cryoturbation, and solifluction deposits developed in unglaciated extra-Andean Patagonia during the last glaciation, but not all these reported features have been verified. The area west of Llanquihue Lake was ice-free during the last glacial maximum, and had sparsely distributed vegetation dominated by "Nothofagus". Valdivian temperate rain forest was reduced to scattered remnants on the western side of the Andes.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta is a temporary embryonic and later fetal organ that begins developing from the blastocyst shortly after implantation. It plays critical roles in facilitating nutrient, gas and waste exchange between the physically separate maternal and fetal circulations, and is an important endocrine organ, producing hormones that regulate both maternal and fetal physiology during pregnancy. The placenta connects to the fetus via the umbilical cord, and on the opposite aspect to the maternal uterus in a species-dependent manner. In humans, a thin layer of maternal decidual (endometrial) tissue comes away with the placenta when it is expelled from the uterus following birth (sometimes incorrectly referred to as the 'maternal part' of the placenta). Placentas are a defining characteristic of placental mammals, but are also found in marsupials and some non-mammals with varying levels of development.


title: Placenta

text: Mammalian placentas probably first evolved about 150 million to 200 million years ago. The protein syncytin, found in the outer barrier of the placenta (the syncytiotrophoblast) between mother and fetus, has a certain RNA signature in its genome that has led to the hypothesis that it originated from an ancient retrovirus: essentially a virus that helped pave the transition from egg-laying to live-birth.


title: Placenta

text: The word "placenta" comes from the Latin word for a type of cake, from Greek πλακόεντα/πλακοῦντα "plakóenta/plakoúnta", accusative of πλακόεις/πλακούς "plakóeis/plakoús", "flat, slab-like", with reference to its round, flat appearance in humans. The classical plural is "placentae", but the form "placentas" is more common in modern English.


title: Placenta

text: Although all mammalian placentas have the same functions, there are important differences in structure and function in different groups of mammals. For example, human, bovine, equine and canine placentas are very different at both the gross and the microscopic levels. Placentas of these species also differ in their ability to provide maternal immunoglobulins to the fetus.


title: Placenta

text: Placental mammals, including humans, have a chorioallantoic placenta that forms from the chorion and allantois. In humans, the placenta averages 22 cm (9 inch) in length and 2–2.5 cm (0.8–1 inch) in thickness, with the center being the thickest, and the edges being the thinnest. It typically weighs approximately 500 grams (just over 1 lb). It has a dark reddish-blue or crimson color. It connects to the fetus by an umbilical cord of approximately 55–60 cm (22–24 inch) in length, which contains two umbilical arteries and one umbilical vein. The umbilical cord inserts into the chorionic plate (has an eccentric attachment). Vessels branch out over the surface of the placenta and further divide to form a network covered by a thin layer of cells. This results in the formation of villous tree structures. On the maternal side, these villous tree structures are grouped into lobules called cotyledons. In humans, the placenta usually has a disc shape, but size varies vastly between different mammalian species.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta occasionally takes a form in which it comprises several distinct parts connected by blood vessels. The parts, called lobes, may number two, three, four, or more. Such placentas are described as bilobed/bilobular/bipartite, trilobed/trilobular/tripartite, and so on. If there is a clearly discernible main lobe and auxiliary lobe, the latter is called a "succenturiate placenta". Sometimes the blood vessels connecting the lobes get in the way of fetal presentation during labor, which is called "vasa previa".


title: Placenta

text: About 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and 70% of these genes are expressed in the normal mature placenta. Some 350 of these genes are more specifically expressed in the placenta and fewer than 100 genes are highly placenta specific. The corresponding specific proteins are mainly expressed in trophoblasts and have functions related to pregnancy. Examples of proteins with elevated expression in placenta compared to other organs and tissues are PEG10 and the cancer testis antigen PAGE4 and expressed in cytotrophoblasts, CSH1 and KISS1 expressed in syncytiotrophoblasts, and PAPPA2 and PRG2 expressed in extravillous trophoblasts.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta begins to develop upon implantation of the blastocyst into the maternal endometrium, very early on in pregnancy at about week 4.


title: Placenta

text: The outer layer of the late blastocyst, is formed of trophoblasts, cells that form the outer layer of the placenta. This outer layer is divided into two further layers: the underlying cytotrophoblast layer and the overlying syncytiotrophoblast layer. The syncytiotrophoblast is a multinucleated continuous cell layer that covers the surface of the placenta. It forms as a result of differentiation and fusion of the underlying cytotrophoblasts, a process that continues throughout placental development. The syncytiotrophoblast contributes to the barrier function of the placenta.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta grows throughout pregnancy. Development of the maternal blood supply to the placenta is complete by the end of the first trimester of pregnancy week 14 (DM).


title: Placenta

text: In preparation for implantation of the blastocyst, the endometrium undergoes decidualization. Spiral arteries in the decidua are remodeled so that they become less convoluted and their diameter is increased. The increased diameter and straighter flow path both act to increase maternal blood flow to the placenta. There is relatively high pressure as the maternal blood fills intervillous space through these spiral arteries which bathe the fetal villi in blood, allowing an exchange of gases to take place. In humans and other hemochorial placentals, the maternal blood comes into direct contact with the fetal chorion, though no fluid is exchanged. As the pressure decreases between pulses, the deoxygenated blood flows back through the endometrial veins.


title: Placenta

text: Deoxygenated fetal blood passes through umbilical arteries to the placenta. At the junction of umbilical cord and placenta, the umbilical arteries branch radially to form chorionic arteries. Chorionic arteries, in turn, branch into cotyledon arteries. In the villi, these vessels eventually branch to form an extensive arterio-capillary-venous system, bringing the fetal blood extremely close to the maternal blood; but no intermingling of fetal and maternal blood occurs ("placental barrier").


title: Placenta

text: Endothelin and prostanoids cause vasoconstriction in placental arteries, while nitric oxide causes vasodilation. On the other hand, there is no neural vascular regulation, and catecholamines have only little effect.


title: Placenta

text: The fetoplacental circulation is vulnerable to persistent hypoxia or intermittent hypoxia and reoxygenation, which can lead to generation of excessive free radicals. This may contribute to pre-eclampsia and other pregnancy complications. It is proposed that melatonin plays a role as an antioxidant in the placenta.


title: Placenta

text: Placental expulsion begins as a physiological separation from the wall of the uterus. The period from just after the child is born until just after the placenta is expelled is called the "third stage of labor". The placenta is usually expelled within 15–30 minutes of birth.


title: Placenta

text: Placental expulsion can be managed actively, for example by giving oxytocin via intramuscular injection followed by cord traction to assist in delivering the placenta. Alternatively, it can be managed expectantly, allowing the placenta to be expelled without medical assistance. Blood loss and the risk of postpartum bleeding may be reduced in women offered active management of the third stage of labour, however there may be adverse effects and more research is necessary.


title: Placenta

text: The habit is to cut the cord immediately after birth, but it is theorised that there is no medical reason to do this; on the contrary, it is theorised that not cutting the cord helps the baby in its adaptation to extrauterine life, especially in preterm infants.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta is traditionally thought to be sterile, but recent research suggests that a resident, non-pathogenic, and diverse population of microorganisms may be present in healthy tissue. However, whether these microbes exist or are clinically important is highly controversial and is the subject of active research.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta intermediates the transfer of nutrients between mother and fetus. The perfusion of the intervillous spaces of the placenta with maternal blood allows the transfer of nutrients and oxygen from the mother to the fetus and the transfer of waste products and carbon dioxide back from the fetus to the maternal blood. Nutrient transfer to the fetus can occur via both active and passive transport. Placental nutrient metabolism was found to play a key role in limiting the transfer of some nutrients. Adverse pregnancy situations, such as those involving maternal diabetes or obesity, can increase or decrease levels of nutrient transporters in the placenta potentially resulting in overgrowth or restricted growth of the fetus.


title: Placenta

text: Waste products excreted from the fetus such as urea, uric acid, and creatinine are transferred to the maternal blood by diffusion across the placenta.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta functions as a selective barrier between maternal and fetal cells, preventing maternal blood, proteins and microbes (including bacteria and most viruses) from crossing the maternal-fetal barrier.


title: Placenta

text: Deterioration in placental functioning, referred to as placental insufficiency, may be related to mother-to-child transmission of some infectious diseases.


title: Placenta

text: A very small number of viruses including "rubella virus", "Zika virus" and "cytomegalovirus" (CMV) can travel across the placental barrier, generally taking advantage of conditions at certain gestational periods as the placenta develops. CMV and Zika travel from the maternal bloodstream via placental cells to the fetal bloodstream.


title: Placenta

text: Beginning as early as 13 weeks of gestation, and increasing linearly, with the largest transfer occurring in the third trimester, IgG antibodies can pass through the human placenta, providing protection to the fetus "in utero".


title: Placenta

text: This passive immunity lingers for several months after birth, providing the newborn with a carbon copy of the mother's long-term humoral immunity to see the infant through the crucial first months of extrauterine life. IgM antibodies, because of their larger size, cannot cross the placenta, one reason why infections acquired during pregnancy can be particularly hazardous for the fetus.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta and fetus may be regarded as a foreign body inside the mother and must be protected from the normal immune response of the mother that would cause it to be rejected. The placenta and fetus are thus treated as sites of immune privilege, with immune tolerance.


title: Placenta

text: However, the placental barrier is not the sole means of evading the immune system, as foreign fetal cells also persist in the maternal circulation, on the other side of the placental barrier.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta also provides a reservoir of blood for the fetus, delivering blood to it in case of hypotension and vice versa, comparable to a capacitor.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta often plays an important role in various cultures, with many societies conducting rituals regarding its disposal. In the Western world, the placenta is most often incinerated.


title: Placenta

text: Some cultures bury the placenta for various reasons. The Māori of New Zealand traditionally bury the placenta from a newborn child to emphasize the relationship between humans and the earth. Likewise, the Navajo bury the placenta and umbilical cord at a specially chosen site, particularly if the baby dies during birth. In Cambodia and Costa Rica, burial of the placenta is believed to protect and ensure the health of the baby and the mother. If a mother dies in childbirth, the Aymara of Bolivia bury the placenta in a secret place so that the mother's spirit will not return to claim her baby's life.


title: Placenta

text: The placenta is believed by some communities to have power over the lives of the baby or its parents. The Kwakiutl of British Columbia bury girls' placentas to give the girl skill in digging clams, and expose boys' placentas to ravens to encourage future prophetic visions. In Turkey, the proper disposal of the placenta and umbilical cord is believed to promote devoutness in the child later in life. In Transylvania, and Japan, interaction with a disposed placenta is thought to influence the parents' future fertility.


title: Placenta

text: Several cultures believe the placenta to be or have been alive, often a relative of the baby. Nepalese think of the placenta as a friend of the baby; the orang Asli and Malay populations in Malay Peninsula regard it as the baby's older sibling. Native Hawaiians believe that the placenta is a part of the baby, and traditionally plant it with a tree that can then grow alongside the child. Various cultures in Indonesia, such as Javanese and Malay, believe that the placenta has a spirit and needs to be buried outside the family house. Some Malays would bury the baby's placenta with a pencil (if it is a boy) or a needle and thread (if it is a girl).


title: Placenta

text: In some cultures, the placenta is eaten, a practice known as placentophagy. In some eastern cultures, such as China, the dried placenta ("ziheche" , literally "purple river car") is thought to be a healthful restorative and is sometimes used in preparations of traditional Chinese medicine and various health products. The practice of human placentophagy has become a more recent trend in western cultures and is not without controversy; its practice being considered cannibalism is debated.


title: Placenta

text: Some cultures have alternative uses for placenta that include the manufacturing of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and food.


title: Automation

text: Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines. Automation has been achieved by various means including mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, electrical, electronic devices, and computers, usually in combination. Complicated systems, such as modern factories, airplanes, and ships typically use combinations of all of these techniques. The benefit of automation includes labor savings, reducing waste, savings in electricity costs, savings in material costs, and improvements to quality, accuracy, and precision.


title: Automation

text: Automation includes the use of various equipment and control systems such as machinery, processes in factories, boilers, and heat-treating ovens, switching on telephone networks, steering, and stabilization of ships, aircraft, and other applications and vehicles with reduced human intervention. Examples range from a household thermostat controlling a boiler to a large industrial control system with tens of thousands of input measurements and output control signals. Automation has also found space in the banking sector. In control complexity, it can range from simple on-off control to multi-variable high-level algorithms.


title: Automation

text: In the simplest type of an automatic control loop, a controller compares a measured value of a process with a desired set value and processes the resulting error signal to change some input to the process, in such a way that the process stays at its set point despite disturbances. This closed-loop control is an application of negative feedback to a system. The mathematical basis of control theory was begun in the 18th century and advanced rapidly in the 20th. The term "automation", inspired by the earlier word "automatic" (coming from "automaton"), was not widely used before 1947, when Ford established an automation department. It was during this time that industry was rapidly adopting feedback controllers, which were introduced in the 1930s.


title: Automation

text: The World Bank's World Development Report of 2019 shows evidence that the new industries and jobs in the technology sector outweigh the economic effects of workers being displaced by automation. Job losses and downward mobility blamed on automation have been cited as one of many factors in the resurgence of nationalist, protectionist and populist politics in the US, UK and France, among other countries since the 2010s.


title: Automation

text: In open-loop control, the control action from the controller is independent of the "process output" (or "controlled process variable"). A good example of this is a central heating boiler controlled only by a timer, so that heat is applied for a constant time, regardless of the temperature of the building. (The control action is switching the boiler off and on. The process output is building temperature.)


title: Automation

text: In closed-loop control, the control action from the controller is dependent on the process output. In the case of the boiler analogy, this would include a temperature sensor to monitor the building temperature, and thereby feed a signal back to the controller to ensure it maintains the building at the temperature set on the thermostat. A closed-loop controller, therefore, has a feedback loop that ensures the controller exerts a control action to give a process output equal to the "reference input" or "set point". For this reason, closed-loop control is also called feedback control.


title: Automation

text: The definition of a closed-loop control system according to the British Standard Institution is 'a control system possessing monitoring feedback, the deviation signal formed as a result of this feedback being used to control the action of a final control element in such a way as to tend to reduce the deviation to zero.'


title: Automation

text: Likewise, a feedback "control system" is a system that tends to maintain a prescribed relationship of one system variable to another by comparing functions of these variables and using the difference as a means of control.


title: Automation

text: The advanced type of automation that revolutionized manufacturing, aircraft, communications, and other industries, is feedback control, which is usually "continuous" and involves taking measurements using a sensor and making calculated adjustments to keep the measured variable within a set range. The theoretical basis of closed-loop automation is control theory.


title: Automation

text: One of the simplest types of control is "on-off" control. An example is a thermostat used on household appliances which either open or close an electrical contact. (Thermostats were originally developed as true feedback-control mechanisms rather than the on-off common household appliance thermostat.)


title: Automation

text: Sequence control, in which a programmed sequence of "discrete" operations is performed, often based on system logic that involves system states. An elevator control system is an example of sequence control.


title: Automation

text: A proportional–integral–derivative controller (PID controller) is a control loop feedback mechanism (controller) widely used in industrial control systems.


title: Automation

text: In a PID loop, the controller continuously calculates an "error value" formula_1 as the difference between a desired setpoint and a measured process variable and applies a correction based on proportional, integral, and derivative terms, respectively (sometimes denoted "P", "I", and "D") which give their name to the controller type.


title: Automation

text: The theoretical understanding and application date from the 1920s, and they are implemented in nearly all analog control systems; originally in mechanical controllers, and then using discrete electronics and latterly in industrial process computers.


title: Automation

text: Sequential control may be either to a fixed sequence or to a logical one that will perform different actions depending on various system states. An example of an adjustable but otherwise fixed sequence is a timer on a lawn sprinkler.


title: Automation

text: States refer to the various conditions that can occur in a use or sequence scenario of the system. An example is an elevator, which uses logic based on the system state to perform certain actions in response to its state and operator input. For example, if the operator presses the floor n button, the system will respond depending on whether the elevator is stopped or moving, going up or down, or if the door is open or closed, and other conditions.


title: Automation

text: Early development of sequential control was relay logic, by which electrical relays engage electrical contacts which either start or interrupt power to a device. Relays were first used in telegraph networks before being developed for controlling other devices, such as when starting and stopping industrial-sized electric motors or opening and closing solenoid valves. Using relays for control purposes allowed event-driven control, where actions could be triggered out of sequence, in response to external events. These were more flexible in their response than the rigid single-sequence cam timers. More complicated examples involved maintaining safe sequences for devices such as swing bridge controls, where a lock bolt needed to be disengaged before the bridge could be moved, and the lock bolt could not be released until the safety gates had already been closed.


title: Automation

text: The total number of relays and cam timers can number into the hundreds or even thousands in some factories. Early programming techniques and languages were needed to make such systems manageable, one of the first being ladder logic, where diagrams of the interconnected relays resembled the rungs of a ladder. Special computers called programmable logic controllers were later designed to replace these collections of hardware with a single, more easily re-programmed unit.


title: Automation

text: In a typical hard wired motor start and stop circuit (called a "control circuit") a motor is started by pushing a "Start" or "Run" button that activates a pair of electrical relays. The "lock-in" relay locks in contacts that keep the control circuit energized when the push-button is released. (The start button is a normally open contact and the stop button is normally closed contact.) Another relay energizes a switch that powers the device that throws the motor starter switch (three sets of contacts for three-phase industrial power) in the main power circuit. Large motors use high voltage and experience high in-rush current, making speed important in making and breaking contact. This can be dangerous for personnel and property with manual switches. The "lock-in" contacts in the start circuit and the main power contacts for the motor are held engaged by their respective electromagnets until a "stop" or "off" button is pressed, which de-energizes the lock in relay.


title: Automation

text: Commonly interlocks are added to a control circuit. Suppose that the motor in the example is powering machinery that has a critical need for lubrication. In this case, an interlock could be added to ensure that the oil pump is running before the motor starts. Timers, limit switches, and electric eyes are other common elements in control circuits.


title: Automation

text: Solenoid valves are widely used on compressed air or hydraulic fluid for powering actuators on mechanical components. While motors are used to supply continuous rotary motion, actuators are typically a better choice for intermittently creating a limited range of movement for a mechanical component, such as moving various mechanical arms, opening or closing valves, raising heavy press-rolls, applying pressure to presses.


title: Automation

text: Computers can perform both sequential control and feedback control, and typically a single computer will do both in an industrial application. Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are a type of special-purpose microprocessor that replaced many hardware components such as timers and drum sequencers used in relay logic–type systems. General-purpose process control computers have increasingly replaced stand-alone controllers, with a single computer able to perform the operations of hundreds of controllers. Process control computers can process data from a network of PLCs, instruments, and controllers to implement typical (such as PID) control of many individual variables or, in some cases, to implement complex control algorithms using multiple inputs and mathematical manipulations. They can also analyze data and create real-time graphical displays for operators and run reports for operators, engineers, and management.


title: Automation

text: Control of an automated teller machine (ATM) is an example of an interactive process in which a computer will perform a logic-derived response to a user selection based on information retrieved from a networked database. The ATM process has similarities with other online transaction processes. The different logical responses are called "scenarios". Such processes are typically designed with the aid of use cases and flowcharts, which guide the writing of the software code. The earliest feedback control mechanism was the water clock invented by Greek engineer Ctesibius (285–222 BC).


title: Automation

text: It was a preoccupation of the Greeks and Arabs (in the period between about 300 BC and about 1200 AD) to keep accurate track of time. In Ptolemaic Egypt, about 270 BC, Ctesibius described a float regulator for a water clock, a device not unlike the ball and cock in a modern flush toilet. This was the earliest feedback-controlled mechanism. The appearance of the mechanical clock in the 14th century made the water clock and its feedback control system obsolete.


title: Automation

text: The Persian Banū Mūsā brothers, in their "Book of Ingenious Devices" (850 AD), described a number of automatic controls. Two-step level controls for fluids, a form of discontinuous variable structure controls, was developed by the Banu Musa brothers. They also described a feedback controller. The design of feedback control systems up through the Industrial Revolution was by trial-and-error, together with a great deal of engineering intuition. Thus, it was more of an art than a science. It was not until the mid-19th century that the stability of feedback control systems was analyzed using mathematics, the formal language of automatic control theory.


title: Automation

text: The centrifugal governor was invented by Christiaan Huygens in the seventeenth century, and used to adjust the gap between millstones.


title: Automation

text: The introduction of prime movers, or self-driven machines advanced grain mills, furnaces, boilers, and the steam engine created a new requirement for automatic control systems including temperature regulators (invented in 1624; see Cornelius Drebbel), pressure regulators (1681), float regulators (1700) and speed control devices. Another control mechanism was used to tent the sails of windmills. It was patented by Edmund Lee in 1745. Also in 1745, Jacques de Vaucanson invented the first automated loom. Around 1800, Joseph Marie Jacquard created a punch-card system to program looms.


title: Automation

text: In 1771 Richard Arkwright invented the first fully automated spinning mill driven by water power, known at the time as the water frame. An automatic flour mill was developed by Oliver Evans in 1785, making it the first completely automated industrial process.


title: Automation

text: A centrifugal governor was used by Mr. Bunce of England in 1784 as part of a model steam crane. The centrifugal governor was adopted by James Watt for use on a steam engine in 1788 after Watt's partner Boulton saw one at a flour mill Boulton & Watt were building. The governor could not actually hold a set speed; the engine would assume a new constant speed in response to load changes. The governor was able to handle smaller variations such as those caused by fluctuating heat load to the boiler. Also, there was a tendency for oscillation whenever there was a speed change. As a consequence, engines equipped with this governor were not suitable for operations requiring constant speed, such as cotton spinning.


title: Automation

text: Several improvements to the governor, plus improvements to valve cut-off timing on the steam engine, made the engine suitable for most industrial uses before the end of the 19th century. Advances in the steam engine stayed well ahead of science, both thermodynamics and control theory. The governor received relatively little scientific attention until James Clerk Maxwell published a paper that established the beginning of a theoretical basis for understanding control theory.


title: Automation

text: Relay logic was introduced with factory electrification, which underwent rapid adaption from 1900 through the 1920s. Central electric power stations were also undergoing rapid growth and the operation of new high-pressure boilers, steam turbines and electrical substations created a large demand for instruments and controls. Central control rooms became common in the 1920s, but as late as the early 1930s, most process controls were on-off. Operators typically monitored charts drawn by recorders that plotted data from instruments. To make corrections, operators manually opened or closed valves or turned switches on or off. Control rooms also used color-coded lights to send signals to workers in the plant to manually make certain changes.


title: Automation

text: The development of the electronic amplifier during the 1920s, which was important for long-distance telephony, required a higher signal-to-noise ratio, which was solved by negative feedback noise cancellation. This and other telephony applications contributed to the control theory. In the 1940s and 1950s, German mathematician Irmgard Flügge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic controls, which found military applications during the Second World War to fire control systems and aircraft navigation systems.


title: Automation

text: Controllers, which were able to make calculated changes in response to deviations from a set point rather than on-off control, began being introduced in the 1930s. Controllers allowed manufacturing to continue showing productivity gains to offset the declining influence of factory electrification.


title: Automation

text: Factory productivity was greatly increased by electrification in the 1920s. U.S. manufacturing productivity growth fell from 5.2%/yr 1919–29 to 2.76%/yr 1929–41. Alexander Field notes that spending on non-medical instruments increased significantly from 1929 to 1933 and remained strong thereafter.


title: Automation

text: The First and Second World Wars saw major advancements in the field of mass communication and signal processing. Other key advances in automatic controls include differential equations, stability theory and system theory (1938), frequency domain analysis (1940), ship control (1950), and stochastic analysis (1941).


title: Automation

text: Starting in 1958, various systems based on solid-state digital logic modules for hard-wired programmed logic controllers (the predecessors of programmable logic controllers [PLC]) emerged to replace electro-mechanical relay logic in industrial control systems for process control and automation, including early Telefunken/AEG Logistat, Siemens Simatic, Philips/Mullard/ Norbit, BBC Sigmatronic, ACEC Logacec, Estacord, Krone Mibakron, Bistat, Datapac, Norlog, SSR, or Procontic systems.


title: Automation

text: Conversion of factories to digital control began to spread rapidly in the 1970s as the price of computer hardware fell.


title: Automation

text: The automatic telephone switchboard was introduced in 1892 along with dial telephones. By 1929, 31.9% of the Bell system was automatic. Automatic telephone switching originally used vacuum tube amplifiers and electro-mechanical switches, which consumed a large amount of electricity. Call volume eventually grew so fast that it was feared the telephone system would consume all electricity production, prompting Bell Labs to begin research on the transistor.


title: Automation

text: The first commercially successful glass bottle-blowing machine was an automatic model introduced in 1905. The machine, operated by a two-man crew working 12-hour shifts, could produce 17,280 bottles in 24 hours, compared to 2,880 bottles made by a crew of six men and boys working in a shop for a day. The cost of making bottles by machine was 10 to 12 cents per gross compared to $1.80 per gross by the manual glassblowers and helpers.


title: Automation

text: Sectional electric drives were developed using control theory. Sectional electric drives are used on different sections of a machine where a precise differential must be maintained between the sections. In steel rolling, the metal elongates as it passes through pairs of rollers, which must run at successively faster speeds. In paper making paper, the sheet shrinks as it passes around steam-heated drying arranged in groups, which must run at successively slower speeds. The first application of a sectional electric drive was on a paper machine in 1919. One of the most important developments in the steel industry during the 20th century was continuous wide strip rolling, developed by Armco in 1928.


title: Automation

text: Before automation, many chemicals were made in batches. In 1930, with the widespread use of instruments and the emerging use of controllers, the founder of Dow Chemical Co. was advocating continuous production.


title: Automation

text: Self-acting machine tools that displaced hand dexterity so they could be operated by boys and unskilled laborers were developed by James Nasmyth in the 1840s. Machine tools were automated with Numerical control (NC) using punched paper tape in the 1950s. This soon evolved into computerized numerical control (CNC).


title: Automation

text: Today extensive automation is practiced in practically every type of manufacturing and assembly process. Some of the larger processes include electrical power generation, oil refining, chemicals, steel mills, plastics, cement plants, fertilizer plants, pulp and paper mills, automobile and truck assembly, aircraft production, glass manufacturing, natural gas separation plants, food and beverage processing, canning and bottling and manufacture of various kinds of parts. Robots are especially useful in hazardous applications like automobile spray painting. Robots are also used to assemble electronic circuit boards. Automotive welding is done with robots and automatic welders are used in applications like pipelines.


title: Automation

text: With the advent of the space age in 1957, controls design, particularly in the United States, turned away from the frequency-domain techniques of classical control theory and backed into the differential equation techniques of the late 19th century, which were couched in the time domain. During the 1940s and 1950s, German mathematician Irmgard Flugge-Lotz developed the theory of discontinuous automatic control, which became widely used in hysteresis control systems such as navigation systems, fire-control systems, and electronics. Through Flugge-Lotz and others, the modern era saw time-domain design for nonlinear systems (1961), navigation (1960), optimal control and estimation theory (1962), nonlinear control theory (1969), digital control and filtering theory (1974), and the personal computer (1983).


title: Automation

text: Perhaps the most cited advantage of automation in industry is that it is associated with faster production and cheaper labor costs. Another benefit could be that it replaces hard, physical, or monotonous work. Additionally, tasks that take place in hazardous environments or that are otherwise beyond human capabilities can be done by machines, as machines can operate even under extreme temperatures or in atmospheres that are radioactive or toxic. They can also be maintained with simple quality checks. However, at the time being, not all tasks can be automated, and some tasks are more expensive to automate than others. Initial costs of installing the machinery in factory settings are high, and failure to maintain a system could result in the loss of the product itself.


title: Automation

text: Moreover, some studies seem to indicate that industrial automation could impose ill effects beyond operational concerns, including worker displacement due to systemic loss of employment and compounded environmental damage; however, these findings are both convoluted and controversial in nature, and could potentially be circumvented.


title: Automation

text: Automation primarily describes machines replacing human action, but it is also loosely associated with mechanization, machines replacing human labor. Coupled with mechanization, extending human capabilities in terms of size, strength, speed, endurance, visual range & acuity, hearing frequency & precision, electromagnetic sensing & effecting, etc., advantages include:


title: Automation

text: The paradox of automation says that the more efficient the automated system, the more crucial the human contribution of the operators. Humans are less involved, but their involvement becomes more critical. Lisanne Bainbridge, a cognitive psychologist, identified these issues notably in her widely cited paper "Ironies of Automation." If an automated system has an error, it will multiply that error until it is fixed or shut down. This is where human operators come in. A fatal example of this was Air France Flight 447, where a failure of automation put the pilots into a manual situation they were not prepared for.


title: Automation

text: Many roles for humans in industrial processes presently lie beyond the scope of automation. Human-level pattern recognition, language comprehension, and language production ability are well beyond the capabilities of modern mechanical and computer systems (but see "Watson computer"). Tasks requiring subjective assessment or synthesis of complex sensory data, such as scents and sounds, as well as high-level tasks such as strategic planning, currently require human expertise. In many cases, the use of humans is more cost-effective than mechanical approaches even where the automation of industrial tasks is possible. Overcoming these obstacles is a theorized path to post-scarcity economics.


title: Automation

text: Increased automation often causes workers to feel anxious about losing their jobs as technology renders their skills or experience unnecessary. Early in the Industrial Revolution, when inventions like the steam engine were making some job categories expendable, workers forcefully resisted these changes. Luddites, for instance, were English textile workers who protested the introduction of weaving machines by destroying them. More recently, some residents of Chandler, Arizona, have slashed tires and pelted rocks at driver-less cars, in protest over the cars' perceived threat to human safety and job prospects.


title: Automation

text: The relative anxiety about automation reflected in opinion polls seems to correlate closely with the strength of organized labor in that region or nation. For example, while a study by the Pew Research Center indicated that 72% of Americans are worried about increasing automation in the workplace, 80% of Swedes see automation and artificial intelligence (AI) as a good thing, due to the country's still-powerful unions and a more robust national safety net.


title: Automation

text: In the U.S., 47% of all current jobs have the potential to be fully automated by 2033, according to the research of experts Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne. Furthermore, wages and educational attainment appear to be strongly negatively correlated with an occupation's risk of being automated. Even highly skilled professional jobs like a lawyer, doctor, engineer, journalist are at risk of automation.


title: Automation

text: Prospects are particularly bleak for occupations that do not presently require a university degree, such as truck driving. Even in high-tech corridors like Silicon Valley, concern is spreading about a future in which a sizable percentage of adults have little chance of sustaining gainful employment. "In "The Second Machine Age," Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argue that "...there's never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there's never been a worse time to be a worker with only 'ordinary' skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate." As the example of Sweden suggests, however, the transition to a more automated future need not inspire panic, if there is sufficient political will to promote the retraining of workers whose positions are being rendered obsolete.


title: Automation

text: According to a 2020 study in the "Journal of Political Economy", automation has robust negative effects on employment and wages: "One more robot per thousand workers reduces the employment-to-population ratio by 0.2 percentage points and wages by 0.42%."


title: Automation

text: Research by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin School argued that employees engaged in "tasks following well-defined procedures that can easily be performed by sophisticated algorithms" are at risk of displacement, and 47% of jobs in the US were at risk. The study, released as a working paper in 2013 and published in 2017, predicted that automation would put low-paid physical occupations most at risk, by surveying a group of colleagues on their opinions. However, according to a study published in "McKinsey Quarterly" in 2015 the impact of computerization in most cases is not the replacement of employees but automation of portions of the tasks they perform. The methodology of the McKinsey study has been heavily criticized for being intransparent and relying on subjective assessments. The methodology of Frey and Osborne has been subjected to criticism, as lacking evidence, historical awareness, or credible methodology. Additionally, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that across the 21 OECD countries, 9% of jobs are automatable.


title: Automation

text: The Obama administration pointed out that every 3 months "about 6 percent of jobs in the economy are destroyed by shrinking or closing businesses, while a slightly larger percentage of jobs are added." A recent MIT economics study of automation in the U.S. from 1990 to 2007 found that there may be a negative impact on employment and wages when robots are introduced to an industry. When one robot is added per one thousand workers, the employment to population ratio decreases between 0.18 and 0.34 percentages and wages are reduced by 0.25–0.5 percentage points. During the time period studied, the US did not have many robots in the economy which restricts the impact of automation. However, automation is expected to triple (conservative estimate) or quadruple (a generous estimate) leading these numbers to become substantially higher.


title: Automation

text: Based on a formula by Gilles Saint-Paul, an economist at Toulouse 1 University, the demand for unskilled human capital declines at a slower rate than the demand for skilled human capital increases. In the long run and for society as a whole it has led to cheaper products, lower average work hours, and new industries forming (i.e., robotics industries, computer industries, design industries). These new industries provide many high salary skill-based jobs to the economy. By 2030, between 3 and 14 percent of the global workforce will be forced to switch job categories due to automation eliminating jobs in an entire sector. While the number of jobs lost to automation is often offset by jobs gained from technological advances, the same type of job loss is not the same one replaced and that leading to increasing unemployment in the lower-middle class. This occurs largely in the US and developed countries where technological advances contribute to higher demand for highly skilled labor but demand for middle-wage labor continues to fall. Economists call this trend "income polarization" where unskilled labor wages are driven down and skilled labor is driven up and it is predicted to continue in developed economies.


title: Automation

text: Unemployment is becoming a problem in the U.S. due to the exponential growth rate of automation and technology. According to Kim, Kim, and Lee (2017:1), "[a] seminal study by Frey and Osborne in 2013 predicted that 47% of the 702 examined occupations in the U.S. faced a high risk of decreased employment rate within the next 10–25 years as a result of computerization." As many jobs are becoming obsolete, which is causing job displacement, one possible solution would be for the government to assist with a universal basic income (UBI) program. UBI would be a guaranteed, non-taxed income of around 1000 dollars per month, paid to all U.S. citizens over the age of 21. UBI would help those who are displaced take on jobs that pay less money and still afford to get by. It would also give those that are employed with jobs that are likely to be replaced by automation and technology extra money to spend on education and training on new demanding employment skills. UBI, however, should be seen as a short-term solution as it doesn't fully address the issue of income inequality which will be exacerbated by job displacement.


title: Automation

text: Lights out manufacturing grew in popularity in the U.S. when General Motors in 1982 implemented humans "hands-off" manufacturing to "replace risk-averse bureaucracy with automation and robots". However, the factory never reached full "lights out" status.


title: Automation

text: The costs of automation to the environment are different depending on the technology, product or engine automated. There are automated engines that consume more energy resources from the Earth in comparison with previous engines and vice versa. Hazardous operations, such as oil refining, the manufacturing of industrial chemicals, and all forms of metal working, were always early contenders for automation.


title: Automation

text: The automation of vehicles could prove to have a substantial impact on the environment, although the nature of this impact could be beneficial or harmful depending on several factors. Because automated vehicles are much less likely to get into accidents compared to human-driven vehicles, some precautions built into current models (such as anti-lock brakes or laminated glass) would not be required for self-driving versions. Removing these safety features would also significantly reduce the weight of the vehicle, thus increasing fuel economy and reducing emissions per mile. Self-driving vehicles are also more precise concerning acceleration and breaking, and this could contribute to reduced emissions. Self-driving cars could also potentially utilize fuel-efficient features such as route mapping that can calculate and take the most efficient routes. Despite this potential to reduce emissions, some researchers theorize that an increase in the production of self-driving cars could lead to a boom of vehicle ownership and use. This boom could potentially negate any environmental benefits of self-driving cars if a large enough number of people begin driving personal vehicles more frequently.


title: Automation

text: Automation of homes and home appliances is also thought to impact the environment, but the benefits of these features are also questioned. A study of energy consumption of automated homes in Finland showed that smart homes could reduce energy consumption by monitoring levels of consumption in different areas of the home and adjusting consumption to reduce energy leaks (e.g. automatically reducing consumption during the nighttime when activity is low). This study, along with others, indicated that the smart home's ability to monitor and adjust consumption levels would reduce unnecessary energy usage. However, new research suggests that smart homes might not be as efficient as non-automated homes. A more recent study has indicated that, while monitoring and adjusting consumption levels do decrease unnecessary energy use, this process requires monitoring systems that also consume a significant amount of energy. This study suggested that the energy required to run these systems is so much so that it negates any benefits of the systems themselves, resulting in little to no ecological benefit.


title: Automation

text: Another major shift in automation is the increased demand for flexibility and convertibility in manufacturing processes. Manufacturers are increasingly demanding the ability to easily switch from manufacturing Product A to manufacturing Product B without having to completely rebuild the production lines. Flexibility and distributed processes have led to the introduction of Automated Guided Vehicles with Natural Features Navigation.


title: Automation

text: Digital electronics helped too. Former analog-based instrumentation was replaced by digital equivalents which can be more accurate and flexible, and offer greater scope for more sophisticated configuration, parametrization, and operation. This was accompanied by the fieldbus revolution which provided a networked (i.e. a single cable) means of communicating between control systems and field-level instrumentation, eliminating hard-wiring.


title: Automation

text: Discrete manufacturing plants adopted these technologies fast. The more conservative process industries with their longer plant life cycles have been slower to adopt and analog-based measurement and control still dominate. The growing use of Industrial Ethernet on the factory floor is pushing these trends still further, enabling manufacturing plants to be integrated more tightly within the enterprise, via the internet if necessary. Global competition has also increased demand for Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems.


title: Automation

text: Engineers can now have numerical control over automated devices. The result has been a rapidly expanding range of applications and human activities. Computer-aided technologies (or CAx) now serve as the basis for mathematical and organizational tools used to create complex systems. Notable examples of CAx include computer-aided design (CAD software) and computer-aided manufacturing (CAM software). The improved design, analysis, and manufacture of products enabled by CAx has been beneficial for industry.


title: Automation

text: Information technology, together with industrial machinery and processes, can assist in the design, implementation, and monitoring of control systems. One example of an industrial control system is a programmable logic controller (PLC). PLCs are specialized hardened computers which are frequently used to synchronize the flow of inputs from (physical) sensors and events with the flow of outputs to actuators and events.