title: Deconstruction

text: Deconstruction denotes the pursuing of the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded—supposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, in literary analysis, and even in the analysis of scientific writings. Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an "aporia" in the text; thus, deconstructive reading is termed "aporetic". He insists that meaning is made possible by the relations of a word to other words within the network of structures that language is.


title: Deconstruction

text: Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction", on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterize his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.


title: Deconstruction

text: Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by postmodernists to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings. There is a focus on the deconstruction that denotes the tearing apart of a text to find arbitrary hierarchies and presuppositions for the purpose of tracing contradictions that shadow a text's coherence. Here, the meaning of a text does not reside with the author or the author's intentions because it is dependent on the interaction between reader and text. Even the process of translation is also seen as transformative since it "modifies the original even as it modifies the translating language".


title: Deconstruction

text: Derrida's lecture at Johns Hopkins University, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences", often appears in collections as a manifesto against structuralism. Derrida's essay was one of the earliest to propose some theoretical limitations to structuralism, and to attempt to theorize on terms that were clearly no longer structuralist. Structuralism viewed language as a number of signs, composed of a signified (the meaning) and a signifier (the word itself). Derrida proposed that signs always referred to other signs, existing only in relation to each other, and there was therefore no ultimate foundation or centre. This is the basis of différance.


title: Deconstruction

text: Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, many thinkers were influenced by deconstruction, including Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. This group came to be known as the Yale school and was especially influential in literary criticism. Derrida and Hillis Miller were subsequently affiliated with the University of California, Irvine.


title: Deconstruction

text: Miller has described deconstruction this way: "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock, but thin air."


title: Deconstruction

text: Arguing that law and politics cannot be separated, the founders of the "Critical Legal Studies Movement" found it necessary to criticize the absence of the recognition of this inseparability at the level of theory. To demonstrate the indeterminacy of legal doctrine, these scholars often adopt a method, such as structuralism in linguistics, or deconstruction in Continental philosophy, to make explicit the deep structure of categories and tensions at work in legal texts and talk. The aim was to deconstruct the tensions and procedures by which they are constructed, expressed, and deployed.


title: Deconstruction

text: For example, Duncan Kennedy, in explicit reference to semiotics and deconstruction procedures, maintains that various legal doctrines are constructed around the binary pairs of opposed concepts, each of which has a claim upon intuitive and formal forms of reasoning that must be made explicit in their meaning and relative value, and criticized. Self and other, private and public, subjective and objective, freedom and control are examples of such pairs demonstrating the influence of opposing concepts on the development of legal doctrines throughout history.


title: Deconstruction

text: Deconstructive readings of history and sources have changed the entire discipline of history. In "Deconstructing History", Alun Munslow examines history in what he argues is a postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history, and historical practice, as well as articulating his own theoretical challenges.


title: Deconstruction

text: Jean-Luc Nancy argues, in his 1982 book "The Inoperative Community", for an understanding of community and society that is undeconstructable because it is prior to conceptualisation. Nancy's work is an important development of deconstruction because it takes the challenge of deconstruction seriously and attempts to develop an understanding of political terms that is undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida.


title: Deconstruction

text: Simon Critchley argues, in his 1992 book "The Ethics of Deconstruction", that Derrida's deconstruction is an intrinsically ethical practice. Critchley argues that deconstruction involves an openness to the Other that makes it ethical in the Levinasian understanding of the term.


title: Deconstruction

text: Jacques Derrida has had a great influence on contemporary political theory and political philosophy. Derrida's thinking has inspired Slavoj Zizek, Richard Rorty, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler and many more contemporary theorists who have developed a deconstructive approach to politics. Because deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse it has helped many authors to analyse the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought; and, as such, it has proved revolutionary in political analysis, particularly ideology critiques.


title: Deconstruction

text: Richard Beardsworth, developing from Critchley's "Ethics of Deconstruction", argues, in his 1996 "Derrida and the Political", that deconstruction is an intrinsically political practice. He further argues that the future of deconstruction faces a perhaps undecidable choice between a theological approach and a technological approach, represented first of all by the work of Bernard Stiegler.


title: Deconstruction

text: Derrida was involved in a number of high-profile disagreements with prominent philosophers, including Michel Foucault, John Searle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Peter Kreeft, and Jürgen Habermas. Most of the criticism of deconstruction were first articulated by these philosophers then repeated elsewhere.


title: Deconstruction

text: In the early 1970s, Searle had a brief exchange with Jacques Derrida regarding speech-act theory. The exchange was characterized by a degree of mutual hostility between the philosophers, each of whom accused the other of having misunderstood his basic points. Searle was particularly hostile to Derrida's deconstructionist framework and much later refused to let his response to Derrida be printed along with Derrida's papers in the 1988 collection "Limited Inc". Searle did not consider Derrida's approach to be legitimate philosophy, or even intelligible writing, and argued that he did not want to legitimize the deconstructionist point of view by paying any attention to it. Consequently, some critics have considered the exchange to be a series of elaborate misunderstandings rather than a debate, while others have seen either Derrida or Searle gaining the upper hand. The level of hostility can be seen from Searle's statement that "It would be a mistake to regard Derrida's discussion of Austin as a confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions", to which Derrida replied that that sentence was "the only sentence of the 'reply' to which I can subscribe". Commentators have frequently interpreted the exchange as a prominent example of a confrontation between analytic and continental philosophies.


title: Deconstruction

text: The debate began in 1972, when, in his paper "Signature Event Context", Derrida analyzed J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act. While sympathetic to Austin's departure from a purely denotational account of language to one that includes "force", Derrida was sceptical of the framework of normativity employed by Austin. Derrida argued that Austin had missed the fact that any speech event is framed by a "structure of absence" (the words that are left unsaid due to contextual constraints) and by "iterability" (the constraints on what can be said, imposed by what has been said in the past). Derrida argued that the focus on intentionality in speech-act theory was misguided because intentionality is restricted to that which is already established as a possible intention. He also took issue with the way Austin had excluded the study of fiction, non-serious, or "parasitic" speech, wondering whether this exclusion was because Austin had considered these speech genres as governed by different structures of meaning, or hadn't considered them due to a lack of interest. In his brief reply to Derrida, "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida", Searle argued that Derrida's critique was unwarranted because it assumed that Austin's theory attempted to give a full account of language and meaning when its aim was much narrower. Searle considered the omission of parasitic discourse forms to be justified by the narrow scope of Austin's inquiry. Searle agreed with Derrida's proposal that intentionality presupposes iterability, but did not apply the same concept of intentionality used by Derrida, being unable or unwilling to engage with the continental conceptual apparatus. This, in turn, caused Derrida to criticize Searle for not being sufficiently familiar with phenomenological perspectives on intentionality. Some critics have suggested that Searle, by being so grounded in the analytical tradition that he was unable to engage with Derrida's continental phenomenological tradition, was at fault for the unsuccessful nature of the exchange, however Searle also argued that Derrida's disagreement with Austin turned on Derrida's having misunderstood Austin's type–token distinction and having failed to understand Austin's concept of failure in relation to performativity.


title: Deconstruction

text: Derrida, in his response to Searle ( in "Limited Inc"), ridiculed Searle's positions. Claiming that a clear sender of Searle's message could not be established, Derrida suggested that Searle had formed with Austin a "société à responsabilité limitée" (a "limited liability company") due to the ways in which the ambiguities of authorship within Searle's reply circumvented the very speech act of his reply. Searle did not reply. Later in 1988, Derrida tried to review his position and his critiques of Austin and Searle, reiterating that he found the constant appeal to "normality" in the analytical tradition to be problematic.


title: Deconstruction

text: In 1995, Searle gave a brief reply to Derrida in "The Construction of Social Reality". He called Derrida's conclusion "preposterous" and stated that "Derrida, as far as I can tell, does not have an argument. He simply declares that there is nothing outside of texts..." Searle's reference here is not to anything forwarded in the debate, but to a mistranslation of the phrase ""il n'y a pas dehors du texte"," ("There is no outside-text") which appears in Derrida's "Of Grammatology".


title: Deconstruction

text: In "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity", Jürgen Habermas criticized what he considered Derrida's opposition to rational discourse. Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized Derrida's emphasis on etymology and philology (see "Etymological fallacy").


title: Deconstruction

text: The American philosopher Walter A. Davis, in "Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and Freud", argues that both deconstruction and structuralism are prematurely arrested moments of a dialectical movement that issues from Hegelian "unhappy consciousness".


title: Deconstruction

text: Popular criticism of deconstruction intensified following the Sokal affair, which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole, despite the absence of Derrida from Sokal's follow-up book "Impostures Intellectuelles".


title: Deconstruction

text: Chip Morningstar holds a view critical of deconstruction, believing it to be "epistemologically challenged". He claims the humanities are subject to isolation and genetic drift due to their unaccountability to the world outside academia. During the Second International Conference on Cyberspace (Santa Cruz, California, 1991), he reportedly heckled deconstructionists off the stage. He subsequently presented his views in the article "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything", where he stated, "Contrary to the report given in the 'Hype List' column of issue #1 of Wired ('Po-Mo Gets Tek-No', page 87), we did not shout down the postmodernists. We made fun of them."


title: Deconstruction

text: "the analytic examination of something (such as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy" https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deconstruction


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is a chemical element with the symbol V and atomic number 23. It is a hard, silvery-grey, malleable transition metal. The elemental metal is rarely found in nature, but once isolated artificially, the formation of an oxide layer (passivation) somewhat stabilizes the free metal against further oxidation.


title: Vanadium

text: Spanish scientist Andrés Manuel del Río discovered compounds of vanadium in 1801 in Mexico by analyzing a new lead-bearing mineral he called "brown lead". Though he initially presumed its qualities were due to the presence of a new element, he was later erroneously convinced by French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils that the element was just chromium. Then in 1830, Nils Gabriel Sefström generated chlorides of vanadium, thus proving there was a new element, and named it "vanadium" after the Scandinavian goddess of beauty and fertility, Vanadís (Freyja). The name was based on the wide range of colors found in vanadium compounds. Del Rio's lead mineral was ultimately named vanadinite for its vanadium content. In 1867 Henry Enfield Roscoe obtained the pure element.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium occurs naturally in about 65 minerals and in fossil fuel deposits. It is produced in China and Russia from steel smelter slag. Other countries produce it either from magnetite directly, flue dust of heavy oil, or as a byproduct of uranium mining. It is mainly used to produce specialty steel alloys such as high-speed tool steels, and some aluminium alloys. The most important industrial vanadium compound, vanadium pentoxide, is used as a catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid. The vanadium redox battery for energy storage may be an important application in the future.


title: Vanadium

text: Large amounts of vanadium ions are found in a few organisms, possibly as a toxin. The oxide and some other salts of vanadium have moderate toxicity. Particularly in the ocean, vanadium is used by some life forms as an active center of enzymes, such as the vanadium bromoperoxidase of some ocean algae.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium was discovered in 1801 by the Spanish mineralogist Andrés Manuel del Río. Del Río extracted the element from a sample of Mexican "brown lead" ore, later named vanadinite. He found that its salts exhibit a wide variety of colors, and as a result he named the element "panchromium" (Greek: παγχρώμιο "all colors"). Later, Del Río renamed the element "erythronium" (Greek: ερυθρός "red") because most of the salts turned red upon heating. In 1805, French chemist Hippolyte Victor Collet-Descotils, backed by del Río's friend Baron Alexander von Humboldt, incorrectly declared that del Río's new element was an impure sample of chromium. Del Río accepted Collet-Descotils' statement and retracted his claim.


title: Vanadium

text: In 1831 Swedish chemist Nils Gabriel Sefström rediscovered the element in a new oxide he found while working with iron ores. Later that year, Friedrich Wöhler confirmed del Río's earlier work. Sefström chose a name beginning with V, which had not yet been assigned to any element. He called the element "vanadium" after Old Norse "Vanadís" (another name for the Norse Vanir goddess Freyja, whose attributes include beauty and fertility), because of the many beautifully colored chemical compounds it produces. In 1831, the geologist George William Featherstonhaugh suggested that vanadium should be renamed ""rionium"" after del Río, but this suggestion was not followed.


title: Vanadium

text: The isolation of vanadium metal was difficult. In 1831, Berzelius reported the production of the metal, but Henry Enfield Roscoe showed that Berzelius had produced the nitride, vanadium nitride (VN). Roscoe eventually produced the metal in 1867 by reduction of vanadium(II) chloride, VCl, with hydrogen. In 1927, pure vanadium was produced by reducing vanadium pentoxide with calcium.


title: Vanadium

text: The first large-scale industrial use of vanadium was in the steel alloy chassis of the Ford Model T, inspired by French race cars. Vanadium steel allowed reduced weight while increasing tensile strength (ca. 1905). For the first decade of the 20th century, most vanadium ore was mined by American Vanadium Company from the Minas Ragra in Peru. Later, the demand for uranium rose, leading to increased mining of that metal's ores. One major uranium ore was carnotite, which also contains vanadium. Thus, vanadium became available as a by-product of uranium production. Eventually, uranium mining began to supply a large share of the demand for vanadium.


title: Vanadium

text: In 1911, German chemist Martin Henze discovered vanadium in the hemovanadin proteins found in blood cells (or coelomic cells) of Ascidiacea (sea squirts).


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is an average-hard, ductile, steel-blue metal. It is electrically conductive and thermally insulating. Some sources describe vanadium as "soft", perhaps because it is ductile, malleable, and not brittle. Vanadium is harder than most metals and steels (see Hardnesses of the elements (data page) and iron). It has good resistance to corrosion and it is stable against alkalis and sulfuric and hydrochloric acids. It is oxidized in air at about 933 K (660 °C, 1220 °F), although an oxide passivation layer forms even at room temperature.


title: Vanadium

text: Naturally occurring vanadium is composed of one stable isotope, V, and one radioactive isotope, V. The latter has a half-life of 1.5×10 years and a natural abundance of 0.25%. V has a nuclear spin of , which is useful for NMR spectroscopy. Twenty-four artificial radioisotopes have been characterized, ranging in mass number from 40 to 65. The most stable of these isotopes are V with a half-life of 330 days, and V with a half-life of 16.0 days. The remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives shorter than an hour, most below 10 seconds. At least four isotopes have metastable excited states. Electron capture is the main decay mode for isotopes lighter than V. For the heavier ones, the most common mode is beta decay. The electron capture reactions lead to the formation of element 22 (titanium) isotopes, while beta decay leads to element 24 (chromium) isotopes.


title: Vanadium

text: The chemistry of vanadium is noteworthy for the accessibility of the four adjacent oxidation states 2–5. In aqueous solution, vanadium forms metal aquo complexes of which the colours are lilac [V(HO)], green [V(HO)], blue [VO(HO)], yellow-orange oxides [VO(HO)], the formula for which depends on pH. Vanadium(II) compounds are reducing agents, and vanadium(V) compounds are oxidizing agents. Vanadium(IV) compounds often exist as vanadyl derivatives, which contain the VO center.


title: Vanadium

text: Ammonium vanadate(V) (NHVO) can be successively reduced with elemental zinc to obtain the different colors of vanadium in these four oxidation states. Lower oxidation states occur in compounds such as V(CO), and substituted derivatives.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium pentoxide is a commercially important catalyst for the production of sulfuric acid, a reaction that exploits the ability of vanadium oxides to undergo redox reactions.


title: Vanadium

text: The vanadium redox battery utilizes all four oxidation states: one electrode uses the +5/+4 couple and the other uses the +3/+2 couple. Conversion of these oxidation states is illustrated by the reduction of a strongly acidic solution of a vanadium(V) compound with zinc dust or amalgam. The initial yellow color characteristic of the pervanadyl ion [VO(HO)] is replaced by the blue color of [VO(HO)], followed by the green color of [V(HO)] and then the violet color of [V(HO)].


title: Vanadium

text: In aqueous solution, vanadium(V) forms an extensive family of oxyanions as established by V NMR spectroscopy. The interrelationships in this family are described by the predominance diagram, which shows at least 11 species, depending on pH and concentration. The tetrahedral orthovanadate ion, , is the principal species present at pH 12–14. Similar in size and charge to phosphorus(V), vanadium(V) also parallels its chemistry and crystallography. Orthovanadate V is used in protein crystallography to study the biochemistry of phosphate. Beside that, this anion also has been shown to interact with activity of some specific enzymes. The tetrathiovanadate [VS] is analogous to the orthovanadate ion.


title: Vanadium

text: At lower pH values, the monomer [HVO] and dimer [VO] are formed, with the monomer predominant at vanadium concentration of less than c. 10M (pV > 2, where pV is equal to the minus value of the logarithm of the total vanadium concentration/M). The formation of the divanadate ion is analogous to the formation of the dichromate ion. As the pH is reduced, further protonation and condensation to polyvanadates occur: at pH 4-6 [HVO] is predominant at pV greater than ca. 4, while at higher concentrations trimers and tetramers are formed. Between pH 2-4 decavanadate predominates, its formation from orthovanadate is represented by this condensation reaction:


title: Vanadium

text: In decavanadate, each V(V) center is surrounded by six oxide ligands. Vanadic acid, HVO exists only at very low concentrations because protonation of the tetrahedral species [HVO] results in the preferential formation of the octahedral [VO(HO)] species. In strongly acidic solutions, pH < 2, [VO(HO)] is the predominant species, while the oxide VO precipitates from solution at high concentrations. The oxide is formally the acid anhydride of vanadic acid. The structures of many vanadate compounds have been determined by X-ray crystallography.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium(V) forms various peroxo complexes, most notably in the active site of the vanadium-containing bromoperoxidase enzymes. The species VO(O)(HO) is stable in acidic solutions. In alkaline solutions, species with 2, 3 and 4 peroxide groups are known; the last forms violet salts with the formula MV(O) nHO (M= Li, Na, etc.), in which the vanadium has an 8-coordinate dodecahedral structure.


title: Vanadium

text: Twelve binary halides, compounds with the formula VX (n=2..5), are known. VI, VCl, VBr, and VI do not exist or are extremely unstable. In combination with other reagents, VCl is used as a catalyst for polymerization of dienes. Like all binary halides, those of vanadium are Lewis acidic, especially those of V(IV) and V(V). Many of the halides form octahedral complexes with the formula VXL (X= halide; L= other ligand).


title: Vanadium

text: Many vanadium oxyhalides (formula VOX) are known. The oxytrichloride and oxytrifluoride (VOCl and VOF) are the most widely studied. Akin to POCl, they are volatile, adopt tetrahedral structures in the gas phase, and are Lewis acidic.


title: Vanadium

text: Complexes of vanadium(II) and (III) are relatively exchange inert and reducing. Those of V(IV) and V(V) are oxidants. The vanadium ion is rather large and some complexes achieve coordination numbers greater than 6, as is the case in [V(CN)]. Oxovanadium(V) also forms 7 coordinate coordination complexes with tetradentate ligands and peroxides and these complexes are used for oxidative brominations and thioether oxidations. The coordination chemistry of V is dominated by the vanadyl center, VO, which binds four other ligands strongly and one weakly (the one trans to the vanadyl center). An example is vanadyl acetylacetonate (V(O)(OCH)). In this complex, the vanadium is 5-coordinate, distorted square pyramidal, meaning that a sixth ligand, such as pyridine, may be attached, though the association constant of this process is small. Many 5-coordinate vanadyl complexes have a trigonal bipyramidal geometry, such as VOCl(NMe). The coordination chemistry of V is dominated by the relatively stable dioxovanadium coordination complexes which are often formed by aerial oxidation of the vanadium(IV) precursors indicating the stability of the +5 oxidation state and ease of interconversion between the +4 and +5 states.


title: Vanadium

text: Organometallic chemistry of vanadium is well developed. Vanadocene dichloride is a versatile starting reagent and has applications in organic chemistry. Vanadium carbonyl, V(CO), is a rare example of a paramagnetic metal carbonyl. Reduction yields V (isoelectronic with Cr(CO)), which may be further reduced with sodium in liquid ammonia to yield V (isoelectronic with Fe(CO)).


title: Vanadium

text: The cosmic abundance of vanadium in the universe is 0.0001%, making the element nearly as common as copper or zinc. Vanadium is detected spectroscopically in light from the Sun and sometimes in the light from other stars.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is the 20th most abundant element in the earth's crust; metallic vanadium is rare in nature (known as native vanadium), but vanadium compounds occur naturally in about 65 different minerals.


title: Vanadium

text: At the beginning of the 20th century a large deposit of vanadium ore was discovered, the Minas Ragra vanadium mine near Junín, Cerro de Pasco, Peru. For several years this patrónite (VS) deposit was an economically significant source for vanadium ore. In 1920 roughly two thirds of the worldwide production was supplied by the mine in Peru. With the production of uranium in the 1910s and 1920s from carnotite () vanadium became available as a side product of uranium production. Vanadinite () and other vanadium bearing minerals are only mined in exceptional cases. With the rising demand, much of the world's vanadium production is now sourced from vanadium-bearing magnetite found in ultramafic gabbro bodies. If this titanomagnetite is used to produce iron, most of the vanadium goes to the slag, and is extracted from it.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is mined mostly in South Africa, north-western China, and eastern Russia. In 2013 these three countries mined more than 97% of the 79,000 tonnes of produced vanadium.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is also present in bauxite and in deposits of crude oil, coal, oil shale, and tar sands. In crude oil, concentrations up to 1200 ppm have been reported. When such oil products are burned, traces of vanadium may cause corrosion in engines and boilers. An estimated 110,000 tonnes of vanadium per year are released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Black shales are also a potential source of vanadium. During WW II some vanadium was extracted from alum shales in the south of Sweden.


title: Vanadium

text: The vanadyl ion is abundant in seawater, having an average concentration of 30 nM (1.5 mg/m). Some mineral water springs also contain the ion in high concentrations. For example, springs near Mount Fuji contain as much as 54 μg per liter.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium metal is obtained by a multistep process that begins with roasting crushed ore with NaCl or NaCO at about 850 °C to give sodium metavanadate (NaVO). An aqueous extract of this solid is acidified to produce "red cake", a polyvanadate salt, which is reduced with calcium metal. As an alternative for small-scale production, vanadium pentoxide is reduced with hydrogen or magnesium. Many other methods are also used, in all of which vanadium is produced as a byproduct of other processes. Purification of vanadium is possible by the crystal bar process developed by Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer in 1925. It involves the formation of the metal iodide, in this example vanadium(III) iodide, and the subsequent decomposition to yield pure metal:


title: Vanadium

text: Most vanadium is used as a steel alloy called ferrovanadium. Ferrovanadium is produced directly by reducing a mixture of vanadium oxide, iron oxides and iron in an electric furnace. The vanadium ends up in pig iron produced from vanadium-bearing magnetite. Depending on the ore used, the slag contains up to 25% of vanadium.


title: Vanadium

text: Approximately 85% of the vanadium produced is used as ferrovanadium or as a steel additive. The considerable increase of strength in steel containing small amounts of vanadium was discovered in the early 20th century. Vanadium forms stable nitrides and carbides, resulting in a significant increase in the strength of steel. From that time on, vanadium steel was used for applications in axles, bicycle frames, crankshafts, gears, and other critical components. There are two groups of vanadium steel alloys. Vanadium high-carbon steel alloys contain 0.15% to 0.25% vanadium, and high-speed tool steels (HSS) have a vanadium content of 1% to 5%. For high-speed tool steels, a hardness above HRC 60 can be achieved. HSS steel is used in surgical instruments and tools. Powder-metallurgic alloys contain up to 18% percent vanadium. The high content of vanadium carbides in those alloys increases wear resistance significantly. One application for those alloys is tools and knives.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium stabilizes the beta form of titanium and increases the strength and temperature stability of titanium. Mixed with aluminium in titanium alloys, it is used in jet engines, high-speed airframes and dental implants. The most common alloy for seamless tubing is Titanium 3/2.5 containing 2.5% vanadium, the titanium alloy of choice in the aerospace, defense, and bicycle industries. Another common alloy, primarily produced in sheets, is Titanium 6AL-4V, a titanium alloy with 6% aluminium and 4% vanadium.


title: Vanadium

text: Several vanadium alloys show superconducting behavior. The first A15 phase superconductor was a vanadium compound, VSi, which was discovered in 1952. Vanadium-gallium tape is used in superconducting magnets (17.5 teslas or 175,000 gauss). The structure of the superconducting A15 phase of VGa is similar to that of the more common NbSn and NbTi.


title: Vanadium

text: It has been found that a small amount, 40 to 270 ppm, of vanadium in Wootz steel significantly improved the strength of the product, and gave it the distinctive patterning. The source of the vanadium in the original Wootz steel ingots remains unknown.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium can be used as a substitute for molybdenum in armor steel, though the alloy produced is far more brittle and prone to spalling on non-penetrating impacts. The Third Reich was one of the most prominent users of such alloys, in armored vehicles like Tiger II or Jagdtiger.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium compounds are used extensively as catalysts; Vanadium pentoxide VO, is used as a catalyst in manufacturing sulfuric acid by the contact process In this process sulfur dioxide () is oxidized to the trioxide (): In this redox reaction, sulfur is oxidized from +4 to +6, and vanadium is reduced from +5 to +4:


title: Vanadium

text: Phthalic anhydride and several other bulk organic compounds are produced similarly. These green chemistry processes convert inexpensive feedstocks to highly functionalized, versatile intermediates.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is an important component of mixed metal oxide catalysts used in the oxidation of propane and propylene to acrolein, acrylic acid or the ammoxidation of propylene to acrylonitrile. In service, the oxidation state of vanadium changes dynamically and reversibly with the oxygen and the steam content of the reacting feed mixture.


title: Vanadium

text: Another oxide of vanadium, vanadium dioxide VO, is used in the production of glass coatings, which blocks infrared radiation (and not visible light) at a specific temperature. Vanadium oxide can be used to induce color centers in corundum to create simulated alexandrite jewelry, although alexandrite in nature is a chrysoberyl. Vanadium pentoxide is used in ceramics.


title: Vanadium

text: The vanadium redox battery, a type of flow battery, is an electrochemical cell consisting of aqueous vanadium ions in different oxidation states. Batteries of the type were first proposed in the 1930s and developed commercially from the 1980s onwards. Cells use +5 and +2 formal oxidization state ions.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadate can be used for protecting steel against rust and corrosion by conversion coating. Vanadium foil is used in cladding titanium to steel because it is compatible with both iron and titanium. The moderate thermal neutron-capture cross-section and the short half-life of the isotopes produced by neutron capture makes vanadium a suitable material for the inner structure of a fusion reactor.


title: Vanadium

text: Lithium vanadium oxide has been proposed for use as a high energy density anode for lithium ion batteries, at 745 Wh/L when paired with a lithium cobalt oxide cathode. Vanadium phosphates have been proposed as the cathode in the lithium vanadium phosphate battery, another type of lithium-ion battery.


title: Vanadium

text: A number of species of marine algae produce vanadium bromoperoxidase as well as the closely related chloroperoxidase (which may use a heme or vanadium cofactor) and iodoperoxidases. The bromoperoxidase produces an estimated 1–2 million tons of bromoform and 56,000 tons of bromomethane annually. Most naturally occurring organobromine compounds are produced by this enzyme, catalyzing the following reaction (R-H is hydrocarbon substrate):


title: Vanadium

text: A vanadium nitrogenase is used by some nitrogen-fixing micro-organisms, such as "Azotobacter". In this role, vanadium serves in place of the more common molybdenum or iron, and gives the nitrogenase slightly different properties.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium is essential to tunicates, where it is stored in the highly acidified vacuoles of certain blood cell types, designated vanadocytes. Vanabins (vanadium binding proteins) have been identified in the cytoplasm of such cells. The concentration of vanadium in the blood of ascidian tunicates is as much as ten million times higher than the surrounding seawater, which normally contains 1 to 2 µg/L. The function of this vanadium concentration system and these vanadium-bearing proteins is still unknown, but the vanadocytes are later deposited just under the outer surface of the tunic, where they may deter predation.


title: Vanadium

text: "Amanita muscaria" and related species of macrofungi accumulate vanadium (up to 500 mg/kg in dry weight). Vanadium is present in the coordination complex amavadin in fungal fruit-bodies. The biological importance of the accumulation is unknown. Toxic or peroxidase enzyme functions have been suggested.


title: Vanadium

text: Deficiencies in vanadium result in reduced growth in rats. The U.S. Institute of Medicine has not confirmed that vanadium is an essential nutrient for humans, so neither a Recommended Dietary Intake nor an Adequate Intake have been established. Dietary intake is estimated at 6 to 18 µg/day, with less than 5% absorbed. The Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL) of dietary vanadium, beyond which adverse effects may occur, is set at 1.8 mg/day.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadyl sulfate as a dietary supplement has been researched as a means of increasing insulin sensitivity or otherwise improving glycemic control in people who are diabetic. Some of the trials had significant treatment effects, but were deemed as being of poor study quality. The amounts of vanadium used in these trials (30 to 150 mg) far exceeded the safe upper limit. The conclusion of the systemic review was "There is no rigorous evidence that oral vanadium supplementation improves glycaemic control in type 2 diabetes. The routine use of vanadium for this purpose cannot be recommended."


title: Vanadium

text: In astrobiology, it has been suggested that discrete vanadium accumulations on Mars could be a potential microbial biosignature, when used in conjunction with Raman spectroscopy and morphology.


title: Vanadium

text: All vanadium compounds should be considered toxic. Tetravalent VOSO has been reported to be at least 5 times more toxic than trivalent VO. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has set an exposure limit of 0.05 mg/m for vanadium pentoxide dust and 0.1 mg/m for vanadium pentoxide fumes in workplace air for an 8-hour workday, 40-hour work week. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has recommended that 35 mg/m of vanadium be considered immediately dangerous to life and health, that is, likely to cause permanent health problems or death.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium compounds are poorly absorbed through the gastrointestinal system. Inhalation of vanadium and vanadium compounds results primarily in adverse effects on the respiratory system. Quantitative data are, however, insufficient to derive a subchronic or chronic inhalation reference dose. Other effects have been reported after oral or inhalation exposures on blood parameters, liver, neurological development, and other organs in rats.


title: Vanadium

text: There is little evidence that vanadium or vanadium compounds are reproductive toxins or teratogens. Vanadium pentoxide was reported to be carcinogenic in male rats and in male and female mice by inhalation in an NTP study, although the interpretation of the results has recently been disputed. The carcinogenicity of vanadium has not been determined by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.


title: Vanadium

text: Vanadium traces in diesel fuels are the main fuel component in high temperature corrosion. During combustion, vanadium oxidizes and reacts with sodium and sulfur, yielding vanadate compounds with melting points as low as 530 °C, which attack the passivation layer on steel and render it susceptible to corrosion. The solid vanadium compounds also abrade engine components.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Wolfwalkers is a 2020 animated fantasy adventure film directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart. The film is the third and final installment in Moore's "Irish Folklore Trilogy", following his previous films "The Secret of Kells" (2009) and "Song of the Sea" (2014). An international co-production led by Cartoon Saloon and Mélusine Productions, the film premiered at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12 and was released theatrically in the United Kingdom on October 26, in the United States and Canada on November 13, and in Ireland on December 2. It was released digitally on Apple TV+ on December 11, 2020, to critical acclaim.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: "Wolfwalkers" follows the story of Robyn Goodfellowe, a young apprentice hunter who arrives in Ireland with her father during a time of superstition and magic to wipe out the last wolf pack. While exploring the forbidden lands outside the city walls, Robyn befriends a free-spirited girl, Mebh, a member of a mysterious tribe rumored to have the ability to turn into wolves by night. As they search for Mebh's missing mother, Robyn uncovers a secret that draws her further into the enchanted world of the Wolfwalkers and risks turning into the very thing her father is tasked to destroy.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The film stars the voices of Honor Kneafsey, Eva Whittaker, Sean Bean, Simon McBurney, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Tommy Tiernan, Jon Kenny and John Morton. It won several awards including the Satellite Award for Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature and five Annie Awards including Best Director for Moore and Stewart and Best Independent Animated Feature. It also received the nominations for Best Animated Feature Film at the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards and BAFTA Awards.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: In Ireland in 1650, the residents of the town of Kilkenny are working to clear the nearby woods under orders from the authoritarian Lord Protector, putting them at odds with a wolf pack who have been terrorising the villagers. English hunter, Bill Goodfellowe, with his rebellious daughter Robyn, has been summoned to Kilkenny by the Lord Protector to exterminate the wolves. Bill goes out into the woods to place traps for the wolves, leaving his daughter alone at home. Wanting to help Bill, Robyn secretly follows him out of town with her pet falcon, Merlyn, in an attempt to kill a wolf. However, once at the edge of the woods, she is soon attacked by the pack. After accidentally shooting Merlyn with her crossbow while trying to kill a wolf, Robyn watches a mysterious girl take him into the woods and follows them. Upon finding Merlyn miraculously healed, she is startled into a trap when one of the wolves confronts her. The wolf begins trying to help her escape, but she mistakes this for aggression and tries to fight it, causing it to bite her. Once out of the trap, Merlyn and the wolf lead Robyn to the wolves' den, where she discovers the wolf is the same girl from earlier. The girl, Mebh, explains she is a “Wolfwalker”, whose spirit leaves her body and becomes a wolf when she sleeps. Robyn comes to befriend Mebh, and also learns that her dormant mother Moll's spirit has not yet returned in her search for a new home for their pack, leaving Mebh alone to take care of them. Returning home, Robyn tries to convince Bill of the existence of Wolfwalkers, but he instead scolds her for going into the forest, and insists that she take up work to occupy herself.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The next morning, while working at the scullery, as ordered by the Lord Protector, Robyn is drawn into his chambers by a mysterious voice coming from a concealed cage, but is soon ushered out by the head maid. That night, as she sleeps, Robyn discovers her soul has left her body and has become a wolf. Shocked and confused, Robyn returns to the woods where Mebh reveals her bite has turned Robyn into a Wolfwalker like her, and helps her get accustomed to her new form. Upon returning to Kilkenny, Robyn infiltrates the Lord Protector's manor where she finds Moll's wolf form inside the cage. Moll tells Robyn that Mebh and the pack must leave the forest, as the Lord Protector plans to burn it down to wipe them out. The Lord Protector, seeking to restore control of the town, assures the townspeople that he can tame the wolves, and by extension, nature itself. He ignores Robyn's pleas to let Moll go and demotes Bill for failing to eliminate the wolves.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Fearing separation from each other, Robyn and Bill tend to their duties. Mebh, having waited for Robyn to return on a promise from the previous night, enters Kilkenny and finds Robyn, who attempts to relay her mother's warning, but Mebh, hurt by Robyn's refusal to help rescue her mother out of concern for her safety, resolves to do it alone. The Lord Protector presents the captured Moll before the townspeople, showing his control over the wolves. An enraged Mebh attempts to free her but when Bill restrains her, Moll bites him. Mebh vows to return with her pack to rescue her mother before finally fleeing. The Lord Protector orders Bill to kill Moll and leads his army to burn the forest down.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: However, Robyn protects Moll from Bill, before she frees and reunites her with Mebh before she and her pack can attack Kilkenny, earning Mebh's forgiveness. Bill follows them and shoots Moll, causing Moll's wolf form to become a spirit and return to her human form in the den, with Robyn, Mebh, and the wolves following it. The Lord Protector and his army arrive and begin burning the forest. As Mebh works to heal a grievously wounded Moll using the same magic used on Merlyn, Robyn and the pack stall the soldiers. Mebh summons Robyn and her pack back, realizing she needs them present to heal Moll, but Robyn is knocked unconscious after disabling the army's cannon. Before the Lord Protector can kill her, Bill, due to Moll's bite, becomes a Wolfwalker too, protecting Robyn and overpowering the Lord Protector, who then willingly falls to his death.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Robyn and Bill return to the den and help Mebh revive Moll, and accept her invitation to stay with the pack and embrace their new identities as Wolfwalkers. They set off to find a new home, ending with the two girls falling asleep in their moving caravan, only to wake up as wolves and chase each other into the sunset, surrounded by the pack, and a content Bill and Moll.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: On September 8, 2018, it was announced that Apple had acquired Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart's "Wolfwalkers" from a script by Will Collins. The film is an original concept that was created by Moore and Stewart, and its animation uses a unique 2D style alternating between a woodblock aesthetic and loose expressive line work.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Moore's frequent collaborators, Bruno Coulais and folk group Kíla, provided the film's original score. Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora contributed to the soundtrack with a re-recorded version of her single "Running with the Wolves".


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The animation of "Wolfwalkers" was primarily drawn by hand using TVPaint with digital brushes to imitate physical pencil lines. Some crowds and background elements were animated with Moho. Backgrounds were drawn and painted on paper.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The film's visual design uses contrasting styles to represent the conflict between the forest and the town of Kilkenny. The town and its inhabitants are drawn in a style inspired by 17th century woodcuts using thick lines and angular, geometric shapes. This represents the cage-like nature of the town and the Lord Protector's rules. In contrast, the forest, animals, and wolfwalker characters are drawn with sketchy and expressive linework with curving shapes to convey the freedom and liveliness of the forest. Robyn's design starts out with the woodblock appearance of the town, but as she comes to identify more with the wolfwalkers her design transitions to the sketchy pencil lines of the forest. The art style of the forest characters also includes intentional pencil construction lines which would normally be removed by a clean-up department. The directors were inspired by the rough, expressive animation of The Tale of the Princess Kaguya and the Xeroxed animation of One Hundred and One Dalmatians which preserved the pencilled art of the animators. Tomm Moore said he had the idea that "it would be great to make a virtue of the fact that it's hand drawn and to really make it look like a Glen Keane line test or something like really, really rough and scratchy."


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Certain first-person shots in the film, called "wolfvision", depict Robyn's point of view as she moves through the environment as a wolf. Many of the wolfvision scenes required a dynamic camera that mimicked the natural movement of Robyn's head as she ran. To achieve this Eimhin McNamara, the wolfvision supervisor, developed a technique that combined 3D technology with traditional hand-drawn art. McNamara's team constructed a 3D forest environment with the virtual reality painting software Quill with further refinement and stylisation done in Blender. This allowed him to previsualise the scene and adjust the camera as needed. Each frame of the CG animation was then printed out in magenta which the artists drew over with pencil and charcoal to match the film's hand-drawn look. The frames were then scanned and the underlying magenta was digitally removed. McNamara said that this technique is "just about getting an organic thing on screen that looks like people made it".


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The film had its world premiere at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival on 12 September 2020.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: It was released theatrically on 26 October 2020 by Wildcard Distribution in the United Kingdom and on 13 November by GKIDS in the United States and Canada.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Child Film distributes it in Japan and Value & Power Culture Communications will distribute in China.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The theatrical release in Ireland was planned for the same day as the UK, but was delayed until later in the year due to the enforced closure of cinemas across the country in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was instead released on 2 December 2020.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The film debuted on Apple TV+ on 11 December 2020, and was later released theatrically in France on 16 December by Haut et Court. In March, "Deadline" announced that "Wolfwalkers" would be re-released to select theaters in North America, starting on 19 March 2021 with the Angelika Film Center in New York.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: A release on Blu-Ray Disc with bonus features is exclusively featured in the "Irish Folklore Trilogy" box set in the US and UK/Ireland also containing "The Secret of Kells", "Song of the Sea" and a bonus disc. GKIDS and Shout! Factory released the Region A box set in North America on December 14, 2021, while StudioCanal released the box set in the UK and Ireland on December 20, 2021 (Originally planned for December 13).


title: Wolfwalkers

text: , "Wolfwalkers" has earned $231,380 at the global box office. According to Moore, the film cost €10 million to produce.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: The website's critical consensus reads, "A mesmerizing Celtic-inspired adventure, "Wolfwalkers" offers an epic ethereal fantasy matched by profound philosophies and stellar voice work." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100, based on 28 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Sam Adams of "Slate" called it the best animated movie of the year to date, praising the beauty and technical ability of the animation. Peter Debruge of "Variety" wrote: "In the decade since "Kells", it's not just the technological advances that make Moore's latest so impressive, but the rapidly changing cultural conversations as well. He brings everything together by borrowing from timeless visual influences, leaving audiences with another stunning artwork for the ages."


title: Wolfwalkers

text: Metacritic summarized various critics end-of-year top lists, and ranked "Wolfwalkers" in 26th place overall. "IndieWire"s poll of 231 critics included Wolfwalkers in its Best Movies of 2020, ranking in 32nd place.


title: Wolfwalkers

text: During an interview in 2021, Moore stated that there are currently no plans for a "Wolfwalkers" sequel, just like his previous films "The Secret of Kells" and "Song of the Sea" have no sequels.


title: Product (business)

text: In marketing, a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand; it is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. In retailing, products are often referred to as "merchandise", and in manufacturing, products are bought as raw materials and then sold as finished goods. A service is also regarded as a type of product.


title: Product (business)

text: In project management, products are the formal definition of the project deliverables that make up or contribute to delivering the objectives of the project.


title: Product (business)

text: Dangerous products, particularly physical ones, that cause injuries to consumers or bystanders may be subject to product liability.


title: Product (business)

text: A product can be classified as tangible or intangible. A tangible product is an actual physical object that can be perceived by touch such as a building, vehicle, gadget, or clothing. An intangible product is a product that can only be perceived indirectly such as an insurance policy. Services can be broadly classified under intangible products, which can be durable or nondurable.


title: Product (business)

text: In its online product catalog, retailer Sears, Roebuck and Company divides its products into "departments", then presents products to potential shoppers according to (1) function or (2) brand. Each product has a Sears item number and a manufacturer's model number. Sears uses the departments and product groupings with the intention of helping customers browse products by function or brand within a traditional department-store structure.


title: Product (business)

text: A product line is "a group of products that are closely related, either because they function in a similar manner, are sold to the same customer groups, are marketed through the same types of outlets, or fall within given price ranges."


title: Product (business)

text: Many businesses offer a range of product lines which may be unique to a single organisation or may be common across the business's industry. In 2002 the US Census compiled revenue figures for the finance and insurance industry by various product lines such as "accident, health and medical insurance premiums" and "income from secured consumer loans". Within the insurance industry, product lines are indicated by the type of risk coverage, such as auto insurance, commercial insurance and life insurance.


title: Product (business)

text: Various classification systems for products have been developed for economic statistical purposes. The NAFTA signatories are working on a system that classifies products called NAPCS as a companion to the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). The European Union uses a "Classification of Products by Activity" among other product classifications. The United Nations also classifies products for international economic activity reporting.


title: Product (business)

text: The National Institute of Governmental Purchasing (NIGP) developed a commodity and services classification system for use by state and local governments, the NIGP Code. The NIGP Code is used by 33 states within the United States as well as thousands of cities, counties and political subdivisions. The NIGP Code is a hierarchical schema consisting of a 3 digit class, 5 digit class-item, 7 digit class-item-group, and an 11 digit class-item-group-detail. Applications of the NIGP Code include vendor registration, inventory item identification, contract item management, spend analysis, and strategic sourcing.


title: Product (business)

text: A manufacturer usually provides an identifier for each particular type of product they make, known as a model, model variant, or model number (often abbreviated as MN, M/N or model no., and sometimes as M- or Mk). For example, Dyson Ltd, a manufacturer of appliances (mainly vacuum cleaners), requires customers to identify their model in the support section of the website. Brand and model can be used together to identify products in the market. The model number is not necessarily the same as the manufacturer part number (MPN).


title: Product (business)

text: Because of the huge amount of similar products in the automotive industry, there is a special kind of defining a car with options (marks, attributes) that represent the characteristics features of the vehicle. A model of a car is defined by some basic options like body, engine, gearbox, and axles. The variants of a model (often called the trim levels) are built by some additional options like color, seats, wheels, mirrors, other trims, entertainment and assistant systems, etc. Options, that exclude each other (pairwise) build an option family. That means that you can choose only one option for each family and you have to choose exactly one option.


title: Product (business)

text: In addition, a specific unit of a product is often (and in some contexts must be) identified by a serial number, which is necessary to distinguish products with the same product definition. In the case of automotive products, it is called the vehicle identification number (VIN), an internationally standardised format.


title: Product (business)

text: Many of these types of product information are regulated to some degree, such as to some degree prohibiting false or misleading product information or requiring sellers or manufacturers to specify various information such as ingredients of food-, pharmaceutical- and hygiene-products. There also is standardization. Marketing to entice the shopper is often prioritized over accurate, high-quality or extensive and relevant information.


title: Product (business)

text: Product information is often a key element in the buyer decision process. Relevant factors include trust in the accuracy of the information and social normative pressure. Easily accessible and up-to-date medicinal product information can contribute to the health literacy. Online shopping is usually more informationally rich than shopping at physical stores traveled to and usually has higher comparability and customizability.


title: Product (business)

text: Production information-related developments can be useful for enabling, facilitating, or shifting towards sustainable consumption and support more sustainable products. Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely used for to assess environmental impacts across the life cycle of products. There are LCA datasets that assess all products in some supermarkets in a standardized way. Consumers may seek reliable information to evaluate relevant characteristics of products such as durability and reliability. Development of 'transparency by design' scenarios have been suggested to "complement the physical product with layers of digital information", improving transparency and traceability (T&T). The app CodeCheck gives some smartphone users some capability to scan products for assessed ingredients. Many labels are considered to be flawed and few have the time to "study the true environmental impact of every purchase". Full product transparency is a concept of making the full life-cycle impacts public. An important element that is required for various product information is supply chain transparency, which relates to human rights and supply chain sustainability.


title: Product (business)

text: In the EU, under the renewed Sustainable Product Policy Initiative, the inclusion of a Digital Product Passport has been proposed. A material passport is a document consisting of all the materials that are included in a product or construction. It consists of a set of data describing defined characteristics of materials in products, useful for recovery, recycling, re-use and various evaluations. They may contribute to a more circular economy.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Titan A.E. is a 2000 American animated science fiction film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, and starring Matt Damon, Bill Pullman, John Leguizamo, Nathan Lane, Janeane Garofalo and Drew Barrymore. Its title refers to the spacecraft central to the plot with "A.E." meaning "After Earth". The animation of the film combines 2D traditional hand-drawn animation with the extensive use of computer-generated imagery.


title: Titan A.E.

text: The film tells the story of a young man who receives a mission to save humanity and protect the giant ship that can create a new planet, after a hostile alien species destroyed Earth. Along the way, he joins up with a ship's crew and their captain, who help him find the ship before the aliens can destroy it.


title: Titan A.E.

text: The third and final project produced by Fox Animation Studios, the film was theatrically released on June 16, 2000 by 20th Century Fox in the United States. The film received mixed reviews from critics and made a loss at the box office.


title: Titan A.E.

text: In 3028, a groundbreaking scientific project known as "The Titan Project" incurs the wrath of the Drej, a hostile race of aliens with bodies of pure energy, who fear that it will allow humans to challenge them. Determined to wipe out humanity, the Drej destroy Earth in a massive attack, forcing the surviving humans to evacuate and flee into space. During the evacuation of Earth, Professor Sam Tucker—head researcher on the Titan Project—leaves his young son Cale in the care of his alien friend Tek as he flees Earth in the spaceship "Titan". Before he leaves, he gives Cale a gold ring, promising him that there will be hope for humanity as long as he wears it.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Fifteen years later, with humanity on the verge of extinction following the destruction of their planet, a jaded and cynical Cale works in the salvage yard of space station Tau 14. Ex-military officer Joseph Korso, a former friend and confidant of Cale's father, tracks Cale down and reveals that the location of the "Titan" is encoded in his ring, allowing him to find the long-missing ship by following a holographic map in the palm of his hand. Korso invites Cale to join the crew of his spaceship "Valkyrie" as they seek the "Titan". Accepting Korso's offer, Cale befriends Korso's pilot Akima Kunimoto and his three alien crew members: first mate Preed, weapons officer Stith, and scientist Gune.


title: Titan A.E.

text: After Cale and Korso escape Tau 14 with the Drej in pursuit, Cale's map leads the crew of the "Valkyrie" to the planet Sesharrim, where the alien Gaoul help them interpret the map, revealing that the "Titan" is hidden in the Andali Nebula. On Sesharrim, Drej fighters abduct Cale and Akima and copy the map. Akima is rescued by the crew after being jettisoned by the Drej Queen, while Cale escapes the Drej mothership in a stolen fighter and makes his way back to the "Valkyrie". The map changes to reveal the "Titan"s hiding place within the Andali Nebula: the ice rings of Tigrin, a labyrinthine asteroid field.


title: Titan A.E.

text: While resupplying at human space station New Bangkok, Cale and Akima discover that Korso and Preed are planning to sell the "Titan"s location to the Drej. Cale and Akima manage to escape the "Valkyrie", but are left stranded on New Bangkok when Korso and the remaining crew leave for the "Titan". Determined to beat Korso to the "Titan", they fix up a dilapidated spaceship with help from the station's inhabitants.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Cale and Akima navigate the ice rings of Tigrin and dock with the "Titan" before the "Valkyrie" arrives. They discover DNA of animals onboard and a pre-recorded holographic message left by Cale's father explaining that the ship was designed to create planets, but the ship's power cells were drained in the escape from Earth, and lack the energy necessary to create a planet. After Korso and Preed arrive, Preed reveals that he has betrayed Korso and made his own deal with the Drej. Korso kills Preed by snapping his neck, and Korso seemingly falls to his death in a fight with Cale.


title: Titan A.E.

text: As the Drej attack the "Titan", Cale and Akima fight them off with the help of Stith and Gune. During the battle, Cale realizes that he may be able to recharge the "Titan" by converting its systems to use the Drej's bodies of pure energy, but a circuit breaker stalls before he can complete the process. Korso, who survived his fall, has a change of heart after overhearing Cale's plan and sacrifices his life to repair the circuit breaker, while Cale triggers the "Titan"s systems, killing the Drej as the "Titan" absorbs their mothership.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Cale and Akima embrace in the rain on the newly created human homeworld, and ships filled with human colonists arrive to start a new life.


title: Titan A.E.

text: In development at 20th Century Fox since 1998, "Titan A.E." was originally going to be a live-action film. The script had been passed around to various writers such as Ben Edlund, Joss Whedon and Art Vitello. After $30 million had been spent in the film's early development with no progress, Art Vitello was sacked. Then-chairman of 20th Century Fox Bill Mechanic then gave the script to Fox Animation Studios creative heads Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, who were fresh from the success of their recent film "Anastasia" (1997). Mechanic had no scripts for Fox Animation Studios to work on and was faced with the choice of laying off the animation staff unless they took "Titan A.E." Despite their inexperience with the science fiction genre, Bluth and Goldman took the script regardless.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Fox Animation Studios was given a production budget of $75 million and 19 months to make the film. Unlike Bluth and Goldman's previous films, the animation in "Titan A.E." is predominantly computer-generated while the main characters and several backgrounds were traditionally animated. Many of the scenes were enacted by the animation staff using handbuilt props before being captured by a computer. Many scenes and backgrounds were painted by concept artist Paul Cheng, who had worked on "Anastasia" and its direct-to-video spin-off "Bartok the Magnificent" (1999). Much like "Anastasia", the storytelling and tone in "Titan A.E." is much darker and edgier than Bluth and Goldman's previous films with the film being regularly compared to Japanese anime. Although Bluth and Goldman denied any influence by anime, they have acknowledged the comparison.


title: Titan A.E.

text: During production of "Titan A.E.", Fox Animation Studios suffered a number of cutbacks which ultimately led to its closure in 2000. Over 300 animation staff were laid off from the studio in 1999 and as a result, much of the film's animation was outsourced to a number of independent companies. Several scenes were contracted to David Paul Dozoretz's POVDE group; the "Wake Angels" scene was animated by Reality Check Studios (their first feature film work) while the film's "Genesis" scene was animated by Blue Sky Studios, who would later go on to making 20th Century Fox's "Ice Age" and "Rio" film franchises as well as "Horton Hears a Who!" (2008) and "The Peanuts Movie" (2015). Under pressure from executives, Bill Mechanic was dismissed from 20th Century Fox prior to "Titan A.E."s release eventuating in the closure of Fox Animation Studios on June 26, 2000, ten days after the film's release. All these events stunted the film's promotion and distribution.


title: Titan A.E.

text: On November 24, 1997, Matt Damon joined the cast of the film along with Bill Pullman, Drew Barrymore, Nathan Lane, Jim Breuer, Janeane Garofalo and Lena Olin. Later, John Leguizamo joined the cast.


title: Titan A.E.

text: The soundtrack to "Titan A.E." was released on audio cassette and CD by Capitol/EMI Records on June 6, 2000 and featured 11 tracks by various contemporary rock bands, including Lit, Powerman 5000, Electrasy, Fun Lovin' Criminals, The Urge, Texas, Bliss 66, Jamiroquai, Splashdown, The Wailing Souls and Luscious Jackson.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Creed's song "Higher" was played in many of the theatrical trailers for "Titan A.E.", but the song did not appear either on the soundtrack or in the movie itself.


title: Titan A.E.

text: "Titan A.E."s score was composed and conducted by Graeme Revell. Although an official album containing the movie's underscore was not originally released alongside the film, it was eventually made available for the first time on October 23, 2014 by La-La Land Records as a limited edition CD of 1,500 copies. The soundtrack contains 32 tracks and music cues, most of what Revell composed for the film, and includes two bonus tracks: an orchestra-only version of "Creation" and an alternative version of "Prologue" with a different opening.


title: Titan A.E.

text: "Titan A.E." became the first major motion picture to be screened in end-to-end digital cinema. On June 6, 2000, ten days before the film was released, at the SuperComm 2000 trade show, the movie was projected simultaneously at the trade show in Atlanta, Georgia as well as a screen in Los Angeles, California. It was sent to both screens from the 20th Century Fox production facilities in Los Angeles via a VPN.


title: Titan A.E.

text: "Titan A.E." was released on VHS and a THX certified "Special Edition" DVD on November 7, 2000 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, which contains extras such as a commentary track by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman, a "Quest for Titan" featurette, deleted scenes, web links, and a music video for Lit's "Over My Head". The region 1 North American version also comes with an exclusive DTS English audio track in addition to Dolby Digital 5.1 featured in most international releases. Chris Carle of IGN rated the DVD an 8 out of 10, calling the movie "thrilling... with some obvious plot and character flaws" but called the video itself "a fully-packed disc which looks and sounds great" and "for animation and sci-fi fans, it's a must-have".


title: Titan A.E.

text: "Titan A.E." earned $9,376,845 during its opening weekend with an average of $3,430 from 2,734 theaters, ranking in fifth place behind "Shaft", "Gone in 60 Seconds", 20th Century Fox's own "Big Momma's House" and "". The film then lost 60% of its audience in its second weekend, dropping to eighth place, with a gross of $3,735,300 for an average of $1,346 from 2,775 theaters. The film ended up grossing only $36,754,634 worldwide ($22,753,426 in the United States and Canada, and $14,001,208 in international markets). The film's budget is estimated at between $75 million and $90 million. According to Chris Meledandri, the supervisor of the film, "Titan A.E." lost $100 million for 20th Century Fox.


title: Titan A.E.

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 50% based on 103 reviews with an average rating of 5.70/10. The site's consensus reads: "Great visuals, but the story feels like a cut-and-paste job of other sci-fi movies". On Metacritic the film has a score of 48 out of 100 based on 30 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Titan A.E.

text: Roger Ebert gave the film 3.5 stars out of 4, praising it for its "rousing story", "largeness of spirit" and "lush galactic visuals [which] are beautiful in the same way photos by the Hubble Space Telescope are beautiful". He cited the Ice Rings sequence as "a perfect examine [sic] of what animation can do and live-action cannot".


title: Titan A.E.

text: "Titan A.E." won a Golden Reel Award for "Best Sound Editing for an Animated Feature", and was nominated by the same organization for "Best Sound Editing for Music in Animation", and a Satellite Award for "Best Motion Picture, Animated or Mixed Media", losing both to "Chicken Run". The film was also nominated for three Annie Awards, including "Outstanding Achievement in An Animated Theatrical Feature", "Effects Animation", and "Production Design" which it lost to "Toy Story 2" and "Fantasia 2000", respectively, and was nominated for Best Science Fiction Film at 27th Saturn Awards, but lost to "X-Men", another film from 20th Century Fox. Drew Barrymore was nominated for "Best Voice-Over Performance" by the Online Film & Television Association for her role as Akima, but was beaten by Eartha Kitt from "The Emperor's New Groove".


title: Titan A.E.

text: A video game adaptation by Blitz Games was planned to be released for the PlayStation and PC in Fall 2000 in North America, following the film's summer release. Development on both platforms had begun in March 1999 under the film's original title "Planet Ice", and an early playable version was showcased at the 2000 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. In July 2000, a spokesman from the game's publisher Fox Interactive, announced that development on the title had been halted largely due to the film's poor box office performance which was "only one of many different factors" that led to its cancellation.


title: Titan A.E.

text: To tie-in with the film, two prequel novels written by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta were released on February 10, 2000 by Ace Books, the same day the official novelization of the film written by Steve and Dal Perry was released. A Dark Horse Comics comic series focusing on the character Sam was also released in May 2000.


title: Pistol

text: A pistol is a handgun, more specifically one with the chamber integral to its gun barrel, though in common usage the two terms are often used interchangeably. The English word was introduced in ca. 1570, when early handguns were produced in Europe, and is derived from the Middle French "pistolet" (ca. 1550), meaning a small gun or knife. In colloquial usage, the word "pistol" is often used to describe any type of handgun, inclusive of revolvers (which have a single barrel and a separate cylinder housing multiple chambers) and the pocket-sized derringers (which are often multi-barrelled).


title: Pistol

text: The most common type of pistol used in the contemporary era is the semi-automatic pistol, while the older single-shot and manual repeating pistols are now rarely seen and used primarily for nostalgic hunting and historical reenactment, and the fully automatic machine pistols are uncommon in civilian usage due to generally poor recoil-controllability and strict laws and regulations governing their manufacture and sale.


title: Pistol

text: Technically speaking, the term "pistol" is a hypernym generally referring to a handgun and predates the existence of the type of guns to which it now applied as a specific term, that is: in colloquial usage it is used as a hyponym to specifically describe pistols with a single integral chamber within its barrel. The American "Webster's Dictionary" defines it as "a handgun whose chamber is integral with the barrel". This makes it distinct from the other types of handgun, such as the revolver, which has multiple chambers within a rotating cylinder that are separately aligned with a single barrel; and the derringer, which is a short pocket gun often with multiple single-shot barrels and no reciprocating action. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) legally defines the term "pistol" as "a weapon originally designed, made, and intended to fire a projectile (bullet) from one or more barrels when held in one hand, and having: a chamber(s) as an integral part(s) of, or permanently aligned with, the bore(s); and a short stock designed to be gripped by one hand at an angle to and extending below the line of the bore(s)", which includes derringers but excludes revolvers.


title: Pistol

text: In contrast with modern colloquial usage, the term is technically synonymous with "any" handgun type, including all revolvers and derringers. UK/Commonwealth usage, for instance, does not usually make distinction, particularly when the terms are used by the military. For example, the official designation of the Webley Mk VI revolver was "Pistol, Revolver, Webley, No. 1 Mk VI". In contrast to the Merriam-Webster definition, the Oxford English Dictionary (a descriptive dictionary) describes "pistol" as "a small firearm designed to be held in one hand", which is similar to the Webster definition for "handgun"; and "revolver" as "a pistol with revolving chambers enabling several shots to be fired without reloading", giving its original form as "revolving pistol".


title: Pistol

text: The pistol originates in the 16th century, when early handguns were produced in Europe. The English word was introduced in ca. 1570 from the Middle French "pistolet" (ca. 1550).


title: Pistol

text: The etymology of the French word "pistolet" is disputed. It may be from a Czech word for early hand cannons, "píšťala" ("whistle" or "pipe"), or alternatively from Italian "pistolese", after Pistoia, a city renowned for Renaissance-era gunsmithing, where hand-held guns (designed to be fired from horseback) were first produced in the 1540s.


title: Pistol

text: The first suggestion derives the word from Czech "píšťala", a type of hand-cannon used in the Hussite Wars during the 1420s. The Czech word was adopted in German as "pitschale", "pitschole", "petsole", and variants.


title: Pistol

text: The second suggestion is less likely; the use of the word as a designation of a gun is not documented before 1605 in Italy, long after it was used in French and German. The Czech word is well documented since the Hussite wars in 1420s.


title: Pistol

text: Single-shot handguns were mainly seen during the era of flintlock and musket weaponry where the pistol was loaded with a lead ball and fired by a flint striker, and then later a percussion cap. This shot required a reload every time it was shot. However, as technology improved, so did the single-shot pistol. New operating mechanisms were created, and due to this, they are still made today. They are the oldest type of pistol, and are often used to hunt wild game. Additionally, their compact size compared to most other types of handgun makes them more concealable.


title: Pistol

text: With the development of the revolver, short for revolving pistol, in the 19th century, gunsmiths had finally achieved the goal of a practical capability for delivering multiple loads to one handgun barrel in quick succession. Revolvers feed ammunition via the rotation of a cartridge-filled cylinder, in which each cartridge is contained within its own ignition chamber, and is sequentially brought into alignment with the weapon's barrel by an indexing mechanism linked to the weapon's trigger (double-action) or its hammer (single-action). These nominally cylindrical chambers, usually numbering between five and eight depending on the size of the revolver and the size of the cartridge being fired, are bored through the cylinder so that their axes are parallel to the cylinder's axis of rotation; thus, as the cylinder rotates, the chambers revolve about the cylinder's axis.


title: Pistol

text: After the revolver, the semi-automatic pistol was the next step in the development of the pistol. By avoiding multiple chambers—which need to be individually reloaded—semi-automatic pistols delivered faster rates of fire and required only a few seconds to reload, by pushing a button or flipping a switch, and the magazine slides out to be replaced by a fully-loaded one. In blowback-type semi-automatics, the recoil force is used to push the slide back and eject the shell (if any) so that the magazine spring can push another round up; then as the slide returns, it chambers the round. An example of a modern blowback action semi-automatic pistol is the Walther PPK. Blowback pistols are some of the more simply designed handguns. Many semi-automatic pistols today operate using short-recoil. This design is often coupled with the Browning type tilting barrel.


title: Pistol

text: A machine pistol is a pistol that is capable of burst-fire or fully automatic fire. The first machine pistol was produced by the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1916, as the "Steyr Repetierpistole" M1912/P16, and the term is derived from the German word "maschinenpistolen". Though it is often used interchangeably with submachine gun, a machine pistol is generally used to describe a weapon that is more compact than a typical submachine gun.


title: Pistol

text: How it works: The shooter will disable the safety switch and pull the trigger, but hold it unlike firing a normal semi-automatic. The handgun will fire one round, and recoils, and the high-capacity magazine spring pushes another round, and is chambered, and fired without any actions needed from the shooter. They are useful in situations where multiple bullets must be fired in quick succession with minimal effort.


title: Pistol

text: Multi-barreled pistols, such as the Pepperbox, were common during the same time as single shot pistols. As designers looked for ways to increase fire rates, multiple barrels were added to all guns including pistols. One example of a multi-barreled pistol is the COP .357 Derringer.


title: Pistol

text: Around 1850, pistols such as the Jarre harmonica gun were produced that had a sliding magazine. The sliding magazine contained pinfire cartridges or speedloaders. The magazine needed to be moved manually in many designs, hence distinguishing them from semi-automatic pistols.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis which holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies, religions, and human biology. A common position is that deities from most, if not all, religions are extraterrestrial in origin, and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: The idea that ancient astronauts existed and visited Earth is not taken seriously by academics and archaeologists, who consider it to be pseudoarchaeological and/or unscientific. It has received no credible attention in peer reviewed studies. When proponents of the idea present evidence in favor of their beliefs, it is often distorted or fabricated.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Well-known ancient astronauts proponents in the latter half of the 20th century who have written numerous books or appear regularly in mass media include Erich von Däniken, Zecharia Sitchin, Robert K. G. Temple, Giorgio A. Tsoukalos, David Hatcher Childress, Peter Kolosimo, and Mauro Biglino.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Proponents of the ancient astronaut hypothesis often maintain that humans are either descendants or creations of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) who landed on Earth thousands of years ago. An associated idea is that humans evolved independently, but that much of human knowledge, religion, and culture came from extraterrestrial visitors in ancient times, in that ancient astronauts acted as a "mother culture". Some ancient astronaut proponents also believe that travelers from outer space, referred to as "astronauts" (or "spacemen") built many of the structures on Earth (such as Egyptian pyramids and the Moai stone heads of Easter Island) or aided humans in building them.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Various terms are used to reference claims about ancient astronauts, such as ancient aliens, ancient ufonauts, ancient space pilots, paleocontact, astronaut- or alien gods, or paleo- or Bible-SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence).


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Proponents argue that the evidence for ancient astronauts comes from documentary gaps in historical and archaeological records, and they also maintain that absent or incomplete explanations of historical or archaeological data point to the existence of ancient astronauts. The evidence is argued to include archaeological artifacts that they deem anachronistic, or beyond the accepted technical capabilities of the historical cultures with which they are associated. These are sometimes referred to as "out-of-place artifacts"; and include artwork and legends which are interpreted in a modern sense as depicting extraterrestrial contact or technologies.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Scholars have responded that gaps in contemporary knowledge are not evidence of the existence of ancient astronauts, and that advocates have not provided any convincing documentary or physical evidence of an artifact that might conceivably be the product of ETI contact. According to astrophysicist Carl Sagan, "In the long litany of 'ancient astronaut' pop archaeology, the cases of apparent interest have perfectly reasonable alternative explanations, or have been misreported, or are simple prevarications, hoaxes and distortions".


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Paleocontact or "ancient astronaut" narratives first appeared in the early science fiction of the late 19th to early 20th century, including H.P. Lovecraft. The idea was proposed in earnest by Harold T. Wilkins in 1954; it received some consideration as a serious hypothesis during the 1960s mainly due to Erich von Däniken and the Space Race. Critics emerged throughout the 1970s, discrediting Von Däniken's claims. Ufologists separated the idea from the UFO controversy. By the early 1980s little remaining support could be found.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: In "Intelligent Life in the Universe" (1966) astrophysicists Iosif Shklovsky [Shklovskii] and Carl Sagan devote a chapter to the argument that scientists and historians should seriously consider the possibility that extraterrestrial contact occurred during recorded history; however, Shklovskii and Sagan stressed that these ideas were speculative and unproven. Shklovskii and Sagan argued that sub-lightspeed interstellar travel by extraterrestrial life was a certainty when considering technologies that were established or feasible in the late 1960s; that repeated instances of extraterrestrial visitation to Earth were plausible; and that pre-scientific narratives can offer a potentially reliable means of describing contact with aliens.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Sagan illustrates this hypothesis by citing the 1786 expedition of French explorer Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, which made the earliest first contact between European and Tlingit cultures. The contact story was preserved as an oral tradition by the preliterate Tlingit. Over a century after its occurrence it was then recorded by anthropologist George T. Emmons. Although it is framed in a Tlingit cultural and spiritual paradigm, the story remained an accurate telling of the 1786 encounter. According to Sagan, this proved how


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Additionally, Shklovskii and Sagan cited tales of Oannes, a fishlike being attributed with teaching agriculture, mathematics, and the arts to early Sumerians, as deserving closer scrutiny as a possible instance of paleocontact due to its consistency and detail.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: In his 1979 book "Broca's Brain", Sagan suggested that he and Shklovskii might have inspired the wave of 1970s ancient astronaut books, expressing disapproval of "von Däniken and other uncritical writers" who seemingly built on these ideas not as guarded speculations but as "valid evidence of extraterrestrial contact." (However, this is arguable as several notable best selling works had made similar arguments before 1966, such as Peter Kolosimo's "Timeless Earth" (1964)) Sagan claimed that while many legends, artifacts, and purported out-of-place artifacts were cited in support of ancient astronaut hypotheses, "very few require more than passing mention" and could be easily explained with more conventional hypotheses. Sagan also reiterated his earlier conclusion that extraterrestrial visits to Earth were possible but unproven, and improbable.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Erich von Däniken was a leading proponent of this hypothesis in the late 1960s and early 1970s, gaining a large audience through the 1968 publication of his best-selling book "Chariots of the Gods?" and its sequels.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: According to von Däniken, certain artifacts require a more sophisticated technological ability in their construction than that which was available to the ancient cultures who constructed them. Von Däniken maintains that these artifacts were constructed either directly by extraterrestrial visitors or by humans who learned the necessary knowledge from said visitors. These include Stonehenge, Pumapunku, the Moai of Easter Island, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and the ancient Baghdad electric batteries.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Von Däniken writes that ancient art and iconography throughout the world illustrates air and space vehicles, non-human but intelligent creatures, ancient astronauts, and artifacts of an anachronistically advanced technology. Von Däniken also states that geographically separated historical cultures share artistic themes, which he argues imply a common origin. One such example is von Däniken's interpretation of the sarcophagus lid recovered from the tomb of the Classic-era Maya ruler of Palenque, Pacal the Great. Von Däniken writes that the design represented a seated astronaut. The iconography and accompanying Maya text, however, identifies it as a portrait of the ruler himself with the World Tree of Maya mythology.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: The origins of many religions are interpreted by von Däniken as reactions to encounters with an alien race. According to his view, humans considered the technology of the aliens to be supernatural and the aliens themselves to be gods. Von Däniken states that the oral and written traditions of most religions contain references to alien visitors in the way of descriptions of stars and vehicular objects travelling through air and space. One such is Ezekiel's revelation in the Old Testament, which Däniken interprets as a detailed description of a landing spacecraft ("The Spaceships of Ezekiel").


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Von Däniken's hypotheses became popularized in the U.S. after the NBC-TV documentary "In Search of Ancient Astronauts" hosted by Rod Serling, and the film "Chariots of the Gods".


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Critics argue that von Däniken misrepresented data, that many of his claims were unfounded, and that none of his core claims have been validated. In particular the Christian creationist community is highly critical of most of von Däniken's work. Young Earth creationist author Clifford A. Wilson published "Crash Go the Chariots" in 1972 in which he attempted to discredit all the claims made in "Chariots of the Gods".


title: Ancient astronauts

text: In "Chariots of the Gods?", regarding the Nazca Lines, von Däniken states that "Seen from the air, the clear-cut impression that the 60 km [37-mile] long plain of Nazca made on me was that of an airfield." Considering he was in the process of finding evidence of ancient aliens, von Däniken exhibits confirmation bias, as he does not consider the Nazca Lines to be man-made until after the publication of "Chariots of the Gods?". This etic perspective that he presents could be easily accepted by a reader familiar with air travel, and an undeveloped knowledge of the nature of the geoglyphs. Furthermore, since the majority of readers of "Chariots of the Gods?" are not educated in viewing artifacts from ancient civilizations, their interpretations are highly subject to von Däniken's opinions of the artifacts. Kenneth L. Feder argues a reader seeing the Nazca Lines for the first time in a book about aliens would be much more likely to associate those features with extraterrestrial origins, rather than from a civilization that existed on Earth.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: In 1970, von Däniken admitted that the Nazca markings "could have been laid out on their gigantic scale by working from a model using a system of coordinates."


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Zecharia Sitchin's series "The Earth Chronicles", beginning with "The 12th Planet", revolves around Sitchin's unique interpretation of ancient Sumerian and Middle Eastern texts, megalithic sites, and artifacts from around the world. He hypothesizes that the gods of old Mesopotamia were astronauts from the planet "Nibiru", which Sitchin states the Sumerians believed to be a remote "12th planet" (counting the Sun, Moon, and Pluto as planets) associated with the god Marduk. According to Sitchin, Nibiru continues to orbit our sun on a 3,600-year elongated orbit. Modern astronomy has found no evidence to support Sitchin's ideas.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Sitchin argues that there are Sumerian texts which tell the story that 50 Anunnaki, inhabitants of a planet named Nibiru, came to Earth approximately 400,000 years ago with the intent of mining raw materials, especially gold, for transport back to Nibiru. With their small numbers they soon grew tired of the task and set out to genetically engineer laborers to work the mines. After much trial and error they eventually created "Homo sapiens sapiens": the "Adapa" (model man) or Adam of later mythology. Sitchin contended the Anunnaki were active in human affairs until their culture was destroyed by global catastrophes caused by the abrupt end of the last ice age some 12,000 years ago. Seeing that humans survived and all they had built was destroyed, the Anunnaki left Earth after giving humans the opportunity and means to govern themselves. Sitchin's work has not received mainstream scholarly support and has been roundly criticized by professionals that have reviewed his hypotheses. Semitic languages scholar Michael S. Heiser says that many of Sitchin's translations of Sumerian and Mesopotamian words are not consistent with Mesopotamian cuneiform bilingual dictionaries, produced by ancient Akkadian scribes.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Alan F. Alford, author of "Gods of the New Millennium" (1996), was an adherent of the ancient astronaut hypothesis. Much of his work draws on Sitchin's hypotheses. However, he now finds fault with Sitchin's hypothesis after deeper analysis, stating that: "I am now firmly of the opinion that these gods personified the falling sky; in other words, the descent of the gods was a poetic rendition of the cataclysm myth which stood at the heart of ancient Near Eastern religions."


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Robert K. G. Temple's 1976 book, "The Sirius Mystery, "argues that the Dogon people of northwestern Mali preserved an account of extraterrestrial visitation from around 5,000 years ago. He quotes various lines of evidence, including advanced astronomical knowledge inherited by the tribe, descriptions, and comparative belief systems with ancient civilizations such as ancient Egypt and Sumer. His work draws heavily on the studies of cultural anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: His conclusions have been criticized by scientists, who point out discrepancies within Temple's account, and suggested that the Dogon may have received some of their astronomical information recently, probably from European sources, and may have misrepresented Dogon ethnography.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Various new religious movements including some branches of theosophy, Scientology, Raëlism, Aetherius Society, and Heaven's Gate believe in ancient and present-day contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. Many of these faiths see both ancient scriptures and recent revelations as connected with the action of aliens from other planetary systems. Psychologists have found that UFO religions have similarities which suggest that members of these groups consciously or subliminally associate enchantment with the memes of science fiction.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Among scientists, the consensus is that the ancient astronaut hypothesis is not impossible, but unjustified and unnecessary. The "mysteries" cited as evidence for the hypothesis can be explained without having to invoke ancient astronauts; proponents look for mysteries where none exist. Since ancient astronauts are unnecessary, Occam's razor should be applied and the hypothesis rejected according to the scientific consensus.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Proponents cite ancient mythologies to support their viewpoints based on the idea that ancient creation myths of gods who descend from the heavens to Earth to create or instruct humanity are representations of alien visitors, whose superior technology accounts for their perception as gods. Proponents draw an analogy to occurrences in modern time when isolated cultures are exposed to Western technology, such as when, in the early 20th century, "cargo cults" were discovered in the South Pacific: cultures who believed various Western ships and their cargo to be sent from the gods as fulfillment of prophecies concerning their return.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: The ancient Sumerian myth of "Enûma Eliš", inscribed on cuneiform tablets and part of the Library of Ashurbanipal, says humankind was created to serve gods called the ""Annunaki"". Hypothesis proponents believe that the Annunaki were aliens who came to earth to mine gold for their own uses. According to the Enuma Elish story, the Annunaki realized mining gold was taking a toll on their race, and then created the human race as slaves.


title: Ancient astronauts

text: In Hindu mythology, the gods and their avatars travel from place to place in flying vehicles called Vimana. There are many mentions of these flying objects in the "Ramayana", which used by the Lankan king Ravana from Sri Lanka dates to the 5th or 4th century BCE. Below are some examples:


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Erich von Däniken discusses the "Ramayana" and the "vimanas" in Chapter 6 of "Chariots of the Gods?" suggesting that they were "space vehicles". To support his hypothesis, he offers a quotation which he says is from an 1889 translation of the "Mahabharata" by C. Roy: "Bhima flew with his Vimana on an enormous ray which was as brilliant as the sun and made a noise like the thunder of a storm".


title: Ancient astronauts

text: The Book of Genesis, Chapter 6 verses 1–2 and 4, states:When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose...The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.– Genesis 6:1–4 (New International Version)


title: Ancient astronauts

text: Many Christians consider these groups to be the different families of Adam and Eve's children. Another interpretation is that the Nephilim are the children of the "sons of God" and "daughters of humans", although scholars are uncertain. The King James Version translates "Nephilim" as "giants" (or Gibborim). Ancient Astronaut proponents argue that Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit in order "to be godlike", and this was the first step in human evolution.