title: Text messaging

text: In some countries, text messages can be used to contact emergency services. In the UK, text messages can be used to call emergency services only after registering with the emergency SMS service. This service is primarily aimed at people who, because of disability, are unable to make a voice call. It has recently been promoted as a means for walkers and climbers to call emergency services from areas where a voice call is not possible due to low signal strength. In the US, there is a move to require both traditional operators and Over-the-top messaging providers to support texting to 911. In Asia, SMS is used for tsunami warnings and in Europe, SMS is used to inform individuals of imminent disasters. Since the location of a handset is known, systems can alert everyone in an area that the events have made impossible to pass through e.g. an avalanche. A similar system, known as Emergency Alert, is used in Australia to notify the public of impending disasters through both SMS and landline phone calls. These messages can be sent based on either the location of the phone or the address to which the handset is registered.


title: Text messaging

text: SMS messages are used in some countries as reminders of medical appointments. Missed outpatient clinic appointments cost the National Health Service (England) more than £600 million ($980 million) a year. SMS messages are thought to be more cost-effective, swifter to deliver, and more likely to receive a faster response than letters. A recent study by Sims and colleagues (2012) examined the outcomes of 24,709 outpatient appointments scheduled in mental health services in South-East London. The study found that SMS message reminders could reduce the number of missed psychiatric appointments by 25–28%, representing a potential national yearly saving of over £150 million. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, medical facilities in the United States are using text messaging to coordinate the appointment process, including reminders, cancellations, and safe check-in. US-based cloud radiology information system vendor AbbaDox includes this in their patient engagement services.


title: Text messaging

text: Short codes are special telephone numbers, shorter than full telephone numbers, that can be used to address SMS and MMS messages from mobile phones or fixed phones. There are two types of short codes: dialling and messaging.


title: Text messaging

text: SMS gateway providers facilitate the SMS traffic between businesses and mobile subscribers, being mainly responsible for carrying mission-critical messages, SMS for enterprises, content delivery and entertainment services involving SMS, e.g., TV voting. Considering SMS messaging performance and cost, as well as the level of text messaging services, SMS gateway providers can be classified as resellers of the text messaging capability of another provider's SMSC or offering the text messaging capability as an operator of their own SMSC with SS7. SMS messaging gateway providers can provide gateway-to-mobile (Mobile Terminated–MT) services. Some suppliers can also supply mobile-to-gateway (text-in or Mobile Originated/MO services). Many operate text-in services on short codes or mobile number ranges, whereas others use lower-cost geographic text-in numbers.


title: Text messaging

text: SMS is widely used for delivering digital content, such as news alerts, financial information, pictures, GIFs, logos and ringtones. Such messages are also known as premium-rated short messages (PSMS). The subscribers are charged extra for receiving this premium content, and the amount is typically divided between the mobile network operator and the value added service provider (VASP), either through revenue share or a fixed transport fee. Services like 82ASK and Any Question Answered have used the PSMS model to enable rapid response to mobile consumers' questions, using on-call teams of experts and researchers. In November 2013, amidst complaints about unsolicited charges on bills, major mobile carriers in the US agreed to stop billing for PSMS in 45 states, effectively ending its use in the United States.


title: Text messaging

text: Outside the United States, premium short messages are increasingly being used for "real-world" services. For example, some vending machines now allow payment by sending a premium-rated short message, so that the cost of the item bought is added to the user's phone bill or subtracted from the user's prepaid credits. Recently, premium messaging companies have come under fire from consumer groups due to a large number of consumers racking up huge phone bills. A new type of free-premium or hybrid-premium content has emerged with the launch of text-service websites. These sites allow registered users to receive free text messages when items they are interested in go on sale, or when new items are introduced. An alternative to inbound SMS is based on long numbers (international mobile number format, e.g., +44 7624 805000, or geographic numbers that can handle voice and SMS, e.g., 01133203040), which can be used in place of short codes or premium-rated short messages for SMS reception in several applications, such as TV voting, product promotions and campaigns. Long numbers are internationally available, as well as enabling businesses to have their own number, rather than short codes, which are usually shared across a lot of brands. Additionally, long numbers are non-premium inbound numbers.


title: Text messaging

text: The use of text messaging for workplace purposes has grown significantly during the mid-2000s (decade). As companies seek competitive advantages, many employees are using new technology, collaborative applications, and real-time messaging such as SMS, instant messaging, and mobile communications to connect with teammates and customers. Some practical uses of text messaging include the use of SMS for confirming delivery or other tasks, for instant communication between a service provider and a client (e.g., a payment card company and a consumer), and for sending alerts. Several universities have implemented a system of texting students and faculties campus alerts. One such example is Penn State. As text messaging has proliferated in business, so too have regulations governing its use. One regulation specifically governing the use of text messaging in financial-services firms engaged in stocks, equities, and securities trading is "Regulatory Notice 07-59, Supervision of Electronic Communications, December 2007", issued to member firms by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). In Regulatory Notice 07-59, FINRA noted that "electronic communications", "e-mail", and "electronic correspondence" may be used interchangeably and can include such forms of electronic messaging as instant messaging and text messaging. Industry has had to develop new technology to allow companies to archive their employees' text messages.


title: Text messaging

text: Security, confidentiality, reliability, and speed of SMS are among the most important guarantees industries such as financial services, energy and commodities trading, health care and enterprises demand in their mission-critical procedures. One way to guarantee such a quality of text messaging lies in introducing SLAs (Service Level Agreement), which are common in IT contracts. By providing measurable SLAs, corporations can define reliability parameters and set up a high quality of their services. Just one of many SMS applications that have proven highly popular and successful in the financial services industry is mobile receipts. In January 2009, Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) published the "Mobile Banking Overview" for financial institutions in which it discussed the advantages and disadvantages of mobile channel platforms such as Short Message Services (SMS), Mobile Web, Mobile Client Applications, SMS with Mobile Web and Secure SMS.


title: Text messaging

text: Mobile interaction services are an alternative way of using SMS in business communications with greater certainty. Typical business-to-business applications are telematics and Machine-to-Machine, in which two applications automatically communicate with each other. Incident alerts are also common, and staff communications are also another use for B2B scenarios. Businesses can use SMS for time-critical alerts, updates, and reminders, mobile campaigns, content and entertainment applications. Mobile interaction can also be used for consumer-to-business interactions, such as media voting and competitions, and consumer-to-consumer interaction, for example, with mobile social networking, chatting and dating.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging is widely used in business settings; as well, it is used in many civil service and non-governmental organization workplaces. The U.S. And Canadian civil service both adopted Blackberry smartphones in the 2000s.


title: Text messaging

text: Group texts involve more than two users. In some cases, when one or more people on the group text are offline, in airplane mode, or has their device shut down, a text being sent to the group may reveal an error message that the text did not go through. Users should rest assured, that all online or available users on the group received the message and that re-sending the message will only result in some participants receiving the message multiple times.


title: Text messaging

text: There are a growing number of websites that allow users to send free SMS messages online. Some websites provide free SMS for promoting premium business packages.


title: Text messaging

text: Europe follows next behind Asia in terms of the popularity of the use of SMS. In 2003, an average of 16 billion messages was sent each month. Users in Spain sent a little more than fifty messages per month on average in 2003. In Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom, the figure was around 35–40 SMS messages per month. In each of these countries, the cost of sending an SMS message varies from €0.04–0.23, depending on the payment plan (with many contractual plans including all or several texts for free). In the United Kingdom, text messages are charged between £0.05–0.12. Curiously, France has not taken to SMS in the same way, sending just under 20 messages on average per user per month. France has the same GSM technology as other European countries, so the uptake is not hampered by technical restrictions.


title: Text messaging

text: In the Republic of Ireland, 1.5 billion messages are sent every quarter, on average 114 messages per person per month. In the United Kingdom, over 1 billion text messages were sent every week. The Eurovision Song Contest organized the first pan-European SMS voting in 2002, as a part of the voting system (there was also a voting over traditional landline phone lines). In 2005, the Eurovision Song Contest organized the biggest televoting ever (with SMS and phone voting). During roaming, that is, when a user connects to another network in different country from his own, the prices may be higher, but in July 2009, EU legislation went into effect limiting this price to €0.11.


title: Text messaging

text: Mobile service providers in Finland offer contracts in which users can send 1000 text messages a month for €10. In Finland, which has very high mobile phone ownership rates, some TV channels began "SMS chat", which involved sending short messages to a phone number, and the messages would be shown on TV. Chats are always moderated, which prevents users from sending offensive material to the channel. The craze evolved into quizzes and strategy games and then faster-paced games designed for television and SMS control. Games require users to register their nicknames and send short messages to control a character onscreen. Messages usually cost 0.05 to 0.86 Euro apiece, and games can require the player to send dozens of messages. In December 2003, a Finnish TV channel, MTV3, put a Santa Claus character on-air reading aloud text messages sent in by viewers. On 12 March 2004, the first entirely "interactive" TV channel, VIISI, began operation in Finland. However, SBS Finland Oy took over the channel and turned it into a music channel named "The Voice" in November 2004. In 2006, the Prime Minister of Finland, Matti Vanhanen, made the news when he allegedly broke up with his girlfriend with a text message. In 2007, the first book written solely in text messages, "Viimeiset viestit" ("Last Messages"), was released by Finnish author Hannu Luntiala. It is about an executive who travels through Europe and India.


title: Text messaging

text: In the United States, text messaging is very popular; as reported by CTIA in December 2009, the 286 million US subscribers sent 152.7 billion text messages per month, for an average of 534 messages per subscriber per month. The Pew Research Center found in May 2010 that 72% of U.S. adult cellphone users send and receive text messages. In the U.S., SMS is often charged both at the sender and at the destination, but, unlike phone calls, it cannot be rejected or dismissed. The reasons for lower uptake than other countries are varied. Many users have unlimited "mobile-to-mobile" minutes, high monthly minute allotments, or unlimited service. Moreover, "push to talk" services offer the instant connectivity of SMS and are typically unlimited. The integration between competing providers and technologies necessary for cross-network text messaging was not initially available. Some providers originally charged extra for texting, reducing its appeal. In the third quarter of 2006, at least 12 billion text messages were sent on AT&T's network, up almost 15% from the preceding quarter. In the U.S., while texting is mainly popular among people from 13–22 years old, it is also increasing among adults and business users. The age that a child receives his/her first cell phone has also decreased, making text messaging a popular way of communicating. The number of texts sent in the US has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received. To convince more customers to buy unlimited text messaging plans, some major cellphone providers have increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20 per message. This is over $1,300 per megabyte. Many providers offer unlimited plans, which can result in a lower rate per text, given sufficient volume.


title: Text messaging

text: Japan was among the first countries to adopt short messages widely, with pioneering non-GSM services including J-Phone's SkyMail and NTT Docomo's Short Mail. Japanese adolescents first began text messaging, because it was a cheaper form of communication than the other available forms. Thus, Japanese theorists created the selective interpersonal relationship theory, claiming that mobile phones can change social networks among young people (classified as 13- to 30-year-olds). They theorized this age group had extensive but low-quality relationships with friends, and mobile phone usage may facilitate improvement in the quality of their relationships. They concluded this age group prefers "selective interpersonal relationships in which they maintain particular, partial, but rich relations, depending on the situation." The same studies showed participants rated friendships in which they communicated face-to-face and through text messaging as being more intimate than those in which they communicated solely face-to-face. This indicates participants make new relationships with face-to-face communication at an early stage, but use text messaging to increase their contact later on. As the relationships between participants grew more intimate, the frequency of text messaging also increased. However, short messaging has been largely rendered obsolete by the prevalence of mobile Internet e-mail, which can be sent to and received from any e-mail address, mobile or otherwise. That said, while usually presented to the user simply as a uniform "mail" service (and most users are unaware of the distinction), the operators may still internally transmit the content as short messages, especially if the destination is on the same network.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging is popular and cheap in China. About 700 billion messages were sent in 2007. Text message spam is also a problem in China. In 2007, 353.8 billion spam messages were sent, up 93% from the previous year. It is about 12.44 messages per week per person. It is routine that the People's Republic of China government monitors text messages across the country for illegal content.


title: Text messaging

text: Among Chinese migrant workers with little formal education, it is common to refer to SMS manuals when text messaging. These manuals are published as cheap, handy, smaller-than-pocket-size booklets that offer diverse linguistic phrases to utilize as messages.


title: Text messaging

text: SMS was introduced to selected markets in the Philippines in 1995. In 1998, Philippine mobile service providers launched SMS more widely across the country, with initial television marketing campaigns targeting hearing-impaired users. The service was initially free with subscriptions, but Filipinos quickly exploited the feature to communicate for free instead of using voice calls, which they would be charged for. After telephone companies realized this trend, they began charging for SMS. The rate across networks is 1 peso per SMS (about US$0.023). Even after users were charged for SMS, it remained cheap, about one-tenth of the price of a voice call. This low price led to about five million Filipinos owning a cell phone by 2001. Because of the highly social nature of Philippine culture and the affordability of SMS compared to voice calls, SMS usage shot up. Filipinos used texting not only for social messages but also for political purposes, as it allowed the Filipinos to express their opinions on current events and political issues. It became a powerful tool for Filipinos in promoting or denouncing issues and was a key factor during the 2001 EDSA II revolution, which overthrew then-President Joseph Estrada, who was eventually found guilty of corruption. According to 2009 statistics, there are about 72 million mobile service subscriptions (roughly 80% of the Filipino population), with around 1.39 billion SMS messages being sent daily. Because of the large number of text messages being sent, the Philippines became known as the "text capital of the world" during the late 1990s until the early 2000s.


title: Text messaging

text: There are three mobile network companies in New Zealand. Spark NZ (formally Telecom NZ), was the first telecommunication company in New Zealand. In 2011, Spark was broken into two companies, with Chorus Ltd taking the landline infrastructure and Spark NZ providing services including over their mobile network. Vodafone NZ acquired mobile network provider Bellsouth New Zealand in 1998 and has 2.32 million customers as of July 2013. Vodafone launched the first Text messaging service in 1999 and has introduced innovative TXT services like Safe TXT and CallMe 2degrees Mobile Ltd launched in August 2009. In 2005, around 85% of the adult population had a mobile phone. In general, texting is more popular than making phone calls, as it is viewed as less intrusive and therefore more polite.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging will become a key revenue driver for mobile network operators in Africa over the next couple of years. Today, text messaging is already slowly gaining influence in the African market. One such person used text messaging to spread the word about HIV and AIDS. Also, in September 2009, a multi-country campaign in Africa used text messaging to expose stock-outs of essential medicines at public health facilities and put pressure on governments to address the issue.


title: Text messaging

text: The advent of text messaging made possible new forms of interaction that were not possible before. A person may now carry out a conversation with another user without the constraint of being expected to reply within a short amount of time and without needing to set time aside to engage in conversation. With voice calling, both participants need to be free at the same time. Mobile phone users can maintain communication during situations in which a voice call is impractical, impossible, or unacceptable, such as during a school class or work meeting. Texting has provided a venue for participatory culture, allowing viewers to vote in online and TV polls, as well as receive information while they are on the move. Texting can also bring people together and create a sense of community through "Smart Mobs" or "Net War", which create "people power".


title: Text messaging

text: Research has also proven that text messaging is somehow making the social distances larger and could be ruining verbal communication skills for many people.


title: Text messaging

text: The small phone keypad and the rapidity of typical text message exchanges have caused a number of spelling abbreviations: as in the phrase "txt msg", "u" (an abbreviation for "you"), "HMU"("hit me up"; i.e., call me), or use of camel case, such as in "ThisIsVeryLame". To avoid the even more limited message lengths allowed when using Cyrillic or Greek letters, speakers of languages written in those alphabets often use the Latin alphabet for their own language. In certain languages utilizing diacritic marks, such as Polish, SMS technology created an entire new variant of written language: characters normally written with diacritic marks (e.g., "ą", "ę", "ś", "ż" in Polish) are now being written without them (as "a", "e", "s", "z") to enable using cell phones without Polish script or to save space in Unicode messages. Historically, this language developed out of shorthand used in bulletin board systems and later in Internet chat rooms, where users would abbreviate some words to allow a response to be typed more quickly, though the amount of time saved was often inconsequential. However, this became much more pronounced in SMS, where mobile phone users either have a numeric keyboard (with older cellphones) or a small QWERTY keyboard (for 2010s-era smartphones), so more effort is required to type each character, and there is sometimes a limit on the number of characters that may be sent. In Mandarin Chinese, numbers that sound similar to words are used in place of those words. For example, the numbers 520 in Chinese ("wǔ èr líng") sound like the words for "I love you" ("wǒ ài nǐ"). The sequence 748 ("qī sì bā") sounds like the curse "go to hell" ("qù sǐ ba").


title: Text messaging

text: Predictive text software, which attempts to guess words (Tegic's T9 as well as iTap) or letters (Eatoni's LetterWise) reduces the labour of time-consuming input. This makes abbreviations not only less necessary but slower to type than regular words that are in the software's dictionary. However, it makes the messages longer, often requiring the text message to be sent in multiple parts and, therefore, costing more to send. The use of text messaging has changed the way that people talk and write essays, some believing it to be harmful. Children today are receiving cell phones at an age as young as eight years old; more than 35 per cent of children in second and third grade have their own mobile phones. Because of this, the texting language is integrated into the way that students think from an earlier age than ever before. In November 2006, New Zealand Qualifications Authority approved the move that allowed students of secondary schools to use mobile phone text language in the end-of-the-year-exam papers. Highly publicized reports, beginning in 2002, of the use of text language in school assignments, caused some to become concerned that the quality of written communication is on the decline, and other reports claim that teachers and professors are beginning to have a hard time controlling the problem. However, the notion that text language is widespread or harmful is refuted by research from linguistic experts.


title: Text messaging

text: An article in "The New Yorker" explores how text messaging has anglicized some of the world's languages. The use of diacritic marks is dropped in languages such as French, as well as symbols in Ethiopian languages. In his book, "" (which translates as "Texting: the Great Debate"), David Crystal states that texters in all eleven languages use "lol" ("laughing out loud"), "u", "brb" ("be right back"), and "gr8" ("great"), all English-based shorthands. The use of pictograms and logograms in texts are present in every language. They shorten words by using symbols to represent the word or symbols whose name sounds like a syllable of the word such as in 2day or b4. This is commonly used in other languages as well. Crystal gives some examples in several languages such as Italian "sei", "six", is used for "sei", "you are". Example: dv6 = "dove sei" ("where are you") and French k7 = "cassette" ("cassette tape"). There is also the use of numeral sequences, substituting for several syllables of a word and creating whole phrases using numerals. For example, in French, a12c4 can be said as "à un de ces quatres", "see you around" (literally: "to one of these four "[days]""). An example of using symbols in texting and borrowing from English is the use of "@". Whenever it is used in texting, its intended use is with the English pronunciation. Crystal gives the example of the Welsh use of "@" in "@F", pronounced ataf, meaning "to me". In character-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese, numbers are assigned syllables based on the shortened form of the pronunciation of the number, sometimes the English pronunciation of the number. In this way, numbers alone can be used to communicate whole passages, such as in Chinese, "8807701314520" can be literally translated as "Hug hug you, kiss you, whole life, whole life I love you." English influences worldwide texting in variation, but still in combination with the individual properties of languages.


title: Text messaging

text: American popular culture is also recognized in shorthand. For example, Homer Simpson translates into: ~(_8^(|). Crystal also suggests that texting has led to more creativity in the English language, giving people opportunities to create their own slang, emoticons, abbreviations, acronyms, etc. The feeling of individualism and freedom makes texting more popular and a more efficient way to communicate. Crystal has also been quoted in saying that "In a logical world, text messaging should not have survived." But text messaging didn't just come out of nowhere. It originally began as a messaging system that would send out emergency information. But it gained immediate popularity with the public. What followed is the SMS we see today, which is a very quick and efficient way of sharing information from person to person. Work by Richard Ling has shown that texting has a gendered dimension and it plays into the development of teen identity. In addition we text to a very small number of other persons. For most people, half of their texts go to 3 – 5 other people.


title: Text messaging

text: Research by Rosen et al. (2009) found that those young adults who used more language-based textisms (shortcuts such as LOL, 2nite, etc.) in daily writing produced worse formal writing than those young adults who used fewer linguistic textisms in daily writing. However, the exact opposite was true for informal writing. This suggests that perhaps the act of using textisms to shorten communication words leads young adults to produce more informal writing, which may then help them to be better "informal" writers. Due to text messaging, teens are writing more, and some teachers see that this comfort with language can be harnessed to make better writers. This new form of communication may be encouraging students to put their thoughts and feelings into words and this may be able to be used as a bridge, to get them more interested in formal writing.


title: Text messaging

text: Joan H. Lee in her thesis, "What does txting do 2 language: The influences of exposure to messaging and print media on acceptability constraints" (2011), she associates exposure to text messaging with more rigid acceptability constraints. The thesis suggests that more exposure to the colloquial, Generation Text language of text messaging contributes to being less accepting of words. In contrast, Lee found that students with more exposure to traditional print media (such as books and magazines) were more accepting of both real and fictitious words. The thesis, which garnered international media attention, also presents a literature review of academic literature on the effects of text messaging on language. Texting has also been shown to have had no effect or some positive effects on literacy. According to Plester, Wood and Joshi and their research done on the study of 88 British 10–12-year-old children and their knowledge of text messages, "textisms are essentially forms of phonetic abbreviation" that show that "to produce and read such abbreviations arguably requires a level of phonological awareness (and orthographic awareness) in the child concerned."


title: Text messaging

text: Texting while driving leads to increased distraction behind the wheel and can lead to an increased risk of an accident. In 2006, Liberty Mutual Insurance Group conducted a survey with more than 900 teens from over 26 high schools nationwide. The results showed that 87% of students found texting to be "very" or "extremely" distracting. A study by AAA found that 46% of teens admitted to being distracted behind the wheel due to texting. One example of distraction behind the wheel is the 2008 Chatsworth train collision, which killed 25 passengers. The engineer had sent 45 text messages while operating the train. A 2009 experiment with "Car and Driver" editor Eddie Alterman (that took place at a deserted airfield, for safety reasons) compared texting with drunk driving. The experiment found that texting while driving was more dangerous than being drunk. While being legally drunk added 4 feet to Alterman's stopping distance while going , reading an e-mail on a phone added , and sending a text message added .


title: Text messaging

text: In 2009, the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute released the results of an 18-month study that involved placing cameras inside the cabs of more than 100 long-haul trucks, which recorded the drivers over a combined driving distance of three million miles. The study concluded that when the drivers were texting, their risk of crashing was 23 times greater than when not texting.


title: Text messaging

text: Due to the proliferation of smart phone applications performed while walking, "texting while walking" or "wexting" is the increasing practice of people being transfixed to their mobile device without looking in any direction but their personal screen while walking. First coined reference in 2015 in New York from Rentrak's chief client officer when discussing time spent with media and various media usage metrics. Text messaging among pedestrians leads to increased cognitive distraction and reduced situation awareness, and may lead to increases in unsafe behaviour leading to injury and death. Recent studies conducted on cell phone use while walking showed that cell phone users recall fewer objects when conversing, walk slower, have altered gait and are more unsafe when crossing a street. Additionally, some gait analyses showed that stance phase during overstepping motion, longitudinal and lateral deviation increased during cell phone operation, but step length and clearance did not; a different analysis did find increased step clearance and reduced step length.


title: Text messaging

text: It is unclear which processes may be affected by distraction, which types of distraction may affect which cognitive processes, and how individual differences may affect the influence of distraction. Lamberg and Muratori believe that engaging in a dual-task, such as texting while walking, may interfere with working memory and result in walking errors. Their study demonstrated that participants engaged in text messaging were unable to maintain walking speed or retain accurate spatial information, suggesting an inability to adequately divide their attention between two tasks. According to them, the addition of texting while walking with vision occluded increases the demands placed on the working memory system resulting in gait disruptions.


title: Text messaging

text: Texting on a phone distracts participants, even when the texting task used is a relatively simple one. Stavrinos et al. investigated the effect of other cognitive tasks, such as engaging in conversations or cognitive tasks on a phone, and found that participants actually have reduced visual awareness. This finding was supported by Licence et al., who conducted a similar study. For example, texting pedestrians may fail to notice unusual events in their environment, such as a unicycling clown. These findings suggest that tasks that require the allocation of cognitive resources can affect visual attention even when the task itself does not require the participants to avert their eyes from their environment. The act of texting itself seems to impair pedestrians' visual awareness. It appears that the distraction produced by texting is a combination of both a cognitive and visual perceptual distraction. A study conducted by Licence et al. supported some of these findings, particularly that those who text while walking significantly alter their gait. However, they also found that the gait pattern texters adopted was slower and more "protective", and consequently did not increase obstacle contact or tripping in a typical pedestrian context.


title: Text messaging

text: There have also been technological approaches to increase the safety/awareness of pedestrians that are (unintentionally) blind while using a smartphone, e.g., using a Kinect or an ultrasound phone cover as a virtual white cane, or using the built-in camera to algorithmically analyze single, respectively a stream of pictures for obstacles, with Wang et al. proposing to use machine learning to specifically detect incoming vehicles.


title: Text messaging

text: Sexting is slang for the act of sending sexually explicit or suggestive content between mobile devices using SMS. It contains either text, images, or video that is intended to be sexually arousing. Sexting was reported as early as 2005 in "The Sunday Telegraph Magazine", constituting a trend in the creative use of SMS to excite another with alluring messages throughout the day.


title: Text messaging

text: Although sexting often takes place consensually between two people, it can also occur against the wishes of a person who is the subject of the content. A number of instances have been reported in which the recipients of sexting have shared the content of the messages with others, with less intimate intentions, such as to impress their friends or embarrass their sender. Celebrities such as Miley Cyrus, Vanessa Hudgens, and Adrienne Bailon have been victims of such abuses of sexting. A 2008 survey by The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com suggested a trend of sexting and other seductive online content being readily shared between teens. One in five teen girls surveyed (22 per cent)—and 11 per cent of teen girls aged 13–16 years old—say they have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude images of themselves. One-third (33 per cent) of teen boys and one-quarter (25 per cent) of teen girls say they were shown private nude or semi-nude images. According to the survey, sexually suggestive messages (text, e-mail, and instant messaging) were even more common than images, with 39 per cent of teens having sent or posted such messages, and half of the teens (50 per cent) having received them. A 2012 study that has received wide international media attention was conducted at the University of Utah Department of Psychology by Donald S. Strassberg, Ryan Kelly McKinnon, Michael Sustaíta and Jordan Rullo. They surveyed 606 teenagers ages 14–18 and found that nearly 20 per cent of the students said they had sent a sexually explicit image of themselves via cell phone, and nearly twice as many said that they had received a sexually explicit picture. Of those receiving such a picture, over 25 per cent indicated that they had forwarded it to others.


title: Text messaging

text: In addition, of those who had sent a sexually explicit picture, over a third had done so despite believing that there could be serious legal and other consequences if they got caught. Students who had sent a picture by cell phone were more likely than others to find the activity acceptable. The authors conclude: "These results argue for educational efforts such as cell phone safety assemblies, awareness days, integration into class curriculum and teacher training, designed to raise awareness about the potential consequences of sexting among young people." Sexting becomes a legal issue when teens (under 18) are involved, because any nude photos they may send of themselves would put the recipients in possession of child pornography.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging has affected students academically by creating an easier way to cheat on exams. In December 2002, a dozen students were caught cheating on an accounting exam through the use of text messages on their mobile phones. In December 2002, Hitotsubashi University in Japan failed 26 students for receiving emailed exam answers on their mobile phones. The number of students caught using mobile phones to cheat on exams has increased significantly in recent years. According to Okada (2005), most Japanese mobile phones can send and receive long text messages of between 250 and 3000 characters with graphics, video, audio, and Web links. In England, 287 school and college students were excluded from exams in 2004 for using mobile phones during exams. Some teachers and professors claim that advanced texting features can lead to students cheating on exams. Students in high school and college classrooms are using their mobile phones to send and receive texts during lectures at high rates. Further, published research has established that students who text during college lectures have impaired memories of the lecture material compared to students who do not. For example, in one study, the number of irrelevant text messages sent and received during a lecture covering the topic of developmental psychology was related to students' memory of the lecture.


title: Text messaging

text: Spreading rumors and gossip by text message, using text messages to bully individuals, or forwarding texts that contain defamatory content is an issue of great concern for parents and schools. Text "bullying" of this sort can cause distress and damage reputations. In some cases, individuals who are bullied online have committed suicide. Harding and Rosenberg (2005) argue that the urge to forward text messages can be difficult to resist, describing text messages as "loaded weapons".


title: Text messaging

text: When a student sends an email that contains phonetic abbreviations and acronyms that are common in text messaging (e.g., "gr8" instead of "great"), it can influence how that student is subsequently evaluated. In a study by Lewandowski and Harrington (2006), participants read a student's email sent to a professor that either contained text-messaging abbreviations (gr8, How R U?) or parallel text in standard English (great, How are you?), and then provided impressions of the sender. Students who used abbreviations in their email were perceived as having a less favorable personality and as putting forth less effort on an essay they submitted along with the email. Specifically, abbreviation users were seen as less intelligent, responsible, motivated, studious, dependable, and hard-working. These findings suggest that the nature of a student's email communication can influence how others perceive the student and their work.


title: Text messaging

text: However, students have become aware of the reality that using these textisms and adaptations can negatively impact their professionalism. Drouin and Davis surveyed American undergraduates in 2009 and found that three quarters of participants believed the use of textisms were not appropriate in formal messaging and writing. A study performed by Grace et. al. (2013) asked 150 undergraduate students to rate the appropriateness of using textisms in a given scenario on a scale of one to five - five being entirely appropriate and one being not at all. All but eleven of the students rated the use of textisms in exams and typed assignments as “not at all appropriate,” showing that the students are aware of how they must adapt their written language and tone depending on the context. Grace et. al. (2010) went further, observing hundreds of academic papers from previous undergraduate students' exams, only to find that out of 533,500 words, a mere 0.02% were textisms. They owe this to the fact that the more accumulated experience a student has, the more they are able to understand when the “appropriate” and “inappropriate” times to use such language is.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging has been a subject of interest for police forces around the world. One of the issues of concern to law enforcement agencies is the use of encrypted text messages. In 2003, a British company developed a program called Fortress SMS which used 128 bit AES encryption to protect SMS messages. Police have also retrieved deleted text messages to aid them in solving crimes. For example, Swedish police retrieved deleted texts from a cult member who claimed she committed a double murder based on forwarded texts she received. Police in Tilburg, Netherlands, started an SMS alert program, in which they would send a message to ask citizens to be vigilant when a burglar was on the loose or a child was missing in their neighbourhood. Several thieves have been caught and children have been found using the SMS Alerts. The service has been expanding to other cities. A Malaysian–Australian company has released a multi-layer SMS security program. Boston police are now turning to text messaging to help stop crime. The Boston Police Department asks citizens to send texts to make anonymous crime tips.


title: Text messaging

text: Under some interpretations of sharia law, husbands can divorce their wives by the pronouncement of talaq. In 2003, a court in Malaysia upheld such a divorce pronouncement which was transmitted via SMS.


title: Text messaging

text: The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled in 2017 that under the state constitution, police require a warrant before obtaining access to text messages without consent.


title: Text messaging

text: Texting has been used on a number of occasions with the result of the gathering of large aggressive crowds. SMS messaging drew a crowd to Cronulla Beach in Sydney resulting in the 2005 Cronulla riots. Not only were text messages circulating in the Sydney area but in other states as well ("Daily Telegraph"). The volume of such text messages and e-mails also increased in the wake of the riot. The crowd of 5000 at stages became violent, attacking certain ethnic groups. Sutherland Shire Mayor directly blamed heavily circulated SMS messages for the unrest. NSW police considered whether people could be charged over the texting. Retaliatory attacks also used SMS.


title: Text messaging

text: The Narre Warren Incident, when a group of 500 party goers attended a party at Narre Warren in Melbourne, Australia, and rioted in January 2008, also was a response of communication being spread by SMS and Myspace. Following the incident, the Police Commissioner wrote an open letter asking young people to be aware of the power of SMS and the Internet. In Hong Kong, government officials find that text messaging helps socially because they can send multiple texts to the community. Officials say it is an easy way of contacting the community or individuals for meetings or events. Texting was used to coordinate gatherings during the 2009 Iranian election protests.


title: Text messaging

text: Between 2009 and 2012 the U.S. secretly created and funded a Twitter-like service for Cubans called ZunZuneo, initially based on mobile phone text message service and later with an internet interface. The service was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development through its Office of Transition Initiatives, who utilized contractors and front companies in the Cayman Islands, Spain and Ireland. A longer-term objective was to organize "smart mobs" that might "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." A database about the subscribers was created, including gender, age, and "political tendencies". At its peak ZunZuneo had 40,000 Cuban users, but the service closed as financially unsustainable when U.S. funding was stopped.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging has affected the political world. American campaigns find that text messaging is a much easier, cheaper way of getting to the voters than the door-to-door approach. In 2006 Mexico's then president-elect Felipe Calderón launched millions of text messages in the days immediately preceding his narrow win over Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In January 2001, Joseph Estrada was forced to resign from the post of president of the Philippines. The popular campaign against him was widely reported to have been coordinated with SMS chain letters. A massive texting campaign was credited with boosting youth turnout in Spain's 2004 parliamentary elections. In 2008, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his Chief of Staff at the time became entangled in a sex scandal stemming from the exchange of over 14,000 text messages that eventually led to his forced resignation, the conviction of perjury, and other charges.


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging has been used to turn down other political leaders. During the 2004 U.S. Democratic and Republican National Conventions, protesters used an SMS-based organizing tool called TXTmob to get to opponents. In the last day before the 2004 presidential elections in Romania, a message against Adrian Năstase was largely circulated, thus breaking the laws that prohibited campaigning that day. Text messaging has helped politics by promoting campaigns.


title: Text messaging

text: On 20 January 2001, President Joseph Estrada of the Philippines became the first head of state in history to lose power to a smart mob. More than one million Manila residents assembled at the site of the 1986 People Power peaceful demonstrations that have toppled the Marcos regime. These people have organized themselves and coordinated their actions through text messaging. They were able to bring down a government without having to use any weapons or violence. Through text messaging, their plans and ideas were communicated to others and successfully implemented. Also, this move encouraged the military to withdraw their support from the regime, and as a result, the Estrada government fell. People were able to converge and unite with the use of their cell phones. "The rapid assembly of the anti-Estrada crowd was a hallmark of early smart mob technology, and the millions of text messages exchanged by the demonstrators in 2001 was, by all accounts, a key to the crowds esprit de corps."


title: Text messaging

text: Text messaging is a rapidly growing trend in Healthcare. A randomized controlled trial of text messaging intervention for diabetes in Bangladesh was one of the first robust trials to report improvement in diabetes management in a low-and-middle income country. A recent systematic review and individual participants data meta analysis from 3779 participants reported that mobile phone text messaging could improve blood pressure and body mass index. Another study in people with type 2 diabetes showed that participants were willing to pay a modest amount to receive a diabetes text messaging program in addition to standard care. "One survey found that 73% of physicians text other physicians about work- similar to the overall percentage of the population that texts." A 2006 study of reminder messages sent to children and adolescents with type 1 diabetes mellitus showed favorable changes in adherence to treatment. A risk is that these physicians could be violating the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Where messages could be saved to a phone indefinitely, patient information could be subject to theft or loss, and could be seen by other unauthorized persons. The HIPAA privacy rule requires that any text message involving a medical decision must be available for the patient to access, meaning that any texts that are not documented in an EMR system could be a HIPAA violation.


title: Text messaging

text: The excessive use of the thumb for pressing keys on mobile devices has led to a high rate of a form of repetitive strain injury termed "BlackBerry thumb" (although this refers to strain developed on older Blackberry devices, which had a scroll wheel on the side of the phone). An inflammation of the tendons in the thumb caused by constant text-messaging is also called text-messager's thumb, or texting tenosynovitis. Texting has also been linked as a secondary source in numerous traffic collisions, in which police investigations of mobile phone records have found that many drivers have lost control of their cars while attempting to send or retrieve a text message. Increasing cases of Internet addiction are now also being linked to text messaging, as mobile phones are now more likely to have e-mail and Web capabilities to complement the ability to text.


title: Text messaging

text: Texting etiquette refers to what is considered appropriate texting behaviour. These expectations may concern different areas, such as the context in which a text was sent and received/read, who each participant was with when the participant sent or received/read a text message or what constitutes impolite text messages. At the website of The Emily Post Institute, the topic of "texting" has spurred several articles with the "do's and dont's" regarding the new form of communication. One example from the site is: "Keep your message brief. No one wants to have an entire conversation with you by texting when you could just call him or her instead." Another example is: "Don't use all Caps. Typing a text message in all capital letters will appear as though you are shouting at the recipient, and should be avoided."


title: Text messaging

text: Expectations for etiquette may differ depending on various factors. For example, expectations for appropriate behaviour have been found to differ markedly between the U.S. and India. Another example is generational differences. In "The M-Factor: How the Millennial Generation Is Rocking the Workplace", Lynne Lancaster and David Stillman note that younger Americans often do not consider it rude to answer their cell or begin texting in the middle of a face-to-face conversation with someone else, while older people, less used to the behavior and the accompanying lack of eye contact or attention, find this to be disruptive and ill-mannered. With regard to texting in the workplace, Plantronics studied how we communicate at work] and found that 58% of US knowledge workers have increased the use of text messaging for work in the past five years. The same study found that 33% of knowledge workers felt text messaging was critical or very important to success and productivity at work.


title: Text messaging

text: In 2002, an increasing trend towards spamming mobile phone users through SMS prompted cellular-service carriers to take steps against the practice, before it became a widespread problem. No major spamming incidents involving SMS had been reported , but the existence of mobile phone spam has been noted by industry watchdogs including "Consumer Reports" magazine and the Utility Consumers' Action Network (UCAN). In 2005, UCAN brought a case against Sprint for spamming its customers and charging $0.10 per text message. The case was settled in 2006 with Sprint agreeing not to send customers Sprint advertisements via SMS. SMS expert Acision (formerly LogicaCMG Telecoms) reported a new type of SMS malice at the end of 2006, noting the first instances of SMiShing (a cousin to e-mail phishing scams). In SMiShing, users receive SMS messages posing to be from a company, enticing users to phone premium-rate numbers or reply with personal information. Similar concerns were reported by PhonepayPlus, a consumer watchdog in the United Kingdom, in 2012.


title: Text messaging

text: Concerns have been voiced over the excessive cost of off-plan text messaging in the United States. AT&T Mobility, along with most other service providers, charges texters 20 cents per message if they do not have a messaging plan or if they have exceeded their allotted number of texts. Given that an SMS message is at most 160 bytes in size, this cost scales to a cost of $1,310 per megabyte sent via text message. This is in sharp contrast with the price of unlimited data plans offered by the same carriers, which allow the transmission of hundreds of megabytes of data for monthly prices of about $15 to $45 in addition to a voice plan. As a comparison, a one-minute phone call uses up the same amount of network capacity as 600 text messages, meaning that if the same cost-per-traffic formula were applied to phone calls, cell phone calls would cost $120 per minute. With service providers gaining more customers and expanding their capacity, their overhead costs should be decreasing, not increasing. In 2005, text messaging generated nearly 70 billion dollars in revenue, as reported by Gartner, industry analysts, three times as much as Hollywood box office sales in 2005. World figures showed that over a trillion text messages were sent in 2005.


title: Text messaging

text: Although major cellphone providers deny any collusion, fees for out-of-package text messages have increased, doubling from 10 to 20 cents in the United States between 2007 and 2008 alone. On 16 July 2009, Senate hearings were held to look into any breach of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The same trend is visible in other countries, though increasingly widespread flat-rate plans, for example in Germany, do make text messaging easier, text messages sent abroad still result in higher costs.


title: Text messaging

text: While text messaging is still a growing market, traditional SMS is becoming increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services which are available on smartphones with data connections. These services are much cheaper and offer more functionality like exchanging multimedia content (e.g. photos, videos or audio notes) and group messaging. Especially in western countries some of these services attract more and more users.


title: Text messaging

text: Consumer SMS should not be used for confidential communication. The contents of common SMS messages are known to the network operator's systems and personnel. Therefore, consumer SMS is not an appropriate technology for secure communications. To address this issue, many companies use an SMS gateway provider based on SS7 connectivity to route the messages. The advantage of this international termination model is the ability to route data directly through SS7, which gives the provider visibility of the complete path of the SMS. This means SMS messages can be sent directly to and from recipients without having to go through the SMS-C of other mobile operators. This approach reduces the number of mobile operators that handle the message; however, it should not be considered as an end-to-end secure communication, as the content of the message is exposed to the SMS gateway provider.


title: Text messaging

text: An alternative approach is to use end-to-end security software that runs on both the sending and receiving device, where the original text message is transmitted in encrypted form as a consumer SMS. By using key rotation, the encrypted text messages stored under data retention laws at the network operator cannot be decrypted even if one of the devices is compromised. A problem with this approach is that communicating devices needs to run compatible software. Failure rates without backward notification can be high between carriers. International texting can be unreliable depending on the country of origin, destination and respective operators. Differences in the character sets used for coding can cause a text message sent from one country to another to become unreadable.


title: Text messaging

text: The "Guinness Book of World Records" has a world record for text messaging, currently held by Sonja Kristiansen of Norway. Kristiansen keyed in the official text message, as established by Guinness, in 37.28 seconds. The message is, "The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality, they seldom attack a human." In 2005, the record was held by a 24-year-old Scottish man, Craig Crosbie, who completed the same message in 48 seconds, beating the previous time by 19 seconds. "The Book of Alternative Records" lists Chris Young of Salem, Oregon, as the world-record holder for the fastest 160-character text message where the contents of the message are not provided ahead of time. His record of 62.3 seconds was set on 23 May 2007.


title: Text messaging

text: Elliot Nicholls of Dunedin, New Zealand, currently holds the world record for the fastest blindfolded text messaging. A record of a 160-letter text in 45 seconds while blindfolded was set on 17 November 2007, beating the old record of 1-minute 26 seconds set by an Italian in September 2006. Ohio native Andrew Acklin is credited with the world record for most text messages sent or received in a single month, with 200,052. His accomplishments were first in the World Records Academy and later followed up by "Ripley's Believe It Or Not 2010: Seeing Is Believing". He has been acknowledged by The Universal Records Database for the most text messages in a single month; however, this has since been broken twice and as of 2010 was listed as 566607 messages by Fred Lindgren.


title: Text messaging

text: In January 2010, LG Electronics sponsored an international competition, the LG Mobile World Cup, to determine the fastest pair of texters. The winners were a team from South Korea, Ha Mok-min and Bae Yeong-ho. On 6 April 2011, SKH Apps released an iPhone app, iTextFast, to allow consumers to test their texting speed and practice the paragraph used by "Guinness Book of World Records". As of 2011, best time listed on Game Center for that paragraph is 34.65 seconds.


title: Text messaging

text: A few competitions have been held between expert Morse code operators and expert SMS users. Several mobile phones have Morse code ring tones and alert messages. For example, many Nokia mobile phones have an option to beep "S M S" in Morse code when it receives a short message. Some of these phones could also play the Nokia slogan "Connecting people" in Morse code as a message tone. There are third-party applications available for some mobile phones that allow Morse input for short messages.


title: Text messaging

text: Many sports arenas now offer a number where patrons can text report security concerns, like drunk or unruly fans, or safety issues like spills. These programs have been praised by patrons and security personnel as more effective than traditional methods. For instance, the patron doesn't need to leave his seat and miss the event in order to report something important. Also, disruptive fans can be reported with relative anonymity. "Text tattling" also gives security personnel a useful tool to prioritize messages. For instance, a single complaint in one section about an unruly fan can be addressed when convenient, while multiple complaints by several different patrons can be acted upon immediately.


title: Text messaging

text: In this context, "tattle texting" refers to an automatic text sent by the computer in an automobile, because a preset condition was met. The most common use for this is for parents to receive texts from the car their child is driving, alerting them to speeding or other issues. Employers can also use the service to monitor their corporate vehicles. The technology is still new and (currently) only available on a few car models.


title: Negrito

text: The term Negrito () refers to several diverse ethnic groups who inhabit isolated parts of Southeast Asia and the Andaman Islands. Populations often described as Negrito include: the Andamanese peoples (including the Great Andamanese, the Onge, the Jarawa, and the Sentinelese) of the Andaman Islands, the Semang peoples (among them, the Batek people) of Peninsular Malaysia, the Maniq people of Southern Thailand, as well as the Aeta of Luzon Island, Ati, and Tumandok of Panay Island, Agta of Sierra Madre and Mamanwa of Mindanao Island and about 30 other officially recognized ethnic groups in the Philippines.


title: Negrito

text: The word "Negrito" is the Spanish diminutive of "negro", used to mean "little black person." This usage was coined by 16th-century Spanish missionaries operating in the Philippines, and was borrowed by other European travellers and colonialists across Austronesia to label various peoples perceived as sharing relatively small physical stature and dark skin. Contemporary usage of an alternative Spanish epithet, "Negrillos", also tended to bundle these peoples with the pygmy peoples of Central Africa on the basis of perceived similarities in stature and complexion. (Historically, the label "Negrito" has also been used to refer to African pygmies.) The appropriateness of using the label "Negrito" to bundle peoples of different ethnicities by similarities in stature and complexion has been challenged.


title: Negrito

text: Most groups designated as "Negrito" lived as hunter-gatherers, while some also used agriculture, such as plant harvesting. Today most live assimilated to the majority population of their respective homeland. Discrimination and poverty are often problems, caused either by their lower social position, and or their hunter-gatherer lifestyles.


title: Negrito

text: Based on perceived physical similarities, Negritos were once considered a single population of closely related people. However, genetic studies suggest that they consist of several separate groups descended from the same ancient East Eurasian meta-population which gave rise to modern East Asian peoples and Oceanian peoples, as well as displaying genetic heterogeneity. The Negritos form the indigenous population of Southeast Asia, but were largely absorbed by Austroasiatic- and Austronesian-speaking groups that migrated from southern East Asia into Mainland and Insular Southeast Asia with the Neolithic expansion. The remainders form minority groups in geographically isolated regions.


title: Negrito

text: It has been found that the physical and morphological phenotypes of Negritos, such as short stature, a wide and snub nose, curly hair and dark skin, ""are shaped by novel mechanisms for adaptation to tropical rainforests"" through convergent evolution and positive selection, rather than a remnant of a shared common ancestor, as suggested previously by some researchers.


title: Negrito

text: A Negrito-like population was mostly likely also present in Taiwan before the Neolithic expansion and must have had persisted into historical times, as suggested by evidence from morphological features of human skeletal remains dating from around 6,000 years ago resembling Negritos (especially Aetas in northern Luzon), and further corroborated by Chinese reports from the Qing period and from tales of Taiwanese indigenous peoples about people with "dark skin, short-and-small body stature, frizzy hair, and occupation in forested mountains or remote caves".


title: Paladin

text: The Paladins, also called the Twelve Peers, are twelve legendary knights, the foremost members of Charlemagne's court in the 8th century. They first appear in the medieval (12th century) "chanson de geste" cycle of the Matter of France, where they play a similar role to the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance. In these romantic portrayals, the chivalric paladins represent Christianity against a Saracen (Muslim) invasion of Europe. The names of the paladins vary between sources, but there are always twelve of them (a number with Christian associations) led by Roland (spelled Orlando in later Italian sources). The paladins' most influential appearance is in "The Song of Roland", written between 1050 and 1115, which narrates the heroic death of Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.


title: Paladin

text: The legend is based on the historical Umayyad invasion of Gaul and subsequent conflict in the "Marca Hispanica" between the Frankish Empire and the Emirate of Córdoba. The term "paladin" is from Old French, deriving from the Latin "comes palatinus" (count palatine), a title given to close retainers.


title: Paladin

text: The paladins remained a popular subject throughout medieval French literature. Literature of the Italian Renaissance (15th and 16th centuries) introduced more fantasy elements into the legend, which later became a popular subject for operas in the Baroque music of the 16th and 17th centuries. During the 19th and early 20th centuries the term was reused outside fiction for small numbers of close military confidants serving national leaders. Modern depictions of paladins are often an individual knight-errant holy warrior or combat healer, influenced by the paladin character class that appeared in "Dungeons & Dragons" in 1975.


title: Paladin

text: The earliest recorded instance of the word "paladin" in the English language dates to 1592, in "Delia" (Sonnet XLVI) by Samuel Daniel. It entered English through the Middle French word , which itself derived from the Latin , ultimately from the name of Palatine Hill — also translated as 'of the palace' in the Frankish title of Mayor of the Palace. A presumptive Old French form was already loaned into late Middle English as in .


title: Paladin

text: Over time "paladin" came to refer to other high-level officials in the imperial, majestic and royal courts. The word palatine, used in various European countries in the medieval and modern eras, has the same derivation.


title: Paladin

text: By the 13th century, words referring specifically to Charlemagne's peers began appearing in European languages; the earliest is the Italian . Modern French has , Spanish has or (reflecting alternate derivations from the French and Italian), while German has . By extension, "paladin" has come to refer to any chivalrous hero such as King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table.


title: Paladin

text: In the Roman imperial period, a "palatinus" was one of the closest retainers of the emperor, who lived in the imperial residence as part of the emperor's household. The title survived into the medieval period, as "comes palatinus". However, the modern spelling "paladin" is now reserved for the fictional characters of the "chanson de geste", while the conventional English translation of "comes palatinus" is count palatine. After the fall of Rome, a new feudal type of title, also known simply as "palatinus", started developing. The Frankish kings of the Merovingian dynasty (reigned 480–750) employed a high official, the "comes palatinus", who at first assisted the king in his judicial duties and at a later date discharged many of these himself. Other counts palatine were employed on military and administrative work.


title: Paladin

text: In the Visigothic Kingdom, the "Officium Palatinum" consisted of a number of men with the title of count that managed the various departments of the royal household. The Comes Cubiculariorum oversaw the chamberlains, the Comes Scanciorun directed the cup-bearers, the Comes Stabulorum directed the equerries in charge of the stables, etc. The Ostrogothic Kingdom also maintained palatine counts with titles such as Comes Patrimonium, who was in charge of the patrimonial or private real estate of the king, and others.


title: Paladin

text: A Frankish capitulary of 882 and Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, writing about the same time, testify to the extent to which the judicial work of the Frankish Empire had passed into their hands.


title: Paladin

text: Instead of remaining near the person of the king, some of the counts palatine were sent to various parts of his empire to act as judges and governors, the districts ruled by them being called palatinates. By the High Middle Ages, the title "count" had become increasingly common, to the point that both great magnates who ruled regions that were the size of duchies, and local castle-lords, might style themselves "count". As the great magnates began to centralize their power over their local castle-lords, they felt the need to assert the difference between themselves and these minor "counts". Therefore, several of these great magnates began styling themselves "Count Palatine", signifying great counts ruling regions equivalent to duchies, such as the Counts Palatine of Champagne in the 13th century. The Count Palatine of the Rhine served as prince-elector from "time immemorial" (with Wigeric of Lotharingia reaching back to the late Carolingian era), noted as such in a papal letter of 1261, and confirmed as elector in the Golden Bull of 1356. "Palatin" was also used as a title in the Kingdom of Hungary.


title: Paladin

text: In the French courtly literature of the 12th century, the paladins are the twelve closest companions of Charlemagne, comparable to the role of the Knights of the Round Table in Arthurian romance.


title: Paladin

text: The names of the twelve paladins vary from romance to romance, and often more than twelve are named. The number is popular because it resembles the Twelve Apostles (etc.).


title: Paladin

text: Always named among the paladins are Roland and Oliver; other recurring characters are Archbishop Turpin, Ogier the Dane, Huon of Bordeaux, Fierabras, Renaud de Montauban and Ganelon.


title: Paladin

text: Their greatest moments come in "The Song of Roland" (written between c. 1040 and 1115), which depicts their defense of Charlemagne's army against the Saracens of Al-Andalus, and their deaths at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass due to the treachery of Ganelon. "The Song of Roland" lists the twelve paladins as Roland, Charlemagne's nephew and the chief hero among the paladins; Oliver, Roland's friend and strongest ally; and Gérin, Gérier (these two are killed in the same "laisse" [123] by the same Saracen, Grandonie), Bérengier, Otton, Samson, Engelier, Ivon, Ivoire, Anséis, Girard. Other characters elsewhere considered part of the twelve appear in the song, such as Archbishop Turpin and Ogier the Dane.


title: Paladin

text: The paladins figure into many "chansons de geste" and other tales associated with Charlemagne. In "Fierabras" (c. 1170), they retrieve holy relics stolen from Rome by the Saracen giant Fierabras.


title: Paladin

text: In some versions, Fierabras is converted to Christianity and joins the ranks of the paladins himself. In "Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne" they accompany their king on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and Constantinople in order to outdo the Byzantine Emperor Hugo.


title: Paladin

text: The Italian Renaissance authors Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto, whose works were once as widely read and respected as William Shakespeare's, contributed prominently to the literary and poetical reworking of the tales of the epic deeds of the paladins. Their works, "Orlando Innamorato" and "Orlando Furioso", send the paladins on even more fantastic adventures than their predecessors. They list the paladins quite differently, but keep the number at twelve.


title: Paladin

text: Boiardo and Ariosto's paladins are Orlando (Roland), Charlemagne's nephew and the chief hero among the paladins; Oliver, the rival to Roland; Ferumbras (Fierabras), the Saracen who became a Christian; Astolpho, descended from Charles Martel and cousin to Orlando; Ogier the Dane; Ganelon the betrayer, who appears in Dante Alighieri's "Inferno"; Rinaldo (Renaud de Montauban); Malagigi (Maugris), a sorcerer; Florismart, a friend to Orlando; Guy de Bourgogne; Namo (Naimon or Namus), Duke of Bavaria, Charlemagne's trusted adviser; and Otuel, another converted Saracen.


title: Paladin

text: In the Baroque era, Ariosto's poem was the basis of many operas. Among the earliest were Francesca Caccini's "La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina" ("The Liberation of Ruggiero from Alcina's Island", 1625) and Luigi Rossi's "Il palazzo incantato" (1642). Antonio Vivaldi staged three operas on themes from Ariosto: "Orlando furioso" (1713) by Giovanni Alberto Ristori, "Orlando Furioso" (1714), with music by Ristori and by himself, and "Orlando" (1727). In France, Jean-Baptiste Lully turned to Ariosto for his "tragédie en musique Roland" (1685).


title: Paladin

text: Perhaps the most famous operas inspired by the poem are those by Handel: "Orlando" (1733), "Ariodante" and "Alcina" (1735).


title: Paladin

text: "Les Paladins" is a 1760 opera by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The plot is based on a verse tale by La Fontaine, "Le petit chien qui secoue de l'argent et des pierreries", itself derived from an episode in Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso".


title: Paladin

text: The enthusiasm for operas based on Ariosto continued into the Classical era and beyond with such examples as Niccolò Piccinni's "Roland" (1778), Haydn's "Orlando paladino" (1782), Méhul's "Ariodant" (1799) and Simon Mayr's "Ginevra di Scozia" (1801).


title: Paladin

text: Thus, the leaders of armies supporting the Protestant Frederick V in the Thirty Years' War were named "Paladins".


title: Paladin

text: "Paladin" was used informally of the closest confidants of the German Emperor. Thus, in 1871 named , and as "the three Paladins of the German Emperor". Similarly, British generals Garnet Wolseley and Frederick Roberts have been dubbed "Queen Victoria's Paladins". Following this template, Adolf Hitler used to refer to as his .


title: Paladin

text: While the Arthurian "Matter of Britain" enjoyed a major revival in the 19th century in the hands of the Romantic and Victorian poets, writers, and artists, the "Matter of France" has generally received less attention. The "Song of Roland" has nevertheless inspired numerous modern works, including Graham Greene's "The Confidential Agent" (1939),


title: Paladin

text: Emanuele Luzzati's animated short film, , together with , in 1960, was turned into the children's picture-story book, with verse narrative, ('The Paladins of France or the treachery of Gano of Maganz', 1962). This was republished in English, as "Ronald and the Wizard Calico" (1969).


title: Paladin

text: In the later 20th century, "Paladin" has become a trope in modern fantasy. A "paladin" character class was first introduced in 1975 for "Dungeons & Dragons" in "Supplement I – Greyhawk". The "Dungeons & Dragons" character class was reportedly inspired by the protagonist of the 1962 fantasy novel "Three Hearts and Three Lions", which was itself a pastiche of various elements of medieval and post-medieval legend, including elements of the Matter of France.


title: Paladin

text: As a character class in video games, the "Paladin" stock character was introduced in 1985, in "The Bard's Tale".


title: Odeya Rush

text: Odeya Rushinek (; born ), known professionally as Odeya Rush (), is an Israeli actress. She is known for her lead roles in "The Giver" (2014), "Goosebumps" (2015), "The Bachelors" (2017), "Lady Bird" (2017), "Dumplin'" (2018), and "Let It Snow" (2019).


title: Odeya Rush

text: Odeya Rushinek was born in Haifa, Israel, to a family of Ashkenazi Jewish (Polish-Jewish and Russian-Jewish) descent. Her father Shlomo Rushinek is a Sabra (Israeli-born Jew), whereas her mother Maya Greenfeld was born in Soviet Russia and immigrated to Israel. In Hebrew, her first name means "I will thank God". As an eight-year-old growing up in her hometown of Haifa, Israel, she wrote and performed plays.


title: Odeya Rush

text: Her family moved to the United States when she was nine years old so that her father could take up a job as a security consultant in Alabama. When she arrived, Rush did not know English and could only speak Hebrew. She attended the N. E. Miles Jewish Day School in Birmingham, Alabama, where she resided; she later moved to Midland Park, New Jersey, where she attended public school.


title: Odeya Rush

text: In the beginning of 2013, Rush moved to Los Angeles with her family. She has six brothers; four of them are younger than she is—two sets of twins who reside with their parents in Los Angeles, and two older paternal half-brothers who reside in Israel.


title: Odeya Rush

text: Before becoming an actress, Rush began her career in her childhood and adolescence when she was discovered as a model in the United States, appearing in major campaigns and advertisements for fashion brands Polo Ralph Lauren, Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, and H&M.


title: Odeya Rush

text: Her first acting roles began in 2010 in "", in the episode "Branded", in which she played the character Hannah Milner; and in the television series "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in the episode "Mister Softee", as Emily.


title: Odeya Rush

text: Her first film role was in 2012, playing Joni Jerome, the best friend of Timothy, in the Peter Hedges-directed Disney film "The Odd Life of Timothy Green".


title: Odeya Rush

text: Rush co-starred, as Fiona, in the science fiction film "The Giver" (2014), based on the 1993 novel of same name from Lois Lowry, and directed by Phillip Noyce. The film also starred Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes, Alexander Skarsgård and Taylor Swift.


title: Odeya Rush

text: In 2015, Rush played Ashley Burwood, niece of Johana Burwood (played by Sarah Hyland), in the comedy film "See You in Valhalla". Rush's next role was the female lead in the film "Goosebumps", based on the R. L. Stine's popular book series. Rush played Hannah Fairchild, the "daughter" of R. L. Stine (portrayed by Jack Black), who teams up with her neighbor to fight the "Goosebumps" monsters.


title: Odeya Rush

text: In 2016, Rush completed filming the satirical comedy film "Dear Dictator", in which she starred with Michael Caine and Katie Holmes. She was also cast as Ella Hatto, opposite Sam Worthington, in action-thriller film "The Hunter's Prayer" directed by Jonathan Mostow.


title: Odeya Rush

text: In 2017, she had a supporting role in Greta Gerwig's "Lady Bird"; Rush was nominated along with the rest of the cast for numerous awards. The film earned five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and starred in "The Bachelors" with J. K. Simmons in 2017.


title: Odeya Rush

text: In 2021, Rush played the titular role in her first Hebrew-language Israeli drama series and the following year, she played Macy in the comedy-drama film "Cha Cha Real Smooth" and River in the supernatural horror film "Umma".


title: Momordica charantia

text: Momordica charantia (commonly called bitter melon; Goya; bitter apple; bitter gourd; bitter squash; balsam-pear; with many more names listed below) is a tropical and subtropical vine of the family Cucurbitaceae, widely grown in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean for its edible fruit. Its many varieties differ substantially in the shape and bitterness of the fruit.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon originated in Africa where it was a dry-season staple food of ǃKung hunter-gatherers. Wild or semi-domesticated variants spread across Asia in prehistory, and it was likely fully domesticated in Southeast Asia. It is widely used in the cuisines of East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon has many names in other languages, which have sometimes entered English as loanwords. Following are a few:


title: Momordica charantia

text: This herbaceous, tendril-bearing vine grows up to in length. It bears simple, alternate leaves across, with three to seven deeply separated lobes. Each plant bears separate yellow male and female flowers. In the Northern Hemisphere, flowering occurs during June to July and fruiting during September to November.


title: Momordica charantia

text: The fruit has a distinct warty exterior and an oblong shape. It is hollow in cross-section, with a relatively thin layer of flesh surrounding a central seed cavity filled with large, flat seeds and pith. The fruit is most often eaten green, or as it is beginning to turn yellow. At this stage, the fruit's flesh is crunchy and watery in texture, similar to cucumber, chayote, or green bell pepper, but bitter. The skin is tender and edible. Seeds and pith appear white in unripe fruits; they are not intensely bitter and can be removed before cooking.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Some sources claim the flesh (rind) becomes somewhat tougher and more bitter with age, but other sources claim that at least for the common Chinese variety the skin does not change and bitterness decreases with age. The Chinese variety is best harvested light green possibly with a slight yellow tinge or just before. The pith becomes sweet and intensely red; it can be eaten uncooked in this state, and is a popular ingredient in some Southeast Asian salads.


title: Momordica charantia

text: When the fruit is fully ripe, it turns orange and soft, and splits into segments which curl back to expose seeds covered in bright red pulp.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. The cultivar common in China is long, oblong with bluntly tapering ends and pale green in colour, with a gently undulating, warty surface. The bitter melon more typical of India has a narrower shape with pointed ends, and a surface covered with jagged, triangular "teeth" and ridges. It is green to white in colour. Between these two extremes are any number of intermediate forms. Some bear miniature fruit of only in length, which may be served individually as stuffed vegetables. These miniature fruits are popular in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal, and other countries in South Asia. The sub-continent variety is most popular in Bangladesh and India.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon is generally consumed cooked in the green or early yellowing stage. The young shoots and leaves of the bitter melon may also be eaten as greens. The fruit is very bitter raw and can be soaked in cold water and drained to remove some of those strong flavours.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Chinese cuisine, bitter melon (, ) is valued for its bitter flavour, typically in stir-fries (often with pork and "douchi"), soups, dim sum, and herbal teas (gohyah tea). It has also been used in place of hops as the bittering ingredient in some beers in China and Okinawa.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter gourd is commonly eaten throughout India. In North Indian cuisine, it is often served with yogurt on the side to offset the bitterness, used in curry such as "sabzi," or stuffed with spices and then cooked in oil.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In South Indian cuisine, it is used in numerous dishes such as "thoran" / "thuvaran" (mixed with grated coconut), "pavaikka mezhukkupuratti" (stir-fried with spices), "theeyal" (cooked with roasted coconut), and "pachadi" (which is considered a medicinal food for diabetics), making it vital in Malayali's diet. Other popular recipes include preparations with curry, deep-frying with peanuts or other ground nuts, and "Kakara kaya pulusu" in "Telugu", a soup with fried onions and other spices. In Karnataka, bitter melon is known as "hāgalakāyi" () in Kannada; in Tamil Nadu it is known as "paagarkaai" or "pavakai" () in Tamil. In these regions, a special preparation called "pagarkai pitla", a kind of sour "koottu", is common. Also commonly seen is "kattu pagarkkai", a curry in which bitter melons are stuffed with onions, cooked lentil, and grated coconut mix, then tied with thread and fried in oil. In the Konkan region of Maharashtra, salt is added to finely chopped bitter gourd, known as "karle" () in Marathi, and then it is squeezed, removing its bitter juice to some extent. After frying this with different spices, the less bitter and crispy preparation is served with grated coconut. Bitter melon is known as "karate" () in Goa; it is valued for its health benefits and used widely in Goan cuisine. In Bengal bitter melon is often simply eaten boiled and mashed with salt, mustard oil, sliced thinly and deep fried, added to lentils to make "tetor" dal (bitter lentils), and is a key ingredient of the Shukto, a Bengali vegetable medley that is a mixture of several vegetables like raw banana, drumstick stems, bori, and sweet potato.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In northern India and Nepal, bitter melon, known as "tite karela" () in Nepali, is prepared as a fresh pickle. For this, the vegetable is cut into cubes or slices, and sautéed with oil and a sprinkle of water. When it is softened and reduced, it is crushed in a mortar with a few cloves of garlic, salt, and a red or green pepper. It is also eaten sautéed to golden-brown, stuffed, or as a curry on its own or with potatoes.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Burmese cuisine, bitter melon is sauteéd with garlic, tomatoes, spices, and dried shrimp and is served as an accompaniment to other dishes. Such a dish is available at street stalls and deli counters throughout the country.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Pakistan, where it is known as "karela" () in Urdu-speaking areas, and Bangladesh, where it is known as "korola" (করলা|করলা) in Bengali, bitter melon is often cooked with onions, red chili powder, turmeric powder, salt, coriander powder, and a pinch of cumin seeds. Another dish in Pakistan calls for whole, unpeeled bitter melon to be boiled and then stuffed with cooked minced beef, served with either hot "tandoori" bread, "naan", "chappati", or with "khichri" (a mixture of lentils and rice).


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon, known as "gōyā" () in Okinawan, and in Japanese (although the Okinawan word "gōyā" is also used), is a significant ingredient in Okinawan cuisine, and is increasingly used in Japanese cuisine beyond that island.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Indonesian cuisine, bitter melon, known as "pare" in Javanese and Indonesian (also "paria"), is prepared in various dishes, such as "gado-gado", and also stir-fried, cooked in coconut milk, or steamed. In Christian areas in Eastern Indonesia it is cooked with pork and chile, the sweetness of the pork balancing against the bitterness of the vegetable.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Vietnamese cuisine, raw bitter melon slices known as "mướp đắng" or "khổ qua" in Vietnamese, eaten with dried meat floss and bitter melon soup with shrimp, are common dishes. Bitter melons stuffed with ground pork are commonly served as a summer soup in the south. It is also used as the main ingredient of stewed bitter melon. This dish is usually cooked for the Tết holiday, where its "bitter" name is taken as a reminder of the bitter living conditions experienced in the past.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Thai cuisine, the Chinese variety of green bitter melon, "mara" () in Thai, is prepared stuffed with minced pork and garlic, in a clear broth. It is also served sliced, stir-fried with garlic and fish sauce until just tender. Varieties found in Thailand range from large fruit to small fruit. The smallest fruit variety ("mara khii nok") is generally not cultivated, but is occasionally found in the wild and is considered the most nutritious variety.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In the cuisine of the Philippines, bitter melon, known as "ampalaya" in Tagalog and "parya" in Ilokano, may be stir-fried with ground beef and oyster sauce, or with eggs and diced tomato. The dish "pinakbet", popular in the Ilocos region of Luzon, consists mainly of bitter melons, eggplant, okra, string beans, tomatoes, lima beans, and other various regional vegetables all stewed together with a little "bagoong"-based stock.


title: Momordica charantia

text: In Trinidad and Tobago, bitter melons, known as "caraille" or "carilley", are usually sautéed with onion, garlic, and scotch bonnet pepper until almost crisp.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon has been used in various Asian and African herbal medicine systems for a long time. In Turkey, it has been used as a folk remedy for a variety of ailments, particularly stomach complaints. In the traditional medicine of India, different parts of the plant are used as claimed treatments for diabetes (particularly polypeptide-p, an insulin analogue), and as a stomachic, laxative, antibilious, emetic, anthelmintic agent, for the treatment of cough, respiratory diseases, skin diseases, wounds, ulcer, gout, and rheumatism.


title: Momordica charantia

text: "Momordica charantia" has a number of alleged uses including cancer prevention, treatment of diabetes, fever, HIV and AIDS, and infections. While it has shown some potential clinical activity in laboratory experiments, "further studies are required to recommend its use". In 2012, the germplasm and chemical constituents, such as momordicin, charantin, cucurbitacin, and momordicoside D within several varieties of the gourd, were being studied.


title: Momordica charantia

text: For fever reduction and relief of menstrual problems, there is no scientific research to back these claims. For cancer prevention, HIV and AIDS, and treatment of infections, there is preliminary laboratory research, but no clinical studies in humans showing a benefit.


title: Momordica charantia

text: With regard to the use of "Momordica charantia" for diabetes, several animal studies and small-scale human studies have demonstrated a hypoglycemic effect of concentrated bitter melon extracts. In addition, a 2014 review shows evidence that "Momordica charantia", when consumed in raw or juice form, can be efficacious in lowering blood glucose levels. However, multiple reviews have found that "Momordica charantia" does not significantly decrease fasting blood glucose levels or A1c, indicators of blood glucose control, when taken in capsule or tablet form. "Momordica charantia" may be beneficial in diabetes; however, the effects seem to depend on how it is consumed. More studies need to be performed in order to verify this effect. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center concludes that bitter melon "cannot be recommended as a replacement therapy for insulin or hypoglycemic drugs".


title: Momordica charantia

text: In the Caribbean, tea brewed from cerasee leaves is a popular remedy for stomach and abdominal ailments. The plant grows wild in many areas, and the tea is made with freshly gathered leaves. The dried leaves in tea bags are also sold commercially and are readily available for sale in stores.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Reported side effects include diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, hypoglycemia, urinary incontinence, and chest pain. Symptoms generally are mild, do not require treatment, and resolve with abstinence and rest.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon is contraindicated in pregnant women because it can induce bleeding, contractions, and miscarriage.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Bitter melon tea, also known as gohyah (goya) tea, is an herbal tea made from an infusion of dried slices of the bitter melon. It is sold as a medicinal tea, and a culinary vegetable.


title: Momordica charantia

text: Gohyah is not listed in the Grieve's herbal database, the MPNA database at University of Michigan (Medicinal Plants of Native America, see Native American ethnobotany), or in the Phytochemical Database of the USDA – Agricultural Research Service (ARS) – National Plant Germplasm System NGRL.


title: Brahmastra

text: In Hindu mythology, the Brahmastra (IAST: "Brahmāstra") is an "astra" (weapon) that is said to be able to destroy the whole universe, capable of destroying creation and vanquishing all beings. Only Parasurama, Rama, Meghnada, Bhisma, Drona, Karna, Ashwatthama, and Arjuna possessed the knowledge to invoke this weapon. It is one of the most destructive, powerful, and irresistible weapons mentioned in Hinduism. It was created by Lord Brahma along with its more powerful variants Brahmashirā astra, Brahmanda astra and Bhargavastra.


title: Brahmastra

text: It is termed as a fiery weapon that creates a fierce fireball, blazing up with terrible flames and countless horrendous thunder flashes. When discharged, all nature including trees, oceans, and animals tremble, and the sky surrounds with flame, glaciers melt and mountains shatter with copious noise all around.


title: Brahmastra

text: When used, the Brahmastra which is person-centric can destroy a powerful enemy if he does not possess an alternate counter weapon. If it is Brahmashirā astra, it causes collateral damage to every useful resource in a given area and prevents even a single blade of grass from ever growing in that area again. It is mentioned in Epic that there will be no rainfall for 12 Brahma years (12 Brahma years = 37.32 trillion human years) and climate conditions will worsen. The strike of the Brahmashirā astra will eventually destroy everything.


title: Brahmastra

text: When Ashwatthama hurled the Brahmashirā astra against Arjuna, the Pandava countered by invoking the same weapon; to prevent widespread destruction Narada and Vyasa stood between the two "astras", ordering the two warriors to withdraw their weapons. (Arjuna, out of nobility, did so; Ashwatthama, however, out of anger refused to recall the astra and rather directed it to Uttarā's womb to kill the unborn Parikshita in an attempt to produce some level of damage to his opponents but Krishna intervened and saved the child and Ashwatthama was made to surrender the gem on his forehead and cursed by Krishna for 3000 years that he will roam in the forests with blood and puss oozing out of his injuries and cry for death but death would not meet him.)


title: Brahmastra

text: The origin of the word comes from the word "Brahma", who is the "Creator" in Hindu culture. The idea that Brahmastra is the most powerful weapon can be understood by the kind of weapons that were used according to Hindu culture. The Trimurti, which consists of the three main Gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, each wielding an astra, have them according to their characteristics.


title: Brahmastra

text: The Brahmashirā Astra (Brahma's head weapon), manifests with four heads of Brahma at the front and is four times stronger than the normal Brahmastra. Arjuna, Drona, Karna, Ashwatthama and Bhishma possessed this knowledge in Mahabharata.


title: Brahmastra

text: The Brahma Danda (Brahma's rod) or also known as Brahmanda, is a weapon of self-defence, created by Brahma. It is only to be possessed by Brahmanas and its powers are dependent on its owner. The weapon is a rod capable of absorbing any incoming attack towards its owner. When Vishwamitra, in a fit of anger, unleashed the Brahmastra onto Vasishtha, it was his Brahmadanda that protected him from the lethal weapon.


title: Brahmastra

text: There are numerous instances within Sanskrit theological scriptures where the Brahmastra is used or its use is threatened, including:


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: Vladimir Mikhaylovich Komarov (; 16 March 1927 – 24 April 1967) was a Soviet test pilot, aerospace engineer, and cosmonaut. In October 1964, he commanded Voskhod 1, the first spaceflight to carry more than one crew member. He became the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly in space twice when he was selected as the solo pilot of Soyuz 1, its first crewed test flight. A parachute failure caused his Soyuz capsule to crash into the ground after re-entry on 24 April 1967, making him the first human to die in a space flight.


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: He was declared medically unfit for training or spaceflight twice while he was in the program but continued playing an active role. During his time at the cosmonaut training center, he contributed to space vehicle design, cosmonaut training, evaluation and public relations.


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: Komarov was born on 16 March 1927 in Moscow and grew up with his half-sister Matilda (born in 1915). His father was a labourer who worked at various low-paid jobs to support the family. In 1935, Komarov began his formal education in the local elementary school. Here he showed a natural aptitude for mathematics. In 1941, Komarov left school because of World War II and the German invasion of the Soviet Union, and he became a laborer on a collective farm. He showed an interest in aeronautics from an early age, and he collected magazines and pictures about aviation, in addition to making model aircraft and his own propeller. At the age of fifteen in 1942, Komarov entered the "1st Moscow Special Air Force School" to pursue his dream of becoming an aviator. Shortly thereafter, his family learned that Komarov's father had been killed in an "unknown war action". Of necessity because of the German invasion, the flight school was soon moved to the Tyumen region in Siberia for the duration of the war. Students there learned a wide variety of subjects besides aviation—including zoology and foreign languages. In 1945, Komarov graduated from flight school with honors. World War II hostilities ended before Komarov was called on to enter combat.


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: In 1946, Komarov completed his first year of training at the Chkalov Higher Air Force School in Borisoglebsk in Voronezh Oblast. He then completed his training at the A.K. Serov Military Aviation College in Bataisk. Komarov's mother died in 1948, seven months before his graduation in 1949, at which he received his pilot's wings and commission as a lieutenant in the Soviet Air Force.


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: In December 1949, Komarov served as the pilot of a fighter plane with the 383rd Regiment of the 42nd North Caucasian Fighter Air Division that was based in Grozny.


title: Vladimir Komarov

text: Komarov married Valentina Yakovlevna Kiselyova in October 1950. He was promoted to senior lieutenant in 1952, and he was later assigned as the chief pilot of the 486th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 279th Fighter Air Division in the Prikarpate Region. Komarov continued to fly in that position until 1954, and then he enrolled in an engineering course at the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy. In 1959, Komarov was promoted to the rank of senior engineer-lieutenant. Later that year he achieved his goal of becoming a test pilot at the Central Scientific Research Institute at Chkalovsky.