title: Batman (comic book)

text: Grant Morrison began their long-form "Batman" narrative in issue #655. The first story, "Batman and Son", reveals that Wayne is the father of a child named Damian, and attempts to steer the child away from the machinations of his mother, Talia al Ghul. From there, Morrison began an arc that saw an evil influential organization known as the Black Glove attempt to destroy everything Batman is and what he stands for. This culminated in the storyline "Batman R.I.P.", where the Black Glove initially succeeds in doing so, but is thwarted by Bruce Wayne's ability to preserve his sane mind while an erratic, alternate personality takes over. After stopping the Black Glove, Morrison moved Batman into their event series "Final Crisis", where Batman appears to be killed by Darkseid. In actuality, he was transported to the distant past and stranded there. Neil Gaiman wrote issue #686, which was the first part of a two-part story titled "" It served as a quasi-send off to a generation of Batman stories, intended to come off similarly to what Alan Moore's "" did for Superman prior to the conclusion of "Crisis on Infinite Earths". The story continued into an issue of "Detective Comics".


title: Batman (comic book)

text: After this, the main "Batman" series went on hiatus while the "" miniseries would have Dick Grayson assume the role of Batman in the wake of Bruce Wayne's disappearance from the present day DC Universe. Grant Morrison stayed involved in writing Batman, but moved to a new series titled "Batman and Robin", which followed the exploits of Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as the new Robin. Writer Judd Winick temporarily returned to the title for Grayson's first solo arc as Batman, before handing the writing and art duties off to Tony Daniel.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: Daniel remained the main writer on the series until issue #699. The title reached a milestone with the publication of "Batman" #700 (August 2010), which saw the return of Grant Morrison to the title and a collaboration with an art team that consisted of Daniel, Frank Quitely, Andy Kubert, and David Finch. The separate stories tied together to illustrate that the legacy of Batman is unending, and will survive into the furthest reaches of time. Morrison stayed on as writer on the series through issue #702, while simultaneously writing the "Batman and Robin" series and "" miniseries. Tony Daniel resumed writing and art duties with issue #704. Even after Bruce Wayne's return, Dick Grayson remained the star of this title through its final year, as well as being the main character in "Batman and Robin" and "Detective Comics". Bruce Wayne starred in two new titles, "Batman Incorporated" and "".


title: Batman (comic book)

text: On June 1, 2011, it was announced that all series taking place within the shared DC Universe would be either cancelled or relaunched with new #1 issues, after a new continuity was created in the wake of the "Flashpoint" event. "Batman" was no exception, and the first issue of the new series was released on September 21, 2011.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: DC Comics relaunched "Batman" with issue #1 in September 2011, written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Greg Capullo, as part of DC's company-wide title relaunch, "The New 52". As with all of the books associated with the DC relaunch, Bruce Wayne appears to be about five years younger than the previous incarnation of the character. Superheroes at large have appeared only in the past five years, and are viewed with, at best, suspicion, and, at worst, outright hostility. All of the characters that have served as Robin, except Stephanie Brown, have been accounted for as still having served at Batman's side in the new continuity. The stories build on recent developments, with most of the character's previous history remaining intact, and Bruce Wayne is again the only Batman, with Dick Grayson having returned to his role as Nightwing.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: The first story arc of the title, "The Court of Owls", focuses on Batman's discovery of a secret society in Gotham City that he had never known about before, dating back to the time of Gotham's founding and his ancestor Alan Wayne, and his battles against the Talons, the agents of the Court of Owls. This led to the first major "New 52" crossover, "Night of the Owls". The finale of the story sees Thomas Wayne Jr. as the head Talon of the Court of Owls in Gotham.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: The second arc was named "Death of the Family", a name-play on the "". It picked up on the cliffhanger involving the Joker from Tony Daniel's run on "Detective Comics".


title: Batman (comic book)

text: "Talon", a spin-off of the "Court of Owls" storyline, launched in September 2012 and focused on a rogue Talon from the Court.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: After a storyline involving Clayface and a one-shot dealing with the aftermath of "Death of the Family", Snyder's next arc was "". This followed up on "Batman" #0 and retold how Bruce Wayne became Batman, not done since Frank Miller's "". The "" storyline ran from October 2014 to April 2015, and concluded with the apparent deaths of both Batman and the Joker. James Gordon, having taken on the Batman mantle, became the main character of the series in June 2015.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: In the "Superheavy" storyline, Gordon encounters a new supervillain, Mr. Bloom, who is distributing various seed-like devices that grant their users extraordinary superpowers at the cost of their lives to select few individuals. It is also revealed that Bruce Wayne is alive, with no memories of his previous life, and has started dating Julie Madison. With Gordon unable to subdue Bloom, Bruce begins to regain his memories and realizes that he is Batman. Using a machine that Batman planned to use to implant his memories into clones to continue his lineage, he regains his memories and becomes Batman again. With Gordon's help, he takes down Bloom. Gordon is made Commissioner of the GCPD once again following issue #50.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: As part of "DC Rebirth", Batman was relaunched with a "Batman: Rebirth" one-shot issue and began shipping twice-monthly, starting with "Batman" (vol. 3) #1 in June 2016 (cover dated Aug. 2016). The series is written by Tom King and drawn by David Finch and Mikel Janín. The series saw the introduction of two vigilantes, Gotham and Gotham Girl, and reintroduced the romance between Batman and Catwoman. During King's run, the series explored Batman's psychological aspects, made Bane its main antagonist, and celebrated Batman and Catwoman's relationship in a long-running story arc that involved many mini-arcs. These mini-arcs included "I Am Gotham", "Night of the Monster Men", "I Am Suicide", "I Am Bane", "The War of Jokes and Riddles", "The Rules of Engagement", "The Wedding", "Cold Days", "Knightmares", "The Fall and the Fallen", and "City of Bane". The series returned to being shipped monthly in January 2020, with Tom King leaving the book with issue #85 for a 12-issue maxiseries titled "Batman/Catwoman", in order to conclude his Batman story. In issue #77, Bane killed Alfred,Bruce's long-time butler and father figure. Starting with "Batman" (vol. 3) #86, James Tynion IV became the main writer of the title.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: Following Tynion's departure from DC Comics, Joshua Williamson, who previously wrote the backup story in issue #106, briefly became the new head writer in December 2021 starting with issue #118. Chip Zdarsky then became the head writer with artist Jorge Jimenez returning after having previously illustrated parts of Tynion's run. Their run began with issue #125, which released on July 5, 2022 and started with "Failsafe", a six-issue story arc.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: The "Batman" series has had "Annuals" published beginning in 1961. Seven issues of "Batman Annual" were published from 1961–1964. An additional 17 issues were published from 1982 to 2000 and the numbering continued from the 1961 series. Writer Mike W. Barr and artist Trevor Von Eeden crafted "Batman Annual" #8 (1982) and Von Eeden has noted that it is "the book I’m most proud of, in my 25 year career at DC Comics. I was able to ink it myself, and also got my girlfriend at the time, Lynn Varley, to colour it - her first job in comics."


title: Batman (comic book)

text: Four more "Annuals" were published from 2006 to 2011, again with the numbering continued from the previous series. In 2012, a new "Annual" series was begun with a #1 issue.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: The first stories appearing in the "Batman" comic book were written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, though Finger went uncredited for years thereafter. These early stories depicted a vengeful Batman, not hesitant to kill when he saw it as a necessary sacrifice. In one of the early stories, he is depicted using a gun and metal bat to stop a group of giant assailants and again with a group of average criminals. The Joker, a psychopath who is notorious for using a special toxin called Joker venom that kills and mutilates his victims, remains one of the most prolific and notorious Batman villains created in this time period. By the end of the Joker's second appearance in the series, Batman has, since his debut in 'Detective Comics' killed round nineteen people and one vampire in all, with the Joker having killed only thirteen people, and Robin one. Later, during the Silver Age, this type of supervillain changed from disturbing psychological assaults to the use of amusing gimmicks.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: Typically, the primary challenges that the Batman faced in this era were derived from villains who were purely evil; however, by the 1970s, the motivations of these characters, including obsessive-compulsion, child abuse, and environmental fanaticism, were being explored more thoroughly. Batman himself also underwent a transformation and became a much less one-dimensional character, struggling with deeply rooted internal conflicts. Although not canonical, Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" introduced a significant evolution of the Batman's character in his eponymous series; he became uncompromising and relentless in his struggle to revitalize Gotham. The Batman often exhibited behavior that Gotham's elite labeled as excessively violent, as well as antisocial tendencies. This aspect of the Batman's personality was also toned down considerably in the wake of the DC-wide crossover "Infinite Crisis", wherein Batman experienced a nervous breakdown and reconsidered his philosophy and approaches to his relationships. Currently, the Batman's attributes and personality are said to have been greatly influenced by the traditional characterization by Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams' portrayals during the 1970s, although hints of the Miller interpretation appear in certain aspects of his character.


title: Batman (comic book)

text: These are crossovers that include most—if not all—of the Batman-related titles published at the time.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Shortwave radio is radio transmission using shortwave (SW) radio frequencies. There is no official definition of the band, but the range always includes all of the high frequency band (HF), which extends from 3 to 30 MHz (100 to 10 metres); above the medium frequency band (MF), to the bottom of the VHF band.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Radio waves in the shortwave band can be reflected or refracted from a layer of electrically charged atoms in the atmosphere called the ionosphere. Therefore, short waves directed at an angle into the sky can be reflected back to Earth at great distances, beyond the horizon. This is called skywave or "skip" propagation. Thus shortwave radio can be used for communication over very long distances, in contrast to radio waves of higher frequency, which travel in straight lines (line-of-sight propagation) and are limited by the visual horizon, about 64 km (40 miles).


title: Shortwave radio

text: Shortwave broadcasts of radio programs played an important role in the early days of radio history. In World War II it was used as a propaganda tool for an international audience. The heyday of international shortwave broadcasting was during the Cold War between 1960 and 1980.


title: Shortwave radio

text: With the wide implementation of other technologies for the distribution of radio programs, such as satellite radio and cable broadcasting as well as IP-based transmissions, shortwave broadcasting lost importance. Initiatives for the digitization of broadcasting did not bear fruit either, and so , few broadcasters continue to broadcast programs on shortwave.


title: Shortwave radio

text: However, shortwave remains important in war zones, such as in the Russo-Ukrainian war, and shortwave broadcasts can be transmitted over thousands of miles from a single transmitter, making it difficult for government authorities to censor them.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The name "shortwave" originated during the beginning of radio in the early 20th century, when the radio spectrum was divided into long wave (LW), medium wave (MW), and short wave (SW) bands based on the length of the wave. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m (1,500 kHz) which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used for radio communications. The broadcast medium wave band now extends above the 200 m / 1,500 kHz limit.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Early long-distance radio telegraphy used long waves, below 300 kilohertz (kHz). The drawbacks to this system included a very limited spectrum available for long-distance communication, and the very expensive transmitters, receivers and gigantic antennas. Long waves are also difficult to beam directionally, resulting in a major loss of power over long distances. Prior to the 1920s, the shortwave frequencies above 1.5 MHz were regarded as useless for long-distance communication and were designated in many countries for amateur use.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, commissioned his assistant Charles Samuel Franklin to carry out a large-scale study into the transmission characteristics of short-wavelength waves and to determine their suitability for long-distance transmissions. Franklin rigged up a large antenna at Poldhu Wireless Station, Cornwall, running on 25 kW of power. In June and July 1923, wireless transmissions were completed during nights on 97 meters (about 3 MHz) from Poldhu to Marconi's yacht "Elettra" in the Cape Verde Islands.


title: Shortwave radio

text: In September 1924, Marconi arranged for transmissions to be made day and night on 32 meters (9.4& MHz) from Poldhu to his yacht in the harbour at Beirut, to which he had sailed, and was "astonished" to find he could receive signals "throughout the day". Franklin went on to refine the directional transmission by inventing the curtain array aerial system. In July 1924, Marconi entered into contracts with the British General Post Office (GPO) to install high-speed shortwave telegraphy circuits from London to Australia, India, South Africa and Canada as the main element of the Imperial Wireless Chain. The UK-to-Canada shortwave "Beam Wireless Service" went into commercial operation on 25 October 1926. Beam Wireless Services from the UK to Australia, South Africa and India went into service in 1927.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Shortwave communications began to grow rapidly in the 1920s. By 1928, more than half of long-distance communications had moved from transoceanic cables and longwave wireless services to shortwave, and the overall volume of transoceanic shortwave communications had vastly increased. Shortwave stations had cost and efficiency advantages over massive longwave wireless installations. However, some commercial longwave communications stations remained in use until the 1960s. Long-distance radio circuits also reduced the need for new cables, although the cables maintained their advantages of high security and a much more reliable and better-quality signal than shortwave.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The cable companies began to lose large sums of money in 1927. A serious financial crisis threatened viability of cable companies that were vital to strategic British interests. The British government convened the Imperial Wireless and Cable Conference in 1928 "to examine the situation that had arisen as a result of the competition of Beam Wireless with the Cable Services". It recommended and received government approval for all overseas cable and wireless resources of the Empire to be merged into one system controlled by a newly formed company in 1929, Imperial and International Communications Ltd. The name of the company was changed to Cable and Wireless Ltd. in 1934.


title: Shortwave radio

text: A resurgence of long-distance cables began in 1956 with the laying of TAT-1 across the Atlantic Ocean, the first voice frequency cable on this route. This provided 36 high-quality telephone channels and was soon followed by even higher-capacity cables all around the world. Competition from these cables soon ended the economic viability of shortwave radio for commercial communication.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Amateur radio operators also discovered that long-distance communication was possible on shortwave bands. Early long-distance services used surface wave propagation at very low frequencies, which are attenuated along the path at wavelengths shorter than 1,000 meters. Longer distances and higher frequencies using this method meant more signal loss. This, and the difficulties of generating and detecting higher frequencies, made discovery of shortwave propagation difficult for commercial services.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Radio amateurs may have conducted the first successful transatlantic tests in December 1921, operating in the 200 meter mediumwave band (near 1,500 kHz, inside the modern AM broadcast band), which at that time was the shortest wavelength / highest frequency available to amateur radio. In 1922 hundreds of North American amateurs were heard in Europe on 200 meters and at least 20 North American amateurs heard amateur signals from Europe. The first two-way communications between North American and Hawaiian amateurs began in 1922 at 200 meters. Although operation on wavelengths shorter than 200 meters was technically illegal (but tolerated at the time as the authorities mistakenly believed that such frequencies were useless for commercial or military use), amateurs began to experiment with those wavelengths using newly available vacuum tubes shortly after World War I.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Extreme interference at the longer edge of the 150–200 meter band – the official wavelengths allocated to amateurs by the Second National Radio Conference in 1923 – forced amateurs to shift to shorter and shorter wavelengths; however, amateurs were limited by regulation to wavelengths longer than 150 meters (2 MHz). A few fortunate amateurs who obtained special permission for experimental communications at wavelengths shorter than 150 meters completed hundreds of long-distance two-way contacts on 100 meters (3 MHz) in 1923 including the first transatlantic two-way contacts.


title: Shortwave radio

text: By 1924 many additional specially licensed amateurs were routinely making transoceanic contacts at distances of 6,000 miles (9,600 km) and more. On 21 September 1924 several amateurs in California completed two-way contacts with an amateur in New Zealand. On 19 October amateurs in New Zealand and England completed a 90 minute two-way contact nearly halfway around the world. On 10 October the Third National Radio Conference made three shortwave bands available to U.S. amateurs at 80 meters (3.75 MHz), 40 meters (7 MHz) and 20 meters (14 MHz). These were allocated worldwide, while the 10 meter band (28 MHz) was created by the Washington International Radiotelegraph Conference on 25 November 1927. The 15 meter band (21 MHz) was opened to amateurs in the United States on 1 May 1952.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Shortwave radio frequency energy is capable of reaching any location on the Earth as it is influenced by ionospheric reflection back to the earth by the ionosphere, (a phenomenon known as "skywave propagation"). A typical phenomenon of shortwave propagation is the occurrence of a skip zone where reception fails. With a fixed working frequency, large changes in ionospheric conditions may create skip zones at night.


title: Shortwave radio

text: As a result of the multi-layer structure of the ionosphere, propagation often simultaneously occurs on different paths, scattered by the ‘E’ or ‘F’ layer and with different numbers of hops, a phenomenon that may be disturbed for certain techniques. Particularly for lower frequencies of the shortwave band, absorption of radio frequency energy in the lowest ionospheric layer, the ‘D’ layer, may impose a serious limit. This is due to collisions of electrons with neutral molecules, absorbing some of a radio frequency's energy and converting it to heat. Predictions of skywave propagation depend on:


title: Shortwave radio

text: Amplitude modulation is the simplest type and the most commonly used for shortwave broadcasting. The instantaneous amplitude of the carrier is controlled by the amplitude of the signal (speech, or music, for example). At the receiver, a simple detector recovers the desired modulation signal from the carrier.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Single-sideband transmission is a form of amplitude modulation but in effect filters the result of modulation. An amplitude-modulated signal has frequency components both above and below the carrier frequency. If one set of these components is eliminated as well as the residual carrier, only the remaining set is transmitted. This reduces power in the transmission, as roughly of the energy sent by an AM signal is in the carrier, which is not needed to recover the information contained in the signal. It also reduces signal bandwidth, enabling less than one-half the AM signal bandwidth to be used.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The drawback is the receiver is more complicated, since it must re-create the carrier to recover the signal. Small errors in the detection process greatly affect the pitch of the received signal. As a result, single sideband is not used for music or general broadcast. Single sideband is used for long-range voice communications by ships and aircraft, citizen's band, and amateur radio operators. Lower sideband (LSB) is customarily used below 9 MHz and USB (upper sideband) above 9 MHz.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Vestigial sideband transmits the carrier and one complete sideband, but filters out most of the other sideband. It is a compromise between AM and SSB, enabling simple receivers to be used, but requires almost as much transmitter power as AM. Its main advantage is that only half the bandwidth of an AM signal is used. It is used by the Canadian standard time signal station CHU. Vestigial sideband was used for analog television and by ATSC, the digital TV system used in North America.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Narrow-band frequency modulation (NBFM or NFM) is used typically above 20 MHz. Because of the larger bandwidth required, NBFM is commonly used for VHF communication. Regulations limit the bandwidth of a signal transmitted in the HF bands, and the advantages of frequency modulation are greatest if the FM signal has a wide bandwidth. NBFM is limited to short-range transmissions due to the multiphasic distortions created by the ionosphere.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM) is a digital modulation for use on bands below 30 MHz. It is a digital signal, like the data modes, below, but is for transmitting audio, like the analog modes above.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Continuous wave (CW) is on-and-off keying of a sine-wave carrier, used for Morse code communications and Hellschreiber facsimile-based teleprinter transmissions. It is a data mode, although often listed separately. It is typically received via lower or upper SSB modes.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Radioteletype, fax, digital, slow-scan television, and other systems use forms of frequency-shift keying or audio subcarriers on a shortwave carrier. These generally require special equipment to decode, such as software on a computer equipped with a sound card.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Note that on modern computer-driven systems, digital modes are typically sent by coupling a computer's sound output to the SSB input of a radio.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), organized under the auspices of the International Telecommunication Union, allocates bands for various services in conferences every few years. The last WRC took place in 2019.


title: Shortwave radio

text: At WRC-97 in 1997, the following bands were allocated for international broadcasting. AM shortwave broadcasting channels are allocated with a 5 kHz separation for traditional analog audio broadcasting.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Although countries generally follow the table above, there may be small differences between countries or regions. For example, in the official bandplan of the Netherlands, the 49 m band starts at 5.95 MHz, the 41 m band ends at 7.45 MHz, the 11 m band starts at 25.67 MHz, and the 120 m, 90 m, and 60 m bands are absent altogether. Additionally, international broadcasters sometimes operate outside the normal WRC-allocated bands or use off-channel frequencies. This is done for practical reasons, or to attract attention in crowded bands (60 m, 49 m, 40 m, 41 m, 31 m, 25 m).


title: Shortwave radio

text: The new digital audio broadcasting format for shortwave DRM operates 10 kHz or 20 kHz channels. There are some ongoing discussions with respect to specific band allocation for DRM, as it mainly transmitted in 10 kHz format.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The power used by shortwave transmitters ranges from less than one watt for some experimental and amateur radio transmissions to 500 kilowatts and higher for intercontinental broadcasters and over-the-horizon radar. Shortwave transmitting centers often use specialized antenna designs (like the ALLISS antenna technology) to concentrate radio energy at the target area.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The Asia-Pacific Telecommunity estimates that there are approximately 600 million shortwave broadcast-radio receivers in use in 2002. WWCR claims that there are 1.5 billion shortwave receivers worldwide.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Many hobbyists listen to shortwave broadcasters. In some cases, the goal is to hear as many stations from as many countries as possible "(DXing)"; others listen to specialized shortwave utility, or "ute", transmissions such as maritime, naval, aviation, or military signals. Others focus on intelligence signals from numbers stations, stations which transmit strange broadcast usually for intelligence operations, or the two way communications by amateur radio operators. Some short wave listeners behave analogously to "lurkers" on the Internet, in that they listen only, and never attempt to send out their own signals. Other listeners participate in clubs, or actively send and receive QSL cards, or become involved with amateur radio and start transmitting on their own.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Many listeners tune the shortwave bands for the programmes of stations broadcasting to a general audience (such as Radio Taiwan International, China Radio International, Voice of America, Radio France Internationale, BBC World Service, Voice of Korea, Radio Free Sarawak etc.). Today, through the evolution of the Internet, the hobbyist can listen to shortwave signals via remotely controlled or web controlled shortwave receivers around the world, even without owning a shortwave radio. Many international broadcasters offer live streaming audio on their websites and a number have closed their shortwave service entirely, or severely curtailed it, in favour of internet transmission.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Shortwave listeners, or SWLs, can obtain QSL cards from broadcasters, utility stations or amateur radio operators as trophies of the hobby. Some stations even give out special certificates, pennants, stickers and other tokens and promotional materials to shortwave listeners.


title: Shortwave radio

text: Some musicians have been attracted to the unique aural characteristics of shortwave radio which – due to the nature of amplitude modulation, varying propagation conditions, and the presence of interference – generally has lower fidelity than local broadcasts (particularly via FM stations). Shortwave transmissions often have bursts of distortion, and "hollow" sounding loss of clarity at certain aural frequencies, altering the harmonics of natural sound and creating at times a strange "spacey" quality due to echoes and phase distortion. Evocations of shortwave reception distortions have been incorporated into rock and classical compositions, by means of delays or feedback loops, equalizers, or even playing shortwave radios as live instruments. Snippets of broadcasts have been mixed into electronic sound collages and live musical instruments, by means of analogue tape loops or digital samples. Sometimes the sounds of instruments and existing musical recordings are altered by remixing or equalizing, with various distortions added, to replicate the garbled effects of shortwave radio reception.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The first attempts by serious composers to incorporate radio effects into music may be those of the Russian physicist and musician Léon Theremin, who perfected a form of radio oscillator as a musical instrument in 1928 (regenerative circuits in radios of the time were prone to breaking into oscillation, adding various tonal harmonics to music and speech); and in the same year, the development of a French instrument called the Ondes Martenot by its inventor Maurice Martenot, a French cellist and former wireless telegrapher. Karlheinz Stockhausen used shortwave radio and effects in works including "Hymnen" (1966–1967), "Kurzwellen" (1968) – adapted for the Beethoven Bicentennial in "Opus 1970" with filtered and distorted snippets of Beethoven pieces – "Spiral" (1968), "Pole", "Expo" (both 1969–1970), and "Michaelion" (1997).


title: Shortwave radio

text: Cypriot composer Yannis Kyriakides incorporated shortwave numbers station transmissions in his 1999 "ConSPIracy cantata".


title: Shortwave radio

text: Holger Czukay, a student of Stockhausen, was one of the first to use shortwave in a rock music context. In 1975, German electronic music band Kraftwerk recorded a full length concept album around simulated radiowave and shortwave sounds, entitled "Radio-Activity". The The's Radio Cineola monthly broadcasts drew heavily on shortwave radio sound.


title: Shortwave radio

text: The development of direct broadcasts from satellites has reduced the demand for shortwave receiver hardware, but there are still a great number of shortwave broadcasters. A new digital radio technology, Digital Radio Mondiale (DRM), is expected to improve the quality of shortwave audio from very poor to standards comparable to the FM broadcast band. The future of shortwave radio is threatened by the rise of power line communication (PLC), also known as Broadband over Power Lines (BPL), which uses a data stream transmitted over unshielded power lines. As the BPL frequencies used overlap with shortwave bands, severe distortions can make listening to analog shortwave radio signals near power lines difficult or impossible.


title: Shortwave radio

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the BBC World Service launched two new shortwave frequencies for listeners in Ukraine and Russia, broadcasting English-language news updates in an effort to avoid censorship by the Russian state.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: , art name , was a Japanese writer active in the Taishō period in Japan. He is regarded as the "father of the Japanese short story", and Japan's premier literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, is named after him. He committed suicide at the age of 35 through an overdose of barbital.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was born in Irifune, Kyōbashi, Tokyo City (present-day Akashi, Chūō, Tokyo), the eldest son of businessman Toshizō Niihara and his wife Fuku. His family owned a milk production business. His mother experienced a mental illness shortly after his birth, so he was adopted and raised by his maternal uncle, Dōshō Akutagawa, from whom he received the Akutagawa family name. He was interested in classical Chinese literature from an early age, as well as in the works of Mori Ōgai and Natsume Sōseki.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: He entered the First High School in 1910, developing relationships with classmates such as Kan Kikuchi, Kume Masao, Yūzō Yamamoto, and , all of whom would later become authors. He began writing after entering Tokyo Imperial University in 1913, where he studied English literature.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: While still a student he proposed marriage to a childhood friend, Yayoi Yoshida, but his adoptive family did not approve the union. In 1916 he became engaged to Fumi Tsukamoto, whom he married in 1918. They had three children: (1920–1981) was an actor, Takashi Akutagawa (1922–1945) was killed as a student draftee in Burma, and Yasushi Akutagawa (1925–1989) was a composer.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: After graduation, he taught briefly at the Naval Engineering School in Yokosuka, Kanagawa as an English language instructor, before deciding to devote his full efforts to writing.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: In 1914, Akutagawa and his former high school friends revived the literary journal "Shinshichō" ("New Currents of Thought"), publishing translations of William Butler Yeats and Anatole France along with their own works. Akutagawa published his second short story "Rashōmon" the following year in the literary magazine "Teikoku Bungaku" ("Imperial Literature"), while still a student. The story, based on a twelfth-century tale, was not well received by Akutagawa's friends, who criticized it extensively. Nonetheless, Akutagawa gathered the courage to visit his idol, Natsume Sōseki, in December 1915 for Sōseki's weekly literary circles. In November, he published his short story Rashomon on "Teikoku Mongaku", a literary magazine. In early 1916 he published "Hana" ("The Nose", 1916), which attracted a letter of praise from Sōseki and secured Akutagawa his first taste of fame.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: It was also at this time that he started writing haiku under the "haigo" (or pen-name) "Gaki". Akutagawa followed with a series of short stories set in Heian period, Edo period or early Meiji period Japan. These stories reinterpreted classical works and historical incidents. Examples of these stories include: "Gesaku zanmai" ("A Life Devoted to Gesaku", 1917) and "Kareno-shō" ("Gleanings from a Withered Field", 1918), "Jigoku hen" ("Hell Screen", 1918); "Hōkyōnin no shi" ("The Death of a Christian", 1918), and "Butōkai" ("The Ball", 1920). Akutagawa was a strong opponent of naturalism. He published "Mikan" ("Mandarin Oranges", 1919) and "Aki" ("Autumn", 1920) which have more modern settings.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: In 1921, Akutagawa interrupted his writing career to spend four months in China, as a reporter for the "Osaka Mainichi Shinbun". The trip was stressful and he suffered from various illnesses, from which his health would never recover. Shortly after his return he published "Yabu no naka" ("In a Grove", 1922). During the trip, Akutagawa visited numerous cities of southeastern China including Nanjing, Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou. Before his travel, he wrote a short story ""; concerning the Chinese Christian community; according to his own imagination of Nanjing influenced by Classical Chinese literature.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Akutagawa's stories were influenced by his belief that the practice of literature should be universal and can bring together Western and Japanese cultures. This can be seen in the way that Akutagawa uses existing works from a variety of cultures and time periods and either rewrites the story with modern sensibilities or creates new stories using ideas from multiple sources. Culture and the formation of a cultural identity is also a major theme in several of Akutagawa's works. In these stories, he explores the formation of cultural identity during periods in history where Japan was most open to outside influences. An example of this is his story "Hōkyōnin no Shi" ("The Martyr", 1918) which is set in the early missionary period.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: The portrayal of women in Akutagawa's stories was primarily shaped by the influence of three women who acted as his mother figures; most significant was his biological mother Fuku, from whom he worried about inheriting her mental illness. Although Akutagawa was removed from Fuku eight months after his birth, he identified strongly with her and believed that, if at any moment he might go mad, life was meaningless. His aunt Fuki played the most prominent role in his upbringing, controlling much of Akutagawa's life as well as demanding much of his attention, especially as she grew older. Women that appear in Akutagawa's stories, much like the women he identified as mothers, were mostly written as dominating, aggressive, deceitful, and selfish. Conversely, men were often represented as the victims of such women.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: The final phase of Akutagawa's literary career was marked by his deteriorating physical and mental health. Much of his work during this period is distinctly autobiographical, some even taken directly from his diaries. His works during this period include "Daidōji Shinsuke no hansei" ("The Early Life of Daidōji Shinsuke", 1925) and "Tenkibo" ("Death Register", 1926).


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Akutagawa had a highly publicized dispute with Jun'ichirō Tanizaki over the importance of structure versus lyricism in story. Akutagawa argued that structure, how the story was told, was more important than the content or plot of the story, whereas Tanizaki argued the opposite.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Akutagawa's final works include "Kappa" (1927), a satire based on a creature from Japanese folklore, "Haguruma" ("Spinning Gears", 1927), "Aru ahō no isshō" ("A Fool's Life"), and "Bungeiteki na, amari ni bungeiteki na" ("Literary, All Too Literary", 1927).


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Towards the end of his life, Akutagawa began suffering from visual hallucinations and anxiety over the fear that he had inherited his mother's mental disorder. In 1927 he survived a suicide attempt, together with a friend of his wife. He later died of suicide after taking an overdose of Veronal, which had been given to him by Mokichi Saitō on 24 July of the same year. In his will he wrote that he felt a about the future. He was 35 years old.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: Akutagawa wrote over 150 short stories during his brief life, a number of which were adapted into other art forms: Akira Kurosawa's classic 1950 film "Rashōmon" retells Akutagawa's "In a Grove", with the title and the frame scenes set in the Rashomon Gate taken from Akutagawa's "Rashōmon". Ukrainian composer Victoria Poleva wrote the ballet "Gagaku" (1994), based on Akutagawa's "Hell Screen". Japanese composer Mayako Kubo wrote an opera named "Rashomon", based on Akutagawa's story. The German version premiered in Graz, Austria in 1996, and the Japanese version in Tokyo in 2002.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: In 1930, writer Tatsuo Hori, who saw himself as a disciple of Akutagawa, published his short story "Sei kazoku" (lit. "The Holy Family"), which was written under the impression of Akutagawa's death and even paid reference to the dead mentor in the shape of the deceased character Kuki. In 1935, Akutagawa's lifelong friend Kan Kikuchi established the literary award for promising new writers, the Akutagawa Prize, in his honor.


title: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

text: In 2020 NHK produced and aired the film "A Stranger in Shanghai". It depicts Akutagawa's time in as a reporter in the city and stars Ryuhei Matsuda.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Miracle on 34th Street (initially released as The Big Heart in the United Kingdom) is a 1947 American Christmas comedy-drama film released by 20th Century Fox, written and directed by George Seaton and based on a story by Valentine Davies. It stars Maureen O'Hara, John Payne, Natalie Wood, and Edmund Gwenn. The story takes place between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day in New York City, and focuses on the effect of a department store Santa Claus who claims to be the real Santa. The film has become a perennial Christmas favorite.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: "Miracle on 34th Street" won three Academy Awards: Gwenn for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Valentine Davies for Best Writing, Original Story, and George Seaton for Best Writing, Screenplay. The film was nominated for Best Picture, losing to "Gentleman's Agreement". In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant". The Academy Film Archive preserved "Miracle on 34th Street" in 2009.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Davies also wrote a short novelization of the tale, which was published by Harcourt Brace simultaneously with the film's release.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Kris Kringle is indignant to find that the man assigned to play Santa in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is intoxicated. When he complains to event director Doris Walker, she persuades Kris to take his place. He does so well that he is hired to play Santa at Macy's New York City store on 34th Street.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Ignoring instructions from the toy department head, Mr. Shellhammer, to recommend overstocked items to undecided shoppers, Kris directs one woman to another store to fulfill her son's Christmas request. Impressed by Kris's honesty and helpfulness, she informs Shellhammer that she will now become a loyal Macy's customer.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Attorney Fred Gailey, Doris's neighbor, takes the young divorcée's daughter Susan to see Santa. Doris has raised her to not believe in fairy tales, but Susan is shaken after seeing Kris speak Dutch with a girl who does not know English. Doris asks Kringle to tell Susan that he is not Santa, but he insists that he is.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Worried, Doris decides to fire him, but Kris has generated so much positive publicity and goodwill that the store’s owner promises bonuses. To alleviate Doris's misgivings, Granville Sawyer is asked to administer a "psychological evaluation" and recommends Kris’ dismissal. Meanwhile Susan shows Kris a magazine photo of her dream house and tells him she wants it for Christmas; reluctantly he promises to do his best.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: In the company cafeteria, young employee Alfred tells Kris that Sawyer convinced him that he is unstable simply because he is kind-hearted. Kris immediately goes to confront Sawyer, eventually striking him on the head with an umbrella. Sawyer exaggerates his pain to have Kris confined to Bellevue Hospital. Tricked into cooperating, and believing Doris to be in on the deception, Kris deliberately fails his examination and is recommended for permanent commitment. However, Fred persuades Kris not to give up.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: At a hearing before Judge Henry X. Harper, District Attorney Thomas Mara gets Kris to assert that he is Santa Claus and rests his case, asking Harper to rule that Santa does not exist. In private, Harper's political adviser, Charlie Halloran, warns him that doing so would be disastrous for his upcoming reelection bid. Harper buys time by hearing further evidence.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Fred calls Macy as a witness and persuades him to admit that he does believe in Santa. On leaving the stand, Macy fires Sawyer. Next, Fred calls Mara's own young son, who testifies that his father told him that Santa was real. Mara has to concede the point, but goes on to demand that Fred prove that Kris is "the one and only" Santa Claus on the basis of some competent authority by the following day.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Meanwhile, Susan writes Kris a letter to cheer him up, which Doris also signs. When a New York Post Office mail sorter sees Susan's letter, which is addressed to Kris at the New York courthouse, he suggests delivering all of the dead letters addressed to Santa Claus to Kris. As court resumes, Fred is told of the delivery of mailbags to the courthouse; he argues that the Post Office—a branch of the U.S. federal government—has acknowledged that Kris is the one and only Santa Claus by delivering the letters. When the judge insists on seeing them, Fred has them dump bag after bag on Harper's desk. Half concealed behind them, Harper dismisses the case.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: On Christmas morning, Susan loses faith in Kris when he admits he was not able to get her the house she wanted. However, after Kris offers Fred and Doris a route home that avoids traffic, Susan sees her dream house with a "For Sale" sign in front. Demanding that Fred stop the car, she joyfully runs into the house, exclaiming "Mr. Kringle IS Santa Claus!" Fred learns that Doris had encouraged Susan to have faith and suggests they purchase the house. He then boasts that he must be a great lawyer since he proved an eccentric old man was Santa. However, when he and Doris spot a cane in the house that looks just like Kris's, he is not so sure.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: "Miracle on 34th Street" was shot on location in New York City, with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade sequences filmed live while the 1946 parade was happening. "It was a mad scramble to get all the shots we needed, and we got to do each scene only once," Maureen O'Hara recalled in her memoir. "It was bitterly cold that day, and Edmund and I envied Natalie (Wood) and John Payne, who were watching the parade from a window."


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Although the film is set during the Christmas season, studio head Darryl F. Zanuck insisted that it be released in May, arguing that more people go to the movies in warmer weather. The studio rushed to promote it while keeping its Christmas setting a secret. Fox's promotional trailer depicted a fictional producer roaming the studio backlot and encountering such stars as Rex Harrison, Anne Baxter, Peggy Ann Garner, and Dick Haymes extolling the virtues of the film. In addition, the movie posters prominently featured O'Hara and Payne, with Gwenn's character kept in the background. The film opened in New York City at the Roxy Theatre on June 4, 1947. By contrast, modern home video packaging has Gwenn and Wood dominating the imagery, with the DVD release having Kringle in his Santa Claus costume.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: O'Hara was initially reluctant to take the role, having recently moved back to post-war Ireland. She immediately changed her mind after reading the script and came back to the United States for the film.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Arthur Jacobson, assistant director, filmed the Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving morning with nine cameras simultaneously. He said he "plunked actors Edmund Gwenn and Natalie Wood in the department store cafeteria line during a weekday lunch-rush". When Maureen O'Hara requested a special police escort for a Christmas shopping spree through Macy's he said "I know New Yorkers. They aren't going to pay any attention to you. And don't wear a bandanna around your head or dark glasses. Just be normal."


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Throughout the process of getting this script accepted by the PCA, the movie underwent multiple different title changes, starting as "My Heart Tells Me" and then progressing into "The Big Heart", "It’s Only Human", "Meet Me at Dawn", and finally ended with the name "Miracle on 34th Street". These title changes all happened within a four-month time period. These title changes occurred while the filmmakers were fixing any other discrepancies that the PCA required them to fix before the production of the film could begin.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: "Miracle on 34th Street" mostly received positive reviews from critics. Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" said: "For all those blasé skeptics who do not believe in Santa Claus—and likewise for all those natives who have grown cynical about New York—but most especially for all those patrons who have grown weary of the monotonies of the screen, let us heartily recommend the Roxy's new picture, "Miracle on 34th Street". As a matter of fact, let's go further: let's catch its spirit and heartily proclaim that it is the freshest little picture in a long time, and maybe even the best comedy of this year." Today, it is considered by many to be one of the best films of 1947. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has "Certified Fresh" rating based on reviews from critics. The site's consensus states: "Irrefutable proof that gentle sentimentalism can be the chief ingredient in a wonderful film, Miracle on 34th Street delivers a warm holiday message without resorting to treacle."


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: The Catholic Legion of Decency gave the movie a "B", "morally objectionable in part" rating. This was mainly due to the fact that O'Hara portrayed a divorcée in the film.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Edmund Gwenn), Best Writing, Original Story (Valentine Davies) and Best Writing, Screenplay. It was also nominated for Best Picture, losing to "Gentleman's Agreement".


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: It was ranked ninth by the American Film Institute on "100 Years... 100 Cheers", a list of America's most inspiring films. "Miracle on 34th Street" was listed as the fifth best film in the fantasy genre in the American Film Institute's "Ten top Ten" lists in 2008.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: In 2005, "Miracle on 34th Street" was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: In 1985, it became one of the first full-length black and white films to be colorized. The 4½-month process was carried out by Color Systems Technology, Inc. In 1993, this version was released on VHS and LaserDisc, and was followed four years later by a "50th Anniversary Edition" on both formats, remastered by THX.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: The first DVD release was in October 1999, featuring the B&W version alongside the original theatrical trailer and a TV spot. In November 2006, it was re-released as a two-disc "Special Edition" DVD, with disc one containing an "all new colorized version" carried out by Legend Films. The second disc had the original black-and-white version and numerous extras, including "The 20th Century Fox Hour"s 1955 TV remake. Both discs also included a full-length audio commentary by Maureen O'Hara. The B&W disc has since been re-released several times, including in a pairing with the 1994 remake.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: In October 2009, 20th Century Fox released the B&W version on Blu-ray with all previous extras, bar the TV remake.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: A 1994 feature film starred Richard Attenborough, Elizabeth Perkins, Dylan McDermott, J. T. Walsh, Timothy Shea, James Remar, Jane Leeves, Simon Jones, William Windom and Mara Wilson. It was adapted by John Hughes from the Seaton script, and directed by Les Mayfield. Due to Macy's refusal to give permission to use its name, it was replaced by the fictitious "Cole's". "We feel the original stands on its own and could not be improved upon," said Laura Melillo, a spokeswoman for Macy's. Gimbels no longer existed by 1994 so its name was replaced by the name of the fictional "Shopper's Express". Alvin Greenman (Alfred in the original version) played a doorman. The 1994 remake of the film had a more serious tone than the original 1947 film had and a large portion of the plot was rewritten, although the majority of both the plot and the characters remained intact. The 1994 film also added a subtext which described concerns about religious faith.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: "Lux Radio Theatre" aired a one-hour adaptation of the movie on three occasions: on December 22, 1947, which starred the original cast including Natalie Wood; on December 20, 1948, without Natalie Wood's participation; and on December 21, 1954. There were also two broadcasts on "Screen Directors Playhouse": as a half-hour play on December 23, 1949; and then as a one-hour play on December 21, 1950. All of these adaptations had Edmund Gwenn reprising his screen role.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: The novella was adapted into a stage play by Will Severin, Patricia Di Benedetto Snyder and John Vreeke in 2000. It is a favorite in many community and regional theaters during the Christmas season. The characters' names are those used in the novella, and the stage setting is distinctly late 1940s. Production rights are held by Samuel French, Inc.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: A 1955 one-hour television adaptation of the movie starred Thomas Mitchell as Kris, Macdonald Carey as Fred, Teresa Wright as Doris, and Sandy Descher as Susan. This version did not show the drunken Santa at all. Titled "The Miracle on 34th Street", it originally aired as an episode of "The 20th Century Fox Hour". It was later re-run as "Meet Mr. Kringle".


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: Ed Wynn played Kris in a 1959 television adaptation of the movie. Also featured was Orson Bean. It was broadcast live and in color on NBC the day after Thanksgiving. NBC made a kinescope of the program, probably for broadcasting opening night on the West Coast. The copy was in a large collection of kinescopes donated by NBC to the Library of Congress and later unearthed by Richard Finegan, who reported his experiences in the December 2005 issue of "Classic Images".


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: A 1973 television version featured Jane Alexander, David Hartman, Roddy McDowall, Sebastian Cabot as Kris (without his natural beard; he was forced to shave and wear a false beard for the role), Suzanne Davidson, Jim Backus, David Doyle and Tom Bosley. It was adapted by Jeb Rosebrook from the George Seaton screenplay, and directed by Fielder Cook. Mrs. Walker's first name is changed to Karen in this version. This would prove to be the final version in which the department store was actually Macy's. David Doyle, who played R. H. Macy in this version, had played Mr. Sawyer in the original Broadway cast of "Here's Love" 10 years earlier.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: In 2012, the flagship Macy's Department Store at Herald Square in New York City featured a 30-minute puppet version of the story within its Santaland display, featuring the voice talents of Broadway stars Brian Stokes Mitchell and Victoria Clark.


title: Miracle on 34th Street

text: A short clip of the film was seen on the kitchen television screen in "Home Alone" (a 1990 Christmas film released by Fox) and also the ending was seen in the den television screen in the 1996 film "The Preacher's Wife".


title: Perceptron

text: In machine learning, the perceptron (or McCulloch-Pitts neuron) is an algorithm for supervised learning of binary classifiers. A binary classifier is a function which can decide whether or not an input, represented by a vector of numbers, belongs to some specific class. It is a type of linear classifier, i.e. a classification algorithm that makes its predictions based on a linear predictor function combining a set of weights with the feature vector.


title: Perceptron

text: The perceptron was invented in 1943 by McCulloch and Pitts. The first implementation was a machine built in 1958 at the Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory by Frank Rosenblatt, funded by the United States Office of Naval Research.


title: Perceptron

text: The perceptron was intended to be a machine, rather than a program, and while its first implementation was in software for the IBM 704, it was subsequently implemented in custom-built hardware as the "Mark 1 perceptron". This machine was designed for image recognition: it had an array of 400 photocells, randomly connected to the "neurons". Weights were encoded in potentiometers, and weight updates during learning were performed by electric motors.


title: Perceptron

text: In a 1958 press conference organized by the US Navy, Rosenblatt made statements about the perceptron that caused a heated controversy among the fledgling AI community; based on Rosenblatt's statements, "The New York Times" reported the perceptron to be "the embryo of an electronic computer that [the Navy] expects will be able to walk, talk, see, write, reproduce itself and be conscious of its existence."


title: Perceptron

text: Although the perceptron initially seemed promising, it was quickly proved that perceptrons could not be trained to recognise many classes of patterns. This caused the field of neural network research to stagnate for many years, before it was recognised that a feedforward neural network with two or more layers (also called a multilayer perceptron) had greater processing power than perceptrons with one layer (also called a single-layer perceptron).


title: Perceptron

text: Single-layer perceptrons are only capable of learning linearly separable patterns. For a classification task with some step activation function, a single node will have a single line dividing the data points forming the patterns. More nodes can create more dividing lines, but those lines must somehow be combined to form more complex classifications. A second layer of perceptrons, or even linear nodes, are sufficient to solve a lot of otherwise non-separable problems.


title: Perceptron

text: In 1969, a famous book entitled "Perceptrons" by Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert showed that it was impossible for these classes of network to learn an XOR function. It is often believed (incorrectly) that they also conjectured that a similar result would hold for a multi-layer perceptron network. However, this is not true, as both Minsky and Papert already knew that multi-layer perceptrons were capable of producing an XOR function. (See the page on "Perceptrons (book)" for more information.) Nevertheless, the often-miscited Minsky/Papert text caused a significant decline in interest and funding of neural network research. It took ten more years until neural network research experienced a resurgence in the 1980s. This text was reprinted in 1987 as "Perceptrons - Expanded Edition" where some errors in the original text are shown and corrected.


title: Perceptron

text: A 2022 article states that the Mark 1 Perceptron was "part of a previously secret four-year NPIC [the US' National Photographic Interpretation Center] effort from 1963 through 1966 to develop this algorithm into a useful tool for photo-interpreters".


title: Perceptron

text: The kernel perceptron algorithm was already introduced in 1964 by Aizerman et al. Margin bounds guarantees were given for the Perceptron algorithm in the general non-separable case first by Freund and Schapire (1998), and more recently by Mohri and Rostamizadeh (2013) who extend previous results and give new L1 bounds.


title: Perceptron

text: The perceptron is a simplified model of a biological neuron. While the complexity of biological neuron models is often required to fully understand neural behavior, research suggests a perceptron-like linear model can produce some behavior seen in real neurons.


title: Perceptron

text: In the modern sense, the perceptron is an algorithm for learning a binary classifier called a threshold function: a function that maps its input formula_1 (a real-valued vector) to an output value formula_2 (a single binary value):


title: Perceptron

text: where formula_4 is a vector of real-valued weights, formula_5 is the dot product formula_6, where is the number of inputs to the perceptron, and is the "bias". The bias shifts the decision boundary away from the origin and does not depend on any input value.


title: Perceptron

text: The value of formula_2 (0 or 1) is used to classify formula_1 as either a positive or a negative instance, in the case of a binary classification problem. If is negative, then the weighted combination of inputs must produce a positive value greater than formula_9 in order to push the classifier neuron over the 0 threshold. Spatially, the bias alters the position (though not the orientation) of the decision boundary. The perceptron learning algorithm does not terminate if the learning set is not linearly separable. If the vectors are not linearly separable learning will never reach a point where all vectors are classified properly. The most famous example of the perceptron's inability to solve problems with linearly nonseparable vectors is the Boolean exclusive-or problem. The solution spaces of decision boundaries for all binary functions and learning behaviors are studied in the reference.


title: Perceptron

text: In the context of neural networks, a perceptron is an artificial neuron using the Heaviside step function as the activation function. The perceptron algorithm is also termed the single-layer perceptron, to distinguish it from a multilayer perceptron, which is a misnomer for a more complicated neural network. As a linear classifier, the single-layer perceptron is the simplest feedforward neural network.


title: Perceptron

text: Below is an example of a learning algorithm for a single-layer perceptron. For multilayer perceptrons, where a hidden layer exists, more sophisticated algorithms such as backpropagation must be used. If the activation function or the underlying process being modeled by the perceptron is nonlinear, alternative learning algorithms such as the delta rule can be used as long as the activation function is differentiable. Nonetheless, the learning algorithm described in the steps below will often work, even for multilayer perceptrons with nonlinear activation functions.


title: Perceptron

text: When multiple perceptrons are combined in an artificial neural network, each output neuron operates independently of all the others; thus, learning each output can be considered in isolation.


title: Perceptron

text: The algorithm updates the weights after steps 2a and 2b. These weights are immediately applied to a pair in the training set, and subsequently updated, rather than waiting until all pairs in the training set have undergone these steps.


title: Perceptron

text: The perceptron is a linear classifier, therefore it will never get to the state with all the input vectors classified correctly if the training set is not linearly separable, i.e. if the positive examples cannot be separated from the negative examples by a hyperplane. In this case, no "approximate" solution will be gradually approached under the standard learning algorithm, but instead, learning will fail completely. Hence, if linear separability of the training set is not known a priori, one of the training variants below should be used.


title: Perceptron

text: If the training set "is" linearly separable, then the perceptron is guaranteed to converge. Furthermore, there is an upper bound on the number of times the perceptron will adjust its weights during the training.


title: Perceptron

text: Suppose that the input vectors from the two classes can be separated by a hyperplane with a margin formula_31, i.e. there exists a weight vector formula_32, and a bias term such that formula_33 for all formula_19 with formula_35 and formula_36 for all formula_19 with formula_38, where formula_39 is the desired output value of the perceptron for input formula_19. Also, let denote the maximum norm of an input vector. Novikoff (1962) proved that in this case the perceptron algorithm converges after making formula_41 updates. The idea of the proof is that the weight vector is always adjusted by a bounded amount in a direction with which it has a negative dot product, and thus can be bounded above by , where is the number of changes to the weight vector. However, it can also be bounded below by because if there exists an (unknown) satisfactory weight vector, then every change makes progress in this (unknown) direction by a positive amount that depends only on the input vector.


title: Perceptron

text: While the perceptron algorithm is guaranteed to converge on "some" solution in the case of a linearly separable training set, it may still pick "any" solution and problems may admit many solutions of varying quality. The "perceptron of optimal stability", nowadays better known as the linear support-vector machine, was designed to solve this problem (Krauth and Mezard, 1987).


title: Perceptron

text: The pocket algorithm with ratchet (Gallant, 1990) solves the stability problem of perceptron learning by keeping the best solution seen so far "in its pocket". The pocket algorithm then returns the solution in the pocket, rather than the last solution. It can be used also for non-separable data sets, where the aim is to find a perceptron with a small number of misclassifications. However, these solutions appear purely stochastically and hence the pocket algorithm neither approaches them gradually in the course of learning, nor are they guaranteed to show up within a given number of learning steps.


title: Perceptron

text: The Maxover algorithm (Wendemuth, 1995) is "robust" in the sense that it will converge regardless of (prior) knowledge of linear separability of the data set. In the linearly separable case, it will solve the training problem – if desired, even with optimal stability (maximum margin between the classes). For non-separable data sets, it will return a solution with a small number of misclassifications. In all cases, the algorithm gradually approaches the solution in the course of learning, without memorizing previous states and without stochastic jumps. Convergence is to global optimality for separable data sets and to local optimality for non-separable data sets.


title: Perceptron

text: The Voted Perceptron (Freund and Schapire, 1999), is a variant using multiple weighted perceptrons. The algorithm starts a new perceptron every time an example is wrongly classified, initializing the weights vector with the final weights of the last perceptron. Each perceptron will also be given another weight corresponding to how many examples do they correctly classify before wrongly classifying one, and at the end the output will be a weighted vote on all perceptrons.


title: Perceptron

text: In separable problems, perceptron training can also aim at finding the largest separating margin between the classes. The so-called perceptron of optimal stability can be determined by means of iterative training and optimization schemes, such as the Min-Over algorithm (Krauth and Mezard, 1987) or the AdaTron (Anlauf and Biehl, 1989)). AdaTron uses the fact that the corresponding quadratic optimization problem is convex. The perceptron of optimal stability, together with the kernel trick, are the conceptual foundations of the support-vector machine.


title: Perceptron

text: The formula_42-perceptron further used a pre-processing layer of fixed random weights, with thresholded output units. This enabled the perceptron to classify analogue patterns, by projecting them into a binary space. In fact, for a projection space of sufficiently high dimension, patterns can become linearly separable.


title: Perceptron

text: Another way to solve nonlinear problems without using multiple layers is to use higher order networks (sigma-pi unit). In this type of network, each element in the input vector is extended with each pairwise combination of multiplied inputs (second order). This can be extended to an "n"-order network.


title: Perceptron

text: It should be kept in mind, however, that the best classifier is not necessarily that which classifies all the training data perfectly. Indeed, if we had the prior constraint that the data come from equi-variant Gaussian distributions, the linear separation in the input space is optimal, and the nonlinear solution is overfitted.


title: Perceptron

text: Other linear classification algorithms include Winnow, support-vector machine, and logistic regression.


title: Perceptron

text: Like most other techniques for training linear classifiers, the perceptron generalizes naturally to multiclass classification. Here, the input formula_43 and the output formula_44 are drawn from arbitrary sets. A feature representation function formula_45 maps each possible input/output pair to a finite-dimensional real-valued feature vector. As before, the feature vector is multiplied by a weight vector formula_46, but now the resulting score is used to choose among many possible outputs:


title: Perceptron

text: Learning again iterates over the examples, predicting an output for each, leaving the weights unchanged when the predicted output matches the target, and changing them when it does not. The update becomes:


title: Perceptron

text: This multiclass feedback formulation reduces to the original perceptron when formula_43 is a real-valued vector, formula_44 is chosen from formula_51, and formula_52.


title: Perceptron

text: For certain problems, input/output representations and features can be chosen so that formula_53 can be found efficiently even though formula_44 is chosen from a very large or even infinite set.


title: Perceptron

text: Since 2002, perceptron training has become popular in the field of natural language processing for such tasks as part-of-speech tagging and syntactic parsing (Collins, 2002). It has also been applied to large-scale machine learning problems in a distributed computing setting.


title: Golden calf

text: According to the Bible, the golden calf (עֵגֶל הַזָּהָב " ‘ēgel hazzāhāv") was an idol (a cult image) made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai. In Hebrew, the incident is known as "ḥēṭə’ hā‘ēgel" (חֵטְא הָעֵגֶל) or "the sin of the calf". It is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus.


title: Golden calf

text: Bull worship was common in many cultures. In Egypt, whence according to the Exodus narrative the Hebrews had recently come, the Apis Bull was a comparable object of worship, which some believe the Hebrews were reviving in the wilderness; alternatively, some believe Yahweh, the national god of the Israelites, was associated with or pictured as a calf/bull deity through the process of religious assimilation and syncretism. Among the Canaanites, some of whom would become the Israelites, the bull was widely worshipped as the Lunar Bull and as the creature of El.


title: Golden calf

text: When Moses went up into Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments (), he left the Israelites for forty days and nights. The Israelites feared that he would not return and demanded that Aaron make them "a god to go before them". Aaron gathered up the Israelites' golden earrings and ornaments, constructed a "molten calf" and they declared: "'This is thy god, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt" ().


title: Golden calf

text: Aaron built an altar before the calf and proclaimed the next day to be a feast to the . So they rose up early the next day and "offered burnt-offerings, and brought peace-offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play." (Exodus 32:6) God told Moses what the Israelites were up to back in camp, that they had turned aside quickly out of the way which God commanded them and he was going to destroy them and start a new people from Moses. Moses besought and pleaded that they should be spared and "the repented of the evil which He said He would do unto His people." ()


title: Golden calf

text: Moses went down from the mountain, but upon seeing the calf, he became angry and threw down the two Tablets of Stone, breaking them. Moses burnt the golden calf in a fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on water, and forced the Israelites to drink it. When Moses asked him, Aaron admitted to collecting the gold, and throwing it into the fire, and said it came out as a calf ().


title: Golden calf

text: The Bible records that the tribe of Levi did not worship the golden calf. "Moses stood in the gate of the camp, and said: 'Whosoever is on the 's side, let him come unto me.' And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together unto him. And he said unto them: 'Thus saith the , the God of Israel: Put ye every man his sword upon his thigh, and go to and fro from gate to gate throughout the camp, and slay every man his brother, and every man his companion, and every man his neighbour.' And the sons of Levi did according to the word of Moses; and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men."()


title: Golden calf

text: The language suggests that there are some inconsistencies in the other accounts of the Israelites and their use of the calf. As the version in Exodus and 1 Kings are written by Deuteronomistic historians based in the southern Kingdom of Judah, there is a proclivity to expose the Israelites as unfaithful. The inconsistency is primarily located in Exodus 32:4 where "gods" is plural despite the construction of a single calf.


title: Golden calf

text: The episode of the golden calf is also mentioned in the New Testament, by the apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, as a warning against idolatry.


title: Golden calf

text: According to , after Jeroboam establishes the northern Kingdom of Israel, he contemplates the sacrificial practices of the Israelites.


title: Golden calf

text: His concern was that the tendency to offer sacrifices in Jerusalem, which is in the southern Kingdom of Judah, would lead to a return to King Rehoboam. He makes two golden calves and places them in Bethel and Dan. He erects the two calves in what he figures (in some interpretations) as substitutes for the "cherubim" built by King Solomon in Jerusalem.


title: Golden calf

text: However, in the "Antiquities of the Jews" (v. VIII: 8), which is taken from the Septuagint, Josephus states: "He made two golden heifers, and built two little temples for them, the one in the city Bethel, and the other in Dan...and he put the heifers into both the little temples in the forementioned cities." This is quite incompatible with any resemblance of the "calves" to the Egyptian Apis Bull, but quite indicative of the Egyptian goddess Hathor, to whom in the Egyptian text "Destruction of Mankind" is attributed cataclysmic events similar to those recounted in Exodus.


title: Golden calf

text: Richard Elliott Friedman says "at a minimum we can say that the writer of the golden calf account in Exodus seems to have taken the words that were traditionally ascribed to Jeroboam and placed them in the mouths of the people." Friedman believes that the story was turned into a polemic, exaggerating the throne platform decoration into idolatry, by a family of priests sidelined by Jeroboam.


title: Golden calf

text: After making the golden calf or golden calves both Aaron and Jeroboam celebrate festivals. Aaron builds an altar and Jeroboam ascends an altar (Exod 32:5–6; 1 Kings 12:32–33).


title: Golden calf

text: In "Legends of the Jews", the Conservative rabbi and scholar Louis Ginzberg wrote that the worship of the golden calf was the disastrous consequence for Israel who took a mixed multitude in their exodus from Egypt. Had not the mixed multitude joined them, Israel would not have been misled to worship this molten idol. The form of the calf itself came from a magical virtue of an ornament leaf with the image of the bull which is made by Aaron.


title: Golden calf

text: The devotion of Israel to this worship of the calf was partly explained by a circumstance at passing through the Red Sea, when they beheld the most distinct creature about the Celestial Throne which is the resemblance of ox, then they thought it was an ox who had helped God in their journey from Egypt. After seeing Hur son of Miriam who was carelessly murdered by the people following his rebuke of their ingratitude action to God, Aaron was willing rather to take a sin upon himself to make an idol than to cast the burden of an evil deed upon the people if they commit so terrible sin of killing a priest and prophet among them.


title: Golden calf

text: Also there would be among the Israelites no priestly caste, and the nation would have been a nation of priests only if Israel had not sinned through worshiping the golden calf that the greater part of the people lost the right to priesthood, except the tribe of Levi as the only tribe who remained faithful to God and did not partake in this sinful deed.


title: Golden calf

text: According to Nachman of Breslov, everyone contributed to the building of the Tabernacle, and the contribution that each Jew made was his or her good points. Thus, the Tabernacle was built by the good points found in each person; this was sufficient to counteract the blemish of the golden calf. The “good points” are reflected in the “gold, silver and copper” that the Jews donated. The various colors of these metals reflect the Supernal Colors and the beauty of a person's good deeds.


title: Golden calf

text: Justus Knecht gives two important moral points from the episode of the golden calf: 1) "The Mercy of God." "The people of Israel had sinned horribly against God by their idolatry, and yet, at Moses’ intercession, He forgave them." 2) "Idolatry." "The weak people were most ungrateful and faithless to God. The Lord had done such great things for them! Only forty days before, full of holy fear, they had heard His voice and had repeatedly promised obedience to His Commandments; and now they transgressed the first and most important of them, and forsook God to worship idols. St Paul calls lust and covetousness idolatry. Whenever a man loves anything more than he loves God, he is guilty of idolatry."


title: Golden calf

text: The incident of the worship of the golden calf is narrated in the second chapter of the Quran, named Al-Baqarah, and other Islamic literature. The Quran narrates that after they refused to enter the promised land, God decreed that as punishment the Israelites would wander for forty years. Moses continued to lead the Israelites to Mount Sinai for divine guidance. According to Islamic literature, God ordered Moses to fast for forty nights before receiving the guidance for the Israelites. When Moses completed the fasts, he approached God for guidance. During this time, Moses had instructed the Israelites that Aaron was to lead them.


title: Golden calf

text: The Israelites grew restless, since Moses had not returned to them, and after thirty days, a man the Quran names Samiri raised doubts among the Israelites. Samiri claimed that Moses had forsaken the Israelites and ordered his followers among the Israelites to light a fire and bring him all the jewelry and gold ornaments they had. Samiri fashioned the gold into a golden calf along with the dust on which the angel Gabriel had trodden, which he proclaimed to be the God of Moses and the God who had guided them out of Egypt. There is a sharp contrast between the Quranic and the biblical accounts of the prophet Aaron's actions. The Quran mentions that Aaron attempted to guide and warn the people from worshipping the golden calf. However, the Israelites refused to stop until Moses had returned. The righteous separated themselves from the pagans. God informed Moses that he had tried the Israelites in his absence and that they had failed by worshipping the golden calf.


title: Golden calf

text: Returning to the Israelites in great anger, Moses asked Aaron why he had not stopped the Israelites when he had seen them worshipping the golden calf. The Quran reports that Aaron stated that he did not act due to the fear that Moses would blame him for causing divisions among the Israelites. Moses realized his helplessness in the situation, and both prayed to God for forgiveness. According to Qur’anic sources Moses then questioned Samiri for the creation of the golden calf; Samiri justified his actions by stating that he had thrown the dust of the ground upon which Gabriel had tread on into the fire because his soul had suggested it to him. Moses informed him that he would be banished and that they would burn the golden calf and spread its dust into the sea. Moses ordered seventy delegates to repent to God and pray for forgiveness. The delegates traveled alongside Moses to Mount Sinai, where they witnessed the speech between him and God but refused to believe until they had witnessed God with their sight. As punishment, God struck the delegates with lightning and killed them with a violent earthquake. Moses prayed to God for their forgiveness. God forgave and resurrected them and they continued on their journey.


title: Golden calf

text: In the Islamic view, the calf-worshipers' sin had been "shirk" (), the sin of idolatry or polytheism. "Shirk" is the deification or worship of anyone or anything other than Allah, or more literally the establishment of "partners" placed beside God, a most serious sin.


title: Golden calf

text: According to modern scholarship, there are two versions of the Ten Commandments story, in E (Exodus 20) and J (Exodus 34), this gives some antiquity and there may be some original events serving as a basis to the stories. The Golden Calf story is only in the E version and a later editor added in an explanation that God made a second pair of tablets to give continuity to the J story. The actual Ten Commandments as given in Exodus 20 were also inserted by the redactor who combined the various sources.


title: Golden calf

text: Current historiography considers that this episode was introduced into the Exodus account in the time of Josiah (622) or later to discredit the custom rooted in the Kingdom of Israel (North) of identifying Yahweh with a bull. The cult of the bull was rooted in Palestine from pre-Israelite times, as attested by the archaeological find of a bronze bull in the sanctuary of the acropolis of Jasor dated to the late Bronze Age. A bronze bull has also been found in an Israelite sanctuary east of Tel Dothan, in the mountains of Samaria, dated to around the 11th century.


title: Golden calf

text: Albertz says that when we read in 1Kings 12:28 that the first monarch of the northern kingdom, Jeroboam, had introduced the worship of golden calves in Bethel and Dan, we must interpret that what Jeroboam really does is to return to the traditional Israelite religion, as opposed to the syncretistic innovations introduced by David and Solomon in centralizing the cult in Jerusalem.


title: Golden calf

text: According to Michael Coogan, it seems that the golden calf was not an idol for another god, and thus a false god. He cites as evidence:


title: Golden calf

text: Another understanding of the golden calf narrative is that the calf was meant to be the pedestal of Yahweh. In Near Eastern art, gods were often depicted standing on an animal, rather than seated on a throne. This reading suggests that the golden calf was merely an alternative to the ark of the covenant or the cherubim upon which Yahweh was enthroned.


title: Golden calf

text: The documentary hypothesis can be used to further understand the layers of this narrative: it is plausible that the earliest story of the golden calf was preserved by E (Israel source) and originated in the Northern kingdom. When E and J (Judah source) were combined after the fall of northern kingdom, "the narrative was reworked to portray the northern kingdom in a negative light," and the worship of the calf was depicted as "polytheism, with the suggestion of a sexual orgy" (see Exodus 32:6). When compiling the narratives, P (a later Priest source from Jerusalem) may have minimized Aaron's guilt in the matter, but preserved the negativity associated with the calf.


title: Golden calf

text: Alternatively it could be said that there is no golden calf story in the J source, and if it is correct that the Jeroboam story was the original as stated by Friedman, then it is unlikely that the golden calf events as described in Exodus occurred at all. Friedman states that the smashing of the Ten Commandments by Moses when he beheld the worship of the golden calf, is really an attempt to cast into doubt the validity of Judah's central shrine, the Ark of the Covenant. "The author of E, in fashioning the golden calf story, attacked both the Israelite and Judean religious establishments."


title: Golden calf

text: A metaphoric interpretation emphasizes the "gold" part of "golden calf" to criticize the pursuit of wealth. This usage can be found in Spanish where Mammon, the Gospel personification of idolatry of wealth, is not so current.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Carrie Hope Fletcher (born 22 October 1992) is an English actress, singer-songwriter, author and internet personality, having played the role of Éponine in "Les Misérables", and played Fantine in the musical's revival at the Sondheim Theatre, in 2019.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In 2015 she published a book called: "All I Know Now: Wonderings and Reflections on Growing Up Gracefully", which was a Number 1 bestseller in the UK. Her debut novel "On the Other Side" (2016), and "All That She Can See" (2017). Her third novel was "When The Curtain Falls" (2018), Her fourth "In The Time We Lost" (2019), and her first children's book, "Into The Spotlight" in 2020.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher is a two-time Grammy Award nominee and a three-time winner of the WhatsOnStage Award for Best Actress in a Musical.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher was born and raised in South Harrow in the London borough of Harrow, the daughter of Debbie and Bob Fletcher. Her older brother, Tom Fletcher, is lead vocalist and guitarist of the band McFly. As a child, Fletcher played small roles on television and appeared in musical theatre in London's West End. In 2011, she started a YouTube channel called "ItsWayPastMyBedTime", later retitled "Carrie Hope Fletcher", which features music and vlogs.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Her acting career began at the age of five, when she appeared in a short Channel 4 ident followed by an advert for Honey Nut Cheerios with "Frasier" actor Kelsey Grammer. Fletcher has also played several short television roles, including Jenny in the CITV show "Dog and Duck".


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher made her West End debut as Young Éponine in "Les Misérables" at the age of nine in 2001. In 2002, she was part of the original cast of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (musical)" in the role of Jemima Potts, and in 2004 featured as Jane Banks in "Mary Poppins". Fletcher replaced Danielle Hope as Éponine in "Les Misérables" at the Queen's Theatre, London in June 2013. She is the only British actress to have played young Éponine, older Éponine and Fantine in the production. On 23 February 2014, Fletcher was presented the WhatsOnStage "Best Takeover in a Role" award for her performance as Éponine.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In November 2014, Fletcher took a hiatus from her role in "Les Misérables" to join the cast of Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds" national arena tour in which she played the role of Beth, alongside Jason Donovan, Brian McFadden and Shayne Ward.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: She next returned to "Les Misérables", playing Éponine for the musical's 30th anniversary gala performance on 8 October 2015. Fletcher played her final performance on 13 February 2016, at which time she was the longest-running Éponine in the London production's 30-year history.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In 2017, she played the role of Wednesday Addams on the UK tour of "The Addams Family". The production was produced by James Yeoburn and Stuart Matthew Price for United Theatrical and Music & Lyrics in association with Festival Theatre, Edinburgh. In December 2017, she performed in the musical "The Christmasaurus".


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In 2018, Fletcher reprises her role as Beth in the 40th anniversary tour of Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds". In 2019, she returned to "" as Fantine at the Gielgud Theatre, in a of the musical.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher appeared in the title role of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Cinderella", which began previews in 2021 at the Gillian Lynne Theatre in London until the production closed in June 2022.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher makes her Panto Debut this Christmas at the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury in Sleeping Beauty playing the Villian Carabosse alongside Ben Roddy, Obe Oduba, Jennie Dale and Max Fulham from Friday 25th November 2022 - Sunday 8th January 2023


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In April 2015, Fletcher released her first book, "All I Know Now: Wonderings and Reflections on Growing Up Gracefully", based on her blog of the same name. The non-fiction book focuses on stages of Fletcher's life as a teenager and passes on life lessons and advice through highlighting her own mistakes and struggles as she grew up. Her book was a number one Sunday Times bestseller and remained in the Top 10 list for seven weeks.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: In June 2015, Fletcher officially announced that she had started writing a new fiction novel, titled "On The Other Side", which was published on 14 July 2016. In March 2017, Fletcher announced her second novel "All That She Can See", which was published on 13 July 2017. In October 2017, she announced her third novel, "When the Curtain Falls", which was published on 12 July 2018. In October 2018, Fletcher announced her fourth novel "In the Time We Lost", which was published on 17 October 2019. Fletcher published her first children's book "Into the Spotlight" on 17 September 2020 based on "Ballet Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild. Her fifth novel, "With This Kiss" was announced on 17 November 2020 via her Instagram, due to be published in August 2021.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher has produced two singles, "Running Through Rivers" and "The Way We Were". She performed to benefit the band Sheytoons at the St. James Theatre, as well as Ramin Karimloo on his 2012 Road to Find Out tour.


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher is featured in Alex Day’s 2013 album "Epigrams and Interludes" on the songs covering "Poison" and "This Kiss". Fletcher can also be seen in The Vamps' music video for their cover of McFly's "That Girl". In 2014, Fletcher had featured in Daniel Koek's album "High" in the song "Remember Me". Koek was a colleague and fellow cast member of Fletcher's in "Les Misérables".


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Her most successful video on YouTube, currently with 1.5 million views (as of 14 April 2020), is a live interpretation together with her brother Tom Fletcher of the McFly song "Love Is on the Radio".


title: Carrie Hope Fletcher

text: Fletcher released her first solo album "When The Curtain Falls" on 30 March 2018. It was released via musical theatre concert and record producers Club 11 London and accompanied her first four solo concerts at Cadogan Hall, London, on 31 March and 1 April 2018.


title: Wax

text: Waxes are a diverse class of organic compounds that are lipophilic, malleable solids near ambient temperatures. They include higher alkanes and lipids, typically with melting points above about 40 °C (104 °F), melting to give low viscosity liquids. Waxes are insoluble in water but soluble in nonpolar organic solvents such as hexane, benzene and chloroform. Natural waxes of different types are produced by plants and animals and occur in petroleum.


title: Wax

text: Waxes are organic compounds that characteristically consist of long aliphatic alkyl chains, although aromatic compounds may also be present. Natural waxes may contain unsaturated bonds and include various functional groups such as fatty acids, primary and secondary alcohols, ketones, aldehydes and fatty acid esters. Synthetic waxes often consist of homologous series of long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons (alkanes or paraffins) that lack functional groups.


title: Wax

text: Waxes are synthesized by many plants and animals. Those of animal origin typically consist of wax esters derived from a variety of fatty acids and carboxylic alcohols. In waxes of plant origin, characteristic mixtures of unesterified hydrocarbons may predominate over esters. The composition depends not only on species, but also on geographic location of the organism.


title: Wax

text: The best-known animal wax is beeswax used in constructing the honeycombs of beehives, but other insects also secrete waxes. A major component of beeswax is myricyl palmitate which is an ester of triacontanol and palmitic acid. Its melting point is 62-65 °C. Spermaceti occurs in large amounts in the head oil of the sperm whale. One of its main constituents is cetyl palmitate, another ester of a fatty acid and a fatty alcohol. Lanolin is a wax obtained from wool, consisting of esters of sterols.


title: Wax

text: Plants secrete waxes into and on the surface of their cuticles as a way to control evaporation, wettability and hydration. The epicuticular waxes of plants are mixtures of substituted long-chain aliphatic hydrocarbons, containing alkanes, alkyl esters, fatty acids, primary and secondary alcohols, diols, ketones and aldehydes.


title: Wax

text: From the commercial perspective, the most important plant wax is carnauba wax, a hard wax obtained from the Brazilian palm "Copernicia prunifera". Containing the ester myricyl cerotate, it has many applications, such as confectionery and other food coatings, car and furniture polish, floss coating, and surfboard wax. Other more specialized vegetable waxes include jojoba oil, candelilla wax and ouricury wax.


title: Wax

text: Plant and animal based waxes or oils can undergo selective chemical modifications to produce waxes with more desirable properties than are available in the unmodified starting material. This approach has relied on green chemistry approaches including olefin metathesis and enzymatic reactions and can be used to produce waxes from inexpensive starting materials like vegetable oils.


title: Wax

text: Although many natural waxes contain esters, paraffin waxes are hydrocarbons, mixtures of alkanes usually in a homologous series of chain lengths. These materials represent a significant fraction of petroleum. They are refined by vacuum distillation. Paraffin waxes are mixtures of saturated n- and iso- alkanes, naphthenes, and alkyl- and naphthene-substituted aromatic compounds. A typical alkane paraffin wax chemical composition comprises hydrocarbons with the general formula CH, such as hentriacontane, CH. The degree of branching has an important influence on the properties. Microcrystalline wax is a lesser produced petroleum based wax that contains higher percentage of isoparaffinic (branched) hydrocarbons and naphthenic hydrocarbons.


title: Wax

text: Millions of tons of paraffin waxes are produced annually. They are used in foods (such as chewing gum and cheese wrapping), in candles and cosmetics, as non-stick and waterproofing coatings and in polishes.


title: Wax

text: Montan wax is a fossilized wax extracted from coal and lignite. It is very hard, reflecting the high concentration of saturated fatty acids and alcohols. Although dark brown and odorous, they can be purified and bleached to give commercially useful products.


title: Wax

text: Each production technique generates products with slightly different properties. Key properties of low molecular weight polyethylene waxes are viscosity, density and melt point.


title: Wax

text: Polyethylene waxes produced by means of degradation or recovery from polyethylene resin streams contain very low molecular weight materials that must be removed to prevent volatilization and potential fire hazards during use. Polyethylene waxes manufactured by this method are usually stripped of low molecular weight fractions to yield a flash point >500°F (>260°C). Many polyethylene resin plants produce a low molecular weight stream often referred to as Low Polymer Wax (LPW). LPW is unrefined and contains volatile oligomers, corrosive catalyst and may contain other foreign material and water. Refining of LPW to produce a polyethylene wax involves removal of oligomers and hazardous catalyst. Proper refining of LPW to produce polyethylene wax is especially important when being used in applications requiring FDA or other regulatory certification.


title: Wax

text: Waxes are mainly consumed industrially as components of complex formulations, often for coatings. The main use of polyethylene and polypropylene waxes is in the formulation of colourants for plastics. Waxes confer matting effects (i.e., to confer non-glossy finishes) and wear resistance to paints. Polyethylene waxes are incorporated into inks in the form of dispersions to decrease friction. They are employed as release agents, find use as slip agents in furniture, and confer corrosion resistance.


title: Wax

text: Waxes such as paraffin wax or beeswax, and hard fats such as tallow are used to make candles, used for lighting and decoration. Another fuel type used in candle manufacturing includes soy. Soy wax is made by the hydrogenation process using soybean oil.


title: Wax

text: Waxes are used as finishes and coatings for wood products. Beeswax is frequently used as a lubricant on drawer slides where wood to wood contact occurs.


title: Wax

text: Sealing wax was used to close important documents in the Middle Ages. Wax tablets were used as writing surfaces. There were different types of wax in the Middle Ages, namely four kinds of wax (Ragusan, Montenegro, Byzantine, and Bulgarian), "ordinary" waxes from Spain, Poland, and Riga, unrefined waxes and colored waxes (red, white, and green). Waxes are used to make wax paper, impregnating and coating paper and card to waterproof it or make it resistant to staining, or to modify its surface properties. Waxes are also used in shoe polishes, wood polishes, and automotive polishes, as mold release agents in mold making, as a coating for many cheeses, and to waterproof leather and fabric. Wax has been used since antiquity as a temporary, removable model in lost-wax casting of gold, silver and other materials.