title: Vampires Suck

text: Another review from Collider's Jake Horowitz said that "not a single thing in its dreadful 82 minutes running time is even remotely worth watching, or considered even slightly entertaining." He then wrote that "no amount of review can make up for what I witnessed while watching "Vampires Suck". How wrong I was to assume that it was even watchable, because with each over-done hit on the head or kick in the balls I cringed at the thought of this movie making nearly $80 million worldwide; and imagining people actually laughing in a theatre somewhere."


title: Vampires Suck

text: Despite the overwhelming negativity, Jenn Proske's mimicry performance based on Kristen Stewart received some praise; Steve Persall of "Tampa Bay Times" stated, "One thing the movie roasts to perfection is Kristen Stewart's overly pensive Bella... A newcomer named Jenn Proske has the mumbling, hair-twisting, lip-biting tics down pat, and her expressions of repressed sexuality are almost as funny as Stewart's." "Entertainment Weekly" said, "The exception is newcomer Jenn Proske, who spoofs Twilight star Kristen Stewart's flustered, hair-tugging angst with hilarious precision."


title: Vampires Suck

text: "Vampires Suck" was given four nominations from the Golden Raspberry Awards, including Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel.


title: Vampires Suck

text: In the United States, the film opened at number one on August 18 with $4,016,858. On August 19, the film dropped to #3 behind "The Expendables" and "Eat Pray Love" with $2,347,044. By the weekend, "Vampires Suck" landed at #2 behind "The Expendables" and $200,000 over "Eat Pray Love". The full second week the film dropped to #11, grossing no more than $500 per theater, respectively. In its second weekend, the film dropped more than 50% from its opening weekend but rose to #6. As of July 12, 2012, the film has grossed $80,547,866 worldwide.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Rumble in the Bronx (Chinese title: 紅番區, "Hong Faan Kui" (transl. "Red Turn District") is a 1995 American-Hong Kong martial arts film starring Jackie Chan, Anita Mui and Françoise Yip. It was directed by Stanley Tong, with action choreographed by Chan and Tong. Released in Hong Kong in 1995, "Rumble in the Bronx" had a successful worldwide theatrical run, and brought Chan into the North American mainstream. The film is set in the Bronx area of New York City, but was filmed in and around Vancouver, Canada. The film grossed worldwide against a budget, making it the most profitable film of 1996.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Ma Hon Keung (馬漢強, Mǎ Hànqiáng), a Hong Kong cop, comes to New York to attend the wedding of his Uncle Bill, who introduces him to his American wife Whitney at his supermarket, which he has sold to Elaine. Uncle Bill's friend, Steven Lo, loans him a vintage automobile for the wedding. That night, a street gang starts a motorcycle race near Uncle Bill's apartment. They are about to run over his friend's car until Keung jumps down and stops them.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: He soon starts a rivalry with the gang after driving them away from Elaine's supermarket, which they tried to rob and vandalize. A series of brawls breaks out in which the bikers try to corner Keung and finish him off. When a member named Angelo gets involved in an illegal diamond deal gone bad and steals the diamonds, the small-time gangsters become the victims of a larger and more effective criminal syndicate led by White Tiger. While running away with the diamonds, Angelo leaves them in a cushion, which is unknowingly used by Keung for the wheelchair of a disabled Chinese American boy named Danny. Danny's elder sister Nancy, a lingerie model/dancer, works in a seedy bar and is an associate/girlfriend of the bikers.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Keung befriends Nancy and advises her to stay away from crime. When the gangsters see this, they chase Keung and Nancy. After failing to confront Keung, the bikers trash Elaine's supermarket, during which two of Angelo's men are captured by White Tiger's men, who turn up at the supermarket in search of Angelo. Angelo's colleagues are unaware of his diamond heist and one is executed in a tree-shredder; his remains given back to the other gangsters as a warning to return the multimillion-dollar goods. In the meantime, Keung and Nancy go to the bikers' headquarters after the latest supermarket attack, and Keung defeats them in another brawl.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Keung agrees to help the biker leader Tony, convinces the street gangsters to reform, and brings the big-time criminals to justice. The syndicate and Keung discover the diamonds in Danny's wheelchair. The handover is botched after Nancy and Tony are held hostage by the syndicate and the diamonds are lost after they use a tow truck to destroy Elaine's supermarket. White Tiger's men hijack a hovercraft and are pursued by Keung and the New York Police Department in the Hudson River. The hovercraft ends up running through the streets, causing much damage to property.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Keung ends the chase by stealing a large sword from a museum, clamping it onto a sports car window and driving into the hovercraft, shredding the rubber skirt and crashing the vehicle. After shooting one of the syndicate men non-fatally to force them to reveal White Tiger's location, Keung drives the repaired hovercraft to a golf course where White Tiger is playing with subordinates. He runs them over, leaving White Tiger naked on the ground.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: In his autobiography, "I am Jackie Chan: My life in Action", Jackie Chan talked about the initial difficulty of filming a movie in Vancouver that is set in New York. The production team initially had to put up fake graffiti during the day and take it all down during the evening, while simultaneously making sure that no mountains made it into the background. However, Chan decided that it was best that the production team focus on the action only without worrying too much about scenery. In his review, Roger Ebert notes that there are mountains in the background, which are not present in the NYC landscape. There is also an NYC helicopter which displays a Canadian civil registration (C-GZPM - A Bell JetRanger).


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The original spoken dialogue consisted of all of the actors speaking their native language most of the time. In the completely undubbed soundtrack, available on the Warner Japanese R2 DVD release, Jackie Chan actually speaks his native Cantonese while Françoise Yip and Morgan Lam (the actors playing Nancy and Danny) speak English. All of the original dialogue was intended to be dubbed over in the international and Hong Kong film markets, and New Line cinema overdubbed and slightly changed the original English dialogue.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: During filming, Chan broke his right ankle while performing a stunt. He spent much of the remaining shooting time with one foot in a cast. When it came to the film's climax, the crew colored a sock to resemble the shoe on his good foot, which Chan wore over his cast. His foot still had not completely healed when he went on to shoot his next film, "Thunderbolt" (filmed the same year, 1994, but released earlier in the U.S.).


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The lead actress and several stunt doubles were also injured during the shooting of a motorcycle stunt, with several people suffering broken limbs and ankles.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: New Line Cinema acquired the film for international distribution and commissioned a new music score and English dub (with participation from Jackie Chan). A scene of Keung's airplane flying into John F. Kennedy International Airport was added to the opening credits. Three scenes were added exclusively for the international version: a shot of the syndicate's car pulling up to the diamond deal, Keung and Nancy escaping from the nightclub after the bikers spot them together, and White Tiger taking a golf shot before a subordinate approaches him with his phone. None of these scenes were in the original Hong Kong release. In comparison to the Hong Kong version, 17 minutes of cuts were made, and the new English dub changed some of the context of the characters' conversations. Keung being a cop and having a girlfriend in Hong Kong is never mentioned. Keung's father being shot by a robber years ago is also not mentioned. In the New Line Cinema edit, Elaine buys the grocery store upon her first meeting with Uncle Bill, but in the Hong Kong version, she decides to buy the market at Bill's wedding.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The new soundtrack replaced Chan's song over the closing credits with the song "Kung Fu" by the band Ash, the lyrics of which mention Jackie Chan, as well as other Asian figures and characters ubiquitous in the west.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: In Hong Kong, "Rumble in the Bronx" broke the box office record, earning , making it the highest-grossing film in Hong Kong up until then. In China, within ten days of release, the film grossed () from tickets sold at each. It set a record in Guangzhou, with grossed in the city. It became the highest-grossing imported film in China up until then, grossing (). It was the year's eighth highest-grossing film in Taiwan, earning . In Japan, the film earned at the box office. In South Korea, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, selling 941,433 tickets and earning .


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The film was Chan's mainstream breakthrough in North America. When the film made its North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 1996, the film drew overwhelmingly positive reactions from large crowds cheering loudly, comparable to a sold-out concert. It eventually got a wide release in February 1996. Opening on 1,736 North American screens, it was number one at the box office in its opening weekend, grossing US$9,858,380 ($5,678 per screen). It became one of the year's top 20 highest-grossing R-rated films, finishing its North American run with $32,392,047 (equivalent to adjusted for inflation in 2021). In the United Kingdom, the film sold 130,583 tickets and grossed . In France and Germany, the film sold 493,756 tickets. In other European countries, the film sold 460,254 tickets.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: It became Chan's biggest ever hit up until then, with a worldwide box office gross of (equivalent to over adjusted for inflation in 2021). It was the most profitable film of 1996, with its US box office alone earning over 6 times its budget.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: When released in North America, "Rumble in the Bronx" received generally positive reviews, with most critics happy that a Jackie Chan film was finally getting a wide theatrical release in North America. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating based on reviews from critics, with an average rating of . Most critics praised the action, stunts, and Chan's charm, but found the plot and acting to be lacking.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Roger Ebert gave the film a positive review, rating it 3 out of 4 stars. His review for the "Chicago Sun-Times" stated:


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Any attempt to defend this movie on rational grounds is futile. Don't tell me about the plot and the dialogue. Don't dwell on the acting. The whole point is Jackie Chan – and, like Astaire and Rogers, he does what he does better than anybody. There is a physical confidence, a grace, an elegance to the way he moves. There is humor to the choreography of the fights (which are never too gruesome). He's having fun. If we allow ourselves to get in the right frame of mind, so are we.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Nate Jones in "The Daily Utah Chronicle" rated the film 3-and-a-half stars. He described Chan as "the biggest action hero in the world" like a cross between Bruce Lee, Bruce Willis, Charlie Chaplin, and Harrison Ford, and said Chan "has brought the Kung-Fu action picture" genre "roaring back to life" in American pop culture. He praised the action choreography as "a masterfully seamless wave, proving that acting and fighting can coexist, if they're in the hands of a virtuoso." However, he criticized the English dubbing.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: In a 1995 review for the Hong Kong Film Critics Society, Stephen Teo panned the film as "at best, an average Jackie Chan picture." He noted that despite the final hovercraft set piece, the action "is offset by the comedy underpinnings of the thin plot."


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The film was featured in a 2015 video essay by Every Frame A Painting, calling attention to the fact that the movie was shot in Vancouver despite being set in the Bronx, where no mountain ranges are visible.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: In the United Kingdom, the film was watched by viewers on BBC1 in 2008, making it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on BBC. It was later watched by UK viewers on BBC1 in 2009, making it the year's most-watched foreign-language film on UK television. In 2011, it was again the year's most-watched foreign-language film on UK television with 900,000 viewers on BBC1. Combined, the film drew at least UK television viewership on BBC1 between 2008 and 2011.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The majority of DVD versions of the film contain the heavily edited US New Line Cinema cut, with the relevant dubs created for each market. However, other versions exist, which are closer to the original theatrical release.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: It appears that a joint-distribution deal was made, with Thakral releasing the film in China, and Chinastar releasing it in Hong Kong. This version contains no credits, not even the film title, but is otherwise the Hong Kong version. There are no English subtitles and the ratio is roughly 2.10:1.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: Malaysian distributor Speedy released a VCD. As well as local censorship (for profanity - also featuring a substituted shots of Angelo insulting Keung), it has a slightly different Cantonese/English soundtrack (some characters are dubbed in Cantonese); there are English, Chinese and Malay subtitles languages. It is cropped to approximately 1:85:1 and distorted to 1:56:1.


title: Rumble in the Bronx

text: The film had three separate DVD releases by Taiwanese distributor Funny. Two of these DVDs feature the Taiwanese Mandarin-dubbed version with embedded subtitles. One of these contains a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack only, whilst the other contains both Dolby and DTS soundtracks. The third release is a double-sided disc, featuring the Taiwanese Mandarin dub on one side and the English-dubbed New Line Cinema version on the other. Despite containing a dubbed soundtrack, these DVDs are the only releases to contain English subtitles for a Chinese version. All three are presented in 2.35:1.


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: Josh Point Wolf (born October 19, 1969) is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He has written for a number of sitcoms, including "All of Us" and "Cuts". He is best known for his regular appearances on the round table of E!'s late-night talk show "Chelsea Lately".


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: He was introduced to comedy at the age of sixteen, doing an entire set about his parents' gas. Having moved to Seattle, he became a spokesperson for Nintendo and interviewed Bill Gates for an internal film for Microsoft. He moved once more to Los Angeles, and was spotted while doing a one-man show at the HBO Workspace. He signed a two-year deal with ABC to develop his own television show, but it was never broadcast. He instead concentrated on writing for sitcoms such as UPN's "All of Us" and "Cuts".


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: Wolf is a regular on the round table of E!'s late-night talk show "Chelsea Lately". He appears as one of the comedians on the "Comedians of Chelsea Lately" stand-up tour, and has previously appeared as the warm-up act for Chelsea Handler herself.


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: He also appeared as a finalist on the fourth season of NBC's "Last Comic Standing" in the "Last Comic Downloaded" segment, he was beaten by Theo Von. He is currently working on an untitled project for Fox, starring himself as a single father. It is a semi-autobiographical show, being based in part on Wolf's experiences as a single dad. He has also sold a book to Grand Central Publishing. Wolf has sold a script to Adam Sandler's Happy Madison Productions based on the true story of a traveling youth baseball team which was used as a cover for the robberies committed by its coach. On July 20, 2012, he began hosting a weekly podcast with fellow "Chelsea Lately" regular Ross Mathews called "Josh and Ross." That same year, Discovery Channel hired Josh for "Shark After Dark," which received great ratings. Josh was put on live television hosting a show about sharks. In September 2013, Wolf began hosting his own podcast on the Toad Hop Network called "Off the Rails with Josh Wolf". Josh now hosts a podcast with Sarah Colonna called "Off the Rails with Josh Wolf and Sarah Colonna."


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: Wolf is married to film director Bethany Ashton Wolf. His cousin is former "Party of Five" actor Scott Wolf.


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: On an episode of "The Church of What's Happening Now" with Joey Diaz, Josh detailed a true story about a food truck–style business he once ran called PB&J'S.


title: Josh Wolf (comedian)

text: He was ordered to shut down after an inspector found Josh and his children making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on an apartment floor. Josh Wolf is an alumnus of Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.


title: Tha Trademarc

text: Marc Predka (born April 21, 1975), better known by his stage name Tha Trademarc, is an American hip hop artist. He first came to prominence when he and his younger first cousin, WWE wrestler John Cena, collaborated on the 2005 album "You Can't See Me", including Cena's entrance theme "The Time Is Now". He also appeared in the music videos of the songs, "Bad Bad Man" and "Right Now" with Cena. Prior to the album, Trademarc appeared on Cena's first WWE DVD "Word Life".


title: Tha Trademarc

text: In August 2007, Trademarc appeared at Total Nonstop Action Wrestling's (TNA) Hard Justice pay-per-view as the "new boyfriend" of Karen Angle, later revealed to be a ruse when Karen and Trademarc helped Karen's "estranged" husband Kurt Angle win the match. He appeared again on "iMPACT!" the next week. While working with TNA he also re-recorded Kurt Angle's entrance music, mixing in a rap he did over a Lunatic Fringe beat with the TNA-composed "My Quest" to form the hip hop theme "Gold Medal". In 2008, he released his first solo debut album "Inferiority Complex".


title: Tha Trademarc

text: In August 2008, Tha Trademarc collaborated with Massachusetts rappers Esoteric and DC The Midi Alien to create the East Coast Avengers. Their group debut album "Prison Planet" was released in late 2008. The group released their song "Kill Bill O'Reilly" which caused a media controversy due to lyrics that centered on violently killing Bill O'Reilly. Michelle Malkin's criticism of the song led to the group recording "Dear Michelle" in response. They have since released another single titled "Hey America!".


title: Aliens of the Deep

text: Aliens of the Deep is a 2005 American documentary film directed in part by James Cameron alongside fellow cameraman and friend Steven Quale, and filmed in the IMAX 3D format. It was produced by Walden Media and Walt Disney Pictures. Cameron teams with NASA scientists to explore the mid-ocean ridges, submerged chains of mountains in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans that are home to some of the planet's more unusual forms of life.


title: Aliens of the Deep

text: Cameron joins up aboard the Russian research vessel "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh" with a group of NASA scientists, as well as some American marine biologists, to investigate ten hydrothermal vents in both the Atlantic and Pacific. The vents have their own unique ecosystem, which support diverse organisms such as giant tube worms, swarms of blind white crabs, and vast amounts of shrimp which are capable of "seeing" water that is heated by the vents. These creatures do not require sunlight like other organisms, and instead obtain their energy from the vents. They are able to survive in the superheated and sulfurous water. Because of this, the documentary suggests that this is what life beyond Earth might look like. As some alien ecosystems are likely to be a lot harsher than a typical terrestrial ecosystem, these exotic vents provide an insight into some of the forms that alien life might take.


title: Aliens of the Deep

text: The documentary shows Cameron's passion for exploring the oceans, as well as his interest in extraterrestrial life. It also showcases the technology employed to reach such depths.


title: Aliens of the Deep

text: The film is similar to Cameron's earlier documentary, "Ghosts of the Abyss" (2003), which involves him journeying to the wreck of the RMS "Titanic". It too was filmed in the 3-D IMAX format.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is an American computer scientist who is the co-founder of Pixar and was the President of Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored for his contributions to 3D computer graphics, including the 2019 ACM Turing Award.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Edwin Catmull was born on March 31, 1945, in Parkersburg, West Virginia. His family later moved to Salt Lake City, Utah, where his father first served as principal of Granite High School and then of Taylorsville High School.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Early in his life, Catmull found inspiration in Disney movies, including "Peter Pan" and "Pinocchio", and wanted to be an animator; however, after finishing high school, he had no idea how to get there as there were no animation schools around that time. Because he also liked math and physics, he chose a scientific career instead. He also made animation using flip-books. Catmull graduated in 1969, with a B.S. in physics and computer science from the University of Utah. Initially interested in designing programming languages, Catmull encountered Ivan Sutherland, who had designed the computer drawing program Sketchpad, and changed his interest to digital imaging. As a student of Sutherland, he was part of the university's ARPA program, sharing classes with James H. Clark, John Warnock and Alan Kay.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: From that point, his main goal and ambition were to make digitally realistic films. During his time at the university, he made two new fundamental computer-graphics discoveries: texture mapping and bicubic patches; and invented algorithms for spatial anti-aliasing and refining subdivision surfaces. Catmull says the idea for subdivision surfaces came from mathematical structures in his mind when he applied B-splines to non-four sided objects. He also independently discovered Z-buffering, which had been described eight months before by Wolfgang Straßer in his PhD thesis.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 1972, Catmull made his earliest contribution to the film industry: a one-minute animated version of his left hand, titled "A Computer Animated Hand", created with Fred Parke at the University of Utah. This short sequence was eventually picked up by a Hollywood producer and incorporated in the 1976 film "Futureworld", which was the first film to use 3D computer graphics and a science-fiction sequel to the 1973 film "Westworld", itself being the first to use a pixelated image generated by a computer. "A Computer Animated Hand" was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in December 2011.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 1974, Catmull earned his doctorate in computer science, and was hired by a company called Applicon. By November of that year, he had been contacted by Alexander Schure, the founder of the New York Institute of Technology, who offered him the position as the director of the institute's new Computer Graphics Lab. In that position, in 1977, he invented Tween, software for 2D animation that automatically produced frames of motion in between two frames.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: However, Catmull's team lacked the ability to tell a story effectively via film, harming the effort to produce a motion picture via a computer. Catmull and his partner, Alvy Ray Smith, attempted to reach out to studios to alleviate this issue, but were generally unsuccessful until they attracted the attention of George Lucas at Lucasfilm.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Lucas approached Catmull in 1979 and asked him to lead a group to bring computer graphics, video editing, and digital audio into the entertainment field.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Lucas had already made a deal with a computer company called Triple-I, and asked them to create a digital model of an X-wing fighter from "Star Wars", which they did. In 1979, Catmull became the Vice President at Industrial Light & Magic computer graphics division at Lucasfilm.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Lucasfilm's digital division and founded Pixar, where Catmull would work. Pixar would be acquired by Disney in 2006.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In June 2007, Catmull and long-time Pixar digital animator and director John Lasseter were given control of Disneytoon Studios, a division of Disney Animation housed in a separate facility in Glendale. As president and chief creative officer, respectively, they have supervised three separate studios for Disney, each with its own production pipeline: Pixar, Disney Animation, and Disneytoon. While Disney Animation and Disneytoon are located in the Los Angeles area, Pixar is located over 350 miles (563 kilometers) northwest in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Catmull and Lasseter both live. Accordingly, they appointed a general manager for each studio to handle day-to-day affairs on their behalf, then began regularly commuting each week to both Pixar and Disney Animation and spending at least two days per week (usually Tuesdays and Wednesdays) at Disney Animation.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: While at Pixar, Catmull was implicated in the High-Tech Employee Antitrust scandal, in which Bay Area technology companies allegedly agreed, among other things, not to cold-call recruit from one another. Catmull defended his actions in a deposition, saying: "While I have responsibility for the payroll, I have responsibility for the long term also." Disney and its subsidiaries, including Pixar, ultimately paid $100 million in settlement compensation.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In November 2014, the general managers of Disney Animation and Pixar were both promoted to president, but both continued to report to Catmull, who retained the title of president of Walt Disney and Pixar. On October 23, 2018, Catmull announced his plans to retire from Pixar and Disney Animation, staying on as an adviser through July 2019.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 1993, Catmull received his first Academy Scientific and Technical Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences "for the development of PhotoRealistic RenderMan software which produces images used in motion pictures from 3D computer descriptions of shape and appearance". He shared this award with Tom Porter. In 1995, he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. Again in 1996, he received an Academy Scientific and Technical Award "for pioneering inventions in Digital Image Compositing".


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 2000, Catmull was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for leadership in the creation of digital imagery, leading to the introduction of fully synthetic visual effects and motion pictures.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 2001, he received an Oscar "for significant advancements to the field of motion picture rendering as exemplified in Pixar's RenderMan". In 2006, he was awarded the IEEE John von Neumann Medal for pioneering contributions to the field of computer graphics in modeling, animation and rendering. At the 81st Academy Awards (2008, presented in February 2009), Catmull was awarded the Gordon E. Sawyer Award, which honors "an individual in the motion picture industry whose technological contributions have brought credit to the industry".


title: Edwin Catmull

text: In 2013, the Computer History Museum named him a Museum Fellow "for his pioneering work in computer graphics, animation and filmmaking".


title: Edwin Catmull

text: His book "Creativity, Inc." was shortlisted for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award (2014), and was a selection for Mark Zuckerberg book club in March 2015.


title: Edwin Catmull

text: Catmull shared the 2019 Turing Award with Pat Hanrahan for their pioneering work on computer-generated imagery.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Michael William Duncan is an American political history podcaster and author. A self-described "complete history geek", his love for history grew from an interest in ancient civilizations as a child, with a particular affinity for Roman history. After not finding any Roman history podcasts in 2007, Duncan began "The History of Rome", a narrative podcast chronicling events from the founding of Rome until the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The podcast concluded in 2012. A year later he began "Revolutions", which ran for ten seasons over the course of nine years, covering the American, French, and Russian revolutions, among others. The series' main narrative ended in July 2022.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: In addition to podcasting, Duncan is the author of two historical books. In 2017, Duncan wrote "The Storm Before the Storm", which was well reviewed and appeared on "The New York Times" Best Seller List. His most recent work, 2021's "", received similar praise, earning its own spot on the New York Times Best Seller's.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan was born in Redmond, Washington, and attended Western Washington University, attaining a degree in political science with a minor in philosophy. He is an avid fan of the Seattle Mariners baseball team.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Earlier in his career, he worked as a fishmonger; he was in the fish trade most of the time he was recording "The History of Rome". Duncan also occasionally creates political comic strips in collaboration with illustrator Jason Novak.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: In 2018 Duncan relocated to Paris, France in order to do research for his 2021 book "Hero Of Two Worlds", a biography on the Marquis de Lafayette. In April 2021, with Duncan's work on the book completed, he and his family returned to the United States.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: During the course of The History of Rome, Duncan married and made a special "The History of Rome" episode on Roman wedding customs in celebration. Duncan and his wife have two children.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan's interest in Roman history grew from a "general interest in ancient civilizations." As a child, he would often flip through his parents' encyclopedia set to the entries on Ancient Egypt or Ancient Greece, the Maya, and the Inca. The largest and most encompassing of those civilizations to Duncan was always the Romans. Mike became especially interested in Roman history while reading his grandfather's paperback version of Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Describing himself as "a complete history geek," Duncan also has a huge interest in American history. He believes the greatest difference between America and Rome is that compared to Rome, America has only spent a short time on the world stage. Despite studying political science in college, Duncan spent much of his free time studying ancient Greek and Latin texts. "I sort of stumbled into it, so I was reading a ton of Livy at the time, and a ton of Suetonius, and then I had just gotten into Tacitus."


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Regarding modern history, Duncan has predicted that Silicon Valley may be seen in the future as groundbreaking as the Renaissance was, stating that "we have lived in the last twenty years through some of the most impressive advances in human civilization."


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan began "The History of Rome" in 2007, after failing to find any good podcasts about ancient history. The project turned into an award-winning weekly podcast which aired for 179 episodes until 2012 and was downloaded more than a 100 million times.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: The podcast covers the time period from the origin of the Roman Kingdom to the fall of the Western Roman Empire, focusing on the most accepted chain of events according to historical consensus.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: "Revolutions" aired from 15 September 2013 to 3 July 2022. The podcast covered modern political revolutions, beginning with the English Revolution. Each season was dedicated to one revolution or revolutionary wave and discussed the revolution through a chronological narrative approach, as in his podcast "The History of Rome", but the shorter time periods and longer episode length for each season allowed greater detail for individual events. Seasons began with one or two episodes dedicated to the pre-history of the revolution and its causes, sometimes highlighting when and how the revolution could have been avoided. Initially, Duncan planned to limit his podcast to 12-15 episodes per revolution, but he ran over that self-imposed limit with the English Civil War and the American Revolution and decided to give up on it for the French Revolution, which ultimately ended up being 54 episodes (not counting supplemental episodes). The series covered the English Civil War, the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, Simon Bolivar and Gran Colombia, the July Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune, the Mexican Revolution, and finally the Russian Revolution, ending its run of narrative episodes in July 2022. This was followed by a series of retrospective episodes, taking a broader look at the structure of revolution.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Revolutions also featured supplemental episodes, excluded from the normal count of episodes, and of varying length (compared to roughly half-hour normal episodes). Some of them focused in depth on a particular topic or person, while others were verbatim reproductions of historical texts such as the United States Declaration of Independence or the French Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan drew inspiration for the Revolutions podcast out of a deep personal interest from his teenage years: "When I was really getting into history when I was a teenager, the American Revolution was my favorite period of American history. I spent a whole period of time being really into the Russian Revolution." As he had done with "The History of Rome" podcast, Duncan ran a series of tours to accompany the podcast which visited historical sites mentioned on the show. Publications including "Time", "Popular Mechanics", and "The Guardian" have included "Revolutions" on their lists of recommended podcasts. Benjamin Wittes, after hearing the first two episodes of "Revolutions", called the podcast "informative, engaging, told in Duncan's usual easygoing, somewhat comic style that packs a lot of history into relatively brief discussions". The introduction to each episode is a clip from the second movement of Joseph Haydn's Symphony 92 (Oxford).


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Mike Duncan is believed to have coined the phrase "the entropy of victory" to describe the recurring division that occurs following a successful revolt, or coup d'état, among the victors.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: On 24 October 2017, Duncan published "The Storm Before The Storm," a non-fiction work which explores Rome between 146–78 BC, the period predating the end of the Roman Republic. It entered the "New York Times" best seller list Hardcover Non-Fiction on the eighth place during its first week. In an interview with the "Washington Post Worldview", Duncan claimed his aim for the book was to "pull back two generations [from the time of Caesar] and ask, 'What was it that opened the cracks in the foundation of the Republic?'"


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: The book received widespread praise, with many reviewers noting how the events described in the book portend to modern times. Benjamin Wittes of "Lawfare Blog" wrote, "Never has a book about history that's two millennia old been so timely...You'll learn as much about the problems we face today from this book as from any newspaper", and a review in the Huffington Post praised his "congenial style", claiming that he "zeros in on Rome's polarization between "optimates" (conservatives) and "populares" (populists), the disintegration of participatory democracy, and the concomitant rise in inequality, uncivil discourse, and violence. The parallels with modern times, and particularly contemporary America, leap off the page".


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan's second book, "", is a biography about the Marquis de Lafayette during the American and French revolutions and their aftermaths. The book was published 24 August 2021 and in September of that same year, it reached number three on the New York Times Bestseller List. The book was received positively by numerous important outlets including The New Yorker, Publishers Weekly and The New Republic. Duncan has also expressed interest in developing a TV series based on the biography, having drafted a pilot script for the proposed show.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Duncan appears as a panel historian on seasons two and three of the Netflix documentary "Roman Empire", and was a historical consultant for The Simpsons' episode "I, Carumbus."


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: In July 2022, Duncan released, through his Revolutions podcast, a one-man table read of a script he created for a proposed Marquis de Lafayette TV show. Duncan reported that he hopes to turn this idea into a multi-season series and is currently in early discussions to do so.


title: Mike Duncan (podcaster)

text: Benjamin Wittes directly modelled the introduction to the "Lawfare" Podcast on "The History of Rome". Robin Pierson's podcast "The History of Byzantium" was explicitly modelled after "The History of Rome" in style, length and quality and was intended by Pierson to act as a sort of sequel to it. Similarly, Peter Adamson mentioned Duncan as one of the reasons he started his "History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps" podcast. Rian Johnson was listening to the History of Rome podcast as he was writing the script for "". In a "Wall Street Journal" article Johnson states: "The stories have a lot of similarities. They’re about family dynamics and family politics. They’re about war and the mechanisms of war. You’ve got characters like Nero who are these insane, larger-than-life, operatic madmen driving their country to ruin. It’s very timely."


title: Spanish nobility

text: Spanish nobles are persons who possess the legal status of hereditary nobility according to the laws and traditions of the Spanish monarchy and historically also those who held personal nobility as bestowed by one of the three highest orders of knighthood of the Kingdom, namely the Order of the Golden Fleece, the Order of Charles III and the Order of Isabella the Catholic. A system of titles and honours of Spain and of the former kingdoms that constitute it make up the Spanish nobility. Some nobles possess various titles that may be inherited, but the creation and recognition of titles is legally a prerogative of the King of Spain.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Many noble titles and families still exist which have transmitted that status since time immemorial. Some aristocratic families use the nobiliary particle "de" before their family name, although this was more prominent before the 20th century. During the rule of "Generalísimo" Francisco Franco, some new hereditary titles were conferred on individuals, and the titles granted by the Carlist pretenders were officially recognised.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Despite the accession to the throne of Spain by Juan Carlos I in 1975, the royal court of nobles holding positions and offices attached to the Royal Household was not restored. Noble titleholders are subjected to taxation, whereas under Spain's "Ancien Régime" (until 1923) they were exempt. King Juan Carlos resumed conferral of titles to recognize those whose public service, artistic endeavour, personal achievement, philanthropy, etc. is deemed to have benefitted the Spanish nation.


title: Spanish nobility

text: As of 2019, there are approximately 2,237 nobles in Spain and 400 Grandes de España, with 3,200 total titles of Spanish nobility. Some nobles may carry more than one title of nobility. Many are active in the worlds of business, finance, and technology, with some taking on leadership roles in major IBEX 35 companies, some of Spain's largest companies. Examples include the president of FCC, Esther Alcocer Koplowitz, 9th Marchioness of Casa Peñalver, or Alfonso Martínez de Irujo Fitz-James Stuart, Duke of Híjar, president of IE Law School in Madrid.


title: Spanish nobility

text: In Spain today, the possession of a title of nobility does not imply any legal or fiscal privilege; On the contrary, the possession of titles of nobility is subject to the payment of a normal level of taxation. It is a distinction of merely honorary and symbolic character, accompanied by the treatment of "the most excellent lord" for those titles that possess the dignity of grandees of Spain and of "illustrious lords" for others. The last privilege, suppressed in 1984, was the right to a diplomatic passport by the Grandees of Spain (Grandes de España). This privilege disappeared by Royal Decree 1023/1984. The titles without the rank of grandee of Spain never enjoyed this privilege.


title: Spanish nobility

text: With the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, the use of noble titles was abolished by way of Decree of 1 June 1931, ratified by Law of 30 December of the same year. In 1948, legal recognition of the usage of noble titles was provided for by Law of 4 May 1948 restoring the rules as they were before 14 April 1931.


title: Spanish nobility

text: At present, titles of nobility find their legal basis in article 62, section f, of the 1978 constitution, which grants the prerogative of the king to grant honors and distinctions in accordance with the laws.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Spanish legislation recognizes titles of nobility and protects their legal owners against third parties. The Spanish nobility titles are in no case susceptible of purchase or sale, since their succession is strictly reserved for blood relatives of better right of the first holder of the title. The successions are processed by the Ministry of Justice and their use is subject to their respective tax.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The legal status of individual titles can be checked at La Diputación de la Grandeza de España y Títulos del Reino (DGET) and using Guía de Títulos in the Navigation bar.


title: Spanish nobility

text: In the past, grandees were divided into first, second, and third classes, but this division has ceased to be relevant in practice while remaining a titular distinction; legally all grandees enjoy the same privileges in modern times. At one time however, each class held special privileges such as:


title: Spanish nobility

text: Additionally, all grandees were addressed by the king as "mi Primo" (my Cousin), whereas ordinary nobles were only qualified as "mi Pariente" (my Kinsman).


title: Spanish nobility

text: An individual may hold a grandeeship, whether in possession of a title of nobility or not. Normally, however, each grandeeship is attached to a title. A grandeeship is always attached to the grant of a ducal title. The grant of a grandeeship with any other rank of nobility has always been at the will of the sovereign. Excepting dukes and some very ancient titles of marquesses and counts, most Spanish titles of nobility are not attached to grandeeships.


title: Spanish nobility

text: A grandee of any rank outranks a non-grandee, even if that non-grandee's title is of a higher degree, with the exception of official members of the Spanish Royal Family who may in fact hold no title at all. Thus, a baron-grandee enjoys higher precedence than a marquess who is not a grandee.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Since 1987, the children of Spanish infantes, traditionally considered part of the royal family, have been entitled to the rank and style of a grandee but do not hold the legal dignity of grandee unless a "grandeza" is officially conferred by the sovereign; once the dignity has been officially bestowed, it becomes hereditary.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Some notable titles, which are attached to grandeeships, are: Duke of Alba, Duke of Medinaceli, Duke of Osuna, Duke of Infantado, Duke of Albuquerque, Duke of Nájera, Duke of Frías and Duke of Medina Sidonia, Marquess of Aguilar de Campoo, Marquess of Astorga, Marquess of Santillana, Marquess of Los Vélez, Count of Benavente, Count of Lerín, Count of Olivares, Count of Oñate, and Count of Lemos.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Dukes, Grandees, their spouses and heirs are entitled to the honorific style of "The Most Excellent Lord/Lady".


title: Spanish nobility

text: Non-Grandee titled nobles, their spouses and offspring use the style of "The Most Illustrious Lord/Lady".


title: Spanish nobility

text: The ordinary Spanish nobility is divided into six ranks. From highest to lowest, these are: "Duque" (Duke), "Marqués" (Marquess), "Conde" (Count), "Vizconde" (Viscount), "Barón" (Baron), and "Señor" (Lord) (as well as the feminine forms of these titles).


title: Spanish nobility

text: Nobility descends from the first man of a family who was raised to the nobility (or recognized as belonging to the hereditary nobility) to all his legitimate descendants, male and female, in the male line. Thus, most persons who are legally noble hold no noble title. Hereditary titles formerly descended by male-preference primogeniture, a woman being eligible to inherit only if she had no brother or if her brothers also inherited titles. However, by Spanish law, all hereditary titles descend by absolute primogeniture, gender no longer being a criterion for preference in inheritance, since 2005.


title: Spanish nobility

text: In early October, the Senate (upper house of parliament) of Spain approved a bill on historical memory, declaring the dictatorship of Francisco Franco and the judicial decisions made under his regime illegal.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The often overlooked title of 'prince' ("príncipe/princesa") has historically been borne by those who have been granted or have inherited that title. It is often not included in lists of the Spanish nobility because it is rare. Prince/Princess are English translations of Infante/Infanta, referring to the son or daughter of a king; such titles are reserved for members of the royal family (the heir to the throne or the consort of the Queen regnant). Historically, infante or infanta could refer to offspring, siblings, uncles and aunts of a king. The heir's princely titles derive from the ancient kingdoms which united to form Spain.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Other titles of 'prince' were frequently granted by the kings of Spain, but usually in their capacity as kings of Naples or of Sicily. Such nobles often sojourned at the Spanish court where their titles were acknowledged, but rarely were Spanish nobles the recipients of a title of prince in Spain. The most notable exceptions were the title Prince of the Peace conferred in 1795 on Manuel Godoy, a favourite of the Spanish king and the title Prince of Vergara conferred to Baldomero Espartero. And Joseph Bonaparte conferred the title to be hereditary on his grandchildren in both the male and female line, Although legislation of the twentieth century ended official recognition of the title of prince outside the royal bloodline family, it did allow the holder of a princedom to have the dignity converted to a ducal title of the same name.


title: Spanish nobility

text: When military dictator Francisco Franco appointed Juan Carlos de Borbón as his heir apparent with the future title of king, he created the new titles of prince of Spain for him.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Baronies did not exist in the Kingdom of Castile nor the Kingdom of Navarre, and the subsequent kings of Spain did not confer any baronies attached to Castilian or Navarrese estates. However, they did exist in the Kingdom of Aragon, such as:


title: Spanish nobility

text: The title of "Señor" is, together with that of "Conde", the oldest in seniority of the Spanish realms. Many of these lordships are among the oldest titles of nobility in Spain, and the "señor" usually exercised military and administrative powers over the lordship. Although some lordships were created by the kings of Spain, others existed before them and have not been created by any known king. For example, the lord of Biscay held a great degree of independence from the king of Castile, to whom he could pledge or not pledge feudal allegiance, but of whom he was not automatically a vassal: each new lord of Biscay had to renew his oath to the king. Ultimately, however, the kings of Castile inherited the lordship.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Besides those held by the King, in Spain remain seven lordships that maintain the official consideration of Titles of the Kingdom according to the Official Guide of the Titles and Grandees of the Kingdom published by the Ministry of Justice: the Lordship of Solar de Tejada, the Lordship of Solar de Mandayona y Villaseca, the Lordship of Alconchel, the Lordship of Lazcano (with Grandee of Spain), the Lordship of Rubianes (with Grandee of Spain), the Lordship of Higuera de Vargas (with Grandee of Spain), the Lordship of Meirás (with Grandee of Spain) and the Lordship of Sonseca. Other lordships that were considered as Titles of the Kingdom in the past, have not been rehabilitated.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Lower nobility held ranks, without individual titles, such as (in Aragon, e.g. Latas Family), or . These did not, however, correspond to the status of a , a title unknown to Spanish nobility except in Catalonia.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Originally all the nobles in the Western Peninsular Christian Realms were and, as ("old Christians"), held nearly exclusive right to privileged status (although there were some Jews and Muslims recognized as , who shared their privilege to bear arms as knights in the ). The first of the kings of Pamplona and Asturias were originally elected and lifted up on a shield to assume status, by these otherwise untitled nobles. For approximately three hundred years the retained this privilege, only a few of them eventually being granted the non-heritable title of . Unlike Spain's later titled nobles, the early did not necessarily possess or receive any fief or land grant. Many were as poor as commoners, although they were tax-exempt and could join the civil service or the army.


title: Spanish nobility

text: During the Middle Ages became a title granted by the kings of Castile as a reward for service done to the crown (or, as in Biscay, as a way of recognizing prior rights). In the same way was granted for military achievement when the ended. Being the most obvious proof of noble descent, came to be the only lesser title to remain among the modern ranks of Spanish nobility. From this ancient estate of the realm emerged Spain's nobility. All titled and untitled nobles are considered , but many of the modern titled nobility do not descend from the original .


title: Spanish nobility

text: The term indicated membership in a family whose noble status was recognized in the earliest records of its existence; thus its immemorial nobility was acknowledged but not created by any monarch.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The evidence supporting one's claim to a title may be reviewed by the Council of Grandees and Titled Nobles of the Kingdom ("Diputación de Grandes y Títulos del Reino"). The body includes eight grandees, eight nobles who are not grandees, and a president who must hold both a grandeeship and a hereditary title unattached to a grandeeship.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Succession to Spanish noble titles is hereditary, but not automatic. The original letters patent which created the title determine the order of succession. Payment of substantial fees is required whenever a title is inherited.


title: Spanish nobility

text: While noble titles historically have followed the rule of male-preference primogeniture, a Spanish law came into effect on 30 October 2006, after approval by both houses of the "Cortes", establishing the inheritance of hereditary noble titles by the firstborn regardless of gender. The law is retroactive to 27 July 2005.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Following the death of a noble, the senior heir may petition the sovereign through the Spanish Ministry of Justice for permission to use the title. If the senior heir does not make a petition within two years, then other potential heirs may do so on their own behalf. There is a limit of forty years from the vacancy by death or relinquishment of a title within which that title may be claimed and revived by an heir.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The petitioner must demonstrate that he or she is a child, grandchild or direct male line descendant of a noble (whether a grandee or not), or that he or she belongs to certain bodies or orders of chivalry deemed noble, or that the father's family is recognized as noble. The amount of fees due depend on whether the title is attached to a grandeeship or not, and on whether the heir is a direct descendant or a collateral kinsman of the previous holder. The petition is normally granted, except if the petitioner is a criminal.


title: Spanish nobility

text: Titles may also be ceded to heirs other than the senior heir, during the lifetime of the main titleholder. Normally, this process is used to allow younger children to succeed to lesser titles, while the highest or principal title goes to the senior heir. Only subsidiary titles may be ceded; the principal title must be reserved for the senior heir. The cession of titles may only be done with the approval of the monarch.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The late Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart, 18th Duchess of Alba (1926–2014) holds the Guinness World Record for number of titles with over 50 titles. Before her death, she ceded some of her titles to each of her six children; otherwise, all but the eldest would have been excluded from succession.


title: Spanish nobility

text: The pretender Carlist branch of the Bourbons created its own titles for its supporters, unrecognized by the ruling Christinos branch.


title: Spanish nobility

text: When General Francisco Franco became head of state with the support of, among others, Carlist troops, Carlist titles became officially recognized.


title: Spanish nobility

text: From the beginning of his reign in November 1975, King Juan Carlos created new titles for about 51 people (as of April 2011), among others recognizing the merits of politicians and artists. Some of these dignities have been hereditary. Examples include:


title: Spanish nobility

text: King Juan Carlos also exceptionally confirmed the title of "Count of Barcelona", a title historically attached to the Crown, but used as a title of pretence by his father, "Infante" Juan, during the dynasty's 20th century exile and the subsequent reign of his son.


title: Spanish nobility

text: King Felipe VI has not yet created any new titles of nobility. He has, however, revived the dukedom of Fernandina, the marquisate of Murillo, and the county of Torre Alegre; and has reverted to the crown the dukedom of Palma Mallorca, formerly belonging to his elder sister, Infanta Cristina of Spain, over a corruption enquiry.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A ventricular septal defect (VSD) is a defect in the ventricular septum, the wall dividing the left and right ventricles of the heart. The extent of the opening may vary from pin size to complete absence of the ventricular septum, creating one common ventricle. The ventricular septum consists of an inferior muscular and superior membranous portion and is extensively innervated with conducting cardiomyocytes.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: The membranous portion, which is close to the atrioventricular node, is most commonly affected in adults and older children in the United States. It is also the type that will most commonly require surgical intervention, comprising over 80% of cases.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Membranous ventricular septal defects are more common than muscular ventricular septal defects, and are the most common congenital cardiac anomaly.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Ventricular septal defect is usually symptomless at birth. It usually manifests a few weeks after birth.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: VSD is an acyanotic congenital heart defect, aka a left-to-right shunt, so there are no signs of cyanosis in the early stage. However, uncorrected VSD can increase pulmonary resistance leading to the reversal of the shunt and corresponding cyanosis.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: The restrictive ventricular septal defects (smaller defects) are associated with a louder murmur and more palpable thrill (grade IV murmur). Larger defects may eventually be associated with pulmonary hypertension due to the increased blood flow. Over time this may lead to an Eisenmenger's syndrome the original VSD operating with a left-to-right shunt, now becomes a right-to-left shunt because of the increased pressures in the pulmonary vascular bed.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A VSD can also form a few days after a myocardial infarction (heart attack) due to mechanical tearing of the septal wall, before scar tissue forms, when macrophages start remodeling the dead heart tissue.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A congenital VSD can result from a disturbance in the morphogenesis of the heart in its embryonic stages. In the fifth week of gestation, the heart undergoes multiple processes of septation and forming a dextral loop. Interfering with the latter leads to insufficient leftward movement of the ventricular outflow tract over the atrioventricular canal, which in turn can result in a VSD or, in the most extreme cases, a double outlet right ventricle with one.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A ventricular septal defect arises when the superior part of the interventricular septum, which separates the right and left ventricles of the heart, fails to fully develop. The right ventricle pumps blood to the lungs to get oxygen, while the left ventricle pumps blood to the rest of the body to provide oxygen to tissues. A ventricular septal defect results in the mixing of oxygen-rich blood with oxygen-poor blood, increasing strain on the heart and lungs.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: During ventricular contraction, or systole, some of the blood from the left ventricle leaks into the right ventricle, passes through the lungs and reenters the left ventricle via the pulmonary veins and left atrium. This has two net effects. First, the circuitous refluxing of blood causes volume overload on the left ventricle. Second, because the left ventricle normally has a much higher systolic pressure (~120 mmHg) than the right ventricle (~20 mmHg), the leakage of blood into the right ventricle therefore elevates right ventricular pressure and volume, causing pulmonary hypertension with its associated symptoms.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: In serious cases, the pulmonary arterial pressure can reach levels that equal the systemic pressure. This reverses the left to right shunt, so that blood then flows from the right ventricle into the left ventricle, resulting in cyanosis, as blood is by-passing the lungs for oxygenation.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: This effect is more noticeable in patients with larger defects, who may present with breathlessness, poor feeding and failure to thrive in infancy. Patients with smaller defects may be asymptomatic. Four different septal defects exist, with perimembranous most common, outlet, atrioventricular, and muscular less commonly.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A VSD can be detected by cardiac auscultation. Classically, a VSD causes a pathognomonic holo- or pansystolic murmur. Auscultation is generally considered sufficient for detecting a significant VSD. The murmur depends on the abnormal flow of blood from the left ventricle, through the VSD, to the right ventricle. If there is not much difference in pressure between the left and right ventricles, then the flow of blood through the VSD will not be very great and the VSD may be silent. This situation occurs a) in the fetus (when the right and left ventricular pressures are essentially equal), b) for a short time after birth (before the right ventricular pressure has decreased), and c) as a late complication of unrepaired VSD. Confirmation of cardiac auscultation can be obtained by non-invasive cardiac ultrasound (echocardiography). To more accurately measure ventricular pressures, cardiac catheterization, can be performed.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Although there are several classifications for VSD, the most accepted and unified classification is that of Congenital Heart Surgery Nomenclature and Database Project.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: The classification is based on the location of the VSD on the right ventricular surface of the inter ventricular septum and is as follows:


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Most cases do not need treatment and heal during the first years of life. Treatment is either conservative or surgical. Smaller congenital VSDs often close on their own, as the heart grows, and in such cases may be treated conservatively.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: For the surgical procedure, a heart-lung machine is required and a median sternotomy is performed. Percutaneous endovascular procedures are less invasive and can be done on a beating heart, but are only suitable for certain patients. Repair of most VSDs is complicated by the fact that the conducting system of the heart is in the immediate vicinity.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Ventricular septum defect in infants is initially treated medically with cardiac glycosides (e.g., digoxin 10-20 μg/kg per day), loop diuretics (e.g., furosemide 1–3 mg/kg per day) and ACE inhibitors (e.g., captopril 0.5–2 mg/kg per day).


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: A device, known as the Amplatzer muscular VSD occluder, may be used to close certain VSDs. It was initially approved in 2009. It appears to work well and be safe. The cost is also lower than having open heart surgery. The device is placed through a small incision in the groin.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: The Amplatzer septal occluder was shown to have full closure of the ventricular defect within the 24 hours of placement. It has a low risk of embolism after implantation. Some tricuspid valve regurgitation was shown after the procedure that could possibly be due from the right ventricular disc. There have been some reports that the Amplatzer septal occluder may cause life-threatening erosion of the tissue inside the heart. This occurs in one percent of people implanted with the device and requires immediate open-heart surgery. This erosion occurs due to improper sizing of the device resulting with it being too large for the defect, causing rubbing of the septal tissue and erosion.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Surgical closure of a Perimembranous VSD is performed on cardiopulmonary bypass with ischemic arrest. Patients are usually cooled to 28 degrees. Percutaneous Device closure of these defects is rarely performed in the United States because of the reported incidence of both early and late onset complete heart block after device closure, presumably secondary to device trauma to the AV node.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Surgical exposure is achieved through the right atrium. The tricuspid valve septal leaflet is retracted or incised to expose the defect margins.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Several patch materials are available, including native pericardium, bovine pericardium, PTFE (Gore-Tex or Impra), or Dacron.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Critical attention is necessary to avoid injury to the conduction system located on the left ventricular side of the interventricular septum near the papillary muscle of the conus. Care is taken to avoid injury to the aortic valve with sutures.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Once the repair is complete, the heart is extensively deaired by venting blood through the aortic cardioplegia site, and by infusing Carbon Dioxide into the operative field to displace air.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Intraoperative transesophageal echocardiography is used to confirm secure closure of the VSD, normal function of the aortic and tricuspid valves, good ventricular function, and the elimination of all air from the left side of the heart.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: The sternum, fascia and skin are closed, with potential placement of a local anesthetic infusion catheter under the fascia, to enhance postoperative pain control.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: Multiple muscular VSDs are a challenge to close, achieving a complete closure can be aided by the use of fluorescein dye.


title: Ventricular septal defect

text: VSDs are the most common congenital cardiac abnormalities. They are found in 30-60% of all newborns with a congenital heart defect, or about 2-6 per 1000 births. During heart formation, when the heart begins life as a hollow tube, it begins to partition, forming septa. If this does not occur properly it can lead to an opening being left within the ventricular septum. It is debatable whether all those defects are true heart defects, or if some of them are normal phenomena, since most of the trabecular VSDs close spontaneously. Prospective studies give a prevalence of 2-5 per 100 births of trabecular VSDs that close shortly after birth in 80-90% of the cases.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Sheryl Patrice Underwood (born October 28, 1963) is an American comedian, actress and television host. She first rose to prominence in the comedy world as the first female finalist in 1989's Miller Lite Comedy Search. Currently, Underwood is one of the hosts on the CBS Daytime talk show "The Talk", becoming the show's longest running co-host, a role she first stepped into in September 2011. She has received one Daytime Emmy Award from seven nominations.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and later moved to Atwater, California, where she attended high school. Her sister, Frankie, was diagnosed with polio. Sheryl is now Frankie's caregiver.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood revealed that she was born with a twin who did not survive. She went on to say that her mother lied to her, telling her that her father murdered her sister. Underwood admitted to carrying her sister's birth certificate around with her. She even stated that her mother stabbed her father, who survived, after Underwood had gotten close to her father, which her mother wanted to prevent after she lied to Underwood about her father being a murderer.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: After graduating college, Underwood joined the United States Air Force, where she served two years in the reserves. She later gained public notice as the first female finalist in the Miller Lite Comedy Search in 1989. She won the BET "Funniest Female Comedian on Comic View" award in 1994 and the BET Comedy Awards' Platinum Mic Viewers Choice Award in 2005.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Following her stand up success, Underwood took a number of minor acting roles, including Bad Mouth Bessie in the 1998 film "I Got the Hook Up" and Catfish Rita in the 2005 film "Beauty Shop".


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood was the host of BET's "Comic View" and executive producer and host of the limited run comedy/variety series "Holla" (September 2002 – January 2003).


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood was a contributor on the nationally syndicated "Tom Joyner Morning Show" until June 2010 when she joined "The Steve Harvey Morning Show" as a contributor. She briefly hosted her own radio program, "Sheryl Underwood and Company", for Radio One-owned Syndication One News/Talk and XM Satellite Radio's Channel 169 (The Power). On Tuesday nights, Underwood hosts "The Sheryl Underwood Show" on Jamie Foxx's Sirius Satellite Radio channel, The Foxxhole (Sirius 106)


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: In 2011, Underwood became a co-host of the CBS Daytime talk show "The Talk" in its second season, replacing Leah Remini.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in liberal arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and master's degrees in media management and mass communication from Governors State University. Underwood once served in the U.S. Armed Forces, and frequently makes jokes about "all the creative places you can get busy on a military base."


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood is a lifelong Republican. However, she campaigned for Barack Obama's re-election in 2012 United States presidential election. Underwood also campaigned for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election "because we have to protect the legacy of President Obama. Low voter turnout benefits Donald Trump and the Republicans. He can't win."


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood is a lifetime member of Zeta Phi Beta sorority, first joining in 1990. She served as president of the organization's Omicron Rho Zeta chapter, as the National Chair of Honorary Members, National Executive Board Chair and International Grand Basileus. She also chartered a graduate chapter of Zeta Phi Beta in Inglewood, California.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: In addition to the Zeta Phi Beta sorority, Underwood is also a member of the National Council of Negro Women and the NAACP. She also founded the African-American Female Comedian Association.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: In the fall of 2011, Underwood revealed that after dating seven years, her husband—who might have suffered from clinical depression—died by suicide after they had been married three years.


title: Sheryl Underwood

text: Underwood was elected as the 23rd International Grand Basileus (President) during Zeta Phi Beta's biennial business meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada in 2008. Her election as Grand Basileus was disputed, but District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Gerald I. Fisher dismissed a lawsuit against the sorority and Underwood that asked the court to unseat her. Her election made her the first professional entertainer to hold the highest elected office of a National Pan-Hellenic Council organization.


title: When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

text: Ayumu Tanaka, a first-year high school student, and Urushi Yaotome, a second-year student, are members of the shogi club. Ayumu vows to confess his feelings to Urushi, his senpai, after he manages to defeat her in a game of shogi, but he is a beginner at the game and Urushi always beats him. Meanwhile, Urushi keeps trying to get Ayumu to admit that he likes her, but Ayumu never allows his poker face to slip.


title: When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

text: "When Will Ayumu Make His Move?" is written and illustrated by Sōichirō Yamamoto. The series originally began as a webcomic titled , which Yamamoto posted on his Twitter account from April 22 to November 19, 2018. "When Will Ayumu Make His Move?" started in Kodansha's "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" on March 6, 2019. Kodansha has compiled its chapters into individual "tankōbon" volumes. The first volume was published on July 4, 2019. As of November 17, 2022, thirteen volumes have been released.


title: When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

text: In March 2021, Kodansha USA announced that they licensed the manga for English release in North America.


title: When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

text: An anime television series adaptation was announced on January 8, 2021. The series was animated by Silver Link and directed by Mirai Minato, with Deko Akao overseeing the series' scripts, and Kazuya Hirata designing the characters. It aired from July 8 to September 23, 2022, on TBS and BS-TBS. The opening theme song is by Kana Hanazawa, while the ending theme song is by Kanna Nakamura. Sentai Filmworks has licensed the series.


title: When Will Ayumu Make His Move?

text: In 2020, the manga was nominated for the 6th Next Manga Awards and placed 3rd out of the 50 nominees with 19,182 votes.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: Turing is the codename for a graphics processing unit (GPU) microarchitecture developed by Nvidia. It is named after the prominent mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. The architecture was first introduced in August 2018 at SIGGRAPH 2018 in the workstation-oriented Quadro RTX cards, and one week later at Gamescom in consumer GeForce RTX 20 series graphics cards. Building on the preliminary work of its HPC-exclusive predecessor, the Turing architecture introduces the first consumer products capable of real-time ray tracing, a longstanding goal of the computer graphics industry. Key elements include dedicated artificial intelligence processors ("Tensor cores") and dedicated ray tracing processors (“RT cores”). Turing leverages DXR, OptiX, and Vulkan for access to ray-tracing. In February 2019, Nvidia released the GeForce 16 series of GPUs, which utilizes the new Turing design but lacks the RT and Tensor cores.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: Turing is manufactured using TSMC's 12 nm FinFET semiconductor fabrication process. The high-end TU102 GPU includes 18.6billion transistors fabricated using this process. Turing also uses GDDR6 memory from Samsung Electronics, and previously Micron Technology.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: The Turing microarchitecture combines multiple types of specialized processor core, and enables an implementation of limited real-time ray tracing. This is accelerated by the use of new RT (ray-tracing) cores, which are designed to process quadtrees and spherical hierarchies, and speed up collision tests with individual triangles.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: The GDDR6 memory is produced by Samsung Electronics for the Quadro RTX series. The RTX 20 series initially launched with Micron memory chips, before switching to Samsung chips by November 2018.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: Nvidia reported rasterization (CUDA) performance gains for existing titles of approximately 30–50% over the previous generation.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: The ray-tracing performed by the RT cores can be used to produce reflections, refractions and shadows, replacing traditional raster techniques such as cube maps and depth maps. Instead of replacing rasterization entirely, however, the information gathered from ray-tracing can be used to augment the shading with information that is much more photo-realistic, especially in regards to off-camera action. Nvidia said the ray-tracing performance increased about 8 times over the previous consumer architecture, Pascal.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: Generation of the final image is further accelerated by the Tensor cores, which are used to fill in the blanks in a partially rendered image, a technique known as de-noising. The Tensor cores perform the result of deep learning to codify how to, for example, increase the resolution of images generated by a specific application or game. In the Tensor cores' primary usage, a problem to be solved is analyzed on a supercomputer, which is taught by example what results are desired, and the supercomputer determines a method to use to achieve those results, which is then done with the consumer's Tensor cores. These methods are delivered via driver updates to consumers. The supercomputer uses a large number of Tensor cores itself.


title: Turing (microarchitecture)

text: Turing's development platform is called RTX. RTX ray-tracing features can be accessed using Microsoft's DXR, OptiX, as well using Vulkan extensions (the last one being also available on Linux drivers). It includes access to AI-accelerated features through NGX. The Mesh Shader, Shading Rate Image functionalities are accessible using DX12, Vulkan and OpenGL extensions on Windows and Linux platforms.


title: Rodinia

text: Rodinia (from the Russian родина, "rodina", meaning "motherland, birthplace") was a Mesoproterozoic and Neoproterozoic supercontinent that assembled 1.26–0.90 billion years ago and broke up 750–633 million years ago.


title: Rodinia

text: Rodinia formed at c. 1.23 Ga by accretion and collision of fragments produced by breakup of an older supercontinent, Columbia, assembled by global-scale 2.0–1.8 Ga collisional events.


title: Rodinia

text: Rodinia broke up in the Neoproterozoic with its continental fragments reassembled to form Pannotia 633–573 million years ago. In contrast with Pannotia, little is known yet about the exact configuration and geodynamic history of Rodinia. Paleomagnetic evidence provides some clues to the paleolatitude of individual pieces of the Earth's crust, but not to their longitude, which geologists have pieced together by comparing similar geologic features, often now widely dispersed.


title: Rodinia

text: The extreme cooling of the global climate around 717–635 million years ago (the so-called Snowball Earth of the Cryogenian period) and the rapid evolution of primitive life during the subsequent Ediacaran and Cambrian periods are thought to have been triggered by the breaking up of Rodinia or to a slowing down of tectonic processes.


title: Rodinia

text: The idea that a supercontinent existed in the early Neoproterozoic arose in the 1970s, when geologists determined that orogens of this age exist on virtually all cratons. Examples are the Grenville orogeny in North America and the Dalslandian orogeny in Europe.


title: Rodinia

text: Since then, many alternative reconstructions have been proposed for the configuration of the cratons in this supercontinent. Most of these reconstructions are based on the correlation of the orogens on different cratons. Though the configuration of the core cratons in Rodinia is now reasonably well known, recent reconstructions still differ in many details. Geologists try to decrease the uncertainties by collecting geological and paleomagnetical data.


title: Rodinia

text: Most reconstructions show Rodinia's core formed by the North American craton (the later paleocontinent of Laurentia), surrounded in the southeast with the East European craton (the later paleocontinent of Baltica), the Amazonian craton ("Amazonia") and the West African craton; in the south with the Río de la Plata and São Francisco cratons; in the southwest with the Congo and Kalahari cratons; and in the northeast with Australia, India and eastern Antarctica. The positions of Siberia and North and South China north of the North American craton differ strongly depending on the reconstruction:


title: Rodinia

text: Little is known about the paleogeography before the formation of Rodinia. Paleomagnetic and geologic data are only definite enough to form reconstructions from the breakup of Rodinia onwards. Rodinia is considered to have formed between 1.3 and 1.23 billion years ago and broke up again before 750 million years ago. Rodinia was surrounded by the superocean geologists call Mirovia (from Russian мировой, "mirovoy", meaning "global").


title: Rodinia

text: According to J.D.A. Piper, Rodinia is one of two models for the configuration and history of the continental crust in the latter part of Precambrian times. The other is Paleopangea, Piper's own concept. Piper proposes an alternative hypothesis for this era and the previous ones. This idea rejects that Rodinia ever existed as a transient supercontinent subject to progressive break-up in the latter part of Proterozoic times and instead that this time and earlier times were dominated by a single, persistent "Paleopangaea" supercontinent. As evidence, he suggests an observation that the palaeomagnetic poles from the continental crust assigned to this time conform to a single path between 825 and 633 million years ago and latterly to a near-static position between 750 and 633 million years. This latter solution predicts that break-up was confined to the Ediacaran period and produced the dramatic environmental changes that characterised the transition between Precambrian and Phanerozoic times. However, this theory has been widely criticized, as incorrect applications of paleomagnetic data have been pointed out.


title: Rodinia

text: In 2009 UNESCO's IGCP project 440, named 'Rodinia Assembly and Breakup', concluded that Rodinia broke up in four stages between 825 and 550 Ma:


title: Rodinia

text: The Rodinia hypothesis assumes that rifting did not start everywhere simultaneously. Extensive lava flows and volcanic eruptions of Neoproterozoic age are found on most continents, evidence for large scale rifting about 750 million years ago. As early as 850 and 800 million years ago, a rift developed between the continental masses of present-day Australia, East Antarctica, India and the Congo and Kalahari cratons on one side and later Laurentia, Baltica, Amazonia and the West African and Rio de la Plata cratons on the other. This rift developed into the Adamastor Ocean during the Ediacaran.


title: Rodinia

text: Around 550 million years ago, on the boundary between the Ediacaran and Cambrian, the first group of cratons eventually fused again with Amazonia, West Africa and the Rio de la Plata cratons. This tectonic phase is called the Pan-African orogeny. It created a configuration of continents that would remain stable for hundreds of millions of years in the form of the continent Gondwana.


title: Rodinia

text: In a separate rifting event about 610 million years ago (halfway into the Ediacaran period), the Iapetus Ocean formed. The eastern part of this ocean formed between Baltica and Laurentia, the western part between Amazonia and Laurentia. Because the exact moments of this separation and the partially contemporaneous Pan-African orogeny are hard to correlate, it might be that all continental mass was again joined in one supercontinent between roughly 600 and 550 million years ago. This hypothetical supercontinent is called Pannotia.


title: Rodinia

text: Unlike later supercontinents, Rodinia would have been entirely barren. Rodinia existed before complex life colonized dry land. Based on sedimentary rock analysis Rodinia's formation happened when the ozone layer was not as extensive as it is today. Ultraviolet light discouraged organisms from inhabiting its interior. Nevertheless, its existence did significantly influence the marine life of its time.


title: Rodinia

text: In the Cryogenian period the Earth experienced large glaciations, and temperatures were at least as cool as today. Substantial areas of Rodinia may have been covered by glaciers or the southern polar ice cap.


title: Rodinia

text: Low temperatures may have been exaggerated during the early stages of continental rifting. Geothermal heating peaks in crust about to be rifted; and since warmer rocks are less dense, the crustal rocks rise up relative to their surroundings. This rising creates areas of higher altitude, where the air is cooler and ice is less likely to melt with changes in season, and it may explain the evidence of abundant glaciation in the Ediacaran period.


title: Rodinia

text: The eventual rifting of the continents created new oceans and seafloor spreading, which produces warmer, less dense oceanic lithosphere. Due to its lower density, hot oceanic lithosphere will not lie as deep as old, cool oceanic lithosphere. In periods with relatively large areas of new lithosphere, the ocean floors come up, causing the eustatic sea level to rise. The result was a greater number of shallower seas.


title: Rodinia

text: The increased evaporation from the larger water area of the oceans may have increased rainfall, which, in turn, increased the weathering of exposed rock. By inputting data on the ratio of stable isotopes O:O into computer models, it has been shown that, in conjunction with quick weathering of volcanic rock, this increased rainfall may have reduced greenhouse gas levels to below the threshold required to trigger the period of extreme glaciation known as Snowball Earth.


title: Rodinia

text: Increased volcanic activity also introduced into the marine environment biologically active nutrients, which may have played an important role in the development of the earliest animals.


title: Amiibo

text: Amiibo functionality can be used directly with the Nintendo Switch, Wii U, and New Nintendo 3DS consoles by using built-in NFC readers. In addition, the rest of the 3DS hardware line can use an official NFC adapter. By September 2016, Nintendo reported that 39 million Amiibo toys had been sold, along with more than 30 million Amiibo cards.


title: Amiibo

text: Toys for Bob and its parent company Activision had offered an opportunity for Nintendo to be a partner in a new video game franchise known as "Skylanders", which would use RFID-equipped character figurines and a special reader component to interact with the game itself, and could store data on the figurine itself such as the corresponding character's statistics. While Nintendo passed on the exclusivity deal, the franchise itself quickly became one of Activision's most successful franchises upon its launch as a spin-off of the "Spyro the Dragon" series, and also resulted in competition from Disney Interactive Studios, who released a game with a similar concept known as "Disney Infinity" in 2013.


title: Amiibo

text: In March 2013, long predating Amiibo, Nintendo unveiled "Pokémon Rumble U", the first game for the Wii U to use the Wii U GamePad's near-field communications support to enable the use of its own interactive figurines. During an investors' meeting in May 2014, Nintendo presented a prototype of a more comprehensive figurine platform for its 3DS and Wii U consoles, which was designed so that the figurines could be used across multiple games. The new system was codenamed NFP, standing for either "Nintendo Figurine Platform" or "NFC Featured Platform", and was slated to be officially unveiled during E3.


title: Amiibo

text: On June 10, 2014, during E3 2014, Nintendo officially announced the Amiibo platform, and that "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" would be among the first games to provide features integrating with Amiibo figurines.


title: Amiibo

text: In a corporate policy event after the launch of the Amiibo platform, Nintendo executive Shigeru Miyamoto addressed the platform's future by stating that the company was "now moving forward with projects that make use of NFC in a variety of unique ways. Nintendo is known as a video game company, but in fact, it is also a toy company."


title: Amiibo

text: "Super Smash Bros." Amiibo toys were first released in North America on November 21, 2014, in Europe on November 28, 2014, and in Japan on December 6, 2014, along with the release of "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U".


title: Amiibo

text: The "Super Mario" series, featuring Mario, Luigi, Peach, Yoshi, Bowser, and Toad, arrived on March 20, 2015, for both regions.


title: Amiibo

text: In 2015, Nintendo began to extend the Amiibo line into new form factors; on February 27, 2015, Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata revealed that the company had plans to release Amiibo-enabled trading cards. On April 1, 2015, Nintendo unveiled "", a spin-off in the "Animal Crossing" series that utilizes cards. Nintendo also unveiled Amiibo yarn plushies as a tie-in for "Yoshi's Woolly World".


title: Amiibo

text: During the E3 2015 Nintendo Direct on June 16, 2015, Activision revealed Bowser and Donkey Kong Amiibo (Hammer Slam Bowser and Turbo Charge Donkey Kong) and vehicles for use in "". These toys are compatible with either the "Skylanders" games or Amiibo-compatible games by means of a mode switch on their bases. They will work across all Nintendo platform versions of "Skylanders: SuperChargers". The Amiibo are also compatible with all Nintendo platform versions of "Skylanders: Imaginators".


title: Amiibo

text: On August 27, 2015, an Amiibo toy of the titular character from the indie video game "Shovel Knight" was unveiled, which will unlock content exclusive to the 3DS and Wii U versions of the game and its future installments. It is the first Amiibo toy of a non-Nintendo character that is not associated with a first-party title; previous Amiibo toys of third-party characters were associated with "Super Smash Bros." Additionally, production and distribution of the figurine will be overseen by the game's publisher, Yacht Club Games, rather than Nintendo (except in Japan where the latter is the publisher), although it will still officially be marketed by Nintendo as part of the Amiibo line as a form of brand licensing. Explaining the arrangement, a Nintendo representative stated that "we were like, what's one thing that Nintendo could do that nobody [else] could ever do?"


title: Amiibo

text: The Amiibo line for "The Legend of Zelda" initially began solely with the Wolf Link figurine, which is mainly used in "" and later "". It expanded with the 30th Anniversary collection (8-bit Link, "" Link, "" Link, and "The Wind Waker" Zelda), and the "Breath of the Wild" collection (Archer Link, Rider Link, Zelda, Bokoblin, Mipha, Daruk, Revali, Urbosa and the Guardian figurine). At E3 2017, Nintendo unveiled several new Amiibo figurines, including wedding-themed Mario, Peach and Bowser figurines which coincided with the launch of the Nintendo Switch game "Super Mario Odyssey", as well as figurines of Chrom and Tiki from the "Fire Emblem" series to tie in with the release of "Fire Emblem Warriors" on Switch and New 3DS systems. Two "Metroid"-themed Amiibo figures released alongside the 3DS remake of "Metroid II", "", and figurines released later based around the four Champions in "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild". Third-party software developer Bethesda Softworks announced that existing Zelda figurines would be compatible with the Nintendo Switch port of "", allowing players to obtain select Zelda items and clothing for their Dragonborn, including the Master Sword, Hylian Shield and the Champion's Tunic from "Breath of the Wild".


title: Amiibo

text: Upon initial launch, the Amiibo line quickly spiked in popularity, with preorders selling out before the products became available to the public. While Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata stated that Amiibo will be kept in stock, he also explained that some will be "limited-time offers which will cede their positions to new ones once they are sold out". The rarity of certain Amiibo figurines influenced the prices held by online retailers and auctions, of which most can be seen offering select items at prices above the retail price. In Nintendo's 3rd Quarter Financial Results Briefing for the Fiscal Year Ending March 2015, Satoru Iwata expressed surprise at such online auctions that offered "premium prices" of sold out Amiibo toys. A number of first-wave Amiibo toys with manufacturing defects were discovered and sold for notably high prices, such as a Samus figurine with cannons on both arms instead of one being sold on eBay for , and a defect of Princess Peach with missing legs being sold for .


title: Amiibo

text: On April 2, 2015, when preorders were being taken for the May 29 release of the "Super Smash Bros." series Wave 4 and the "Splatoon" series, the US preorder process crashed both GameStop's website and in-store register system. Nintendo acknowledged these issues in early May 2015. Amazon forwent the entire preorder process for those waves; it instead blocked out specific time intervals on their release date during which the non-retailer exclusive Amiibo and the "Super Mario" series Silver Mario Amiibo were available. The retailer continued this practice with its exclusive release of the Palutena Amiibo as well as those released on September 11, 2015.


title: Amiibo

text: In May 2015 in the UK, a truck was stolen that contained preorders of the special edition of "Splatoon", which included a rare Squid Inkling Amiibo as a preorder bonus: the only way to obtain the figure in the UK. As a result, Nintendo lacked the stock to supply the Squid Inkling Amiibos to those who preordered, and offered Inkling Girl or Inkling Boy Amiibos instead alongside a standard edition with a £10 refund, or full refunds.


title: Amiibo

text: In response to the lack of certain Amiibo toys in the United States, Satoru Iwata explained on February 17, 2015, that "an ongoing labor dispute on the west coast" has delayed the "discharge of cargo over the past six months", and is the cause of the absences of certain Amiibo toys intended to be delivered before its launch in November. Following this announcement, rarer Amiibo toys such as Wii Fit Trainer, Meta Knight, and Ike have been receiving limited re-releases in North America. For the US, the exclusive Best Buy release of the Dark Pit figurine, the retailer announced it would not take any preorders or online orders and the item would be limited to one per customer. While some news sources such as Kotaku came out in favour of Best Buy's practice, alternatively in response to this (and the difficulty of acquiring previous retailer-exclusives), others, such as Brian Altano, Jose Otero, and Peer Schneider of IGN's Nintendo Voice Chat podcast, have encouraged American collectors to import these hard-to-find items.


title: Amiibo

text: The Wii U, New Nintendo 3DS, and Nintendo Switch contain integrated NFC support, and are Amiibo-compatible. On Wii U, toys are scanned using an NFC reader contained within the Wii U GamePad. Amiibo support was formally introduced to the consoles' firmware between November and December 2014; these updates added an Amiibo menu to the system settings area, allowing users to scan, register, and erase data from toys. The Nintendo Switch similarly features an NFC reader in both the Joy-Con R and Pro Controller.


title: Amiibo

text: A separate NFC reader accessory allows use of Amiibo on the original Nintendo 3DS, 3DS XL, and 2DS models; in Japan, released in "Summer 2015", and released alongside "" in North America. The New Nintendo 3DS, New 3DS XL, and New 2DS XL contain an integrated NFC reader utilizing the touch (bottom) screen.


title: Amiibo

text: Supported games offer one of two kinds of Amiibo compatibility; the ability to access an Amiibo toy's NFC tag and store data, and read-only recognition. Each Amiibo toy largely corresponds to a specific game that can access its storage space, though some may have multiple games that can use it. However, each Amiibo toy can only store data from one compatible game at a time, meaning data must be deleted to use it with a different title. For example, a Mario Amiibo figurine containing data from "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U" must have the data for that game deleted to store data from "Mario Party 10". Many games offer compatibility with specific Amiibo toys on a read-only basis, allowing for additional content to be unlocked in that game. For example, using certain figurines with "Mario Kart 8" or "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe" unlocks Mii costumes based on the corresponding character. Multiple variations of the same character offer the same compatibility, although special variations can unlock unique content with specific games. Existing Wii U and 3DS games can receive updates for Amiibo functionality. Due to their co-development effort on "Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS" and "Wii U", Bandai Namco Entertainment were the first third-party publishers to embrace the Amiibo concept in some of their own games.


title: Amiibo

text: The following list features all known NFC items branded under Amiibo, originally produced in the form of character figurines as of 2014, then cards as of 2015, and other types in the future. Nintendo designed all Amiibo characters to be cross-compatible with all games that support specific Amiibo characters, regardless of whichever model line these characters belong to; for example, Mario figurines from both the "Super Smash Bros." and "Super Mario" series have the same functionality. "Yoshi" line are soft dolls instead of hard plastic figurines.


title: Amiibo

text: The following is a list of all confirmed Amiibo cards for the "Animal Crossing" series of games. Series 1, 2, 3 and 4 consist of 100 cards each, while Series 5 consists of 48 cards. Additionally, there are five cards which aren't part of any series. After the announcement that New Leaf would receive an Amiibo update a new series of 50 Animal Crossing RV cards was announced plus an additional series of 6 cards based around characters by Sanrio. Later, after a Nintendo Direct on September 23, 2021, Nintendo confirmed on the official Animal Crossing Twitter account that a Series 5 of Amiibo cards was being produced and implied it may feature villagers introduced in "Animal Crossing: New Horizons", as well as returning villagers. Series 5 was released on November 5, 2021.


title: Amiibo

text: In North America, Australia, and New Zealand, at launch some Amiibo were only available in selected retailers. In Australia and New Zealand, this practice is limited to Mario (Silver Edition), Dark Hammer Slam Bowser, and Dark Turbo Charge Donkey Kong being limited to EB Games, Mario (Gold Edition) being limited to Target in Australia and Mighty Ape in New Zealand, Animal Crossing: New Leaf – Welcome Amiibo Sanrio Collaboration Pack and Qbby Amiibo being limited to the Official Nintendo AU/NZ eBay Store; however, in North America it is much more widespread. Some characters, such as Villager, were originally non-exclusives, but later became exclusive to retailers during restocks.