title: Jalal Talabani

text: Talabani received his elementary and intermediate school education in Koya (Koysanjak) and his high school education in Erbil and Kirkuk. When he was in his teens, Talabani's peers began referring to him as "Mam" Jalal, as 'mam' meaning "paternal uncle" in Kurdish, and the Kurds have called him by this affectionate name ever since. In 1953, he began to study law at the Baghdad University. He had to flee into exile in Syria in 1956, in order to prevent an arrest for being involved In activities of the Kurdish Students Union. Residing in Damascus, he was involved in the establishment the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) . He later returned to Iraq and gained a degree in 1959.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: After completing his studies at the Baghdad University, he entered the Iraqi Army, where he served shortly as a tank unit commander. In the early 1960, he was made the head of the Polit bureau of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). When in September 1961, the Kurdish uprising for the rights of the Kurds in northern Iraq was declared against the Baghdad government of Abd al-Karim Qasim, Talabani took charge of the Kirkuk and Silemani battlefronts and organized and led separatist movements in Mawat, Rezan and the Qaradagh regions.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: In March 1962, he led a coordinated offensive that brought about the liberation of the district of Sharbazher from Iraqi government forces. When not engaged in fighting in the early and mid-1960s, Talabani undertook numerous diplomatic missions, representing the Kurdish leadership at meetings in Europe and the Middle East. In 1964, he and the Barzani family had a dispute over the direction of the KDP and Talabani left Iraq and settled in Iran. In Iran he purchased weapons without the knowledge of the Barzanis, following which he was expelled from the KDP in summer 1964.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: After the March 1970 agreement between the Iraqi government and the Kurdish rebels, Talabani returned to Iraqi Kurdistan, and rejoined the KDP, even though he wouldn't hold an office at the time. The Kurdish separatist movement collapsed in March 1975, after Iran ended their support in exchange for a border agreement with Iraq. This agreement was the 1975 Algiers Agreement, where Iraq gave up claims to the Shatt al-Arab (Arvand Rūd) waterway and Khuzestan, which later became the basis for the Iran–Iraq War. Believing it was time to give a new direction to the Kurdish separatists and to the Kurdish society, Talabani, with a group of Kurdish intellectuals and activists, founded the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (Yekiaiti Nishtimani Kurdistan).


title: Jalal Talabani

text: In 1976, he began organizing an armed campaign for Kurdish independence inside Iraqi Kurdistan. From 1977 onwards, he established the PUK base within Iranian Kurdistan in Nawkhan and another one in Iraqi Kurdistan in Qandil. During the 1980s, Talabani sided with Iran and led a Kurdish struggle from bases inside Iraq until the crackdown against Kurdish separatists from 1987 to 1988. Following the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in August 1990, he travelled to the United States, in order to offer his services and troops to the United States and raise support for the PUK. But his attempts did not bear the success he expected at the time.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: In 1991, he helped inspire a renewed effort for Kurdish independence. He negotiated a ceasefire with the Iraqi Ba'athist government that saved the lives of many Kurds and worked closely with the United States, United Kingdom, France and other countries to set up the safe haven in Iraqi Kurdistan. In 1992 the Kurdistan Regional Government was founded. He was also supportive of peace negotiations between the Kurdistan Workers' Party and Turkey, and was also present as Abdullah Öcalan announced the ceasefire of the PKK on the 17 March and prolonged it indefinitely on the 16 April 1993.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: Talabani pursued a negotiated settlement to the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War, as well as the larger issue of Kurdish rights in the current regional context. He worked closely with other Kurdish politicians as well as the rest of the Iraqi opposition factions. In close coordination with Masoud Barzani, Talabani and the Kurds played a key role as a partner of the U.S. led Coalition in the invasion of Iraq.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: Talabani was a member of the Iraqi Governing Council which negotiated the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL), Iraq's interim constitution. The TAL governed all politics in Iraq and the process of writing and adopting the final constitution.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: Talabani was elected President of Iraq on April 6, 2005, by the Iraqi National Assembly and sworn into office the following day.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: On 22 April 2006, Talabani began his second term as President of Iraq, becoming the first President elected under the country's new constitution. His office was part of the Presidency Council of Iraq. Nawshirwan Mustafa was Talabani's deputy until Mustafa resigned in 2006 and formed an opposition party called Gorran.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: On 18 December 2012, Talabani suffered a stroke and was in intensive care in Baghdad, where his condition eventually stabilized after reports that he was in a coma. A statement on the President's official website said that he was being treated for blocked arteries. On 20 December, Talabani's condition had improved enough to allow travel to Germany for treatment. The head of Talabani's medical team in Iraq has been Governor Najmiddin Karim. On 19 July 2014, Jalal Talabani returned to Iraq after more than 18 months of medical treatment. Due to his absence from politics, as a result of his illness, the PUK became consumed by a succession crisis.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: Jalal Talabani died on 3 October 2017, at the age of 83, in Berlin, Germany, of a cerebral hemorrhage as complications of the stroke he suffered in 2012. He died a few days after the referendum about the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan was approved by the voters. Masoud Barzani, President of Kurdistan Regional Government and for years his Kurdish rival, announced seven days of mourning in Iraqi Kurdistan in memory of Talabani. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi also announced three days of mourning in the country. His state funeral was held on 6 October 2017. Millions turned out across the cities and memorials were held across the globe.


title: Jalal Talabani

text: Talabani was married to Hero Ibrahim Ahmed, daughter of Ibrahim Ahmed. They are the parents of two sons, Bafel and Qubad. Qubad is the deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Erbil since 2014. His nephew is Lahur Talabany.


title: 2022 in downloadable songs for the Rock Band series

text: The "Rock Band" series of music video games supports downloadable songs for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions through the consoles' respective online services. Users can download songs on a track-by-track basis, with many of the tracks also offered as part of a "song pack" or complete album at a discounted rate. All songs that are available to "Rock Band 3" are playable in "Rock Band Blitz".


text: The following table lists the available songs for the "Rock Band" series released in 2022. All songs available in packs are also available as individual song downloads on the same date, unless otherwise noted. Dates listed are the initial release of songs on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live.


text: Starting from October 6, 2015, all music added to the downloadable content catalog is exclusive to "Rock Band 4". In addition, due to changes in the charting format and gameplay of "Rock Band 4", the released songs no longer support keyboard or Pro guitar and bass (future downloadable content will continue to support vocal harmonies and Pro drum charts), and most songs no longer display "family friendly" or "supervision recommended" ratings. Downloadable content from previous "Rock Band" titles (excepting "") is forward-compatible in "Rock Band 4" within the same system family (Xbox 360 downloads are usable in the Xbox One version and PlayStation 3 downloads are usable in the PlayStation 4 version) at no additional cost.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In biochemistry, fatty acid synthesis is the creation of fatty acids from acetyl-CoA and NADPH through the action of enzymes called fatty acid synthases. This process takes place in the cytoplasm of the cell. Most of the acetyl-CoA which is converted into fatty acids is derived from carbohydrates via the glycolytic pathway. The glycolytic pathway also provides the glycerol with which three fatty acids can combine (by means of ester bonds) to form triglycerides (also known as "triacylglycerols" – to distinguish them from fatty "acids" – or simply as "fat"), the final product of the lipogenic process. When only two fatty acids combine with glycerol and the third alcohol group is phosphorylated with a group such as phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid is formed. Phospholipids form the bulk of the lipid bilayers that make up cell membranes and surrounds the organelles within the cells (such as the cell nucleus, mitochondria, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus, etc.).


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Much like β-oxidation, straight-chain fatty acid synthesis occurs via the six recurring reactions shown below, until the 16-carbon palmitic acid is produced.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The diagrams presented show how fatty acids are synthesized in microorganisms and list the enzymes found in "Escherichia coli". These reactions are performed by fatty acid synthase II (FASII), which in general contain multiple enzymes that act as one complex. FASII is present in prokaryotes, plants, fungi, and parasites, as well as in mitochondria.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In animals, as well as some fungi such as yeast, these same reactions occur on fatty acid synthase I (FASI), a large dimeric protein that has all of the enzymatic activities required to create a fatty acid. FASII is less efficient than FASI; however, it allows for the formation of more molecules, including "medium-chain" fatty acids via early chain termination.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Once a 16:0 carbon fatty acid has been formed, it can undergo a number of modifications, resulting in desaturation and/or elongation. Elongation, starting with stearate (18:0), is performed mainly in the ER by several membrane-bound enzymes. The enzymatic steps involved in the elongation process are principally the same as those carried out by FAS, but the four principal successive steps of the elongation are performed by individual proteins, which may be physically associated.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Note that during fatty synthesis the reducing agent is NADPH, whereas NAD is the oxidizing agent in beta-oxidation (the breakdown of fatty acids to acetyl-CoA). This difference exemplifies a general principle that NADPH is consumed during biosynthetic reactions, whereas NADH is generated in energy-yielding reactions. (Thus NADPH is also required for the synthesis of cholesterol from acetyl-CoA; while NADH is generated during glycolysis.) The source of the NADPH is two-fold. When malate is oxidatively decarboxylated by "NADP-linked malic enzyme" to form pyruvate, and NADPH are formed. NADPH is also formed by the pentose phosphate pathway which converts glucose into ribose, which can be used in synthesis of nucleotides and nucleic acids, or it can be catabolized to pyruvate.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In humans, fatty acids are formed from carbohydrates predominantly in the liver and adipose tissue, as well as in the mammary glands during lactation.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The pyruvate produced by glycolysis is an important intermediary in the conversion of carbohydrates into fatty acids and cholesterol. This occurs via the conversion of pyruvate into acetyl-CoA in the mitochondrion. However, this acetyl CoA needs to be transported into cytosol where the synthesis of fatty acids and cholesterol occurs. This cannot occur directly. To obtain cytosolic acetyl-CoA, citrate (produced by the condensation of acetyl CoA with oxaloacetate) is removed from the citric acid cycle and carried across the inner mitochondrial membrane into the cytosol. There it is cleaved by ATP citrate lyase into acetyl-CoA and oxaloacetate. The oxaloacetate can be used for gluconeogenesis (in the liver), or it can be returned into mitochondrion as malate. The cytosolic acetyl-CoA is carboxylated by acetyl CoA carboxylase into malonyl CoA, the first committed step in the synthesis of fatty acids.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The main fuel stored in the bodies of animals is fat. A young adult human's fat stores average between about , but varies greatly depending on age, sex, and individual disposition. In contrast, the human body stores only about of glycogen, of which is locked inside the skeletal muscles and is unavailable to the body as a whole. The or so of glycogen stored in the liver is depleted within one day of starvation. Thereafter the glucose that is released into the blood by the liver for general use by the body tissues, has to be synthesized from the glucogenic amino acids and a few other gluconeogenic substrates, which do not include fatty acids.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Fatty acids are broken down to acetyl-CoA by means of beta oxidation inside the mitochondria, whereas fatty acids are synthesized from acetyl-CoA outside the mitochondrion, in the cytosol. The two pathways are distinct, not only in where they occur, but also in the reactions that occur, and the substrates that are used. The two pathways are mutually inhibitory, preventing the acetyl-CoA produced by beta-oxidation from entering the synthetic pathway via the acetyl-CoA carboxylase reaction. It can also not be converted to pyruvate as the pyruvate decarboxylation reaction is irreversible. Instead it condenses with oxaloacetate, to enter the citric acid cycle. During each turn of the cycle, two carbon atoms leave the cycle as in the decarboxylation reactions catalyzed by isocitrate dehydrogenase and alpha-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase. Thus each turn of the citric acid cycle oxidizes an acetyl-CoA unit while regenerating the oxaloacetate molecule with which the acetyl-CoA had originally combined to form citric acid. The decarboxylation reactions occur before malate is formed in the cycle. Malate is the only substance that can be removed from the mitochondrion to enter the gluconeogenic pathway to form glucose or glycogen in the liver or any other tissue. There can therefore be no net conversion of fatty acids into glucose.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Only plants possess the enzymes to convert acetyl-CoA into oxaloacetate from which malate can be formed to ultimately be converted to glucose.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Acetyl-CoA is formed into malonyl-CoA by acetyl-CoA carboxylase, at which point malonyl-CoA is destined to feed into the fatty acid synthesis pathway. Acetyl-CoA carboxylase is the point of regulation in saturated straight-chain fatty acid synthesis, and is subject to both phosphorylation and allosteric regulation. Regulation by phosphorylation occurs mostly in mammals, while allosteric regulation occurs in most organisms. Allosteric control occurs as feedback inhibition by palmitoyl-CoA and activation by citrate. When there are high levels of palmitoyl-CoA, the final product of saturated fatty acid synthesis, it allosterically inactivates acetyl-CoA carboxylase to prevent a build-up of fatty acids in cells. Citrate acts to activate acetyl-CoA carboxylase under high levels, because high levels indicate that there is enough acetyl-CoA to feed into the Krebs cycle and conserve energy.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: High plasma levels of insulin in the blood plasma (e.g. after meals) cause the dephosphorylation of acetyl-CoA carboxylase, thus promoting the formation of malonyl-CoA from acetyl-CoA, and consequently the conversion of carbohydrates into fatty acids, while epinephrine and glucagon (released into the blood during starvation and exercise) cause the phosphorylation of this enzyme, inhibiting lipogenesis in favor of fatty acid oxidation via beta-oxidation.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Many bacteria use the anaerobic pathway for synthesizing unsaturated fatty acids. This pathway does not utilize oxygen and is dependent on enzymes to insert the double bond before elongation utilizing the normal fatty acid synthesis machinery. In "Escherichia coli", this pathway is well understood.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Most bacteria that undergo anaerobic desaturation contain homologues of FabA and FabB. Clostridia are the main exception; they have a novel enzyme, yet to be identified, that catalyzes the formation of the cis double bond.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: This pathway undergoes transcriptional regulation by FadR and FabR. FadR is the more extensively studied protein and has been attributed bifunctional characteristics. It acts as an activator of "fabA" and "fabB" transcription and as a repressor for the β-oxidation regulon. In contrast, FabR acts as a repressor for the transcription of fabA and fabB.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Aerobic desaturation is the most widespread pathway for the synthesis of unsaturated fatty acids. It is utilized in all eukaryotes and some prokaryotes. This pathway utilizes desaturases to synthesize unsaturated fatty acids from full-length saturated fatty acid substrates. All desaturases require oxygen and ultimately consume NADH even though desaturation is an oxidative process. Desaturases are specific for the double bond they induce in the substrate. In Bacillus subtilis, the desaturase, Δ-Des, is specific for inducing a cis-double bond at the Δ position. "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" contains one desaturase, Ole1p, which induces the cis-double bond at Δ.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In mammals the aerobic desaturation is catalyzed by a complex of three membrane-bound enzymes ("NADH-cytochrome b reductase, cytochrome b", and a "desaturase"). These enzymes allow molecular oxygen, , to interact with the saturated fatty acyl-CoA chain, forming a double bond and two molecules of water, . Two electrons come from NADH + and two from the single bond in the fatty acid chain. These mammalian enzymes are, however, incapable of introducing double bonds at carbon atoms beyond C-9 in the fatty acid chain..) Hence mammals cannot synthesize linoleate or linolenate (which have double bonds at the C-12 (= Δ), or the C-12 and C-15 (= Δ and Δ) positions, respectively, as well as at the Δ position), nor the polyunsaturated, 20-carbon arachidonic acid that is derived from linoleate. These are all termed essential fatty acids, meaning that they are required by the organism, but can only be supplied via the diet. (Arachidonic acid is the precursor the prostaglandins which fulfill a wide variety of functions as local hormones.)


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Odd-chain fatty acids (OCFAs) are those fatty acids that contain an odd number of carbon atoms. The most common OCFAs are the saturated C15 and C17 derivatives, respectively pentadecanoic acid and heptadecanoic acid. The synthesis of even-chained fatty acid synthesis is done by assembling acetyl-CoA precursors, however, propionyl-CoA instead of acetyl-CoA is used as the primer for the biosynthesis of long-chain fatty acids with an odd number of carbon atoms.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In "B. subtilis", this pathway is regulated by a two-component system: DesK and DesR. DesK is a membrane-associated kinase and DesR is a transcriptional regulator of the "des" gene. The regulation responds to temperature; when there is a drop in temperature, this gene is upregulated. Unsaturated fatty acids increase the fluidity of the membrane and stabilize it under lower temperatures. DesK is the sensor protein that, when there is a decrease in temperature, will autophosphorylate. DesK-P will transfer its phosphoryl group to DesR. Two DesR-P proteins will dimerize and bind to the DNA promoters of the "des" gene and recruit RNA polymerase to begin transcription.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: In general, both anaerobic and aerobic unsaturated fatty acid synthesis will not occur within the same system, however "Pseudomonas aeruginosa" and "Vibrio" ABE-1 are exceptions.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: While "P. aeruginosa" undergoes primarily anaerobic desaturation, it also undergoes two aerobic pathways. One pathway utilizes a Δ-desaturase (DesA) that catalyzes a double bond formation in membrane lipids. Another pathway uses two proteins, DesC and DesB, together to act as a Δ-desaturase, which inserts a double bond into a saturated fatty acid-CoA molecule. This second pathway is regulated by repressor protein DesT. DesT is also a repressor of "fabAB" expression for anaerobic desaturation when in presence of exogenous unsaturated fatty acids. This functions to coordinate the expression of the two pathways within the organism.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Branched chain fatty acids are usually saturated and are found in two distinct families: the iso-series and anteiso-series. It has been found that Actinomycetales contain unique branch-chain fatty acid synthesis mechanisms, including that which forms tuberculosteric acid.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The branched-chain fatty acid synthesizing system uses α-keto acids as primers. This system is distinct from the branched-chain fatty acid synthetase that utilizes short-chain acyl-CoA esters as primers. α-Keto acid primers are derived from the transamination and decarboxylation of valine, leucine, and isoleucine to form 2-methylpropanyl-CoA, 3-methylbutyryl-CoA, and 2-Methylbutyryl-CoA, respectively. 2-Methylpropanyl-CoA primers derived from valine are elongated to produce even-numbered iso-series fatty acids such as 14-methyl-pentadecanoic (isopalmitic) acid, and 3-methylbutyryl-CoA primers from leucine may be used to form odd-numbered iso-series fatty acids such as 13-methyl-tetradecanoic acid. 2-Methylbutyryl-CoA primers from isoleucine are elongated to form anteiso-series fatty acids containing an odd number of carbon atoms such as 12-Methyl tetradecanoic acid. Decarboxylation of the primer precursors occurs through the branched-chain α-keto acid decarboxylase (BCKA) enzyme. Elongation of the fatty acid follows the same biosynthetic pathway in "Escherichia coli" used to produce straight-chain fatty acids where malonyl-CoA is used as a chain extender. The major end products are 12–17 carbon branched-chain fatty acids and their composition tends to be uniform and characteristic for many bacterial species.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The BCKA decarboxylase enzyme is composed of two subunits in a tetrameric structure (AB) and is essential for the synthesis of branched-chain fatty acids. It is responsible for the decarboxylation of α-keto acids formed by the transamination of valine, leucine, and isoleucine and produces the primers used for branched-chain fatty acid synthesis. The activity of this enzyme is much higher with branched-chain α-keto acid substrates than with straight-chain substrates, and in Bacillus species its specificity is highest for the isoleucine-derived α-keto-β-methylvaleric acid, followed by α-ketoisocaproate and α-ketoisovalerate. The enzyme's high affinity toward branched-chain α-keto acids allows it to function as the primer donating system for branched-chain fatty acid synthetase.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: α-Keto acid primers are used to produce branched-chain fatty acids that, in general, are between 12 and 17 carbons in length. The proportions of these branched-chain fatty acids tend to be uniform and consistent among a particular bacterial species but may be altered due to changes in malonyl-CoA concentration, temperature, or heat-stable factors (HSF) present. All of these factors may affect chain length, and HSFs have been demonstrated to alter the specificity of BCKA decarboxylase for a particular α-keto acid substrate, thus shifting the ratio of branched-chain fatty acids produced. An increase in malonyl-CoA concentration has been shown to result in a larger proportion of C17 fatty acids produced, up until the optimal concentration (≈20μM) of malonyl-CoA is reached. Decreased temperatures also tend to shift the fatty-acid distribution slightly toward C17 fatty-acids in "Bacillus" species.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: This system functions similarly to the branch-chain fatty acid synthesizing system, however it uses short-chain carboxylic acids as primers instead of alpha-keto acids. In general, this method is used by bacteria that do not have the ability to perform the branch-chain fatty acid system using alpha-keto primers. Typical short-chain primers include isovalerate, isobutyrate, and 2-methyl butyrate. In general, the acids needed for these primers are taken up from the environment; this is often seen in ruminal bacteria.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: The difference between (straight-chain) fatty acid synthase and branch-chain fatty acid synthase is substrate specificity of the enzyme that catalyzes the reaction of acyl-CoA to acyl-ACP.


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Omega-alicyclic fatty acids typically contain an omega-terminal propyl or butyryl cyclic group and are some of the major membrane fatty acids found in several species of bacteria. The fatty acid synthetase used to produce omega-alicyclic fatty acids is also used to produce membrane branched-chain fatty acids. In bacteria with membranes composed mainly of omega-alicyclic fatty acids, the supply of cyclic carboxylic acid-CoA esters is much greater than that of branched-chain primers. The synthesis of cyclic primers is not well understood but it has been suggested that mechanism involves the conversion of sugars to shikimic acid which is then converted to cyclohexylcarboxylic acid-CoA esters that serve as primers for omega-alicyclic fatty acid synthesis


title: Fatty acid synthesis

text: Tuberculostearic acid (-10-Methylstearic acid) is a saturated fatty acid that is known to be produced by "Mycobacterium" spp. and two species of "Streptomyces". It is formed from the precursor oleic acid (a monounsaturated fatty acid). After oleic acid is esterified to a phospholipid, S-adenosyl-methionine donates a methyl group to the double bond of oleic acid. This methylation reaction forms the intermediate 10-methylene-octadecanoyal. Successive reduction of the residue, with NADPH as a cofactor, results in 10-methylstearic acid


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The repeating crossbow (), also known as the repeater crossbow, and the Zhuge crossbow (, also romanized Chu-ko-nu) due to its association with the Three Kingdoms-era strategist Zhuge Liang (181–234 AD), is a crossbow invented during the Warring States period in China that combined the bow spanning, bolt placing, and shooting actions into one motion.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The earliest archaeological evidence of the repeating crossbow is found in the state of Chu, but it uses a pistol grip that is different from the later and more commonly known Ming dynasty design.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: Although the repeating crossbow was in use throughout most of Chinese history until the late Qing dynasty, it was generally regarded as a non-military weapon suited for women, defending households against robbers, and even hunting.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: According to the "Wu-Yue Chunqiu" (history of the Wu-Yue War), written in the Eastern Han dynasty, the repeating crossbow was invented during the Warring States Period by a Mr. Qin from the State of Chu. This is corroborated by the earliest archaeological evidence of repeating crossbows, which was excavated from a Chu burial site at Tomb 47 at Qinjiazui, Hubei Province, and has been dated to the 4th century BC, during the Warring States Period (475 - 220 BC). Unlike repeating crossbows of later eras, the ancient double-shot repeating crossbow uses a pistol grip and a rear-pulling mechanism for arming. The Ming repeating crossbow uses an arming mechanism that requires its user to push a rear lever upwards and downwards back and forth. Although handheld repeating crossbows were generally weak and required additional poison, probably aconite, for lethality, much larger mounted versions appeared during the Ming dynasty.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The invention of the repeating crossbow has often been attributed to Zhuge Liang, but he in fact had nothing to do with it. This misconception is based on a record attributing improvements to the multiple bolt crossbows to him.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: Although the repeating crossbow has been used throughout Chinese history and is attested as late as 19th century Qing dynasty in battle against the Japanese, it was generally not regarded as an important military weapon. The "Wubei Zhi", written during the 17th century, says that it was favored by people in the southeast but lacked in strength and its bolts tended not to harm anyone. The functions of the repeating crossbow listed in the text are primarily non-military: tiger hunting, defending fortified houses, and usage by timid men and women. According to the "Tiangong Kaiwu", also written during the 17th century, the repeating crossbow is only useful against robbers.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The repeating crossbow combined the actions of spanning the bow, placing the bolt, and shooting into a one-handed movement, thus allowing for a much higher rate of fire than a normal crossbow. The most common repeating crossbow design originated from the Ming Dynasty and consisted of a top-mounted magazine containing a reservoir of bolts which fed the crossbow using gravity, a rectangular lever attached to both the tiller and the magazine, and a tiller mounting the prods with a stock. By holding the tiller firmly against the hip while pushing and pulling the lever forwards and backwards, the user was able to catch the drawstring on to side notches at the back of the magazine while loading the bolt. A sliding lug nut at the back of the magazine pushed the drawstring out of the notches once the lever is fully pulled backwards; with the tiller pushing the nut up and enabling the drawstring to propel the loaded bolt. The Korean version mounted the magazine at the end of a longer stalk as well as a pivoting recurve bow as a prod; increasing the drawspan, range, and performance of the crossbow. Additionally, both the Ming Dynasty in China and the Joseon Dynasty in Korea developed variations that either shot two to three bolts per draw or fired pellets in place of bolts.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: An earlier version originated from the State of Chu during the Warring States period and used a different design. It consisted of a tiller mounting a fixed double magazine on top as well as a pistol style grip at the bottom beneath the prods mount. Instead of an overhand lever for arming and shooting, it used a sliding lever that had a handle tied to the end with chord. The lever was pumped forwards and backwards with one hand while the user held the pistol grip firm with the other hand; in a manner similar to drawing a regular bow. Within the crossbow, the lever was embedded with a special metal trigger composed of a latch and sear; the entire trigger being shaped like a crab's claw arm. Upon pushing the lever forward, the trigger was moved forward to catch the drawstring and becomes locked firm by friction and tensional forces from grooves inside the mounting lever and sear. Upon being drawn back, the draw string is spanned while the double magazine fed two bolts onto the firing slots on either side of the trigger once the drawstring is almost fully drawn. At the very end of the pulling action, the sear comes in contact with a round bar that holds the sliding lever in place. The bar pushed the sear forward to release the trigger and enable the drawstring to propel the two loaded bolts. Ultimately, it was superseded by the aforementioned design from the Ming Dynasty due to being overtly complex with weaker performance.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The basic construction of the repeating crossbow has remained very much unchanged since its invention, making it one of the longest-lived mechanical weapons. The bolts of one magazine are fired and reloaded by simply pushing and pulling the lever back and forth.


title: Repeating crossbow

text: The repeating crossbow had an effective range of 70 meters and a maximum range of 180 meters. Its comparatively short range limited its usage to primarily defensive positions, where its ability to rapidly discharge 7–10 bolts in 15–20 seconds was used to prevent assaults on gates and doorways. In comparison, an arbalest could only deliver about two bolts a minute. The repeating crossbow, with its smaller and lighter ammunition, had neither the power nor the accuracy of an arbalest. Thus, it was not very useful against more heavily armoured troops unless poison was smeared on bolts, in which case even a small wound might prove fatal.


title: Antonio Campos (director)

text: Antonio Campos (born August 24, 1983) is an American filmmaker known for the films "Afterschool" (2008), "Simon Killer" (2012), "Christine" (2016), "The Devil All the Time" (2020) and "The Staircase" (2022).


title: Antonio Campos (director)

text: Campos was born in New York City. His father is the Brazilian journalist Lucas Mendes, while his mother is an American producer, Rose Ganguzza. His maternal grandparents were Italian.


title: Antonio Campos (director)

text: Campos made his feature-length debut on "Afterschool", which had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was later acquired by IFC Films. It was released in a limited release on October 2, 2009. Campos then went on to direct "Simon Killer". The film stars Brady Corbet and had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. IFC Films acquired distribution rights to the film, and opened in a limited release in April 2013.


title: Antonio Campos (director)

text: Campos's third feature, "Christine", which starred Rebecca Hall, had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was acquired by The Orchard, and released in a limited release on October 14, 2016. Campos is attached to direct a prequel to "The Omen" for 20th Century Fox. Campos directed the pilot episode of "The Sinner", starring Jessica Biel and Christopher Abbott, and also served as an executive producer. The pilot was later ordered to series. He also directed episode 8 of "Marvel's The Punisher." In 2020, Campos wrote and directed the psychological thriller "The Devil All the Time," which was released in September on Netflix.


title: Antonio Campos (director)

text: Apart from being a director and screenwriter, Campos cofounded the production company Borderline Films, which has produced films such as "James White," "Katie Says Goodbye," and "Martha Marcy May Marlene." In October 2022, it was announced that Campos had been hired as showrunner for the untitled "The Batman" spin-off series set in Arkham Asylum, in addition to serving as director and an executive producer.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: The Freshman is a 1990 American satirical crime comedy film directed and written by Andrew Bergman and starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick with Bruno Kirby, Penelope Ann Miller, and Frank Whaley. The plot revolves around a young New York film student's entanglement in an illicit business of offering exotic and endangered animals as specialty food items, including his being tasked with delivering a Komodo dragon for this purpose. The film received positive reviews from critics.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Clark Kellogg leaves his mother Liz and environmental activist stepfather Dwight in Vermont to go to New York University (NYU) to study film. After arriving at Grand Central Terminal, he is approached by Victor Ray, who at first offers to carry Clark's bags, then offers a ride. As soon as Clark steps out of the car, Victor drives off with Clark's luggage still in the trunk.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Clark tells his instructor at NYU Professor Fleeber, who uses books he has written as required study, about losing his belongings. Clark notices Victor walking by and gives chase. Victor claims to have sold most of the luggage and lost the money while gambling, but offers him a job as reimbursement. In Little Italy, Manhattan, Clark is introduced to Victor's uncle Carmine Sabatini as Victor explains that Vito Corleone was based on Carmine.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Carmine offers Clark the opportunity to make a lot of money just for running small errands. The first is to pick up a Komodo dragon from JFK Airport and transport it to a specific address. Clark enlists the help of his roommate Steve Bushak to pick up the animal and deliver it to Larry London and his assistant Edward.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Clark is also introduced to Carmine's daughter Tina who takes an immediate shine to him. Tina talks as if the two are soon to be married. A distracted Clark tries to pay attention in Fleeber's film class (where the professor shows clips of the 1974 film "The Godfather Part II"), but he is soon being chased by agents Chuck Greenwald and Lloyd Simpson of the Department of Justice.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Upon being caught, Clark is told by Greenwald and Simpson that Carmine—also known as "Jimmy The Toucan"—not only is a Mafia figure but runs the Fabulous Gourmet Club. It is an illicit and nomadic establishment, never holding its dinners in the same place twice, where (for enormous prices) endangered animals are served as the main course, specially prepared by Larry London. Clark is told that "for the privilege of eating the very last of a species", a million dollars is charged.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Clark finds out that Dwight listened in on a conversation with Liz. Right after Clark mentioned the Komodo dragon, Dwight contacted the Department of Justice. Carmine admits that the Gourmet Club exists, but tells Clark that Greenwald and Simpson are being bribed by the Bonelli crime family that wants both Carmine and Clark dead. While driving to the Gourmet Club, a plan is hatched to get Carmine out of the exotic animal business for good and to clear Clark.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: At the Gourmet Club's dinner, longtime Miss America pageant host Bert Parks sings a version of "There She Is" when the Komodo dragon is revealed. Clark steps outside to signal Greenwald and Simpson, who raid the club. Carmine is upset that Clark has ratted him out. Carmine pulls a gun, the two wrestle, and Carmine is apparently shot dead.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Revealing their corruption, Greenwald and Simpson leave with a duffel bag filled with money, though they are soon caught by real FBI agents and arrested for their crimes. Clark berates his stepfather who leaves. Carmine then gets up off the floor, having faked his death. Larry London reveals tonight's expensive and exotic dinner is actually Hawaiian tigerfish mixed with smoked turkey from Virginia, not endangered species (a long-running con of Carmine's, swindling the rich out of their money). The endangered animals will be in fact housed in the new Carmine Sabatini Endangered Species Wing at the Bronx Zoo. Clark was hand-picked by Carmine, who was in fact working with the FBI, because they knew Clark's stepfather would contact the corrupt agents once he found out about Clark's "job".


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Tina's aggressive interest in Clark was an act as well, but she and Clark now share a mutual attraction. Carmine and Clark take the Komodo dragon for a walk, Carmine promising it will be taken safely to a new habitat at the zoo. As the credits start rolling, Carmine offers to help Clark make it in Hollywood, having a few connections there. Clark says "Thanks, but no thanks" as they continue walking.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Bergman got the idea of the film after reading a newspaper article about mobster Vincent Teresa being arrested for smuggling a near-extinct lizard into the United States. Brando was cast in 1988, and was paid $3 million base salary. Bergman said that "the most fun I ever had" as a filmmaker "was once Marlon [Brando] committed to play the character Jimmy the Toucan... Rewriting that [script], knowing Marlon was going to be saying all those lines? It was absolutely heaven... On one level you're like, I'm going to direct this guy!? But at the end of the day you say, well, somebody’s got to direct him, so what the hell, it's going to be me. And he was really a pleasure to work with. It's not like you’re dealing with George Burns in terms of a comedy god. Getting Marlon to do things was sometimes like turning around an aircraft carrier because he had a way he wanted to do it. But you could get him there. He was terribly respectful and funny." Bergman says Matthew Broderick "was very hot at the time. He was impossible to get—he was like the hottest thing going!" but he agreed to do the film because of Brando. "Once Marlon was in the picture, you could get any actor you want... Olivier wanted to be in the movie [instead of Max Schell] but he was too sick."


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Principal photography was scheduled to begin in October 1988, but was delayed eight months to June 1989. After shooting exteriors in New York City for three weeks, the production moved to Toronto, Canada, for the remainder of the 11-week shoot. Though referred to in the film as a "Komodo Dragon", the lizards supplied for filming were actually Asian water monitors, a slightly smaller relative. A tame specimen was used for scenes requiring the actors to interact with it, while the chase sequences used more aggressive lizards. The Komodo dragon species is endangered, though not as severely as is described in the film.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Marlon Brando publicly condemned "The Freshman" and claimed it would be the "biggest turkey of all time". This was because Brando asked for an additional $1 million to compensate him for when filming was extended an extra week. The producers initially refused Brando's request and he threatened to badmouth the film in the press. The producers continued to refuse and Brando followed through with his threat. A day later, the producers acquiesced and agreed to pay him the $1 million; Brando began to publicly praise the film.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 94% based on 50 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Buoyed by the charm of Matthew Broderick in the title role and Marlon Brando as a caricature of his Godfather persona, "The Freshman" benefits from solid casting, a clever premise, and sweet humor." Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 78 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Freshman (1990 film)

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" described the film as "witty and enchanted". In his review, Roger Ebert wrote, "There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts—but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in "The Freshman"?"


title: My Unorthodox Life

text: My Unorthodox Life is an American reality television series by Netflix that premiered on July 14, 2021. The series centers on Julia Haart, the former CEO of a modeling agency and fashion company and a former ultra-Orthodox Jew, as Haart and her family acculturate to their new non-religious lifestyle in Manhattan. The second season premiered on December 2, 2022.


title: My Unorthodox Life

text: The nine-episode web series documents Haart and her children's decision to leave the Haredi Jewish community in Monsey, New York, and pursue their passions for fashion and design. Haart claims that she had left Haredi Judaism over her discomfort with the community's strict religious observances and principles that she views as a form of "fundamentalism". Haart is depicted in the show as completing an autobiographical work recounting her personal journey. Haart's forthcoming memoir is titled, "Brazen: My Unorthodox Journey from Long Sleeves to Lingerie".


title: My Unorthodox Life

text: The show features Haart's four children, Batsheva, Shlomo, Miriam, and Aron; her second husband, Italian entrepreneur Silvio Scaglia Haart; and her best friend and chief operating officer of Elite Model World, Robert Brotherton.


title: My Unorthodox Life

text: Writing for the "Decider", Joel Keller recommends the show, writing that it is "going to ride on Julia Haart's personality, and this force of nature has personality to spare". Jenny Singer, in "Glamour", called the series "wildly compelling", and wrote that "Haart's anger at her upbringing is justifiable", while also critiquing the show for what she claims will "make life dangerous for Jewish people", by "making a reality show that depicts them as monsters". Irene Katz Connelly, in "The Forward", writes that the show is "full of clothing choices, but those who don't choose correctly get chastised", and notes that the show "barely touches on the intriguing logistics of Haart's fashion world ascent". Judy Berman also panned the show, writing in "Time" that "it's hard to tell which parts of the show have been massaged into ads for Elite, Batsheva's career as an influencer, or Julia's forthcoming memoir". In "J.: The Jewish News of Northern California", writer Esther D. Kustanowitz noted: "There's an interesting core story: Julia's goal to liberate and empower people in a way that she thinks allows them to be the most authentic and free versions of themselves... [Haart] wants others to experience freedom the way she defines it... While I can appreciate her embrace of a world she was denied, the imposition of her 'freedom' on others struck me as its own version of oppression." In "The Jerusalem Post", Elliot Cohen writes that he "found that Ilhan Omar's infamous anti-Semitic quote, 'all about the Benjamins, baby', has been turned into an evening of Netflix and chill", and that "Netflix and Jeff Jenkins gave anti-Semites their greatest media gift since "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion"".


title: My Unorthodox Life

text: Articles published in Orthodox media outlets were heavily critical of the perceived anti-Orthodox premises of the show. Many women turned to social media to post pro-Orthodox stories using the hashtag #MyOrthodoxLife, and to express opposition to the show as distorting their position in the Orthodox community. Author Roberta Rosenthal Kwall wrote in "Jewish Journal": "Most people outside of Orthodox communities do not understand that Orthodoxy in general is far from monolithic", and the show omits how "Orthodox women are often highly educated and professionally accomplished even in the world of Jewish law, long a male-dominated field". Writing a review in the "Washington Jewish Week", writer Andy Gottlieb stated that the show is vapid, and the characters are narcissistic. Rabbi Yair Hoffman, writing in the "Five Towns Jewish Times", said that the show is "spewing a vicious form of hatred designed to cast observant Jewry in a hideously negative light".


title: Canny edge detector

text: The Canny edge detector is an edge detection operator that uses a multi-stage algorithm to detect a wide range of edges in images. It was developed by John F. Canny in 1986. Canny also produced a "computational theory of edge detection" explaining why the technique works.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Canny edge detection is a technique to extract useful structural information from different vision objects and dramatically reduce the amount of data to be processed. It has been widely applied in various computer vision systems. Canny has found that the requirements for the application of edge detection on diverse vision systems are relatively similar. Thus, an edge detection solution to address these requirements can be implemented in a wide range of situations.


title: Canny edge detector

text: To satisfy these requirements Canny used the calculus of variations – a technique which finds the function which optimizes a given functional. The optimal function in Canny's detector is described by the sum of four exponential terms, but it can be approximated by the first derivative of a Gaussian.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Among the edge detection methods developed so far, Canny edge detection algorithm is one of the most strictly defined methods that provides good and reliable detection. Owing to its optimality to meet with the three criteria for edge detection and the simplicity of process for implementation, it became one of the most popular algorithms for edge detection.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Since all edge detection results are easily affected by the noise in the image, it is essential to filter out the noise to prevent false detection caused by it. To smooth the image, a Gaussian filter kernel is convolved with the image. This step will slightly smooth the image to reduce the effects of obvious noise on the edge detector. The equation for a Gaussian filter kernel of size (2"k"+1)×(2"k"+1) is given by:


title: Canny edge detector

text: Here is an example of a 5×5 Gaussian filter, used to create the adjacent image, with formula_2 = 1. (The asterisk denotes a convolution operation.)


title: Canny edge detector

text: It is important to understand that the selection of the size of the Gaussian kernel will affect the performance of the detector. The larger the size is, the lower the detector's sensitivity to noise. Additionally, the localization error to detect the edge will slightly increase with the increase of the Gaussian filter kernel size. A 5×5 is a good size for most cases, but this will also vary depending on specific situations.


title: Canny edge detector

text: An edge in an image may point in a variety of directions, so the Canny algorithm uses four filters to detect horizontal, vertical and diagonal edges in the blurred image. The edge detection operator (such as Roberts, Prewitt, or Sobel) returns a value for the first derivative in the horizontal direction (G) and the vertical direction (G). From this the edge gradient and direction can be determined:


title: Canny edge detector

text: where G can be computed using the hypot function and atan2 is the arctangent function with two arguments.


title: Canny edge detector

text: The edge direction angle is rounded to one of four angles representing vertical, horizontal, and the two diagonals (0°, 45°, 90°, and 135°). An edge direction falling in each color region will be set to a specific angle value, for instance, θ in [0°, 22.5°] or [157.5°, 180°] maps to 0°.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Minimum cut-off suppression of gradient magnitudes, or lower bound thresholding, is an edge thinning technique.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Lower bound cut-off suppression is applied to find the locations with the sharpest change of intensity value. The algorithm for each pixel in the gradient image is:


title: Canny edge detector

text: In some implementations, the algorithm categorizes the continuous gradient directions into a small set of discrete directions, and then moves a 3x3 filter over the output of the previous step (that is, the edge strength and gradient directions). At every pixel, it suppresses the edge strength of the center pixel (by setting its value to 0) if its magnitude is not greater than the magnitude of the two neighbors in the gradient direction. For example,


title: Canny edge detector

text: In more accurate implementations, linear interpolation is used between the two neighbouring pixels that straddle the gradient direction. For example, if the gradient angle is between 89° and 180°, interpolation between gradients at the north and north-east pixels will give one interpolated value, and interpolation between the south and south-west pixels will give the other (using the conventions of the last paragraph). The gradient magnitude at the central pixel must be greater than both of these for it to be marked as an edge.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Note that the sign of the direction is irrelevant, i.e. north–south is the same as south–north and so on.


title: Canny edge detector

text: After application of non-maximum suppression, remaining edge pixels provide a more accurate representation of real edges in an image. However, some edge pixels remain that are caused by noise and color variation. To account for these spurious responses, it is essential to filter out edge pixels with a weak gradient value and preserve edge pixels with a high gradient value. This is accomplished by selecting high and low threshold values. If an edge pixel’s gradient value is higher than the high threshold value, it is marked as a strong edge pixel. If an edge pixel’s gradient value is smaller than the high threshold value and larger than the low threshold value, it is marked as a weak edge pixel. If an edge pixel's gradient value is smaller than the low threshold value, it will be suppressed. The two threshold values are empirically determined and their definition will depend on the content of a given input image.


title: Canny edge detector

text: The strong edge pixels should certainly be involved in the final edge image; they are deemed to come from true edges in the image. However, there will be some debate on the weak edge pixels. We want to determine whether these pixels come from a true edge, or noise/color variations. Weak edge pixels should be dropped from consideration if it is the latter. This algoritm uses the idea that weak edge pixels from true edges will (usually) be connected to a strong edge pixels while noise responses are unconnected.


title: Canny edge detector

text: To track the edge connection, blob analysis is applied by looking at a weak edge pixel and its 8-connected neighborhood pixels. As long as there is one strong edge pixel that is involved in the blob, that weak edge point can be identified as one that should be preserved. These weak edge pixels become strong edges that can then cause their neighboring weak edge pixels to be preserved.


title: Canny edge detector

text: While traditional Canny edge detection provides a relatively simple but precise methodology for the edge detection problem, with more demanding requirements on the accuracy and robustness on the detection, the traditional algorithm can no longer handle the challenging edge detection task. The main defects of the traditional algorithm can be summarized as follows:


title: Canny edge detector

text: In order to address these defects, an improvement to the canny edge algorithm is presented in the following paragraphs.


title: Canny edge detector

text: As both edge and noise will be identified as a high frequency signal, a simple Gaussian filter will add a smooth effect on both of them. However, in order to reach high accuracy of detection of the real edge, it is expected that a more smooth effect should be applied to noise and a less smooth effect should be added to the edge. Bing Wang and Shaosheng Fan from Changsha University of Science and Technology developed an adaptive filter, where the filter will evaluate discontinuity between greyscale values of each pixel. The higher the discontinuity, the lower the weight value is set for the smooth filter at that point. Contrarily, the lower the discontinuity between the greyscale values, the higher the weight value is set to the filter. The process to implement this adaptive filter can be summarized in five steps:


title: Canny edge detector

text: The gradient magnitude and direction can be calculated with a variety of different edge detection operators, and the choice of operator can influence the quality of results. A very commonly chosen one is the 3x3 Sobel filter. However, other filters may be better, such as a 5x5 Sobel filter, which will reduce noise, or the Scharr filter, which has better rotational symmetry. Other common choices are Prewitt (used by Zhou ) and Roberts Cross.


title: Canny edge detector

text: In order to resolve the challenges where it is hard to determine the dual-threshold value empirically, Otsu's method can be used on the non-maximum suppressed gradient magnitude image to generate the high threshold. The low threshold is typically set to 1/2 of the high threshold in this case. Since the gradient magnitude image is continuous-valued without a well-defined maximum, Otsu's method has to be adapted to use value/count pairs instead of a complete histogram.


title: Canny edge detector

text: While the traditional Canny edge detection implements a good detection result to meet the first two criteria, it does not meet the single response per edge strictly. A mathematical morphology technique to thin the detected edge is developed by Mallat S and Zhong.


title: Canny edge detector

text: Curvelets have been used in place of the Gaussian filter and gradient estimation to compute a vector field whose directions and magnitudes approximate the direction and strength of edges in the image, to which steps 3 - 5 of the Canny algorithm are then applied. Curvelets decompose signals into separate components of different scales, and dropping the components of finer scales can reduce noise.


title: Canny edge detector

text: A more refined approach to obtain edges with sub-pixel accuracy is by using the approach of differential edge detection, where the requirement of non-maximum suppression is formulated in terms of second- and third-order derivatives computed from a scale space representation (Lindeberg 1998) – see the article on edge detection for a detailed description.


title: Canny edge detector

text: over the alignment of the edge with the gradient field (Kimmel and Bruckstein 2003). See the article on


title: Canny edge detector

text: The Canny algorithm contains a number of adjustable parameters, which can affect the computation time and effectiveness of the algorithm.


title: Canny edge detector

text: The Canny algorithm is adaptable to various environments. Its parameters allow it to be tailored to recognition of edges of differing characteristics depending on the particular requirements of a given implementation. In Canny's original paper, the derivation of the optimal filter led to a Finite Impulse Response filter, which can be slow to compute in the spatial domain if the amount of smoothing required is important (the filter will have a large spatial support in that case). For this reason, it is often suggested to use Rachid Deriche's infinite impulse response form of Canny's filter (the Canny–Deriche detector), which is recursive, and which can be computed in a short, fixed amount of time for any desired amount of smoothing. The second form is suitable for real time implementations in FPGAs or DSPs, or very fast embedded PCs. In this context, however, the regular recursive implementation of the Canny operator does not give a good approximation of rotational symmetry and therefore gives a bias towards horizontal and vertical edges.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé is an executive car (E-segment) introduced in 2018 by Mercedes-AMG marketed as a five-door variant of the AMG GT two-door sports car.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: Despite the name and style, the car is not based on the sports car, but rather on the E-Class and CLS-Class.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The design of the GT 4-Door Coupé was mainly influenced by the Mercedes-Benz AMG GT Concept introduced a few years before series production. The AMG GT 4-Door Coupé uses a front-engine layout with rear-wheel-drive or 4MATIC+ fully variable all-wheel-drive (rear-biased), and is available with either a 3.0 L "M256" turbo/supercharged inline-six engine or a 4.0 L "M177" twin-turbocharged V8 engine. The inline-six engine features a conventional turbocharger as well as a mild hybrid system that Mercedes-Benz calls ""EQ Boost"", which uses an electrically driven supercharger and a 48 volt electric motor that when combined, produce an extra and of torque in addition to the petrol engine when it is not powering the electrical system. This system traces its roots back to the Mercedes CLS53. The car utilises the rear anti-roll bar to increase chassis stiffness, as well as active aero, including an electronically adjustable rear spoiler and electronically operated front louvers in the front grille, that can open and close to manage airflow through the radiator from the AMG GT R flagship sports car.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT 43 and the GT 50 are the entry-level variants of the AMG GT 4-Door Coupé and both feature the same M256 3.0L Twincharged inline-six and the 4MATIC+ AWD system. The engine produces and of torque and can accelerate from in 4.9 seconds, with a claimed top speed of . The GT43 and GT50 are the same car (GT43 is the worldwide version, GT50 is the China only version)


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT 53 is the more powerful version of the GT 43. It features the same 3.0L turbo/supercharged inline-six, but with higher outputs. The engine produces and of torque. The starter-generator and electrically driven supercharger called EQ boost supplements the engine temporarily with and of torque while under full acceleration. It can accelerate from in 4.5 seconds, along with attaining a top speed of as tested by the manufacturer. The suspension uses steel springs and adaptive dampers and the gearbox is a 9-speed unit that uses a conventional torque converter.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT53 can be optioned with the more aggressive "Aero Package". this package includes a more pronounced front splitter, with lager air vents to allow for more efficient cooling, combined with a deeper and larger rear diffusor and both fixed or movable (electronically) rear wing.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT 63 is a high performance, better equipped variant of the GT 4-Door and features the AMG M177 4.0L twin-turbocharged V8 engine, which produces and . It has a claimed acceleration time of 3.4 seconds and a top speed of as tested by the manufacturer. The GT 63 also has an optional selectable "Drift Mode" which directs power solely to the rear wheels. The car comes standard with an electronically controlled limited-slip rear differential and rear-wheel steering, and features an MCT gearbox with a wet clutch to handle the extra power. The GT 63 uses AMG's multi-chamber air suspension for a sportier, more adaptive ride and has cylinder deactivation mode for increased efficiency.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT 63S is the top-of-the-line variant of the GT 4-Door and features the same 4.0L M177 twin-turbocharged V8 engine as in the GT 63, but receives further tuning to produce and of torque. The GT 63S will reportedly accelerate from in 3.2 seconds and attain a top speed of as tested by the manufacturer. Auto Bild tested in 3.0 seconds, in 6.6 seconds and in 10.2 seconds.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: Additionally, all of the equipment and features from the GT 63, as well as the selectable "Drift Mode", which directs power solely to the rear wheels, comes as standard on the GT 63S as well.


title: Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupé

text: The GT 63 S E-Performance is an upcoming top-of-the-line, flagship variant of the GT 4-Door. It will be the first car to be launched under Mercedes’ new E Performance brand. It features the same 4.0L M177 Biturbo V8 engine, with the same electric motor powertrain as the Mercedes-Benz AMG GT Concept. The engine alone produces from 5,500 to 6,500 rpm, and from 2,500 to 4,500 rpm. It is supplemented by a rear-mounted electric motor that spins up a maximum of 204 PS for 10-second blasts and can continually provide 95 PS, and of torque. Its combined power output is , with of torque, making it the most powerful production AMG model ever made. The sprint time can be achieved in less than three seconds. The powertrain will be named ‘V8 Biturbo E-Performance’. As for the PHEV system, the 6.1 kWh battery pack with the electric motor can commit to a pure EV range of 12 km at speeds of up to .


title: History of smoking

text: The history of smoking dates back to as early as 5000 BC in the Americas in shamanistic rituals. With the arrival of the Europeans in the 16th century, the consumption, cultivation, and trading of tobacco quickly spread. The modernization of farming equipment and manufacturing increased the availability of cigarettes following the reconstruction era in the United States. Mass production quickly expanded the scope of consumption, which grew until the scientific controversies of the 1960s, and condemnation in the 1980s.


title: History of smoking

text: Cannabis was common in Eurasia before the arrival of tobacco, and is known to have been used since at least 5000 BC. Cannabis was not commonly smoked directly until the advent of tobacco in the 16th century. Before this cannabis and numerous other plants were vaporized on hot rocks or charcoal, burned as incense or in vessels and censers and inhaled indirectly. Evidence of direct smoking before the 16th century is contentious, with pipes thought to have been used to smoke cannabis dated to the 10th to 12th centuries found in Southeastern Africa.


title: History of smoking

text: Previously eaten for its medicinal properties, opium smoking became widespread in China and the West during the 19th century. These led to the establishment of opium dens. In the latter half of the century, opium smoking became popular in the artistic communities of Europe. While opium dens continued to exist throughout the world, the trend among the Europeans abated during the First World War, and among the Chinese during the cultural revolution.


title: History of smoking

text: More widespread cigarette usage as well as increased life expectancy during the 1920s made adverse health effects more noticeable. In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published formal statistical evidence of a cancer–tobacco link. The subject remained largely taboo until 1954 with the British Doctors Study, and in 1964 United States Surgeon General's report. Tobacco became stigmatized, which led to the largest civil settlement in United States history, the Tobacco Master Settlement (MSA), in 1998.


title: History of smoking

text: Smoking has been practiced in one form or another since ancient times. Tobacco and various hallucinogenic drugs were smoked all over the Americas as early as 5000 BC in shamanistic rituals and originated in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian Andes. Many ancient civilizations, such as the Babylonians, Indians and Chinese, burnt incense as a part of religious rituals, as did the Israelites and the later Catholic and Orthodox churches. However, the burning of incense is not direct inhalation. It has been suggested that cannabis resin or possibly opium was at times included in this incense . It is unknown how much cannabis resin this incense would have contained and if it came from psychoactive types of cannabis or possibly opium. The ancient Assyrians employed cannabis fumes as a cure for "poison of the limbs", presumed to mean arthritis.


title: History of smoking

text: The Greek historian Herodotos wrote that the Scythians vaporized cannabis seeds as part of their cultural rituals. He wrote that after a funeral procession holden for one of their kings:


title: History of smoking

text: The Scythians had constructed a sweat lodge which have been used ritualistically by a number of different peoples. Sergei Ivanovich Rudenko in 1947–1949 excavated a Scythian burial site that included a miniature version at Pazyryk in the Tien Shen Mountains. A leather pouch containing cannabis seed was attached to one pole of the tent. Coriander seeds have also been discovered in this Kurgan. Likely a mixture of cannabis seeds and coriander seeds was vaporized on the hot rocks to create a thick fragrant if not psychoactive smoke for ritual bathing.


title: History of smoking

text: Robicsek posits that smoking in the Americas probably originated in incense-burning ceremonies, and was later adopted for pleasure or as a social tool. The Maya employed it in classical times (at least from the 10th century) and the Aztecs included it in their mythology. The Aztec goddess Cihuacoahuatl had a body consisting of tobacco, and the priests that performed human sacrifices wore tobacco gourds as symbols of divinity. Even today certain Tzeltal Maya sacrifice 13 calabashes of tobacco at New Year. The smoking of tobacco and various other hallucinogenic drugs was used to achieve trances and to come into contact with the spirit world. Reports from the first European explorers and conquistadors to reach the Americas tell of rituals where native priests smoked themselves into such high degrees of intoxication that it is unlikely that the rituals were limited to just tobacco. No concrete evidence of exactly what they smoked exists, but the most probable theory is that the tobacco was much stronger, consumed in extreme amounts, or was mixed with other, unknown psychoactive drugs.


title: History of smoking

text: In early North America the most common form of smoking by indigenous peoples was in pipes, either for social or religious purposes (which varied between different cultures). Sometimes pipes were smoked by representatives of warring tribes, and later with European settlers, as a gesture of goodwill, diplomacy, or to seal a peace treaty (hence the misnomer, "peace pipe"). In the Caribbean, Mexico and Central and South America, early forms of cigarettes include smoking reeds or cigars were the most common smoking tools. Only in modern times has the use of pipes become fairly widespread. Smoking is depicted in engravings and on various types of pottery as early as the 9th century, but it is not known whether it was limited to just the upper class and priests.


title: History of smoking

text: After Europeans arrived in the Americas in the late 15th-century tobacco smoking as a recreational activity became widespread. At the banquets of Aztec nobles, the meal would commence by passing out fragrant flowers and smoking tubes for the dinner guests. At the end of the feast, which would last all night, the remaining flowers, smoking tubes, and food would be given as a kind of alms to old and poor people who had been invited to witness the social occasion, or it would be rewarded to the servants.


title: History of smoking

text: Four baked clay, non-Arab produced pipes were found at the Iron Age Sebanzi Hill site in the Lochinvar National Park, Zambia. Radiocarbon dating, along with related pottery, on the two oldest specimens indicates they were in use around the 10th to 12th century CE. The pipes have not been chemically analyzed, it has been argued they were used for smoking cannabis because they predate the introduction of tobacco. North of Zambia in Ethiopia, the remains of two ceramic water pipe bowls were recovered from Lalibela Cave and dated to 640–500 BP. Both contained trace amounts of THC according to modified thin-layer chromatography. These reports are controversial because these dates predate the exploration of the New World by Spain and the supposed first introduction of tobacco, pipes, and smoking from the New World into Eurasia.


title: History of smoking

text: A Frenchman named Jean Nicot (from whose name the word nicotine derives) introduced tobacco to France in 1560 from Portugal. From there, it spread to England. The first report of a smoking Englishman is of a sailor in Bristol in 1556, seen "emitting smoke from his nostrils". Like tea, coffee and opium, tobacco was just one of many intoxicants originally used as a form of medicine.


title: History of smoking

text: Early modern European medical science was still to a great extent based on humorism, the idea that everything had a specific humoral nature that varied between hot and cold, dry and moist. Tobacco was often seen as something that was beneficial in its heating and drying properties and was assigned an endless list of beneficial properties. The concept of ingesting substances in the form of smoke was also entirely new and was met with both astonishment and great skepticism by Europeans.


title: History of smoking

text: The debate raged among priests, scientists and laymen whether tobacco was a bane or boon and both sides had powerful supporters. The English king James I was one of the first outspoken skeptics and wrote "A Counterblaste to Tobacco", an unforgiving literary assault on what he believed was a menace to society. Though rife with, at times, irrelevant and partial arguments, it did address some of the health issues and pointed out the peculiar fact that tobacco was frequently assigned conflicting, and at times almost miraculous, properties:


title: History of smoking

text: Cannabis 'smoking' in India has been known since at least 2000 BC and is first mentioned in the "Atharvaveda", which dates back a few hundred years BC. Fumigation ("dhupa") and fire offerings ("homa") are prescribed in the Ayurveda for medical purposes and have been practiced for at least 3,000 years while smoking, "dhumrapana" (literally "drinking smoke"), has been practiced for at least 2,000 years. Always the cannabis was burned in an open vessel or censer rather than being smoked in a pipe or rolled into a cigarette.


title: History of smoking

text: Fumigation and fire offerings have been performed with various substances, including clarified butter (ghee), fish offal, dried snake skins, and various pastes molded around incense sticks and lit to spread the smoke over wide areas. The practice of inhaling smoke was employed as a remedy for many different ailments. It was not limited to just cannabis, but various plants and medicinal concoctions recommended to promote general health were also used.


title: History of smoking

text: Before modern times, smoking was done with pipes with stems of various lengths, or chillums. Today "dhumrapana" has been replaced almost entirely by cigarette smoking, but both "dhupa" and "homa" are still practiced. Beedi, a type of handrolled herbal cigarette consisting of cloves, ground betel nut, and tobacco, usually with rather low proportion of tobacco, are a modern descendant of the historical "dhumrapana".


title: History of smoking

text: In Indonesia, a specific type of cigarette that includes cloves called "kretek" was invented in the early 1880s as a way of delivering the therapeutic properties of clove oil, or eugenol, to the lungs. It quickly became a popular cough remedy, and in the early 20th century "kretek", producers began to market pre-rolled clove cigarettes. In the 1960s and 1970s, "kretek" took on the form of a national symbol, with tax breaks compared to "white" cigarettes and the production began to shift from traditional hand-rolling to machine-rolling.


title: History of smoking

text: The industrial method passed the hand-rolled type in numbers in the mid-1980s and today "kretek" dominates up to 90% of the Indonesian cigarette market. The production is one of the largest sources of income for the Indonesian government and the production, which is spread out on some 500 independent manufacturers, employs some 180,000 people directly and over 10 million indirectly.


title: History of smoking

text: Waterpipes were introduced into Persia and the Middle East in the 16th century from China. At first these pipes were used to smoke tobacco but very quickly cannabis flowers and hashish were mixed in. As tobacco use exploded across the Middle East and Northern Africa the hashish trade blossomed within a few decades. During the 16th and 17th centuries hashish smoking quickly gained in popularity across Eurasia, from Turkey to Nepal, peaking during more modern times in the late 19th and early 20th century. Throughout the 18th century the technique of gathering and drying cannabis plants to make hashish became increasingly widespread as mass production became necessary to satisfy the rapidly increasing Eurasian hashish trade.


title: History of smoking

text: As today, the pipes often had several tubes to accommodate multiple smokers, or smokers would pass the nozzle around in the many smoking houses that functioned as social hubs in major centers of Muslim culture like Istanbul, Baghdad, and Cairo. Smoking, especially after the introduction of tobacco, was an essential component of Muslim society and culture and became integrated with important traditions like weddings, funerals and was expressed in architecture, clothing, literature and poetry.


title: History of smoking

text: There is reference to tobacco in Persian poem dating from before 1536, but because of the lack of any corroborating sources, the authenticity of the source has been questioned. The next reliable eyewitness account of tobacco smoking is by a Spanish envoy in 1617, but by this time the practice was already deeply engrained in Persian society.


title: History of smoking

text: The water-pipe called "Argila" (or hookah) was created in Persia. The pipes of the rich were made of finely crafted glass and precious metals while common people used coconuts with bamboo tubing, and these were used to smoke cannabis before the arrival of tobacco.


title: History of smoking

text: The two substances in combination became very popular and were also smoked in normal "dry" pipes. The water-pipe, however, remained the most common smoking tool until the introduction of the cigarette in the 20th century. Foreign visitors to the region often remarked that smoking was immensely popular among Persians. On Ramadan, the Muslim period of fasting when no food is eaten while the sun is up, among the first thing many Persians did after sunset was light their pipes.


title: History of smoking

text: Both sexes smoked, but for women it was a private affair enjoyed in the seclusion of private homes. In the 19th century Iran was one of the world's largest tobacco exporters, and the habit had by then become a national Iranian trait.


title: History of smoking

text: After the European discovery of the Americas, tobacco spread to Asia—first via Spanish and Portuguese sailors, and later by the Dutch and English. Spain and Portugal were active in Central and South America, where cigarettes and cigars were the smoking tools of choice, and their sailors smoked mostly cigars. The English and Dutch had contact with the pipe smoking natives of North America, and adopted the habit. While the Southern Europeans began smoking earlier, it was the long-stemmed pipes of the northerners that became popular in East and Southeast Asia. Tobacco smoking arrived through expatriates in the Philippines and was introduced as early as the 1570s.


title: History of smoking

text: By the early 17th century the kiseru, a long-stemmed Japanese pipe inspired by Dutch clay pipes, was common enough to be mentioned in Buddhist text books for children. The practice of tobacco smoking evolved as a part of the Japanese tea ceremony by employing many of the traditional object used to burn incense for tobacco smoking. The "kō-bon" (the incense tray) became the "tabako-bon", the incense burner evolved into a pot for tobacco embers and the incense pot became an ash tray.


title: History of smoking

text: During the Edo period, weapons were frequently used as objects of ostentation, indicating wealth and social status. Since only samurai were allowed to carry weapons, an elaborate kiseru slung from the waist served a similar purpose. After the Meiji restoration and abolishing of the caste system, many craftsmen who previously decorated swords switched to designing kiserus and buckles for tobacco pouches. Though mass-production of cigarettes began in the late 19th century, not until after World War II did the kiseru go out of style and become an object of tradition and relative obscurity.


title: History of smoking

text: Around 1600, French merchants introduced tobacco in what is now Gambia and Senegal. At the same time, caravans from Morocco brought tobacco to the area around Timbuktu, and the Portuguese brought the commodity (and the plant) to southern Africa. This established the popularity of tobacco throughout all of Africa by the 1650s. Imported tobacco and tobacco pipes became prized and valuable trading goods and were both quickly absorbed into African cultural traditions, rituals, and politics. The practice spawned a rich artistic tradition of decorated pipes of wood, ceramics, and eventually metal in an endless variety of themes and motifs of all shapes and sizes.


title: History of smoking

text: Tobacco and cannabis were used, much like elsewhere in the world, to confirm social relations, but also created entirely new ones. In what is today Congo, a society called Bena Diemba ("People of Cannabis") was organized in the late 19th century in Lubuko ("The Land of Friendship").


title: History of smoking

text: The Bena Diemba were collectivist pacifists that rejected alcohol and herbal medicines in favor of cannabis. Certain other herbs have been and still are smoked by certain African communities. Tabwa shamans smoke "lubowe" ("Amaranthus dubius"), a plant said to help shamans see invisible spirit sorcerers, even though there are no reports of the substance being hallucinogenic.


title: History of smoking

text: Some groups, such as the Fang of Gabon consume "eboga" ("Tabernanthe iboga"), a mind-altering drug in religious rituals. In modern Africa, smoking is, in most areas, considered an expression of modernity, and many of the strong adverse opinions that prevail in the West receive less attention.


title: History of smoking

text: In the 19th century, the practise of smoking opium became widespread in China. Previously, opium had only been ingested via consumption, and then only for its medicinal properties (opium was an anaesthetic). The narcotic was also outlawed in China sometime in the early 18th century due to the societal issues it caused. Due to a massive trade imbalance, however, foreign merchants started to smuggle opium into China via Canton, to the chagrin of the Chinese authorities. Attempts by Chinese official Lin Zexu to eliminate the trade led to the outbreak of the First Opium War. The Chinese defeat in the First and Second Opium Wars resulted in the legalization of the importation of opium into China.


title: History of smoking

text: Opium smoking later spread with Chinese immigrants and led to the establishment of numerous opium dens in China towns around South and Southeast Asia and Western nations. In the latter half of the 19th century, opium smoking became popular in the artistic community in Europe, especially Paris in artists' neighborhoods such as Montparnasse and Montmartre being virtual opium capitals. While opium dens that catered primarily to emigrant Chinese continued to exist in China Towns around the world, the trend among the European artists largely abated after the outbreak of World War I.


title: History of smoking

text: Ever since smoking was introduced outside of the Americas, there has been much vehement opposition to it. Arguments ranged from socio-economic, with tobacco called a usurper of good farm land—to purely moralistic, where many religiously devout individuals saw tobacco as another form of immoral intoxication. Many arguments were presented to the effect that smoking was harmful, and even if the critics were in the end right about many of their claims, the complaints were usually not based on scientific arguments, and if they were, these often relied on humorism and other pre-modern scientific methods.


title: History of smoking

text: Dr Eleazar Duncon, 1606, wrote that tobacco "...is so hurtful and dangerous to youth that it might have the pernicious nation expressed in the name, and that it were as well known by the name of Youths-bane as by the name of tobacco".


title: History of smoking

text: Early 17th century descriptive notices of various characteristic types and fashions of men portray tobacconists and smokers as individuals who suffer from false self-images and mistaken illusions about the properties of tobacco taking. Though physicians such as Benjamin Rush claimed tobacco use (including smoking) negatively impacted health as far back as 1798, not until the early 20th century did researchers begin to conduct serious medical studies.


title: History of smoking

text: In the late 19th century, automated cigarette-making machinery was invented. Factories, primarily located in the southern United States, allowed for the mass production of cigarettes at low costs. Cigarettes became elegant and fashionable among society men as the Victorian era gave way to the Edwardian. In 1912, American Dr. Isaac Adler was the first to strongly suggest that lung cancer is related to smoking.


title: History of smoking

text: With the postwar rise in cigarette smoking, however, the significant increase in lung cancer promoted nascent investigations into the link between smoking and cancer. In 1929, Fritz Lickint of Dresden, Germany, published a formal statistical description of a lung cancer–tobacco link, based on a study that showed lung cancer sufferers were likely to be smokers. Lickint also argued that tobacco use was the best way to explain the fact that lung cancer struck men four or five times more often than women (since women smoked much less).


title: History of smoking

text: In Germany, anti-smoking groups, often associated with anti-liquor groups, first published advocacy against the consumption of tobacco in the journal "Der Tabakgegner" (The Tobacco Opponent), by the Bohemian organization between 1912 and 1932. The "Deutsche Tabakgegner" (German Tobacco Opponents) was published in Dresden from 1919 to 1935, and was the second journal on this subject.


title: History of smoking

text: After Adolf Hitler rose to power during the great depression, he condemned his earlier smoking habit as a waste of money. In later years, Hitler viewed smoking as "decadent" and "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man, vengeance for having been given hard liquor," lamenting that "...so many excellent men have been lost to tobacco poisoning."


title: History of smoking

text: Nazi reproductive policy likewise strengthened the anti-smoking movement. Women who smoked were considered vulnerable to premature aging and loss of physical attractiveness—unsuitable to be wives and mothers in a German family. Werner Huttig of the Nazi Party's "Rassenpolitisches Amt" (Office of Racial Politics) said that a smoking mother's breast milk contained nicotine, a claim modern research has verified. Nazi political resistance to smoking, however, did not cross enemy lines.


title: History of smoking

text: A true breakthrough came in 1948, when the British epidemiologist Richard Doll published the first major studies that demonstrated that smoking could cause serious health damage. While some physicians in the United States once pitched cigarettes as health-improving products, some commentators now argue that it is unethical for physicians, as role models, to smoke at all.


title: History of smoking

text: In 1950, Richard Doll published research in the "British Medical Journal" that showed a close link between smoking and lung cancer. Four years later, in 1954 the British Doctors Study, a study of some 40,000 doctors over twenty years, confirmed the suggestion, based on which the UK Government issued advice that smoking and lung cancer rates were related. The British Doctors Study lasted until 2001, with results published every ten years and final results published in 2004 by Doll and Richard Peto. Much early research was also done by Dr. Ochsner. "Reader's Digest" magazine for many years published frequent anti-smoking articles.


title: History of smoking

text: In 1964, the United States Surgeon General's began the font, suggesting a link between smoking and cancer. This eventually led to bans on certain advertising, and requirements for health warning labels on tobacco products.


title: History of smoking

text: In the 21st century, smoking has become stigmatized throughout Western societies, but it is still a frequent practice among individuals, mostly from a lower socioeconomic background. Research implies that the act of smoking generates intimidating impressions, and it has been suggested that individuals of a low socioeconomic status are motivated to smoke by a desire to appear intimidating and forceful.


title: History of smoking

text: A recent development is the rise in popularity of e-cigarettes. In the late 2010s, some health institutions began to praise them for helping people quit smoking. Many studies concluded e-cigarettes are an effective smoking cessation tool, but the long-term side effects of vaping have yet to be discovered. Recently, the life-threatening 'vaping associated lung injury' syndrome was described, it is a form of Lipoid pneumonia caused by black market e-liquids containing lipids.


title: History of smoking

text: Since the popularisation of e-cigarettes, the tobacco industry protected its interests in a few ways:


title: History of smoking

text: In the United Kingdom, it was estimated in September 2018 that there are now 3,000,000 people who vape, 40% of whom are smokers trying to quit smoking. There is an ongoing debate in the country about whether e-cigarettes should be treated the same under the law, as regular cigarettes would. Amidst the debate, many businesses and institutions have put up signs saying "no vaping" next to their no smoking signs.


title: History of smoking

text: In the early 1980s, the majority of cocaine shipped to the United States that arrived at Miami came through the Bahamas. However, overproduction of cocaine powder in those islands drove the price down by as much as 80 percent. Confronted with falling profits for their illegal product, drug dealers decided to convert the powder to "crack," a solid, smokable form of cocaine, that they could sell in smaller quantities to more people. It was cheap, simple to produce, ready to use, and highly profitable. As early as 1980, reports of crack appeared in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston, and the Caribbean.


title: History of smoking

text: This growth in popularity abated in the late 1990s. Described by criminologist Alfred Blumstein, this change resulted from four factors: tighter gun restrictions in areas where crack cocaine is prevalent, a shrinking market and its institutionalization, the robustness of the economy, and the availability of jobs.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (born Pål Gamst, 6 September 1961) is a Norwegian musician and songwriter. Waaktaar-Savoy is best known for his work as the main songwriter and guitarist in the Norwegian pop band A-ha, which has sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. He has written or co-written most of the band's biggest hits, including "The Sun Always Shines on T.V.", "Hunting High and Low", "Take On Me", the 1987 James Bond theme "The Living Daylights" and the ballad "Summer Moved On". In addition, Waaktaar-Savoy is also a painter.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Waaktaar-Savoy was named Knights First Class of the Order of St. Olav by King Harald for his services to Norwegian music and his international success.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Pål Waaktaar, as he was then known, was lead singer, guitarist and songwriter in the Norwegian rock band Bridges, along with keyboardist Magne Furuholmen (with whom he later formed A-ha with singer Morten Harket), drummers Erik Hagelien and Øystein Jevanord, and bassist Viggo Bondi. In 1980, Bridges released their only album, the self-financed LP "Fakkeltog". Although the title is Norwegian (meaning torchlight procession), the songs are in English. At the request of Harket, A-ha performed the "Fakkeltog" song "The Vacant" (renamed "Sox of the Fox") during their 2017 "MTV Unplugged" performance, released as "MTV Unplugged – Summer Solstice".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: An unreleased Bridges song called "The Juicy Fruit Song" later evolved into "Lesson One" and then into the A-ha hit "Take On Me".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Waaktaar-Savoy is the lead guitarist and main songwriter for A-ha, one of the most successful bands of the 1980s. Once "Q Magazine" named him as one of the best unknown lyricists of his generation. A-ha performed "Summer Moved On" live at the Nobel-Peace-Prize-Concert following a hiatus. After this, they decided to record a new album and, in 2000, A-ha had the comeback of the year, followed by a sold-out tour. The A-ha album ""Lifelines"" was released in 2002. The following tour was documented in A-ha's second official live album, "How Can I Sleep with Your Voice in My Head", which was released in March 2003.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: In 2005 the compilation album "" was released, their last album with WEA. After that, A-ha signed to Universal. "Analogue" was released later that year. The title-track entered the UK-charts at No. 10. The band's ninth studio album, "Foot of the Mountain" was released in 2009. After that they split, but in 2015 reunited again and released a new studio album, "Cast in Steel".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Waaktaar-Savoy has said "Morten is totally different from me. When we first came to London together, he burned all my clothes and re-dressed me from head to toe. I don't care much about clothes, whereas he's always very interested in them. He has given me self-confidence, encourages me to talk to people, not to be afraid and to use the abilities I have. Morten is actually the only one in Norway who had as much ambition as I did. I guess we both have big egos. In a way, we're each sitting in our own little world, while Mags is more down to earth. Mags often has to mediate between Morten and me... It's good that we're so different and still respect each other. The tension between us is creative. No one sings like Morten. He's got what it takes and I have great faith in him."


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: The three members of a-ha, Morten Harket, Magne Furuholmen and Waaktaar-Savoy, were appointed Knights of the 1st Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav for their contribution to Norwegian music.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: The Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav is granted as a reward for distinguished services to their country and mankind.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: With his wife, he has produced many CDs as the band Savoy. In 2001 Waaktaar released his fourth studio album, "Reasons to Stay Indoors", which was again a big success in Norway. On 30 August 2004, Savoy released their fifth studio album called 'Savoy' through their own label, "Eleventeen Records".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Together with his wife, and drummer Frode Unneland, he has performed in the band Savoy. Savoy have achieved great success in Norway, selling over 300,000 records. They have been nominated for Spellemannprisen (Norwegian equivalent of the Grammy Award) four times and have won three times. A-ha's version of the song "Velvet" appears in the film "One Night at McCool's" and "Whalebone" appears in the highly acclaimed Norwegian film "Hawaii, Oslo".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: With Jimmy Gnecco he presented Weathervane as a new project in June 2011. Their self-titled single (Weathervane) appears on the soundtrack for the movie "Headhunters" (based on the book "Hodejegerne" by Jo Nesbø).


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: In February 2014 Waaktaar-Savoy premiered a new track under the name Waaktaar through a-ha.com. The track is called "Manmade Lake".


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: In September 2016 Waaktaar-Savoy formed a new duo with singer Zoe Gnecco (daughter of Weathervane singer Jimmy Gnecco), called Waaktaar and Zoe. The released two singles, "Beautiful Burnout" (2016) and "Tearful Girl" (January 2018), both taken from the album "World of Trouble", released in February 2017.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Waaktaar-Savoy has painted all his life. His trademark is not starting to paint until the canvas has been fitted with a frame. This trait was played upon in his debut and so far sole exhibition "Rammer" (meaning "Frames" in Norwegian) in Lillehammer, Norway in 1998.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Magne Furuholmen describes Waaktaar-Savoy thus: "Pål is the person who has meant most to me in my musical development and yet he’s the one person I find it most difficult to say anything sensible about. He has incredible will-power and a watchful eye, always searching for material he can use creatively. In a way, I have idolized Pål for years and I still depend on him to help me sort out my own ideas."


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Morten Harket describes Waaktaar-Savoy thus: "Pål has unbelievable self-discipline and is a workaholic. He can keep working on what appears to be the same thing over and over again. While I go crazy when I have to go over a song hundreds of times, he can sit with it for hours, trying to find exactly the right mix to achieve the sound he wants. Pål is really the driving force behind A-ha. He’s one of the few real artists on the pop rock scene. It's always exciting to hear what he's written."


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: Waaktaar-Savoy was born to the Gamst family on 6 September 1961 in Tonsenhagen, Norway, at the outskirts of Oslo, and was raised in Oslo's Manglerud district with his older sister Tongje. His birth name is Pål Gamst; in the Norwegian language, an acceptable alternate spelling of his first name is Paal. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother worked at the phone company. He is a distant relative of Norwegian footballer Morten Gamst Pedersen.


title: Paul Waaktaar-Savoy

text: His parents appreciated classical music, and encouraged young Pål first to learn the flute, then to study music composition when his performance skill revealed him to be a child prodigy. He admired the music of American rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and hoped one day to write a rock opera similar to "Hair". He used his mother's family name, Waaktaar, in his stage name, to become Pål Waaktar. He also enjoyed reading and painting. He was a loner, not social at school, and was unsuccessful attracting girlfriends in his teens.