title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2016, Smithfield had 50,200 employees in the United States, Mexico and Europe, and an annual revenue of $14 billion. In 2012 it opened a restaurant, Taste of Smithfield, in Smithfield, Virginia, located in the same Main Street building as its retail store, The Genuine Smithfield Ham Shoppe. As of July 2017, the company's brands included Armour, Berlinki, Carando, Cook's, Curly's, Eckrich, Farmland, Gwaltney, Healthy Ones, John Morrell, Krakus, Kretschmar, Margherita, Morliny, Nathan's Famous, and Smithfield. In 2019 it introduced Pure Farmland, a plant-based brand of soy burgers and meatballs.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In early 2019 Smithfield re-branded its food-service business, Smithfield Farmland, as "Smithfield Culinary." The company created advisory boards composed of chefs, established partnerships with culinary schools, and engaged in substantial research and development to improve its products. Smithfield Culinary uses the Carando, Curly's, Eckrich, Farmland, Margherita, and Smithfield brand names.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield began buying hog-farming operations in 1990, making it a vertically integrated company. As a result, it was able to expand by over 1,000 percent between 1990 and 2005. Vertical integration allows Smithfield to control every stage of pig production, from conception and birth, to slaughter, processing and packing, a system known as "from squeal to meal" or "from birth to bacon".


title: Smithfield Foods

text: The company contracted farmers who had moved out of tobacco farming, and sent them piglets between eight and ten weeks old to be brought to market weights on diets controlled by Smithfield. Smithfield retained ownership of the pigs. Only farmers able to handle thousands of pigs were contracted, which meant that smaller farms went out of business. In North Carolina, Smithfield's expansion mirrored hog farmers' decline; there were 667,000 hog farms there in 1980 and 67,000 in 2005. When the US government placed restrictions on the company, it moved into Eastern Europe. As a result, in Romania there were 477,030 hog farms in 2003 and 52,100 in 2007. There was a similar decline, by 56 percent between 1996 and 2008, in Poland.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Joseph W. Luter III said that vertical integration produces "high quality, consistent products with consistent genetics". The company obtained 2,000 pigs and the rights to their genetic lines from Britain's National Pig Development Company in 1990, and used them to create Smithfield Lean Generation Pork, which the American Heart Association certified for its low fat, salt, and cholesterol content. According to Luter, it was vertical integration that enabled this.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: The pigs are housed together in their thousands in identical barns with metal roofs, known as Concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The floors of the buildings are slatted, allowing waste to be flushed into 30-feet-deep "open-air pits the size of two football fields", according to "The Washington Post". These are referred to within the industry as anaerobic lagoons. They dispose of effluent at a low cost, but they require large areas and release odors and methane, a greenhouse gas.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield Foods states that the lagoons contain an impervious liner made to withstand leakage. According to Jeff Tietz in "Rolling Stone", the waste—a mixture of excrement, urine, blood, afterbirths, stillborn pigs, drugs and other chemicals—overflows when it rains, and the liners can be punctured by rocks. Smithfield attributes the pink color of the waste to the health of the lagoons, and states that the color is "a sign of bacteria doing what it should be doing. It's indicative of lower odor and lower nutrient content." In 2018 it announced an "animal waste-to-energy" plan; the company said it would spend $125 million over ten years, along with Dominion Energy, to cover the lagoons in North Carolina, Utah and Virginia with "high-density plastic and digesters" to capture the methane gas and direct it into a local pipeline.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield said in 2007 that it would phase out its use of gestation crates by 2017. Pregnant sows spend most of their lives in these stalls, which are too small to allow them to turn around. Pregnancies last about 115 days; the average life span of a sow in the United States is 4.2 litters. When they give birth, they are moved to a farrowing crate for three weeks, then artificially inseminated again and moved back to a gestation crate. The practice has been criticized by animal-welfare groups, supermarket chains, and McDonald's. Smithfield did not commit to requiring its contract farms to phase out the crates. Almost half the company's sows in the United States live on its roughly 2,000 contract farms.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2009, Smithfield said it would not meet the deadline because of the recession, but in 2011 it returned to its commitment, and to doing the same in Europe and Mexico by 2022. In January 2017 the company said that 87 percent of sows on company-owned farms were no longer in crates, and that it would require its contract farms to phase out crates by 2022. As of January 2018, on company-owned farms in the United States, Smithfield confines pregnant sows in gestation crates for six weeks during the impregnation process. When pregnancy is confirmed, they are moved to pens within a group-housing system for about 10 weeks, then to a farrowing crate, then back to a gestation crate to be impregnated again. It uses two forms of group housing: in one system, 30–40 sows are kept in a pen with access to individual gestation crates; in the other system, five or six sows are housed together in a pen. In July 2017 Direct Action Everywhere filmed the gestation crates at Smithfield's Circle Four Farms in Milford, Utah. The FBI subsequently raided two animal sanctuaries searching for two piglets removed by the activists. In January 2018 Smithfield released a video of the gestation and farrowing areas on one of its farms.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2020, Smithfield announced the closure of its plant in San Jose, California and the layoff of 139 workers from the site. Smithfield says it closed the plant due to the expiration of its lease and the decision of its landlord to sell. The local union that represented the plant's workers publicly questioned Smithfield's explanation.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In June of 2022, Smithfield announced the closure of its plant in Vernon, California, by early 2023, and also stated that it is "exploring strategic options to exit its farms in Arizona and California". The company cited the high costs for the company to conduct business within the state of California.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: The earliest confirmed case of the H1N1 virus (swine flu) during the 2009 flu pandemic was in a five-year-old boy in La Gloria, Mexico, near several facilities operated by Granjas Carroll de Mexico, a Smithfield Foods subsidiary that processes 1.2 million pigs a year and employs 907 people. This, together with tension between the company and local community over Smithfield's environmental record, prompted several newspapers to link the outbreak to Smithfield's farming practices. According to "The Washington Post", over 600 other residents of La Gloria became ill from a respiratory disease in March that year (later thought to be seasonal flu). The "Post" writes that health officials found no link between the farms and the H1N1 outbreak. Smithfield said that it had found no clinical signs of swine flu in its pigs or employees in Mexico, and had no reason to believe that the outbreak was connected to its Mexican facilities. The company said it routinely administers flu virus vaccine to its swine herds in Mexico and conducts monthly tests to detect the virus.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Residents alleged that the company regularly violates local environmental regulations. According to "The Washington Post", local farmers had complained for years about headaches from the smell of the pig farms and said that wild dogs had been eating discarded pig carcasses. Smithfield was using biodigesters to convert dead pigs into renewable energy, but residents alleged that they regularly overflowed. Residents also feared that the waste stored in the lagoons would leak into the groundwater.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Since its acquisition by what would become WH Group, Smithfield has partially retooled its plants to export meat for consumption in China. This effort has been at least partially driven by the epidemic of swine fever in China that has resulted in massive reductions in that country's pig population and pork production. One plant in Smithfield, Virginia slaughters about 10,000 pigs per day for export. Smithfield's ramp up of exports to China has occurred in the face of headwinds in the form of 62% tariffs designed to protect China's hog farmers, who largely have small operations. Pork industry trade groups claim that the United States could export twice as much pork to China if the tariffs were lifted.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: As of 2006 Smithfield raised 15 million pigs a year and processed 27 million, producing over six billion pounds of pork and, in 2012, 4.7 billion gallons of manure. Killing 114,300 pigs a day, it was the top pig-slaughter operation in the United States in 2007; along with three other companies, it also slaughtered 56 percent of the cattle processed there until it sold its beef group in 2008.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2010, a jury in Jackson County, Missouri, awarded 13 plaintiffs $825,000 each against a Smithfield subsidiary, Premium Standard, and two other plaintiffs $250,000 and $75,000. The plaintiffs argued that they were unable to enjoy their property because of the smell coming from the Smithfield facilities.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2017, in Wake County, North Carolina, nearly 500 residents sued a Smithfield subsidiary, Murphy-Brown, in 26 lawsuits, alleging nuisance and ill health caused by smells, open-air lagoons, and pig carcasses. Residents said their outdoor activities were limited as a consequence, and that they were unable to invite visitors to their homes. Smithfield said the complaints were without merit. On August 3, 2018, a federal jury awarded six North Carolina residents $470 million in damages against Murphy-Brown LLC. The verdict included $75 million each in punitive damages, plus $3–5 million in compensatory damages for loss of enjoyment in their properties. A state law capping punitive damages lowered that amount to $94 million. The plaintiffs had filed suit for "stench odor, truck noise and flies generated near their homes on Kinlaw Farm in Bladen County." In December 2018, several plaintiffs living near a Smithfield contract farm in Sampson County received compensatory damages ranging from $100 to $75,000. In March 2019, 10 plaintiffs were awarded $420,000 for nuisance by a jury in North Carolina.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: State representatives of agriculture in North Carolina accused lawyers and their plaintiffs of attempting to put farmers out of business. Steve Troxler, North Carolina's agricultural commissioner, said the litigation could harm farm production across the country; he argued that legal abuse of the word "nuisance" is a mounting concern. As a result of the cases, legislators in Georgia, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Utah, and West Virginia passed or proposed changes to right-to-farm laws that reduce either the right to sue or potential damages.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield has come under criticism for the millions of gallons of untreated fecal matter it produces and stores in its lagoons. In 2012 it produced at least 4.7 billion gallons of manure in the United States; during their lifetimes, every pig will produce 1,100–1,300 liters. In a four-year period in North Carolina in the 1990s, 4.7 million gallons of hog fecal matter were released into the state's rivers. Workers and residents near Smithfield plants reported health problems and complained about the stench. The company was fined $12.6 million in 1997 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for 6,900 violations of the Clean Water Act after discharging illegal levels of slaughterhouse waste into the Pagan River in Virginia, the largest penalty levied under the Clean Water Act at that time. Its facilities in North Carolina came under scrutiny in 1999 when Hurricane Floyd flooded lagoons holding fecal matter; many of Smithfield's contract farms were accused of polluting the rivers. Smithfield reached a settlement in 2000 with the state of North Carolina, agreeing to pay the state $50 million over 25 years.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: According to Ralph Deptolla, writing for Smithfield Foods, the company created new executive positions to monitor the environmental issues. In 2001 it created an environmental management system and the following year hired Dennis Treacy, director of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality since 1998, as executive vice-president and chief sustainability officer. Treacy had previously been involved in enforcement efforts against Smithfield. In 2005 the company received ISO 14001 certification for its hog production and processing facilities in the US, with the exception of new acquisitions, and, in 2009, 14 plants in the US and 21 in Romania received certification. By 2011, 578 Smithfield facilities (95 percent of the company's global operations) were ISO 14001-certified. Smithfield subsidiary Murphy-Brown reached an agreement in 2006 with the Waterkeeper Alliance, once one of Smithfield's biggest critics, to enhance environmental protection at the Murphy-Brown's facilities in North Carolina. In 2009 the company said it had reduced its emissions since 2007, including its greenhouse-gas emissions by four percent; it attributed this to the divestiture of the beef group. In 2010 it released its ninth annual Corporate Social Responsibility report, and announced the creation of two sustainability committees.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2018, Smithfield Foods faced criticism for widely publicized failures of its hog waste lagoons, this time in the wake of Hurricane Florence. Despite statewide attempts to modernize facilities after Hurricane Floyd, more than a hundred and thirty of North Carolina's hog waste lagoons were compromised by floodwaters during Hurricane Florence. Thirty-three lagoons overflowed entirely, discharging their contents into the Cape Fear River watershed.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2009 Armour-Eckrich introduced smaller crescent-style packaging for its smoked sausages, which reduced the plastic film and corrugated cardboard the company used by over 840,000 pounds per year. In 2010 the John Morrell plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, reduced its use of plastic by 40,600 pounds a year, and Farmland Foods reduced the corrugated packaging entering waste streams by over five million pounds a year. Smithfield Packing used 17 percent less plastic for deli meat. The company also eliminated 20,000 pounds of corrugated material a year by using smaller boxes to transport chicken frankfurters to its largest customer.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield and Dominion Energy formed a joint venture, Align Renewable Natural Gas, in 2018 to make and distribute renewable natural gas from biological sources. The two sides they will invest $500 million by 2028. Align harvests methane from Smithfield's farms. It can be mixed and used entirely interchangeably with conventionally produced natural gas. Align will sell gas collected in Utah to California's low carbon fuel standard market. The two companies aspire to produce enough gas through Align to power 70,000 homes by 2028. Align's first project started serving 3,000 homes in Milford, Utah in 2019. Dominion allows its customers to buy blocks or renewable natural gas from Align in increments of $5 on a voluntary basis. One $5 increment is worth about half a dekatherm of energy.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2019, a joint venture, called Monarch Bioenergy, in Northern Missouri with Roeslein Alternative Energy constructed a "low-pressure natural gas transmission line" between a Smithfield farm and the city of Milan, Missouri. The construction was part of Smithfield Renewables' "manure-to-energy" project. In early 2020, Smithfield and Roeslein announced an additional $45 million investment in their joint venture. This investment will fund adding gas harvesting infrastructure to at least 85% of Smithfield's hog farms in Missouri. Smithfield also has other gas projects located in North Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield also has a deal with Duke Energy to harvest renewable natural gas from its farms in North Carolina. Smithfield, Duke, and OptimaBio have also partnered to harvest renewable natural gas from wastewater at Smithfield's plant in Bladen County, North Carolina. Gas is sent from the plant via Piedmont Natural Gas lines to Duke Energy power plants where it is used to generate electricity. This project cost $14 million.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Concerns have been raised about Smithfield's use of low doses of antibiotics to promote the pigs' growth, in addition to using antibiotics as part of a treatment regime. The concern was that the antibiotics were harmful to the animals and were contributing to the rise of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Smithfield said in 2005 that it would administer antibiotics only to animals who were sick themselves, or who were in close proximity to sick animals; however, in CAFOs all pigs are in close proximity to each other. The company introduced an antibiotic-free Pure Farms brand in 2017; it promoted the brand as free of antibiotics, artificial ingredients, hormones, and steroids.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In Poland, Smithfield Foods purchased former state farms for what its CEO said were "small dollars" and turned them into CAFOs using grants from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) conducted an undercover investigation into Smithfield CAFOs there in 2006, and found sick and injured animals in the barns, and dead animals rotting. The CAFOs were run by Animex, a Smithfield subsidiary. In one barn, 26 pigs were reported to have died in a five-week period. The CIWF report said of a Smithfield lagoon in Boszkowo that the surrounding land was littered with waste including dangerous objects such as needles."


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In December 2010 the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) released an undercover video taken by one of its investigators inside a Smithfield Foods facility. The investigator had worked for a month at Murphy-Brown, a Smithfield subsidiary in Waverly, Virginia. The Associated Press (AP) reported that the investigator videotaped 1,000 sows living in gestation crates. According to the AP, the material shows a pig being pulled by the snout, shot in the head with a stun gun, and thrown into a bin while trying to wriggle free. The investigator said he saw sows biting their crates and bleeding; staff jabbing them to make them move; staff tossing piglets into carts; and piglets born prematurely in gestation crates falling through the slats into the manure pits.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In response, Smithfield stated that it does not tolerate abuse or otherwise improper care of animals. The company asked Temple Grandin, a professor of animal husbandry, to review the footage; she recommended an inspection by animal welfare expert Jennifer Woods. Smithfield announced on December 21 that it had fired two workers and their supervisor. At the company's invitation, the Virginia state veterinarian Richard Wilkes visited the facility on December 22. He praised Smithfield for its efforts to improve animal welfare and said he saw no signs of abuse. The Humane Society criticized the tour.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: The Smithfield Packing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina, was the site of an almost 15-year dispute between the company and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which had tried since 1994 to organize the plant's roughly 5,000 hourly workers. Workers voted against the union in 1994 and 1997, but the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleged that unfair election conduct had occurred and ordered a new election. During the 1997 election the company is alleged to have fired workers who supported the union, stationed police at the plant gates, and threatened plant closures. In 2000, according to Human Rights Watch, Smithfield set up its own security force, with "special police" status under North Carolina law, and in 2003 arrested workers who supported the union.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield appealed the NLRB's ruling that the 1997 election was invalid, and, in 2006, the US Circuit Court of Appeals found in favor of the NLRB. After demonstrations, lockouts, and a shareholder meeting that was disrupted by shareholders supporting the union, the union called for a boycott of Smithfield products. In 2007 Smithfield countered by filing a federal RICO Act lawsuit against the union. The following year Smithfield and the union reached an agreement, under which the union agreed to suspend its boycott in return for the company dropping its RICO lawsuit and allowing another election. In December 2008, workers voted 2,041 to 1,879 in favor of joining the union.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a 175-page report in 2005 documenting what it said were unsafe work conditions in the US meat and poultry industry, citing working conditions at Smithfield Foods as an example. In particular, the report said, workers make thousands of repetitive motions with knives during each shift, leading to lacerations and repetitive strain injuries. It also alleged that the workers' immigrant status may be exploited to prevent them from making complaints or forming unions. According to the report, the speed at which the pigs are killed and processed makes the job inherently dangerous for workers. A Smithfield manager testified in 1998, during an unfair labor practices trial, that at the Tar Heel plant in North Carolina it takes 5–10 minutes to slaughter and complete the process of "disassembly" of an animal, including draining, cleaning, and cleaving. One worker told HRW that the disassembly line moves so fast that there is no time to sharpen the knives, which means harder cuts have to be made, with the resultant injuries to workers. Similar criticism was made by other groups about Smithfield facilities in Poland and Romania. The American Meat Institute, a trade group of which Smithfield is a member, disputed the claims in the report. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union used the report in its appeals to consumers and civil rights groups during its dispute with Smithfield.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield closed numerous plants in order to help control the spread of the coronavirus. In mid-April 2020 the Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota became a "hotspot" for the COVID-19 pandemic. 300 of the plant's 3,700 employees tested positive. On April 12 the company announced the indefinite closure of the plant, which processes 4 to 5 percent of the pork products in the United States. Smithfield has stated that plant closures could cause a meat shortage. By April 14, 438 workers in Smithfield's Sioux Falls plant were confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus, with Sullivan stating, "We have to operate these processing plants even when we have COVID." On April 15, the company announced the closure of a plant in Cudahy, Wisconsin that makes bacon and sausage, and a plant in Martin City, Missouri that makes hams. Both plants were dependent on the Sioux Falls slaughterhouse. Employees in both facilities had tested positive for coronavirus, and by April 15, 28 workers at the plant in Cudahy had tested positive. By April 17, the Sioux Falls outbreak had grown to 777 cases, of whom 634 were Smithfield employees and 143 were other people who got infected after contact with a Smithfield employee. In 2020, Smithfield was cited by OSHA for violating workplace safety rules relevant to the pandemic. Smithfield says OSHA's accusations are without merit and is disputing the citation. By September 11, 2020, the Sioux Falls plant was tied to nearly 1,300 worker infections and four worker deaths.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: On December 23, 2020, animal rights activist Matt Johnson of Direct Action Everywhere was interviewed on Fox Business posing as the CEO Smithfield Foods Dennis Organ and made claims that the factories were petri dishes for the coronavirus. In the interview, he said the meat industry could be "effectively bringing on the next pandemic, with CDC data showing that three of four infectious diseases come from animals and the conditions inside of our farms can sometimes be petri dishes for new diseases". Fox Business later had to issue an acknowledgement and retraction of the interview with host Maria Bartiromo, admitting they "were punked."


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield is a supplier of heparin, which is extracted from pigs' intestines and used as a blood thinner, to the pharmaceutical industry. In 2017 the company opened a bioscience unit and joined a tissue engineering group funded by the United States Department of Defense to the tune of $80 million. According to Reuters, the group included Abbott Laboratories, Medtronic and United Therapeutics.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: In 2012, Smithfield announced a 15-race sponsorship with Richard Petty Motorsports (RPM) and driver Aric Almirola driving the No. 43 Ford Fusion in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The sponsorship was increased to 30 races beginning in 2014. Smithfield rotates its brands on the car, featuring Smithfield, Eckrich, Farmland, Gwaltney, and Nathan's Famous. Smithfield and RPM parted ways in September 2017, allowing Smithfield to sponsor Stewart-Haas Racing in 2018.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: As of 2022, Smithfield continues to sponsor Almirola in the NASCAR Cup Series with Stewart-Haas Racing. Almirola, who was set to retire from racing competition at the conclusion of the 2022 season, was coaxed by Smithfield to continue with his racing career and their partnership for 2023 and beyond in a multi-year agreement with the company.


title: Smithfield Foods

text: Smithfield has started marketing meat substitutes similar to those sold by Impossible Foods. Smithfield sells these products under the Pure Farmland brand.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: The Ammons haunting case, also known as the 200 Demons House or Demon House, is an alleged haunting and demonic possession which occurred in Gary, Indiana, in the United States in 2011. Latoya Ammons, her mother, Rosa Campbell, and her three children claimed paranormal activity occurred in the residence. The story was publicized in January 2014 and received national attention.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: In November 2011, Latoya Ammons, her mother, Rosa Campbell, and her three children then ages 7, 9 and 12 moved into a house located at 3860 Carolina Street in Gary, Indiana. Days after the family moved in, they claimed black flies swarmed the porch in December and kept returning even after the family believed they were killed.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: Campbell initially heard footsteps in the basement and doors creaking. Later, she alleged to have witnessed a "shadowy figure of a man pacing in the living room" and found a "boot print". Campbell claimed she was choked by an unknown force. Ammons' 12-year-old daughter was claimed to have levitated above her bed unconscious during a sleepover with a friend. They were said to have prayed until the girl returned to the bed. The daughter had no memory of the incident. The older son was allegedly thrown across the room by an unknown force. The younger son allegedly had his eyes roll into the back of his head and was growling saying "it's time to die," and "I will kill you".


title: Ammons haunting case

text: The family reached out to their physician, Geoffrey Onyeukwu, on April 19, 2012. When he visited the house during the supposed haunting, he noted their behavior was "delusional". Someone from his office contacted police, after the police arrived, the children were taken to the hospital. The older boy was described as acting rationally, while the younger boy "screamed and thrashed".


title: Ammons haunting case

text: In 2012, the Department of Child Services (DCS) was alerted to the family. The DCS believed that the children were performing for their mother. Sensational stories published in outlets such as the New York Daily News reported that DCS personnel had allegedly witnessed the youngest boy "walking up the wall backwards". 37 year police captain, Charles Austin, believed paranormal activity occurred in the house. A photo published by the Indianapolis Star claimed to show a "shadowy figure" when no one was home.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: The family hired Father Michael Maginot to perform an exorcism. He interviewed the family on April 22, 2012 and concluded they were being "tormented by demons". He eventually performed three exorcisms, two in English and one in Latin. One exorcism was performed on Latoya Ammons.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: Physician Geoffrey Onyeukwu had been skeptical of the entire incident and failed to witness any paranormal incidents. In his medical notes he wrote, "delusions of ghost in home" and "hallucinations". Ammons' children had a history of "irregular school attendance" with a complaint filed against Ammons in 2009. In 2012, she blamed her children's continued irregular attendance on the purported demonic activities.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: According to skeptical investigator Joe Nickell, police chief Charles Austin was "an admitted believer in the supernatural, including ghosts". Nickell reported that the photo published by the Indianapolis Star and captioned "Photo by Hammond Police" was, according to the Hammond police chief, not an official photo and was not taken by Hammond police authorities. Nickell also interviewed a number of witnesses and concluded that there were a number of non-supernatural explanations for the claimed supernatural events.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: Landlord Charles Reed stated he had never experienced any supernatural events at the house. His prior tenants also claimed to never have such experiences. At the time, Ammons was behind on lease and used the claimed paranormal activities to avoid payments. The tenant who moved in after Ammons had not noticed any paranormal events, either. Reed believed the events were a hoax.


title: Ammons haunting case

text: The children were interviewed by psychologists, and several professionals concluded "the children were acting deceptively and in accordance with their mother's beliefs". Tracy Wright, a psychologist, noted that the youngest son "acted possessed" whenever he was challenged or was asked "questions that he did not wish to answer".


title: Ammons haunting case

text: In 2014, Zak Bagans purchased the house for $35,000 and demolished it in January 2016 after filming a documentary in it, titled "Demon House" that was released on March 16, 2018. Dread Central's Steve Barton called it "one of the single most compelling documentaries on the existence of the supernatural that I've ever witnessed." "Los Angeles Times" reviewer Noel Murray called the film "hooey". According to skeptical investigator Kenny Biddle, the film has been characterized as a pseudo-documentary, "meaning it is filmed in a documentary style but doesn't portray real events".


title: The Orbital Children

text: The animation style and story focus on children and technology bear resemblance to Mitsuo Iso’s 2007 animation, "Den-noh Coil". The animation style emphasizes dense motion while working with simplistic-looking character designs, which works effectively to convey the complicated movement of drones, gravity, and orbital vehicles aboard the space station.


title: The Orbital Children

text: "The Orbital Children" explores interactions with artificial intelligence (AI) and considers the different outcomes that can occur when AIs come to different conclusions about humans as they acquire different levels of understanding on the complexities of humanity. AI within the series have restrictions placed upon them to limit their capabilities and prevent them from becoming too smart and potentially threatening humanity, a story element that becomes relevant in later episodes of the miniseries.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Set in 2045 the near-future, a comet strikes a newly opened Japanese commercial space station in geocentric orbit, Anshin. At the same time, a trio of Earth children brought to the commercial space station on a sponsored visit. The purpose of their visit is to meet Touya Sagami, a young boy who is the one of the last surviving children born in space. Touya and Konoha, another space born human, are undergoing physical therapy on the space colony to adapt their bodies to withstand an emigration to Earth's gravity. The collision with the comet leads the computer systems on the space station to malfunction. Isolated from most of the station’s adult staff, the children navigate the early stages of the disaster using local narrowband connections, restricted-intelligence AGI and drones controlled by dermal devices equivalent to smartphones. Their Internet connection is severed, the oxygen supply has been cut off, and they soon discover that the station has been damaged by an impact and is leaking air. Sometimes at odds with each other, they confront difficulties such as decompression, EVA with inadequate plastic suits, and runaway micromachines supposedly designed to retrieve water from comets. Looming over these immediate difficulties is the larger threat of a technological singularity believed to have been narrowly averted in the previous decade.


title: The Orbital Children

text: "The Orbital Children" takes place in an original setting where commercial development on Mars began in the 2010s. In 2045, the United States and China are aiming for the Moon and Jupiter, while Japan is conducting its development at a relatively safe distance in low Earth orbit.


title: The Orbital Children

text: The film's production was announced on May 20, 2018, followed by the announcement on October 27, 2020, that production started on a full-scale and that the film would be released in early 2022, with investment from Avex Pictures, Asmik Ace and others.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Signal.MD was originally attached to animate the project, but its production was temporarily suspended. Then Production +h, a new studio established by Fuminori Honda with personal debt after he left Signal.MD, took over the project.


title: The Orbital Children

text: It was later revealed that the film is split into two parts, with the first part premiering on January 28, 2022, and the second part premiering on February 11, 2022.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Mitsuo Iso, who has been discussing his next work with Avex Pictures producer Tomohiko Iwase for several years, began writing a proposal after watching the film "Gravity" and realizing that "Space = Science Fiction" no longer the case.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Iso then invited Kenichi Yoshida to create his new work in 2016 and showed him over a dozen candidate projects, and he immediately chose this work.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Yoshida was not so much involved in the scenario creation itself, but Iso decided on many aspects, including the roles of the characters, based on his reactions.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Iso wanted to make an original work of juvenile fiction, but a completely new and original project in that genre has a very high hurdle to clear in Japan.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Therefore, Iwase decided to make it for the whole world, thinking that there was still a demand for it overseas.


title: The Orbital Children

text: In the production process, Iso first decided whether to adopt the idea that had flashed in his mind, after listening to the opinions of the experts in charge of scientific research.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Since this was an entertainment work, the minimum basic rules were followed, but priority was given to fun rather than realism in the adoption of the idea.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Finally, Iso took the opposite of the usual approach of linking ideas together before building the story in order to make the most of all the ideas that were adopted.


title: The Orbital Children

text: The script took about five years of meetings alone, and Iso wrote about 100 different draft variations.


title: The Orbital Children

text: The fundamentals of the story have not changed, but the initial plot was about a comet crashing into the earth and only 50 children on a school trip to a space station survived, and in the end they emigrated to the moon, and the main characters were Tōya and Nasa, who was the same age as him.


title: The Orbital Children

text: However, this was a 20th century story, and it is now the 21st century, and since dystopian science fiction has already been produced so many times, Iso decided it was time to create a bright future.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Iso engaged in almost all jobs except sound, including scriptwriting, storyboarding, key frame checking, CG, VFX, and cinematography.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Open source 3DCG software "blender" was used for CG drawing, but it was used more as a support for hand-drawing, both digital and analog.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Since this work has only six episodes for various reasons, it is overwhelmingly short on time, and many scenes in the scenario were cut.


title: The Orbital Children

text: In order to fit into the 3-hour film size, the events before the incident of Episode 1 and daily life in space, etc. were omitted, and a number of important scenes, especially at the end of the story, both narratively and thematically, were cut.


title: The Orbital Children

text: Although the story is complete, Iso said that if given a chance, he would love to release the original "director's cut" version.


title: The Orbital Children

text: The Orbital Children’s 36 song soundtrack was produced by Rei Ishizuka. The theme song, "Oarana," was written and composed by Vincent Diamante and performed by the virtual rap singer Harusaruhi (春猿火).


title: The Orbital Children

text: Caitlin Moore of "Anime News Network" gave it a B+, and describes the series as ""The Orbital Children" is an excellent series, far and away one of the best anime series of the year so far." In particular Caitlin praises the anime's director, saying that "It's a must-watch for fans of "Den-noh Coil", and a strong recommendation to pretty much everyone else".


title: The Orbital Children

text: Toussaint Egan from "Polygon" enjoyed the series and praised its animation and story, and describes the series as "With over a decade in the making, Iso has crafted an accomplished follow-up to "Den-noh Coil" with "The Orbital Children", revisiting his penchant for dense speculative world-building through the eyes of a new generation confronted with new challenges, opportunities, and questions both personal and existential. It’s a triumph of imagination and craft, one which confidently asserts itself as one of the best anime to come out this year and further proof of Iso’s estimable yet understated brilliance".


title: Naina Yeltsina

text: Anastasia "Naina" Iosifovna Yeltsina (, , ; born 14 March 1932) is the widow of the first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin.


title: Naina Yeltsina

text: Naina Yeltsina was born in the Orenburg Oblast in 1932. After graduating from the construction faculty at the Ural Polytechnic Institute in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in 1955, she worked with various projects at the Sverdlovsk Institute.


title: Naina Yeltsina

text: In 1956, she married Boris Yeltsin, whom she met at the Sverdlovsk institute, and has lived in Moscow since 1985. They have two daughters, Yelena and Tatyana, born in 1957 and 1960, respectively.


title: Naina Yeltsina

text: Naina Yeltsina was rarely seen in public. She accompanied her husband on some of his foreign visits including 1997 visits to Sweden and Finland and a 1999 visit to China. As a rule, Naina Yeltsina never interfered in her husband's political work; however, in the 1996 election campaign, she met with voters and gave interviews to the media. She made a major public appearance in April 2007 at her husband's state funeral in Moscow.


title: Naina Yeltsina

text: In 2017, Naina Yeltsina launched her autobiography at the book at both the Yeltsin Center and then in Moscow.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The Belarusian opposition consists of groups and individuals in Belarus seeking to challenge, from 1988 to 1991, the authorities of Soviet Belarus, and since 1995, the leader of the country Alexander Lukashenko, whom supporters of the movement often consider to be a dictator. Supporters of the movement tend to call for a parliamentary democracy based on a Western model, with freedom of speech and political and religious pluralism.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The modern Belarusian democracy movement originated in the late 1980s when Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika and the Chernobyl disaster exposed the serious shortcomings of the Soviet system and galvanized a significant section of Belarusians around the issues of environment, de-Stalinization, national revival and democratic change.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The dissolution of the Soviet Union brought about a brief period of democracy from 1991 to 1994. However, since his election in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko established an authoritarian rule creating a political system which the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) stated is "incompatible with the concept of human rights".


title: Belarusian opposition

text: On 3 June 1988 the Minsk-based weekly "Litaratura i mastatstva" ("Literature And Art") published an article by archeologists Zianon Pazniak and Yauhen Shmyhalyou about the unearthing of 500 mass graves of Stalinist victims in Kurapaty on the outskirts of the Belarusian capital. The article was the first publication in Belarus about crimes of the Soviet-era authorities. This was followed in October that year by the establishment of the Martyrology of Belarus to commemorate the victims of communism, and an organizational committee for the creation of the Belarusian Popular Front, which subsequently became an ardent advocate of Belarus's independence from the Soviet Union.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: On 30 October 1988, riot police in Minsk violently dispersed a mass demonstration to commemorate the victims of Stalinism at Kurapaty – the first of many such clashes in modern Belarusian history.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: On 24 and 25 June, 1989 the Belarusian Popular Front “Revival” () was formally established with Pazniak as chairman.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The 1991 Belarusian Revolution was a series of nationwide strikes and pro-independence rallies against the Soviet authorities and their policies. Falling living standards and unemployment along with Glasnost and Perestroika policies also sparked massive demonstrations and unrest by mostly young people, demanding democracy and leading labour protests across Belarus.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: In 1990, Belarus held its first competitive parliamentary elections to the Supreme Soviet, which upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union declared Belarus an independent nation.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: On 19 June 1994 Belarus held its first presidential election, won by Lukashenko. From 1995 he began to consolidate his power at the expense of the Parliament and other institutions.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: A series of mass street protests called “Minsk Spring” or “Belarusian Spring” took place in the springs of 1996–97 triggered by a constitutional referendum on amendments to the 1994 Constitution of Belarus. The Belarusian political system became increasingly authoritarian with the government seeking to curtail all political freedoms.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Charter 97 is a human rights group taking its inspiration from the 1997 declaration calling for democracy in Belarus. The document – whose title deliberately echoes the Czechoslovak human rights declaration Charter 77 twenty years earlier – was created on the anniversary of the referendum held in 1996, and which, in the words of the organization, declares "devotion to the principles of independence, freedom and democracy, respect to the human rights, solidarity with everybody, who stands for elimination of dictatorial regime and restoration of democracy in Belarus."


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The Jeans Revolution was a term used by the opposition in Belarus and its supporters to describe their effort and aspirations on democratic changes in Belarus, in the period leading up to the 2006 presidential election.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: After the 2010 Belarusian presidential election, up to 40,000 people protested against Lukashenko. Up to 700 opposition activists, including 7 presidential candidates, were arrested in the post-election crackdown.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Several websites of the opposition and opposition candidates were also blocked or hacked. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Talk, many email services and LiveJournal were also blocked. The headquarters of Charter 97, the opposition group and website, was stormed by Lukashenko's security forces and all of its staff were arrested.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: According to The Independent, Lukashenko's security forces went after his opponents "with a ferocity that would not have looked out of place in Soviet times".


title: Belarusian opposition

text: A series of protests influenced by a serious economic crisis took place in 2011. As a result of these protests, on 29 July, the government banned assemblies and gatherings.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Due to an ongoing economic recession, continuing since the last series of protests in 2015, due to falling gasoline prices, that year a law was passed taxing the unemployed. Roughly 470,000 Belarusians are obliged to pay the tax but only about 10% have since it was issued.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Approximately 2,500 protesters filled the streets in the capital of Belarus, Minsk, on 17 February to protest a policy that required those who work for less than 183 days per year to pay USD$250 for "lost taxes" to help fund welfare policies. This converts to approximately Rbls 5 million—a half-month's wages. The law has proven unpopular and has been mocked in the public as the "law against social parasites". On 19 February, another 2,000 demonstrated in the second city of Homieĺ. Both gatherings were peaceful. Smaller demonstrations were held in other cities.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: On 25 March, opposition leader Vladimir Nekliayev, who was set to speak at the main protest, was allegedly stopped in the morning on his way to Minsk.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: The government defended the mass arrests and beatings against citizens by alleging that the police had found "petrol bombs and arms-laden cars" near a protest in Minsk.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: In May 2020, a lowered approval of Lukashenko amid his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic led to street protests and the blogger Sergei Tikhanovsky labeling Lukashenko as a cockroach as in the children's poem "The Monster Cockroach", referring to a slipper signifying stamping the insect. Many opposition candidates registered for the next election as a result of the movement, but many of them were arrested.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Mass protests erupted across Belarus following the 2020 Belarusian presidential election which was marred by allegations of widespread electoral fraud. Subsequently, opposition presidential candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Tikhanovsky's wife, claimed she had won the presidential election with between 60 and 70% of the vote and formed a Coordination Council to facilitate the peaceful and orderly transfer of power in Belarus. Online groups on Telegram such as Nexta, as well as smaller decentralised groups, played an important role in the spread of information and coordination of opposition activities.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Freedom Day (, "Dzień Voli") is an unofficial holiday in Belarus celebrated on 25 March to commemorate the declaration of independence by the Belarusian Democratic Republic by the Third Constituent Charter on that date in 1918. The day has been used annually by the Belarusian democracy movement to protest against Alexander Lukashenko since his election.


title: Belarusian opposition

text: Protests emerged from the Belarusian opposition condemning Lukashenko's support and involvement with the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine on 27 February 2022, shortly after the war's beginning. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, over 800 people had been detained for involvement within these protests. Activists from the opposition later engaged in activity to support Ukraine in the conflict, including attacks on the Belarusian Railway, a state railroad which had been utilized by Russia to support the Kyiv offensive.


title: Plant hormone

text: Plant hormone (or phytohormones) are signal molecules, produced within plants, that occur in extremely low concentrations. Plant hormones control all aspects of plant growth and development, from embryogenesis, the regulation of organ size, pathogen defense, stress tolerance and through to reproductive development. Unlike in animals (in which hormone production is restricted to specialized glands) each plant cell is capable of producing hormones. Went and Thimann coined the term "phytohormone" and used it in the title of their 1937 book.


title: Plant hormone

text: Phytohormones occur across the plant kingdom, and even in algae, where they have similar functions to those seen in higher plants. Some phytohormones also occur in microorganisms, such as unicellular fungi and bacteria, however in these cases they do not play a hormonal role and can better be regarded as secondary metabolites.


title: Plant hormone

text: The word hormone is derived from Greek, meaning "set in motion". Plant hormones affect gene expression and transcription levels, cellular division, and growth. They are naturally produced within plants, though very similar chemicals are produced by fungi and bacteria that can also affect plant growth. A large number of related chemical compounds are synthesized by humans. They are used to regulate the growth of cultivated plants, weeds, and in vitro-grown plants and plant cells; these manmade compounds are called plant growth regulators (PGRs). Early in the study of plant hormones, "phytohormone" was the commonly used term, but its use is less widely applied now.


title: Plant hormone

text: Plant hormones are not nutrients, but chemicals that in small amounts promote and influence the growth, development, and differentiation of cells and tissues. The biosynthesis of plant hormones within plant tissues is often diffuse and not always localized. Plants lack glands to produce and store hormones, because, unlike animals—which have two circulatory systems (lymphatic and cardiovascular) powered by a heart that moves fluids around the body—plants use more passive means to move chemicals around their bodies. Plants utilize simple chemicals as hormones, which move more easily through their tissues. They are often produced and used on a local basis within the plant body. Plant cells produce hormones that affect even different regions of the cell producing the hormone.


title: Plant hormone

text: Hormones are transported within the plant by utilizing four types of movements. For localized movement, cytoplasmic streaming within cells and slow diffusion of ions and molecules between cells are utilized. Vascular tissues are used to move hormones from one part of the plant to another; these include sieve tubes or phloem that move sugars from the leaves to the roots and flowers, and xylem that moves water and mineral solutes from the roots to the foliage.


title: Plant hormone

text: Not all plant cells respond to hormones, but those cells that do are programmed to respond at specific points in their growth cycle. The greatest effects occur at specific stages during the cell's life, with diminished effects occurring before or after this period. Plants need hormones at very specific times during plant growth and at specific locations. They also need to disengage the effects that hormones have when they are no longer needed. The production of hormones occurs very often at sites of active growth within the meristems, before cells have fully differentiated. After production, they are sometimes moved to other parts of the plant, where they cause an immediate effect; or they can be stored in cells to be released later. Plants use different pathways to regulate internal hormone quantities and moderate their effects; they can regulate the amount of chemicals used to biosynthesize hormones. They can store them in cells, inactivate them, or cannibalise already-formed hormones by conjugating them with carbohydrates, amino acids, or peptides. Plants can also break down hormones chemically, effectively destroying them. Plant hormones frequently regulate the concentrations of other plant hormones. Plants also move hormones around the plant diluting their concentrations.


title: Plant hormone

text: The concentration of hormones required for plant responses are very low (10 to 10 mol/L). Because of these low concentrations, it has been very difficult to study plant hormones, and only since the late 1970s have scientists been able to start piecing together their effects and relationships to plant physiology. Much of the early work on plant hormones involved studying plants that were genetically deficient in one or involved the use of tissue-cultured plants grown "in vitro" that were subjected to differing ratios of hormones, and the resultant growth compared. The earliest scientific observation and study dates to the 1880s; the determination and observation of plant hormones and their identification was spread out over the next 70 years.


title: Plant hormone

text: Different hormones can be sorted into different classes, depending on their chemical structures. Within each class of hormone, chemical structures can vary, but all members of the same class have similar physiological effects. Initial research into plant hormones identified five major classes: abscisic acid, auxins, brassinosteroids, cytokinins and ethylene. This list was later expanded, and brassinosteroids, jasmonates, salicylic acid, and strigolactones are now also considered major plant hormones. Additionally there are several other compounds that serve functions similar to the major hormones, but their status as "bona fide" hormones is still debated.


title: Plant hormone

text: Abscisic acid (also called ABA) is one of the most important plant growth inhibitors. It was discovered and researched under two different names, "dormin" and "abscicin II", before its chemical properties were fully known. Once it was determined that the two compounds are the same, it was named abscisic acid. The name refers to the fact that it is found in high concentrations in newly abscissed or freshly fallen leaves.


title: Plant hormone

text: This class of PGR is composed of one chemical compound normally produced in the leaves of plants, originating from chloroplasts, especially when plants are under stress. In general, it acts as an inhibitory chemical compound that affects bud growth, and seed and bud dormancy. It mediates changes within the apical meristem, causing bud dormancy and the alteration of the last set of leaves into protective bud covers. Since it was found in freshly abscissed leaves, it was initially thought to play a role in the processes of natural leaf drop, but further research has disproven this. In plant species from temperate parts of the world, abscisic acid plays a role in leaf and seed dormancy by inhibiting growth, but, as it is dissipated from seeds or buds, growth begins. In other plants, as ABA levels decrease, growth then commences as gibberellin levels increase. Without ABA, buds and seeds would start to grow during warm periods in winter and would be killed when it froze again. Since ABA dissipates slowly from the tissues and its effects take time to be offset by other plant hormones, there is a delay in physiological pathways that provides some protection from premature growth. Abscisic acid accumulates within seeds during fruit maturation, preventing seed germination within the fruit or before winter. Abscisic acid's effects are degraded within plant tissues during cold temperatures or by its removal by water washing in and out of the tissues, releasing the seeds and buds from dormancy.


title: Plant hormone

text: ABA exists in all parts of the plant, and its concentration within any tissue seems to mediate its effects and function as a hormone; its degradation, or more properly catabolism, within the plant affects metabolic reactions and cellular growth and production of other hormones. Plants start life as a seed with high ABA levels. Just before the seed germinates, ABA levels decrease; during germination and early growth of the seedling, ABA levels decrease even more. As plants begin to produce shoots with fully functional leaves, ABA levels begin to increase again, slowing down cellular growth in more "mature" areas of the plant. Stress from water or predation affects ABA production and catabolism rates, mediating another cascade of effects that trigger specific responses from targeted cells. Scientists are still piecing together the complex interactions and effects of this and other phytohormones.


title: Plant hormone

text: In plants under water stress, ABA plays a role in closing the stomata. Soon after plants are water-stressed and the roots are deficient in water, a signal moves up to the leaves, causing the formation of ABA precursors there, which then move to the roots. The roots then release ABA, which is translocated to the foliage through the vascular system and modulates potassium and sodium uptake within the guard cells, which then lose turgidity, closing the stomata.


title: Plant hormone

text: Auxins are compounds that positively influence cell enlargement, bud formation, and root initiation. They also promote the production of other hormones and, in conjunction with cytokinins, control the growth of stems, roots, and fruits, and convert stems into flowers. Auxins were the first class of growth regulators discovered.


title: Plant hormone

text: A Dutch Biologist Frits Warmolt Went first described auxins. They affect cell elongation by altering cell wall plasticity. They stimulate cambium, a subtype of meristem cells, to divide, and in stems cause secondary xylem to differentiate.


title: Plant hormone

text: Auxins act to inhibit the growth of buds lower down the stems in a phenomenon known as apical dominance, and also to promote lateral and adventitious root development and growth. Leaf abscission is initiated by the growing point of a plant ceasing to produce auxins. Auxins in seeds regulate specific protein synthesis, as they develop within the flower after pollination, causing the flower to develop a fruit to contain the developing seeds.


title: Plant hormone

text: In large concentrations, auxins are often toxic to plants; they are most toxic to dicots and less so to monocots. Because of this property, synthetic auxin herbicides including 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T) have been developed and used for weed control by defoliation. Auxins, especially 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), are also commonly applied to stimulate root growth when taking cuttings of plants. The most common auxin found in plants is indole-3-acetic acid (IAA).


title: Plant hormone

text: Brassinosteroids are a class of polyhydroxysteroids, the only example of steroid-based hormones in plants. Brassinosteroids control cell elongation and division, gravitropism, resistance to stress, and xylem differentiation. They inhibit root growth and leaf abscission. Brassinolide was the first identified brassinosteroid and was isolated from extracts of rapeseed ("Brassica napus") pollen in 1979. Brassinosteroids are a class of steroidal phytohormones in plants that regulate numerous physiological processes. This plant hormone was identified by Mitchell et al. who extracted ingredients from Brassica pollen only to find that the extracted ingredients’ main active component was Brassinolide. This finding meant the discovery of a new class of plant hormones called Brassinosteroids. These hormones act very similarly to animal steroidal hormones by promoting growth and development. In plants these steroidal hormones play an important role in cell elongation via BR signaling. Brassinosteroids receptor- brassinosteroid insensitive 1 (BRI1) is the main receptor for this signaling pathway. This BRI1 receptor was found by Clouse et al. who made the discovery by inhibiting BR and comparing it to the wildtype in Arabidopsis. The BRI1 mutant displayed several problems associated with growth and development such as dwarfism, reduced cell elongation and other physical alterations. These findings mean that plants properly expressing brassinosteroids grow more than their mutant counterparts. Brassinosteroids bind to BRI1 localized at the plasma membrane which leads to a signal cascade that further regulates cell elongation. This signal cascade however is not entirely understood at this time. What is believed to be happening is that BR binds to the BAK1 complex which leads to a phosphorylation cascade. This phosphorylation cascade then causes BIN2 to be deactivated which causes the release of transcription factors. These released transcription factors then bind to DNA that leads to growth and developmental processes and allows plants to respond to abiotic stressors.


title: Plant hormone

text: Cytokinins or CKs are a group of chemicals that influence cell division and shoot formation. They also help delay senescence of tissues, are responsible for mediating auxin transport throughout the plant, and affect internodal length and leaf growth. They were called kinins in the past when they were first isolated from yeast cells. Cytokinins and auxins often work together, and the ratios of these two groups of plant hormones affect most major growth periods during a plant's lifetime. Cytokinins counter the apical dominance induced by auxins; in conjunction with ethylene, they promote abscission of leaves, flower parts, and fruits.


title: Plant hormone

text: Among the plant hormones, the 3 that are known to help with immunological interactions are ethylene (ET), salicylates (SA), and jasmonates (JA), however more research has gone into identifying the role that cytokinins (CK) play in this. Evidence suggests that cytokinins delay the interactions with pathogens, showing signs that they could induce resistance toward these pathogenic bacteria. Accordingly, there are higher CK levels in plants that have increased resistance to pathogens compared to those which are more susceptible. For example, pathogen resistance involving cytokinins was tested using the "Arabidopsis" species by treating them with naturally occurring CK (trans-zeatin) to see their response to the bacteria "Pseudomonas syringa". Tobacco studies reveal that over expression of CK inducing IPT genes yields increased resistance whereas over expression of CK oxidase yields increased susceptibility to pathogen, namely "P. syringae".


title: Plant hormone

text: While there’s not much of a relationship between this hormone and physical plant behavior, there are behavioral changes that go on inside the plant in response to it.  Cytokinin defense effects can include the establishment and growth of microbes (delay leaf senescence), reconfiguration of secondary metabolism or even induce the production of new organs such as galls or nodules. These organs and their corresponding processes are all used to protect the plants against biotic/abiotic factors.


title: Plant hormone

text: Unlike the other major plant hormones, ethylene is a gas and a very simple organic compound, consisting of just six atoms. It forms through the breakdown of methionine, an amino acid which is in all cells. Ethylene has very limited solubility in water and therefore does not accumulate within the cell, typically diffusing out of the cell and escaping the plant. Its effectiveness as a plant hormone is dependent on its rate of production versus its rate of escaping into the atmosphere. Ethylene is produced at a faster rate in rapidly growing and dividing cells, especially in darkness. New growth and newly germinated seedlings produce more ethylene than can escape the plant, which leads to elevated amounts of ethylene, inhibiting leaf expansion (see hyponastic response).


title: Plant hormone

text: As the new shoot is exposed to light, reactions mediated by phytochrome in the plant's cells produce a signal for ethylene production to decrease, allowing leaf expansion. Ethylene affects cell growth and cell shape; when a growing shoot or root hits an obstacle while underground, ethylene production greatly increases, preventing cell elongation and causing the stem to swell. The resulting thicker stem is stronger and less likely to buckle under pressure as it presses against the object impeding its path to the surface. If the shoot does not reach the surface and the ethylene stimulus becomes prolonged, it affects the stem's natural geotropic response, which is to grow upright, allowing it to grow around an object. Studies seem to indicate that ethylene affects stem diameter and height: when stems of trees are subjected to wind, causing lateral stress, greater ethylene production occurs, resulting in thicker, sturdier tree trunks and branches.


title: Plant hormone

text: Ethylene also affects fruit ripening. Normally, when the seeds are mature, ethylene production increases and builds up within the fruit, resulting in a climacteric event just before seed dispersal. The nuclear protein Ethylene Insensitive2 (EIN2) is regulated by ethylene production, and, in turn, regulates other hormones including ABA and stress hormones. Ethylene diffusion out of plants is strongly inhibited underwater. This increases internal concentrations of the gas. In numerous aquatic and semi-aquatic species (e.g. "Callitriche platycarpus", rice, and "Rumex palustris"), the accumulated ethylene strongly stimulates upward elongation. This response is an important mechanism for the adaptive escape from submergence that avoids asphyxiation by returning the shoot and leaves to contact with the air whilst allowing the release of entrapped ethylene. At least one species ("Potamogeton pectinatus") has been found to be incapable of making ethylene while retaining a conventional morphology. This suggests ethylene is a true regulator rather than being a requirement for building a plant's basic body plan.


title: Plant hormone

text: Gibberellins (GAs) include a large range of chemicals that are produced naturally within plants and by fungi. They were first discovered when Japanese researchers, including Eiichi Kurosawa, noticed a chemical produced by a fungus called "Gibberella fujikuroi" that produced abnormal growth in rice plants. It was later discovered that GAs are also produced by the plants themselves and control multiple aspects of development across the life cycle. The synthesis of GA is strongly upregulated in seeds at germination and its presence is required for germination to occur. In seedlings and adults, GAs strongly promote cell elongation. GAs also promote the transition between vegetative and reproductive growth and are also required for pollen function during fertilization.


title: Plant hormone

text: Gibberellins breaks the dormancy (in active stage) in seeds and buds and helps increasing the height of the plant. It helps in the growth of the stem


title: Plant hormone

text: Jasmonates (JAs) are lipid-based hormones that were originally isolated from jasmine oil. JAs are especially important in the plant response to attack from herbivores and necrotrophic pathogens. The most active JA in plants is jasmonic acid. Jasmonic acid can be further metabolized into methyl jasmonate (MeJA), which is a volatile organic compound. This unusual property means that MeJA can act as an airborne signal to communicate herbivore attack to other distant leaves within one plant and even as a signal to neighboring plants. In addition to their role in defense, JAs are also believed to play roles in seed germination, the storage of protein in seeds, and root growth.


title: Plant hormone

text: JAs have been shown to interact in the signalling pathway of other hormones in a mechanism described as “crosstalk.” The hormone classes can have both negative and positive effects on each other's signal processes.


title: Plant hormone

text: Jasmonic acid methyl ester (JAME) has been shown to regulate genetic expression in plants. They act in signalling pathways in response to herbivory, and upregulate expression of defense genes. Jasmonyl-isoleucine (JA-Ile) accumulates in response to herbivory, which causes an upregulation in defense gene expression by freeing up transcription factors.


title: Plant hormone

text: Jasmonate mutants are more readily consumed by herbivores than wild type plants, indicating that JAs play an important role in the execution of plant defense. When herbivores are moved around leaves of wild type plants, they reach similar masses to herbivores that consume only mutant plants, implying the effects of JAs are localized to sites of herbivory. Studies have shown that there is significant crosstalk between defense pathways.


title: Plant hormone

text: Salicylic acid (SA) is a hormone with a structure related to phenol. It was originally isolated from an extract of white willow bark ("Salix alba") and is of great interest to human medicine, as it is the precursor of the painkiller aspirin. In plants, SA plays a critical role in the defense against biotrophic pathogens. In a similar manner to JA, SA can also become methylated. Like MeJA, methyl salicylate is volatile and can act as a long-distance signal to neighboring plants to warn of pathogen attack. In addition to its role in defense, SA is also involved in the response of plants to abiotic stress, particularly from drought, extreme temperatures, heavy metals, and osmotic stress.


title: Plant hormone

text: Salicylic acid (SA) serves as a key hormone in plant innate immunity, including resistance in both local and systemic tissue upon biotic attacks, hypersensitive responses, and cell death. Some of the SA influences on plants include seed germination, cell growth, respiration, stomatal closure, senescence-associated gene expression, responses to abiotic and biotic stresses, basal thermo tolerance and fruit yield. A possible role of salicylic acid in signaling disease resistance was first demonstrated by injecting leaves of resistant tobacco with SA. The result was that injecting SA stimulated pathogenesis related (PR) protein accumulation and enhanced resistance to tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) infection. Exposure to pathogens causes a cascade of reactions in the plant cells. SA biosynthesis is increased via isochorismate synthase (ICS) and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) pathway in plastids. It was observed that during plant-microbe interactions, as part of the defense mechanisms, SA is initially accumulated at the local infected tissue and then spread all over the plant to induce systemic acquired resistance at non-infected distal parts of the plant. Therefore with increased internal concentration of  SA, plants were able to build resistant barriers for pathogens and other adverse environmental conditions


title: Plant hormone

text: Strigolactones (SLs) were originally discovered through studies of the germination of the parasitic weed "Striga lutea". It was found that the germination of "Striga" species was stimulated by the presence of a compound exuded by the roots of its host plant. It was later shown that SLs that are exuded into the soil also promote the growth of symbiotic arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi. More recently, another role of SLs was identified in the inhibition of shoot branching. This discovery of the role of SLs in shoot branching led to a dramatic increase in the interest in these hormones, and it has since been shown that SLs play important roles in leaf senescence, phosphate starvation response, salt tolerance, and light signalling.


title: Plant hormone

text: Synthetic plant hormones or PGRs are used in a number of different techniques involving plant propagation from cuttings, grafting, micropropagation and tissue culture. Most commonly they are commercially available as "rooting hormone powder".


title: Plant hormone

text: The propagation of plants by cuttings of fully developed leaves, stems, or roots is performed by gardeners utilizing auxin as a rooting compound applied to the cut surface; the auxins are taken into the plant and promote root initiation. In grafting, auxin promotes callus tissue formation, which joins the surfaces of the graft together. In micropropagation, different PGRs are used to promote multiplication and then rooting of new plantlets. In the tissue-culturing of plant cells, PGRs are used to produce callus growth, multiplication, and rooting.


title: Plant hormone

text: Embryo dormancy is characterized by a high ABA:GA ratio, whereas the seed has high abscisic acid sensitivity and low GA sensitivity. In order to release the seed from this type of dormancy and initiate seed germination, an alteration in hormone biosynthesis and degradation toward a low ABA/GA ratio, along with a decrease in ABA sensitivity and an increase in GA sensitivity, must occur.


title: Plant hormone

text: Seed coat dormancy involves the mechanical restriction of the seed coat. This, along with a low embryo growth potential, effectively produces seed dormancy. GA releases this dormancy by increasing the embryo growth potential, and/or weakening the seed coat so the radical of the seedling can break through the seed coat.


title: Plant hormone

text: Different types of seed coats can be made up of living or dead cells, and both types can be influenced by hormones; those composed of living cells are acted upon after seed formation, whereas the seed coats composed of dead cells can be influenced by hormones during the formation of the seed coat. ABA affects testa or seed coat growth characteristics, including thickness, and effects the GA-mediated embryo growth potential. These conditions and effects occur during the formation of the seed, often in response to environmental conditions. Hormones also mediate endosperm dormancy: Endosperm in most seeds is composed of living tissue that can actively respond to hormones generated by the embryo. The endosperm often acts as a barrier to seed germination, playing a part in seed coat dormancy or in the germination process. Living cells respond to and also affect the ABA:GA ratio, and mediate cellular sensitivity; GA thus increases the embryo growth potential and can promote endosperm weakening. GA also affects both ABA-independent and ABA-inhibiting processes within the endosperm.


title: Plant hormone

text: Willow bark has been used for centuries as a painkiller. The active ingredient in willow bark that provides these effects is the hormone salicylic acid (SA). In 1899, the pharmaceutical company Bayer began marketing a derivative of SA as the drug aspirin. In addition to its use as a painkiller, SA is also used in topical treatments of several skin conditions, including acne, warts and psoriasis. Another derivative of SA, sodium salicylate has been found to suppress proliferation of lymphoblastic leukemia, prostate, breast, and melanoma human cancer cells.


title: Plant hormone

text: Jasmonic acid (JA) can induce death in lymphoblastic leukemia cells. Methyl jasmonate (a derivative of JA, also found in plants) has been shown to inhibit proliferation in a number of cancer cell lines, although there is still debate over its use as an anti-cancer drug, due to its potential negative effects on healthy cells.


title: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic

text: After the Velvet Revolution in late-1989, Czechoslovakia adopted the official short-lived country name Czech and Slovak Federative Republic (, ; ČSFR) during the period from 23 April 1990 until 31 December 1992, after which the country was dissolved into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.


title: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic

text: Since 1960, Czechoslovakia's official name had been the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic ("Československá socialistická republika", ČSSR). In the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution, newly elected President Václav Havel announced that "Socialist" would be dropped from the country's official name.


title: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic

text: Conventional wisdom suggested that the country would resume the name used from 1919 to 1938 and from 1945 to 1960, Czechoslovak Republic ("Československá republika"). However, Slovak politicians objected that the traditional name subsumed Slovakia's equal status in the federal state too much. The first compromise was Constitutional Law 81/1990, which changed the country's name to Czechoslovak Federative Republic (, ; "ČSFR"), explicitly acknowledging the federal nature of the state. It was passed on 29 March 1990 (coming into force on the same day) only after an informal agreement on the Slovak form which would be explicitly codified by a future law on state symbols. This was met with general disapproval and another round of haggling, dubbed "the hyphen war" ("pomlčková válka/vojna") after Slovaks' wish to insert a hyphen into the name ("Česko-Slovensko"). However, aggrieved Czechs vehemently opposed it as too reminiscent of such practice during the Second Czechoslovak Republic (when the official name was "Czecho-Slovak Republic"—which had also been used from 1938 to 1939)—when the country had been mutilated by the Munich Agreement and was slipping toward its final dismemberment at the hands of Nazi Germany a year later. The resultant compromise, after much behind-the-scenes negotiation, was Constitutional Law 101/1990, passed on 20 April and in force since its declaration on 23 April. The law changed the country's name to "Czech and Slovak Federative Republic"; unlike the previous one, it also explicitly listed both versions and stated they were equal.


title: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic

text: The name breaks the rules of Czech and Slovak orthography, which do not use capitalization for proper names' second and further words (see above), nor adjectives derived from them. Thus the correct form would be "Česká a slovenská federat... republika." However, "Česká a Slovenská F. R." was adopted in hopes of eliminating any debate about the prestige of Slovakia. While few people were happy with the name, it came into use quickly. Czech and Slovak tensions, of which this was an early sign, soon became manifest in matters of greater immediate importance which made the country's name a comparatively minor issue and at the same time even more impossible to change, so the name remained.


title: Czech and Slovak Federative Republic

text: The 1960 Constitution remained in force up to 1 January 1993. It was also heavily amended to remove its Communist character. Work on a permanent constitution was still underway at the time of the dissolution of Czechoslovakia.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: Marinus van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 – 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and executed by the Nazis for setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933. During his trial, the prosecution argued that van der Lubbe had acted on behalf of a wider Communist conspiracy, while left-wing anti-Nazis argued that the fire was a false flag attack engineered by the Nazis themselves. Most historians agree that van der Lubbe acted alone. Nearly 75 years after the event, the German government granted van der Lubbe a posthumous pardon.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: Marinus van der Lubbe was born in Leiden in the province of South Holland. His parents were divorced, and after his mother died when he was twelve years old, he went to live with his half-sister's family. In his youth, van der Lubbe worked as a bricklayer. He was nicknamed "Dempsey" after boxer Jack Dempsey because of his great strength. While working, van der Lubbe came in contact with the labour movement; in 1925, at age 16, he joined the Communist Party of the Netherlands (CPN) and its youth wing, the Communist Youth Bund (CJB).


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: In 1926 he was injured at work, getting lime in his eyes, which hospitalised him for a few months and almost left him blind. Since the injury forced him to quit his job, he was unemployed with a pension of only 7.44 guilders a week. After a few conflicts with his sister, van der Lubbe moved to Leiden in 1927. There he learned to speak some German and founded the Lenin House, where he organised political meetings. While working for the Tielmann factory, a strike broke out. Van der Lubbe claimed to the management to be one of the ringleaders and offered to accept any punishment if no one else was victimised, even though he was clearly too inexperienced to have been seriously involved. During the trial, he tried to claim sole responsibility and was purportedly hostile to the idea of getting off free.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: Afterwards, van der Lubbe planned to emigrate to the Soviet Union, but he lacked the funds to do so. He was politically active among the unemployed workers' movement until 1931, when he fell into disagreement with the CPN and instead approached the Group of International Communists. In 1933, van der Lubbe fled to Germany to take action in the local communist underground. He had a criminal record for several attempted arsons.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: Van der Lubbe claimed to have set the Reichstag building on fire in an attempt to rally German workers against fascist rule. He was brought to trial along with the head of the Communist Party of Germany and three members of the Bulgarian Communist Party, who were working in Germany for the Communist International. At his trial, van der Lubbe was convicted and sentenced to death for the Reichstag fire. The four other defendants (Ernst Torgler, Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoy Popov, and Vasil Tanev) were acquitted. Van der Lubbe was guillotined in a Leipzig prison yard on 10 January 1934, three days before his 25th birthday. He was buried in an unmarked grave on the Südfriedhof (South Cemetery) in Leipzig.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: After World War II, moves were made by his brother, Jan van der Lubbe, in an attempt to overturn the original verdict. In 1967, his sentence was changed by a judge from death to eight years in prison. In 1980, after more lengthy complaints, a West German court overturned the verdict entirely, but that was criticised by the state prosecutor. The case was re-examined by the Federal Court of Justice of Germany for three years. In 1983, the court made a final decision on the matter and overturned the result of the 1980 trial on grounds that there was no basis for it and so it was illegal. However, on 6 December 2007 the Attorney General of Germany Monika Harms nullified the entire verdict and posthumously pardoned Van der Lubbe, based on a 1998 German law that makes it possible to overturn certain cases of Nazi injustice. The court's determination was based on the premise that the National Socialist regime was, by definition, unjust, and since the case's death sentence had been politically motivated, it was likely to have contained an extension of that injustice. The conclusion was independent of the factual question of whether or not Van der Lubbe had actually set the fire.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: Historians disagree as to whether van der Lubbe acted alone, as he said, to protest the condition of the German working class, or was involved in a larger conspiracy. The Nazis blamed a communist conspiracy. Responsibility for the Reichstag fire remains an ongoing topic of debate and research in modern historical scholarship. William Shirer, writing in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", surmised that Van der Lubbe was goaded into setting a fire at the Reichstag but that the Nazis had set their own more elaborate fire at the same time. According to Ian Kershaw, writing in 1998, the consensus of nearly all historians is that Van der Lubbe had in fact set the Reichstag on fire.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: The " van der Lubbe" is the colloquial term for the Nazi law on the imposition and execution of the death penalty of 29 March 1933. The name comes from the fact that the law formed the legal basis for the imposition of the death penalty against Van der Lubbe.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: The Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February 1933 contained a list of crimes for which the death penalty was to be imposed instead of a life sentence, as was previously the case. The law on the imposition and execution of the death penalty passed by the Hitler government on 29 March (on the basis of the Enabling Act) extended the law retrospectively to 31 January 1933, thereby violating Article 116 of the Weimar Constitution, which prohibited retroactive penalties. The Enabling Act itself, however, made this legislating constitutional, provided the office of the president and the Reichstag and Reichsrat were not affected. It could thus be applied to Van der Lubbe, who had admitted in court that he had set fire to the Reichstag on 27 February.


title: Marinus van der Lubbe

text: The law was ultimately repealed by the Allied Control Council on 30 January 1946 through Control Council Act No. 11.


title: Solar water heating

text: Solar water heating (SWH) is heating water by sunlight, using a solar thermal collector. A variety of configurations are available at varying cost to provide solutions in different climates and latitudes. SWHs are widely used for residential and some industrial applications (For example: in Israel).


title: Solar water heating

text: A sun-facing collector heats a working fluid that passes into a storage system for later use. SWH are active (pumped) and passive (convection-driven). They use water only, or both water and a working fluid. They are heated directly or via light-concentrating mirrors. They operate independently or as hybrids with electric or gas heaters. In large-scale installations, mirrors may concentrate sunlight into a smaller collector.


title: Solar water heating

text: As of 2017, global solar hot water (SHW) thermal capacity is 472 GW and the market is dominated by China, the United States and Turkey. Barbados, Austria, Cyprus, Israel and Greece are the leading countries by capacity per person.


title: Solar water heating

text: Records of solar collectors in the United States date to before 1900, involving a black-painted tank mounted on a roof. In 1896 Clarence Kemp of Baltimore enclosed a tank in a wooden box, thus creating the first 'batch water heater' as they are known today. Frank Shuman built the world's first solar thermal power station in Maadi, Egypt, using parabolic troughs to power a engine that pumped of water per minute from the Nile River to adjacent cotton fields.


title: Solar water heating

text: Flat-plate collectors for solar water heating were used in Florida and Southern California in the 1920s. Interest grew in North America after 1960, but especially after the 1973 oil crisis.


title: Solar water heating

text: Solar power is in use in Australia, Canada, China, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Romania, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: Solar water heating

text: Israel, Cyprus and Greece are the "per capita" leaders in the use of solar water heating systems supporting 30%–40% of homes.


title: Solar water heating

text: Flat plate solar systems were perfected and used on a large scale in Israel. In the 1950s a fuel shortage led the government to forbid heating water between 10 pm and 6 am. Levi Yissar built the first prototype Israeli solar water heater and in 1953 he launched the NerYah Company, Israel's first commercial manufacturer of solar water heating. Solar water heaters were used by 20% of the population by 1967. Following the energy crisis in the 1970s, in 1980 Israel required the installation of solar water heaters in all new homes (except high towers with insufficient roof area). As a result, Israel became the world leader in the use of solar energy "per capita" with 85% of households using solar thermal systems (3% of the primary national energy consumption), estimated to save the country of oil a year.


title: Solar water heating

text: In 2005, Spain became the world's first country to require the installation of photovoltaic electricity generation in new buildings, and the second (after Israel) to require the installation of solar water heating systems, in 2006.


title: Solar water heating

text: Australia has a variety of national and state and regulations for solar thermal starting with MRET in 1997.


title: Solar water heating

text: Solar water heating systems are popular in China, where basic models start at around 1,500 yuan (US$235), around 80% less than in Western countries for a given collector size. At least 30 million Chinese households have one. The popularity is due to efficient evacuated tubes that allow the heaters to function even under gray skies and at temperatures well below freezing.


title: Solar water heating

text: The minimum requirements of the system are typically determined by the amount or temperature of hot water required during winter, when a system's output and incoming water temperature are typically at their lowest. The maximum output of the system is determined by the need to prevent the water in the system from becoming too hot.


title: Solar water heating

text: Freeze protection measures prevent damage to the system due to the expansion of freezing transfer fluid. Drainback systems drain the transfer fluid from the system when the pump stops. Many indirect systems use antifreeze (e.g., propylene glycol) in the heat transfer fluid.


title: Solar water heating

text: In some direct systems, collectors can be manually drained when freezing is expected. This approach is common in climates where freezing temperatures do not occur often but can be less reliable than an automatic system as it relies on an operator.


title: Solar water heating

text: The third type of freeze protection is freeze-tolerance, where low-pressure water pipes made of silicone rubber simply expand on freezing. One such collector now has European Solar Keymark accreditation.


title: Solar water heating

text: When no hot water has been used for a day or two, the fluid in the collectors and storage can reach high temperatures in all non-"drainback" systems. When the storage tank in a "drainback" system reaches its desired temperature, the pumps stop, ending the heating process and thus preventing the storage tank from overheating.


title: Solar water heating

text: Some active systems deliberately cool the water in the storage tank by circulating hot water through the collector at times when there is little sunlight or at night, losing heat. This is most effective in direct or thermal store plumbing and is virtually ineffective in systems that use evacuated tube collectors, due to their superior insulation. Any collector type may still overheat. High pressure, sealed solar thermal systems ultimately rely on the operation of temperature and pressure relief valves. Low pressure, open vented heaters have simpler, more reliable safety controls, typically an open vent.


title: Solar water heating

text: Simple designs include a simple glass-topped insulated box with a flat solar absorber made of dark-colored sheet metal, attached to copper heat exchanger pipes, or a set of metal tubes surrounded by an evacuated (near vacuum) glass cylinder. In industrial cases a parabolic mirror can concentrate sunlight on the tube. Heat is stored in a hot water storage tank. The volume of this tank needs to be larger with solar heating systems to compensate for bad weather and because the optimum final temperature for the solar collector is lower than a typical immersion or combustion heater. The heat transfer fluid (HTF) for the absorber may be water, but more commonly (at least in active systems) is a separate loop of fluid containing anti-freeze and a corrosion inhibitor delivers heat to the tank through a heat exchanger (commonly a coil of copper heat exchanger tubing within the tank). Copper is an important component in solar thermal heating and cooling systems because of its high heat conductivity, atmospheric and water corrosion resistance, sealing and joining by soldering and mechanical strength. Copper is used both in receivers and primary circuits (pipes and heat exchangers for water tanks).


title: Solar water heating

text: Another lower-maintenance concept is the 'drain-back'. No anti-freeze is required; instead, all the piping is sloped to cause water to drain back to the tank. The tank is not pressurized and operates at atmospheric pressure. As soon as the pump shuts off, flow reverses and the pipes empty before freezing can occur.


title: Solar water heating

text: Residential solar thermal installations fall into two groups: passive (sometimes called "compact") and active (sometimes called "pumped") systems. Both typically include an auxiliary energy source (electric heating element or connection to a gas or fuel oil central heating system) that is activated when the water in the tank falls below a minimum temperature setting, ensuring that hot water is always available. The combination of solar water heating and back-up heat from a wood stove chimney can enable a hot water system to work all year round in cooler climates, without the supplemental heat requirement of a solar water heating system being met with fossil fuels or electricity.


title: Solar water heating

text: When a solar water heating and hot-water central heating system are used together, solar heat will either be concentrated in a pre-heating tank that feeds into the tank heated by the central heating, or the solar heat exchanger will replace the lower heating element and the upper element will remain to provide for supplemental heat. However, the primary need for central heating is at night and in winter when solar gain is lower. Therefore, solar water heating for washing and bathing is often a better application than central heating because supply and demand are better matched. In many climates, a solar hot water system can provide up to 85% of domestic hot water energy. This can include domestic non-electric concentrating solar thermal systems. In many northern European countries, combined hot water and space heating systems (solar combisystems) are used to provide 15 to 25% of home heating energy. When combined with storage, large scale solar heating can provide 50-97% of annual heat consumption for district heating.


title: Solar water heating

text: "Direct" or "open loop" systems circulate potable water through the collectors. They are relatively cheap. Drawbacks include:


title: Solar water heating

text: The advent of freeze-tolerant designs expanded the market for SWH to colder climates. In freezing conditions, earlier models were damaged when the water turned to ice, rupturing one or more components.


title: Solar water heating

text: "Indirect" or "closed loop" systems use a heat exchanger to transfer heat from the "heat-transfer fluid" (HTF) fluid to the potable water. The most common HTF is an antifreeze/water mix that typically uses non-toxic propylene glycol. After heating in the panels, the HTF travels to the heat exchanger, where its heat is transferred to the potable water. Indirect systems offer freeze protection and typically overheat protection.


title: Solar water heating

text: "Passive" systems rely on heat-driven convection or heat pipes to circulate the working fluid. Passive systems cost less and require low or no maintenance, but are less efficient. Overheating and freezing are major concerns.


title: Solar water heating

text: "Active" systems use one or more pumps to circulate water and/or heating fluid"." This permits a much wider range of system configurations.


title: Solar water heating

text: Pumped systems are more expensive to purchase and to operate. However, they operate at higher efficiency and can be more easily controlled.


title: Solar water heating

text: Active systems have controllers with features such as interaction with a backup electric or gas-driven water heater, calculation and logging of the energy saved, safety functions, remote access and informative displays.


title: Solar water heating

text: An "integrated collector storage" (ICS or batch heater) system uses a tank that acts as both storage and collector. Batch heaters are thin rectilinear tanks with a glass side facing the sun at noon. They are simple and less costly than plate and tube collectors, but they may require bracing if installed on a roof (to support  lbs of water), suffer from significant heat loss at night since the side facing the sun is largely uninsulated and are only suitable in moderate climates.


title: Solar water heating

text: A "convection heat storage unit" (CHS) system is similar to an ICS system, except the storage tank and collector are physically separated and transfer between the two is driven by convection. CHS systems typically use standard flat-plate type or evacuated tube collectors. The storage tank must be located above the collectors for convection to work properly. The main benefit of CHS systems over ICS systems is that heat loss is largely avoided since the storage tank can be fully insulated. Since the panels are located below the storage tank, heat loss does not cause convection, as the cold water stays at the lowest part of the system.


title: Solar water heating

text: "Pressurized antifreeze" systems use a mix of antifreeze (almost always low-toxic propylene glycol) and water mix for HTF in order to prevent freeze damage.