title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "F.E.A.R. 3" received mixed reviews, and was felt to be significantly inferior to the original "F.E.A.R." and on a par with "Project Origin". Critics generally lauded the multiplayer, co-op, the differentiation between the play styles of Point Man and Fettel, and the combat mechanics, but they were unimpressed with the plot, the absence of any real horror, and the short length of the campaign. Many critics felt that although it was a solid, if by-the-numbers, first-person shooter, it failed as a "F.E.A.R." game. The game's sales were disappointing, and the "F.E.A.R." franchise has been on hiatus since its release.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "F.E.A.R. 3" is a first-person shooter in which the campaign can be played in either single-player mode or co-op mode. As well as being playable online, co-op is also available offline via split screen. In single-player mode, the player can initially only play as Point Man. However, upon the completion of each level, the player unlocks the ability to play through that level as Paxton Fettel. Level layout, cutscenes, and dialogue are identical irrespective of which character the player is using.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: When playing as Point Man, the player's arsenal includes a handgun, assault rifle, submachine gun, combat shotgun, sniper rifle, nail gun, rocket launcher, machine pistols (which the player can dual wield), and arc weapon. Only two different firearms can be carried at any one time. Point Man also has access to three different types of projectile - frag grenades, flash bangs, and zap grenades (electricity-based). The player can initially carry only two of each type, but this limit can be upped to five via upgrades. The player can carry all three types at once, but only one type may be equipped at any one time. Players can also "cook" grenades before throwing them; arming them but holding onto them for a moment before tossing them. An on screen meter tells the player how much time is left before they detonate. Point Man also carries a knife for hand-to-hand combat, and can perform a silent insta-kill on an enemy if he can sneak up behind the enemy without being seen. He also has several melee attacks, such as a punch, a jumping kick, and a sliding kick.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: A prominent gameplay element when playing as Point Man is "reflex time"; an ability which slows down the game world while still allowing the player to aim and react at normal speeds. This effect is used to simulate Point Man's superhuman reflexes, and is represented by stylized visual effects, such as bullets in flight that cause air distortion or interact with the game's particle system. The duration which reflex time lasts is limited, determined by a meter which slowly fills up automatically when the ability is not being used.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Instead of reflex time, when playing as Fettel, the player has access to a possession ability. Like reflex time, possession is determined by an on-screen meter, but unlike reflex time, possession only becomes available when the meter is full. The ability allows Fettel to take control of an enemy NPC, who then becomes the playable character. When Fettel possesses an NPC, he gains access to any abilities and weaponry wielded by that individual, meaning that although the player cannot use guns when playing directly as Fettel, they can use guns when Fettel possesses gun-wielding enemies. Once in possession of an NPC, the possession meter will begin to empty, and when it is depleted, the possession ends, and the player returns to controlling Fettel. The meter fills up automatically when the ability is not being used. The player also has the option to manually end possession at any time.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Although he cannot carry any weapons in his normal form, Fettel does have other combat abilities. He can fire bolts of psychic energy, use telekinesis to lift and throw objects, punch enemies, crush their heads with his hands (if he can successfully sneak up behind them), suspend them mid-air, explode them (if he is close enough to a suspended enemy), and send out a concussive blast (only available in co-op mode, and only when the other player is using Point Man's reflex time ability).


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Whether playing in single-player or co-op mode, the player can permanently increase the size of the reflex time/possession meter via the game's ranking system, which is based on completing various challenges in four different categories (aggressive, technical, aptitude, psychic). These challenges include such things as killing a certain number of enemies, using specific weapons a certain number of times, finding hidden collectibles, using reflex time or possession for a certain amount of time, killing a certain number of enemies from cover, etc. Completing a challenge awards points, and when enough points have been accrued, the player's rank increases. Each rank progression gives the player an award, such as increasing the size of the reflex time/possession meter, unlocking new melee abilities, increasing ammo and grenade capacity, or allowing the player's health to regenerate faster.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: As with "", the player can use mechs, although in "F.E.A.R. 3" there are two available; the REV9 Powered Armor and the Enhanced Power Armor (EPA). The REV9 is armed with two burst cannons and a head-mounted raygun. The EPA has two miniguns and a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher. Ammo is infinite for all weapons, but the cannons/miniguns overheat if fired continuously, and require a short cool-down period. Similarly, the raygun/rocket launchers require a moment to arm. Both mechs also have fully regenerative health. New to the EPA in "F.E.A.R. 3" is that it has shields, which can significantly reduce incoming damage. However, when the shields are deployed, the rocket launchers cannot be used. Also new is a target lock system for the rockets, a melee attack, and a foot stomp that stuns enemies within a certain radius.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "F.E.A.R. 3" also features an active cover system, the first game in the franchise to do so. When cover is available to the player, a command prompt will appear on-screen, allowing the player to snap to cover. Once in cover, the player can peer around or over their cover and can move around to a limited degree while staying snapped. If another piece of cover is nearby, the player can move from one piece to the other without having to leave cover. Players can also vault over cover and automatically spin 180 degrees to face in the opposite direction and target any enemies who have emerged behind them. Players are also capable of firing from within cover, both standard firing and unsighted firing over the top of the cover without being able to aim.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The game's multiplayer, like co-op, is available both online and offline, via split-screen. There are four different multiplayer modes, each allowing for up to four players.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In "Soul King", all players have the possession ability and are unable to bear arms. To win, the player must possess enemy NPCs and collect their souls; the winner is the player with the most souls at the end of the match. As well as acquiring souls, when a player possesses an NPC, they get access to that NPC's weaponry, and thus the ability to kill the other players. Killing another player causes them to drop half of their souls, which then become available for other players to pick up. However, the player with the most souls at any given moment is highlighted via a glowing outline, making them an easy target.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "Contractions" is a co-op mode. Players must defend a base against a series of increasingly difficult enemy waves, working together to collect resources, construct barricades, and revive one another when necessary. Additionally, Alma is present on the battlefield, and if a player attacks her or keeps her in their sight for too long, that player dies.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In "F**king Run!", players must fight their way through enemies as they move towards an extraction point, all while running from Alma's "Wall of Death". If a player is killed by an NPC, their teammates can revive them, but if the Wall consumes any one player, the game is over for all players.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "Soul Survivor", like "Contractions", sees the players defending against waves of enemies. However, in this mode, one of the players is randomly corrupted by Alma at the commencement of the game, and that player's goal is to possess the other players before the time limit expires. When a player is possessed, they too become corrupted and work to possess the remaining players. To win the game, a player must survive until the end of the round without being possessed.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The game begins nine months after the events of the first two games. Young Alma is shown sitting at a tree, playing with her doll. She pauses, listening for a moment, but then continues playing. Suddenly, there is a growl, and Alma becomes instantly terrified.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The game then cuts to a prison in Brazil where Armacham Technology Corporation (ATC) soldiers are interrogating Point Man. As the interrogators demand to know the location of Jin Sun-Kwon, a red mist floats through the room's closed door, and possesses one of them, who then snaps the other's neck. Point Man immediately grabs a knife and slits the possessed interrogator's throat. The man's body falls to the ground, leaving only Fettel, surrounded by the red mist. Point Man then sets out to rescue Jin, who is trapped in Fairport, and is joined by a reluctant Fettel, who is more concerned with Alma's pregnancy than Jin's fate.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The brothers escape the prison via the sewers, and steal a helicopter, flying back to Fairport, unaware how dangerous the city has become. As they approach the city, a wave of psychic energy hits the helicopter, forcing them to crash. As they move across the city, they discover that most of the population have either been driven insane by the paranormal activity or executed by ATC clean up crews. Meanwhile, both men begin to catch glimpses and have hallucinations of a hideous creature. In one particular vision, the creature is about to attack a terrified Alma. Intermittently, they are also dragged into a fragment of memory from their childhood, when they were kept imprisoned in a lab by Harlan Wade, and experimented upon.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Eventually, the brothers find Jin, although she cannot see Fettel. She tells Point Man that Sgt. Michael Becket of Delta Force is claiming he was raped by Alma and is the father of her unborn child. Given that Alma is pregnant, Jin speculates that the energy pulses may be her contractions rippling out across the world. With Becket held captive by ATC, he is due to be transported out of the city in a few hours, so the brothers head to intercept him. As the city literally collapses in on itself, they approach the airport. Finding a distraught Becket, Fettel possesses him, confirming he is telling the truth about his role in Alma's pregnancy and learning about Project Harbinger and the attempt to artificially create psychic commanders. However, the possession causes Becket to explode.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The brothers head to the facility where Harlan Wade kept them as children. There, as the creature stalks them, they begin destroying items associated with horrific memories from their childhood. As they do, they recall ATC scientists talking about how the first prototype (Point Man) was a failure but the second (Fettel) is perfect. They then remember that the creature is from their childhood. Called "the Creep", it is a monster manifested from the cruel actions of Harlan Wade towards the brothers and their subsequent psychological trauma.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: They defeat the Creep and find Alma, who is moments away from giving birth. Point Man aims his pistol at her belly, but Fettel intervenes. They fight, and one of two endings occur, depending on which character has scored the most points across the game's challenge system. In Point Man's ending, he shoots Fettel in the head. He then aims his gun at Alma before lowering it, and helps her give birth. She then peacefully dies and Point Man learns from Jin that everything in the world has returned to normal. He then leaves with the baby. In Fettel's ending, Fettel possesses Point Man and extracts the baby. He vows to raise the child in his own image before cannibalizing Alma to acquire her power.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In a post-credits scene, security footage of the first Synchronicity Event is shown; Alma, although in a coma at the time, linked telepathically with the ten-year-old Fettel, causing him to go into a rage, in which he mutilates several ATC security officers using his psychic powers. Fettel is then heard in voiceover saying, "They deserved to die. They all deserved to die." He vows he won't stop until ATC is completely destroyed and he has achieved revenge for his mother.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment announced "F.E.A.R. 3" for PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in April 2010. The announcement revealed that both Point Man and Paxton Fettel would be playable characters and, for the first time in the "F.E.A.R." franchise, there would be a co-op mode of gameplay. The press release also revealed that Monolith Productions, who had developed both the original "F.E.A.R." and "", would not be developing "F.E.A.R. 3". Instead, the game was being developed by Day 1 Studios, who had handled the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports of the original game. Warner would later say that Monolith had "passed the torch" to Day 1. The game was scheduled for a third quarter 2010 release.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Warner also revealed that film director John Carpenter was working as a creative consultant for the game's cutscenes and script, which was being written by comic book author and novelist Steve Niles. Both men were fans of the franchise already, and Carpenter had previously done promotional work for the first game.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The following week, Warner released additional details about the game mechanics, explaining that the co-op mode would be "divergent", wherein players won't necessarily have to help one another and can, in fact, compete for bonuses. They also noted that the game would have a prominent semi-randomised system based on "Left 4 Dead"s "Director" system, but there was no information on exactly how this system would manifest in-game.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "F.E.A.R. 3" originally began life as "F.E.A.R. 2". In 2004, after the original "F.E.A.R." had already begun development and a publishing deal struck with Vivendi, Monolith was purchased by Warner. This led to a copyright split whereby Monolith and Warner owned the rights to the "F.E.A.R." intellectual property and characters, and Vivendi owned the name ""F.E.A.R."" As a result, any non-Vivendi game set in the "F.E.A.R." universe could use the characters and events from the original game, but could not be called "F.E.A.R." At the same time, any non-Warner game set in the "F.E.A.R." universe could not use the characters and events from the original game, but could be called "F.E.A.R."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In 2006, both Warner and Vivendi began development of their own sequel to the original game; Warner stuck with Monolith as developers whereas Vivendi hired Day 1. Thus, two rival sequels were in production at the same time - the Warner/Monolith game and the Vivendi/Day 1 game. The Day 1 game was loosely inspired by the Philadelphia Experiment, and was to depict a new phasing technology falling into the wrong hands and being used open up a passage to and from a supernatural parallel universe called the World Behind the Walls. To close it, a F.E.A.R. squad is deployed.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In September 2008, 18 months into development on the Vivendi/Day 1 game, Monolith and Warner re-acquired the "F.E.A.R." name from Vivendi, bringing all of the copyrights under one roof. Monolith continued development on their sequel, which now became the 'official' sequel (and could once again be called "F.E.A.R."). When Warner looked at the work Day 1 had been doing for their version of "F.E.A.R. 2", they suggested that the game could be moulded into " F.E.A.R. 3". Day 1 began reworking the game from the ground up.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: With Day 1 now having access to the established characters and events of the "F.E.A.R." universe, they consulted with Monolith to ensure the "F.E.A.R. 3" storyline was in line with "Project Origin". It was Monolith who suggested that the game focus on the relationship between Point Man and Fettel. Associate producer Jason Frederick said that the team felt obliged to work with Monolith, and to not do so would be "doing the fans a disservice." More specifically, producer Dan Hay said, "we brought the best parts of Monolith, their understanding of the "F.E.A.R." franchise, and then we marry it with Day 1's expertise in mech combat and combat in general." Producer Ernest Zamora said that Monolith's involvement was crucial in terms of "making sure all of the tenets of "F.E.A.R." were in place from the ground up."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The earliest iterations of the storyline for "F.E.A.R. 3" (after it had ceased to be "F.E.A.R. 2") were constructed by Stephen Dinehart (credited as "narrative designer" in the final game). His main role was to integrate into the existing framework the characters and events that Day 1 originally weren't allowed to use and to mould the concept for "F.E.A.R. 2" so that it fit sequentially into the "F.E.A.R." universe. According to Dinehart, "it wasn't really "F.E.A.R.", and suddenly the game had to be "F.E.A.R.", with all the characters and in alignment with the canon of the franchise." He says that when he joined the team, there was already a lot of burnout amongst the Day 1 people, as they had put a lot of work into their original concept for "F.E.A.R. 2", and "basically they realised it was all for naught."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: When it came time to write an actual script, Warner hired Niles over the objections of Day 1, who wanted to use Brian Keene. Niles had finished playing "Project Origin" just a month before he got the offer to write "F.E.A.R 3", which he immediately accepted. At the same time, a project on which he had working with Carpenter recently fell through, and so he asked Warner if they'd be interested in bringing Carpenter on board, to which they said yes. Upon being hired, Niles immersed himself in the lore of the first two games, and set out to "turn the series into a trilogy; to really bring all the points of the games together into this game and answer a lot of questions."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Being unfamiliar with the technology behind video game design, having never worked on a game before, Niles treated the story as if it were a film. He wrote a conventionally formatted script;


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Some of the Day 1 staff, however, do not have fond memories of working with Niles and Carpenter. According to associate producer Chris Julian, "John Carpenter did absolutely nothing. It was like we licensed his name and that was about it." He also criticised Niles for regularly being late turning in deliverables and for not keeping in touch with the designers as much as he should have; "it was a less than ideal relationship with both of them." Speaking of Niles, Dinehart said that much of what he turned in had to rewritten by Day 1.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: On the other hand, both Dinehart and narrative designer Cory Lanham said that Carpenter "was" involved, albeit limited to conference calls where he would listen to the team's ideas and give suggestions, occasionally advising on cutscenes and the script. Carpenter himself was never on-site and never met any of the Day 1 people in person. According to lead artist Heinz Schuller, "they wrote him a cheque to get his name on the game and they got some ideas from him. Probably."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Officially, the main design principal when making "F.E.A.R. 3" was to preserve the core "F.E.A.R." mechanics and both enhance and expand upon them. Specifically, the team didn't want to "mess too much with the "F.E.A.R." franchise's successful formula of frenetic soldier combat and paranormal horror." Behind the scenes, however, Day 1 initially wanted to make the game more like the original than the sequel - emphasising the survival horror elements, such as a dearth of ammo and medkits, and a real sense of being isolated and alone. However, according to Schuller, the then president of Warner Bros. Games, Martin Tremblay, had become a big fan of the "Call of Duty" games, and Day 1


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In relation to the game's horror, the key element was the "generative scare system", which randomises the appearance of the game's apparitions, scares, and enemies. According to product manager Alex Friend, "you will never know what is going to happen next, or when it is going to happen." Hay explained, "the AI and scare moments are going to be reactive to how you play the game." Similarly, Frederick said the system "monitors the way you are playing the game and determines which scare events to trigger next." The system tracks the player's movements, where they are looking at any given moment, and which scares they have already seen. It then uses this data not just to determine what scare to use next, but where and how to use it.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Chris Julian was primarily responsible for the game's horror elements. He had a team of ten Day 1 personnel each of whom had experience with different types of horror. This group, called the "Scare Team" set themselves the goal of creating 10 to 15 really good scares to spread across the game. According to Julian, however, "once the co-op came down, horror pretty much went out the window."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In relation to the game's co-op, Hay explained that one of the benefits of the system is that Point Man and Fettel can combine their attacks to create a unique offensive unavailable to either one of them alone; "we thought maybe there could be a tie in with some of the powers, and how they work in conjunction with one another." However, the major selling point for the game's co-op system was not the benefit of teamwork, but what the developers referred to as "divergent co-op". Essentially, this means that players can compete for bonuses instead of simply assisting one another.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: The key element in divergent co-op is the game's challenge system, which determines a player's ranking. If the players work together, the game is easier, but points for completing challenges are not split between each player. The hope was that this would lead to situations were players would start to actively compete for points, stealing kills from one another, and playing to try to maximum their own score. Behind the scenes, however, Day 1 had no real interest in making the game co-op, which was a decision made by Warner. According to Julian,


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Similarly, programmer Matthew Singer states, "co-op hurt the scariness of the game, but none of us had control over that. It was decided from above that a co-op scoring system was going into place so at that stage, there's no point complaining about it, you just have to do it."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Initially, the plan for the single-player campaign was to have Point Man as the only playable character, with Day 1 stating, "Fettel is a partner to Point Man, but the way we designed the game Point Man is the focus." In February 2011, however, it was revealed that the game had been altered, and players would also be able to play through each level as Fettel, but only after they had already completed that level as Point Man. The decision for the game's single player campaign not to feature an AI-controlled ally was met with some surprise, but Hay explained that they chose not to go this route so as to try to retain a horror element; "the "F.E.A.R." franchise did a very good job of making you feel like you're alone in a basement, and we wanted to make sure that as you're playing the single-playing campaign, we leveraged that."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: In relation to the game's multiplayer, the unique game modes, and the absence of traditional modes such as deathmatch and capture the flag, the team wanted to make the multiplayer component as close as possible to the tone of the single-player/co-op campaign, to make the modes quintessentially "F.E.A.R."-like. According to Zamora, "what we set out to do was focus on making modes that are innovative and unique to the franchise. [We] focused on leveraging the "F.E.A.R." brand."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: By late 2010, many of the staff, who had been working on the game for over four years, had burnt out. According to level designer Matt Mason, there were "many, many months" of "unofficial crunch", before the crunch became official with staff being told they "had" to work longer hours. There were multiple occasions when staff members wouldn't go home for several days, instead sleeping on site. According to Schuller, the game had 44 milestones, each of which involved a degree of crunch, whilst the last crunch consisted of eight months of 60-80 hour weeks. Multiple staff members quit during this period.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Mason says that one of the biggest problems was that there hadn't been enough scoping; "we needed to scope the game down to fit what we could actually do, but instead of that, we tried something that was about 50% more than that." According to Dinehart, "there was a lot of negative attitude about this game, which led to poor decision making. It was something which I won't blame on particular individuals, but maybe it was allowed to fester for longer than it should, and it became a very negative working environment."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Originally scheduled for a third quarter 2010 release, in August 2010, the game was pushed back to an unspecified date in 2011. In October, it was given a world-wide release date for all platforms of March 22, 2011. Also announced at that time were three pre-order bonuses; players who preordered the game at Amazon would get a prequel comic, those who used Best Buy would get access to an exclusive multiplayer weapon called the "Shredder" that fires nitrate bullets, and those who used GameStop would give access to a multiplayer weapon called the "Hammer", a .50 caliber handgun. In January 2011, however, the game was pushed back again, this time to May. In March, the UK release was announced as May 27, although no North American date was specified. Then, in April, the game was delayed for a third time, and was now scheduled for June.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Announced in January 2011, the steel case "Collector's Edition" of "F.E.A.R. 3" included an 18 cm pregnant Alma figure with a glow in the dark fetus, the "F.E.A.R. 3: Prelude" comic, and the unlockable in-game gun the Hammer.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Available via Amazon pre-order and as part of the "Collector's Edition" of the game, "F.E.A.R. 3: Prelude" was written by Steve Niles, illustrated by Stefano Raffaele, and published by DC Comics. The comic serves as a prequel to the game, beginning with the helicopter crash which ends the original "F.E.A.R." Point Man is thrown from the helicopter, and believing Jin to be dead, he takes off, unaware he is being followed by Fettel. Encountering a team of ATC soldiers, Point Man wipes them out, as Fettel, and then Alma reveal themselves. Point Man flees but he is captured by ATC. As they detain him, Fettel watches from nearby, laughing to himself.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "F.E.A.R. 3" received "mixed or average reviews," with the PC and PlayStation 3 versions holding aggregate scores of 74 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 34 and 48 reviews, respectively. The Xbox 360 version holds a score of 75 out of 100, based on 71 reviews.


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "IGN"s Colin Moriarty scored the PC version 8 out of 10, praising the combat mechanics and the "authentically chilling" atmosphere. He also praised the game for trying something new, citing co-op, the "incredibly thoughtful" multiplayer, and the "addicting" challenge system. Although he was critical of the graphics, he praised the sound design and music, concluding, "you won't find the be-all, end-all shooter experience with "F.E.A.R. 3", but you're still bound to have a lot of fun." "Eurogamer"s Jeffrey Matulef scored the Xbox 360 version 8 out of 10 and was critical of the "subpar scares" and "shoddy narrative", arguing that the game is "comically ineffective at getting us to care." However, he praised the shooting mechanics, level design, "deceptively addictive" challenge system, co-op, and multiplayer. Ultimately, he found it to be "a finely crafted action game and an exceptionally inventive shooter."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: "Game Informer"s Matt Bertz scored the PC version 7.75 out of 10. He was highly critical of the narrative, lack of scares, and the length of the campaign, but praised the "satisfying action." He was especially impressed with multiplayer. He concluded, "if you hardly pay attention to narratives and are looking for a fun multiplayer experience, "F.E.A.R. 3" is worth checking out." "GameSpot"s Carolyn Petit scored all three versions 7.5 out of 10, criticizing the graphics and lack of scares, but praising the shooting mechanics, co-op, the different gameplay styles, and multiplayer. She argued that "while "F.E.A.R. 3" may disappoint as a horror game, it satisfies as a shooter."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Tim Francis of "PC Gamer" (UK) scored it 75 out of 100. He was critical of the plot and lack of scares but praised multiplayer and the "remarkably well-built co-op." He found it to be "a passable single player game that's hilarious fun in co-op." Rob Zacny of "PC Gamer" (US) scored it 74 out of 100, arguing that the decision to go with co-op undermined the horror. Finding it to be "just another shooter," he argued, "there is no imagination or style here, just repeated blood-textures and shrill screams." However, he praised Fettel's gameplay and the multiplayer, concluding "the strong combat and clever mechanics save it from its own clumsy campaign."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Cameron Lewis of "Official Xbox Magazine" (US) scored the Xbox 360 version 8 out of 10. He praised Fettle's "frantic" gameplay, and especially lauded multiplayer. He concluded, ""F.E.A.R. 3" isn't expertly polished or perfectly balanced, but it's got sufficient creeping dread and more than enough gameplay variety." Edwin Evans-Thirlwell of "Official Xbox Magazine" (UK) scored it 7 out of 10. He praised the shooting mechanics and multiplayer, which "makes the ambition festering within Day 1 Studios immediately plain", but he criticised the story and lack of scares. He concluded, "bettering its predecessors in many respects, "F.E.A.R. 3" falls well short of the mark in others."


title: F.E.A.R. 3

text: Adam Mathew of Australia's "PlayStation Official Magazine" scored it 6 out of 10. He was critical of the inconsistent logic regarding Fettel (such as how he use keyboards and open doors but cannot pick up guns), and argued that ""F.E.A.R. 3" has gone the decidedly unscary, action intensive route of "Resident Evil 5". Calling it "solid, if stock-standard", he did praise the "halfway decent " multiplayer. He concluded, "it does nothing to stand out from the status quo. Judged in the context of the wider "F.E.A.R." franchise, this co-op infused test sacrifices too much of what made this series unique." Calum Wilson Austin of "The Sydney Morning Herald" praised the gameplay but was critical of the plot; "I would hate to see this entry be the death knell of the franchise [...] those looking for any resolution from the previous games will be sorely disappointed."


title: Irregular warfare

text: Irregular warfare (IW) is defined in United States joint doctrine as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations." Concepts associated with irregular warfare are older than the term itself.


title: Irregular warfare

text: One of the earliest known uses of the term "irregular warfare" is in the 1986 English edition of "Modern Irregular Warfare in Defense Policy and as a Military Phenomenon" by former Nazi officer Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte. The original 1972 German edition of the book is titled "Der Moderne Kleinkrieg als Wehrpolitisches und Militarisches Phänomen". The German word "Kleinkrieg" is literally translated as "Small War." The word "Irregular," used in the title of the English translation of the book, seems to be a reference to non "regular armed forces" as per the Third Geneva Convention.


title: Irregular warfare

text: Another early use of the term is in a 1996 Central Intelligence Agency document by Jeffrey B. White. Major military doctrine developments related to IW were done between 2004 and 2007 as a result of the September 11 attacks on the United States. A key proponent of IW within US DoD is Michael G. Vickers, a former paramilitary officer in the CIA. The CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD) is the premiere unit for irregular warfare, both for creating and for combating irregular warfare units. For example, SAD paramilitary officers created and led successful irregular units from the Hmong tribe during the war in Laos in the 1960s from the Northern Alliance against the Taliban during the war in Afghanistan in 2001 and from the Kurdish Peshmerga against Ansar al-Islam and the forces of Saddam Hussein during the war in Iraq in 2003.


title: Irregular warfare

text: Irregular warfare favors indirect warfare and asymmetric warfare approaches, though it may employ the full range of military and other capabilities, in order to erode the adversary's power, influence, and will. It is inherently a protracted struggle that will test the resolve of a state and its strategic partners. The distinction between regular and irregular forces is unrelated to the term "irregular warfare". The term, irregular warfare, was settled upon in distinction from "traditional warfare" and "unconventional warfare", and to differentiate it as such.


title: Irregular warfare

text: In an entry to the electronic open access Handbook of Military Sciences the Dutch military scholar Martijn Kitzen explores Operations in Irregular Warfare and the underlying body of knowledge which characterizes these conflicts as violent struggles involving non-state actors and states that seek to establish power, control, and legitimacy over relevant populations. In the chapter, Kitzen provides an overview of much of the academic literature that covers this field.


title: Irregular warfare

text: Nearly all modern wars include at least some element of irregular warfare. Since the time of Napoleon, approximately 80% of conflict has been irregular in nature.


title: Irregular warfare

text: As a result of DoD Directive 3000.07, United States armed forces are studying irregular warfare concepts using modeling and simulation.


title: Shellsort

text: Shellsort, also known as Shell sort or Shell's method, is an in-place comparison sort. It can be seen as either a generalization of sorting by exchange (bubble sort) or sorting by insertion (insertion sort). The method starts by sorting pairs of elements far apart from each other, then progressively reducing the gap between elements to be compared. By starting with far apart elements, it can move some out-of-place elements into position faster than a simple nearest neighbor exchange. Donald Shell published the first version of this sort in 1959. The running time of Shellsort is heavily dependent on the gap sequence it uses. For many practical variants, determining their time complexity remains an open problem.


title: Shellsort

text: Shellsort is an optimization of insertion sort that allows the exchange of items that are far apart. The idea is to arrange the list of elements so that, starting anywhere, taking every "h"th element produces a sorted list. Such a list is said to be "h"-sorted. It can also be thought of as "h" interleaved lists, each individually sorted. Beginning with large values of "h" allows elements to move long distances in the original list, reducing large amounts of disorder quickly, and leaving less work for smaller "h"-sort steps to do. If the list is then "k-sorted" for some smaller integer "k", then the list remains "h"-sorted. Following this idea for a decreasing sequence of "h" values ending in 1 is guaranteed to leave a sorted list in the end.


title: Shellsort

text: In simplistic terms, this means if we have an array of 1024 numbers, our first gap ("h") could be 512. We then run through the list comparing each element in the first half to the element in the second half. Our second gap ("k") is 256, which breaks the array into four sections (starting at 0,256,512,768), and we make sure the first items in each section are sorted relative to each other, then the second item in each section, and so on. In practice the gap sequence could be anything, but the last gap is always 1 to finish the sort (effectively finishing with an ordinary insertion sort).


title: Shellsort

text: The first pass, 5-sorting, performs insertion sort on five separate subarrays ("a", "a", "a"), ("a", "a", "a"), ("a", "a"), ("a", "a"), ("a", "a"). For instance, it changes the subarray ("a", "a", "a") from (62, 17, 25) to (17, 25, 62). The next pass, 3-sorting, performs insertion sort on the three subarrays ("a", "a", "a", "a"), ("a", "a", "a", "a"), ("a", "a", "a", "a"). The last pass, 1-sorting, is an ordinary insertion sort of the entire array ("a"..., "a").


title: Shellsort

text: As the example illustrates, the subarrays that Shellsort operates on are initially short; later they are longer but almost ordered. In both cases insertion sort works efficiently.


title: Shellsort

text: Shellsort is not stable: it may change the relative order of elements with equal values. It is an adaptive sorting algorithm in that it executes faster when the input is partially sorted.


title: Shellsort

text: The question of deciding which gap sequence to use is difficult. Every gap sequence that contains 1 yields a correct sort (as this makes the final pass an ordinary insertion sort); however, the properties of thus obtained versions of Shellsort may be very different. Too few gaps slows down the passes, and too many gaps produces an overhead.


title: Shellsort

text: The table below compares most proposed gap sequences published so far. Some of them have decreasing elements that depend on the size of the sorted array ("N"). Others are increasing infinite sequences, whose elements less than "N" should be used in reverse order.


title: Shellsort

text: When the binary representation of "N" contains many consecutive zeroes, Shellsort using Shell's original gap sequence makes Θ("N") comparisons in the worst case. For instance, this case occurs for "N" equal to a power of two when elements greater and smaller than the median occupy odd and even positions respectively, since they are compared only in the last pass.


title: Shellsort

text: Although it has higher complexity than the "O"("N" log "N") that is optimal for comparison sorts, Pratt's version lends itself to sorting networks and has the same asymptotic gate complexity as Batcher's bitonic sorter.


title: Shellsort

text: Gonnet and Baeza-Yates observed that Shellsort makes the fewest comparisons on average when the ratios of successive gaps are roughly equal to 2.2. This is why their sequence with ratio 2.2 and Tokuda's sequence with ratio 2.25 prove efficient. However, it is not known why this is so. Sedgewick recommends using gaps which have low greatest common divisors or are pairwise coprime.


title: Shellsort

text: With respect to the average number of comparisons, Ciura's sequence has the best known performance; gaps from 701 were not determined but the sequence can be further extended according to the recursive formula formula_1.


title: Shellsort

text: Tokuda's sequence, defined by the simple formula formula_2, where formula_3, formula_4, can be recommended for practical applications.


title: Shellsort

text: If the maximum input size is small, as may occur if Shellsort is used on small subarrays by another recursive sorting algorithm such as quicksort or merge sort, then it is possible to tabulate an optimal sequence for each input size.


title: Shellsort

text: The following property holds: after "h"-sorting of any "h"-sorted array, the array remains "h"-sorted. Every "h"-sorted and "h"-sorted array is also ("a""h"+"a""h")-sorted, for any nonnegative integers "a" and "a". The worst-case complexity of Shellsort is therefore connected with the Frobenius problem: for given integers "h"..., "h" with gcd = 1, the Frobenius number "g"("h"..., "h") is the greatest integer that cannot be represented as "a""h"+ ... +"ah" with nonnegative integer "a"..., "a". Using known formulae for Frobenius numbers, we can determine the worst-case complexity of Shellsort for several classes of gap sequences. Proven results are shown in the above table.


title: Shellsort

text: Mark Allen Weiss proved that Shellsort runs in "O"("N" log "N") time when the input array is in reverse order.


title: Shellsort

text: With respect to the average number of operations, none of the proven results concerns a practical gap sequence. For gaps that are powers of two, Espelid computed this average as formula_5. Knuth determined the average complexity of sorting an "N"-element array with two gaps ("h", 1) to be formula_6. It follows that a two-pass Shellsort with "h" = Θ("N") makes on average "O"("N") comparisons/inversions/running time. Yao found the average complexity of a three-pass Shellsort. His result was refined by Janson and Knuth: the average number of comparisons/inversions/running time made during a Shellsort with three gaps ("ch", "cg", 1), where "h" and "g" are coprime, is formula_7 in the first pass, formula_8 in the second pass and formula_9 in the third pass. "ψ"("h", "g") in the last formula is a complicated function asymptotically equal to formula_10. In particular, when "h" = Θ("N") and "g" = Θ("N"), the average time of sorting is "O"("N").


title: Shellsort

text: Based on experiments, it is conjectured that Shellsort with Hibbard's gap sequence runs in "O"("N") average time, and that Gonnet and Baeza-Yates's sequence requires on average 0.41"N" ln "N" (ln ln "N" + 1/6) element moves. Approximations of the average number of operations formerly put forward for other sequences fail when sorted arrays contain millions of elements.


title: Shellsort

text: The graph below shows the average number of element comparisons in various variants of Shellsort, divided by the theoretical lower bound, i.e. log"N"!, where the sequence 1, 4, 10, 23, 57, 132, 301, 701 has been extended according to the formula formula_11.


title: Shellsort

text: Therefore, Shellsort has prospects of running in an average time that asymptotically grows like "N" log"N" only when using gap sequences whose number of gaps grows in proportion to the logarithm of the array size. It is, however, unknown whether Shellsort can reach this asymptotic order of average-case complexity, which is optimal for comparison sorts. The lower bound was improved by Vitányi for every number of passes formula_12 to


title: Shellsort

text: where formula_14. This result implies for example the Jiang-Li-Vitányi lower bound for all formula_12-pass increment sequences and improves that lower bound for particular increment sequences. In fact all bounds (lower and upper) currently known for the average case are precisely matched by this lower bound. For example, this gives the new result that the Janson-Knuth upper bound is matched by the resulting lower bound for the used increment sequence, showing that three pass Shellsort for this increment sequence uses formula_16 comparisons/inversions/running time.


title: Shellsort

text: The formula allows us to search for increment sequences that yield lower bounds which are unknown; for example an increment sequence for four passes which has a lower bound greater than


title: Shellsort

text: The worst-case complexity of any version of Shellsort is of higher order: Plaxton, Poonen, and Suel showed that it grows at least as rapidly as formula_23.


title: Shellsort

text: Shellsort performs more operations and has higher cache miss ratio than quicksort. However, since it can be implemented using little code and does not use the call stack, some implementations of the qsort function in the C standard library targeted at embedded systems use it instead of quicksort. Shellsort is, for example, used in the uClibc library. For similar reasons, in the past, Shellsort was used in the Linux kernel.


title: Shellsort

text: Shellsort can also serve as a sub-algorithm of introspective sort, to sort short subarrays and to prevent a slowdown when the recursion depth exceeds a given limit. This principle is employed, for instance, in the bzip2 compressor.


title: 1985 NFL Draft

text: The 1985 NFL draft was the procedure by which National Football League teams selected amateur college football players. The draft was held April 30 and May 1, 1985, at the Omni Park Central Hotel in New York City, New York. The league also held a supplemental draft after the regular draft and before the regular season.


title: 1985 NFL Draft

text: The first six selections of the draft made at least one Pro Bowl, and three of the first 16 picks — Bruce Smith, Chris Doleman, and Jerry Rice — have been inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


title: 1985 NFL Draft

text: For the second consecutive draft, there were no quarterbacks chosen in the first round (Day One). The Buffalo Bills used the first overall pick of the draft to select defensive end Bruce Smith. Randall Cunningham was the first quarterback selected (second round) by the Philadelphia Eagles. Of note, University of Miami quarterback Bernie Kosar was taken by the Cleveland Browns in the supplemental draft several months later.


title: UEFA competitions

text: UEFA competitions (), referred improperly by the mass media as European football, are the set of tournaments organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), generally in professional and amateur association football and futsal. The term was established in 1971 by the confederation to differentiate the men's football competitions under its administration, the first in history being held at a pan-European stage, from other international competitions carried out in the continent between 1960s and 1990s, such as the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, International Football Cup and Karl Rappan Cup, Cup of the Alps, Balkans Cup and the restructured Mitropa Cup (as well as some which had already been discontinued by late 1950s such as the Latin Cup). All these tournaments were organised by private bodies and/or at least two national associations and concerning one of more regional areas of Europe, not being recognised by UEFA for historic-statistical purposes.


title: UEFA competitions

text: After being recognised by FIFA in 1961 and defined its functions as governing body, UEFA laid down principles for the authorisation of other international club competitions, becoming the only organization with legal authority over international football in the continent. For that reason, it considers only results in its own competitions, in general terms and by single tournament, as the only valid for calculating and communicating confederation-level official records and statistics as long as setting combined values in inter-club football.


title: UEFA competitions

text: Until the first UEFA Europa Conference League final in 2022, the only team to have won every men's professional club competition was Juventus of Italy, while France is the sole national side to have won the European/South American Nations Cup, the Nations League and the men's European Championship. The governing body of the latter, French Football Federation (FFF), alongside its Czechoslovak, German, Italian, Soviet and Spanish counterparts in men's football; as well as German Football Association (DFB) in women's variant, is also the only association affilied to UEFA which representative teams have won, at least once, the senior Euro and the continental tournament in all age categories (under 17, under 19 and under 21).


title: UEFA competitions

text: FC Barcelona of Spain became the first women's club to follow its men's team of winning the Champions League, by winning the 2021 Women's Champions League Final. The club's men's team won their first title in 1992. The beaten finalists Chelsea of England was also seeking to break that record as well, as its men's team won their maiden in 2012. They were already the first club ever to see its men's and women's teams reach the Champions League final in the same season, having qualified for the Champions League Final as well. Barcelona is also the only club in the UEFA zone that has won men's and women's Champions League, the Youth League and the Futsal Champions League among these with active sections which can compete in all these tournaments.


title: Qdoba

text: Qdoba ( ) is a chain of fast casual restaurants in the United States and Canada serving Mexican-style cuisine. After spending 15 years as a wholly owned subsidiary of Jack in the Box, the company was sold to a consortium of funds led by Apollo Global Management in March 2018. At the time of the sale in 2018, Qdoba had more than 700 locations in 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada. In October 2022 Qdoba was acquired by Butterfly Equity.


title: Qdoba

text: This chain traces its origins to the opening of the Zuma Fresh Mexican Grill in 1995 by Colorado native Anthony Miller and partner Robert Hauser at Grant Street and Sixth Avenue in Denver which is still in operation.


title: Qdoba

text: Miller and Hauser met in New York City, where Miller was an investment banker with Merrill Lynch when Hauser was attending the Culinary Institute of America and working at the famed Le Cirque restaurant. Hauser developed most of the recipes and tried to design the menu to be healthier by replacing the use of traditional animal fats with vegetable oils and tried to use more fresh vegetables and herbs when he could. During the first year, lines stretched out the door during most evenings at dinnertime, but it usually took roughly seven minutes for customers in a 30-person line to get served. Zuma was a made-up name but was also the name of a friend's cat.


title: Qdoba

text: The Denver, Colorado, location was an immediate success, with first-year revenues exceeding $1,500,000. The cost of opening the store had been only $180,000.


title: Qdoba

text: In 1997, the name of the company was changed from Zuma to Z-Teca Mexican Grill because of a lawsuit from another restaurant using the Zuma name in Boston and confusion caused by the similar-sounding ZuZu Handmade Mexican Grill chain that was operating in the Denver area at that time. During the same year, Z-teca began to offer franchise opportunities to entrepreneurs to expand the chain outside of its core territory of Colorado.


title: Qdoba

text: In exchange for a large stake, Western Capital and other investors gave the company a large infusion of capital in early 1998 to allow the company to open 25 new locations and nearly triple its size. Later that year, Gary Beisler was hired in 1998 to replace Miller as president and chief operating officer while Miller remained as chief executive officer. By mid-1998, Z-Teca had 21 locations in 9 states, with 10 of those locations being franchises. At that time, a chicken burrito cost only $4.79. By December 1999, Z-Teca had 49 locations in 19 states.


title: Qdoba

text: Even though Z-Teca was another made-up name, there were lawsuits made by Z'Tejas Southwestern Grill in Arizona and Azteca in Washington state that the Z-Teca name was too similar to their names and it infringed on their tradenames. To overcome these problems, the name Qdoba was invented in 1999 by ad agency Heckler Associates. At the time of the name change to Qdoba Mexican Grill, Gary Beisler replaced Miller as CEO.


title: Qdoba

text: Jack in the Box paid $45 million in cash to obtain the Wheat Ridge-based Qdoba from ACI Capital, Western Growth Capital, and other private investors in early 2003.


title: Qdoba

text: Qdoba repurchased 25 stores located in Kentucky, Indiana, and Tennessee from "ZT of Louisville, Inc.," one its largest franchisees, for an undisclosed sum in mid-2012. Tim Casey replaced Gary Beisler as CEO in March 2013.


title: Qdoba

text: In October 2012, Beisler announced his retirement and was replaced the following March by Tim Casey. Three years later, Casey was replaced as brand president by Keith Guilbault in May 2016.


title: Qdoba

text: In June 2013, Qdoba announced it would close a total of 67 underperforming restaurants, including 18 in and around Chicago. By late 2013, Qdoba operated over 600 fast-casual restaurant locations throughout the United States.


title: Qdoba

text: In October 2014, Qdoba changed their price structure to "all-inclusive" in which the price only depended on the type of protein ($7.80 for chicken or vegetarian items and $8.40 for steak, shredded beef or pork), but included all of the "extras" that previously incurred an additional charge, such as guacamole and queso sauce. Most people who routinely ordered the "extras" with their burritos did not see much of a price difference after the new prices went into effect. However, light eaters complained that if they wanted to maintain their light eating habits by getting a simple plain item, they were hit with as much as a $2-per-item price increase (as an example, the Craft 2 which went up to $8.40 from $6.49) by paying for items they did not choose to get (like the guacamole), subsidizing other customers who usually paid for the "extras" in the past and, if they chose to get the extras which they normally don't get, those light eaters would increase their waistline through the increased intake of calories, fat, and salt that usually accompanied those "extras".


title: Qdoba

text: In 2014, Qdoba moved its headquarters from its longtime home in Wheat Ridge to nearby Lakewood. A little over two years later, San Diego-based corporate parent Jack in the Box decided to integrate Qdoba's headquarters into Jack in the Box's main headquarters in California starting in January 2017.


title: Qdoba

text: Faced with sluggish growth, management decided to make a change in their marketing strategy. As part of the new strategy, the trade name of the restaurants was changed to Qdoba Mexican Eats in October 2015 in the hope of trying to distinguish itself from similar-sounding competitors.


title: Qdoba

text: In December 2017, a consortium of funds led by Apollo Global Management announced the purchase of the Qdoba chain for approximately $305 million. At the time of the announcement, Qdoba had approximately 700 restaurants in 47 states. The sale was completed in March 2018. Jack in the Box Inc. received $305 million in cash for more than 700 locations in 47 states, the District of Columbia and Canada. After Apollo had complete its acquisition, Keith Guilbault was promoted from brand president to chief executive officer in May 2018.


title: Qdoba

text: In June 2019, Qdoba finally moved its headquarters from the building that it had previously shared for the past two years with its former corporate parent Jack in the Box in Kearny Mesa to the Amp&rsand building in Mission Valley.


title: Qdoba

text: In 2021, Qdoba promoted tenured operating officer Eric Williams to chief operating officer, a position he still holds.


title: Qdoba

text: By May 2022, Qdoba operates over 750 fast-casual restaurant locations throughout the United States, with 12 locations in Canada.


title: Qdoba

text: In October of 2022, Qdoba was officially Acquired by Butterfly Equity via a merger transaction with Modern Restaurant Concepts (“MRC”), an industry-leading “better-for-you” fast casual restaurant platform consisting of two brands: Modern Market Eatery (“Modern Market”) and Lemonade.


title: Qdoba

text: The first Canadian location opened on December 3, 2012, in Brandon, Manitoba. A second location was opened in London, Ontario, three months later. A third location opened in Winnipeg in 2014. As of May 2022, there are 12 locations in Canada and no locations exist in any other country.


title: Qdoba

text: Qdoba serves burritos made in the San Francisco burrito style, and other foods such as tacos, quesadillas, chile con queso and Mexican gumbo. The restaurant fits into the "fast casual" category, offering both quick service and a higher quality of food than typical fast-food restaurants. Customers order by selecting an entrée then choosing its ingredients. All of the items are made in plain view of the customer.


title: Qdoba

text: To distinguish itself from some of its competitors, Qdoba serves breakfast, and some locations are open 24 hours on weekends.


title: Qdoba

text: Qdoba has also opened restaurants in non-traditional locations, such as directly on college campuses, and participates in some college meal plans.


title: Qdoba

text: Through agreements with the Army & Air Force Exchange Service, Qdoba can be found on selected U.S. military bases across the nation.


title: Qdoba

text: The main national rivals to Qdoba are Chipotle Mexican Grill (which also started in Denver, two years before Qdoba), Baja Fresh, Moe's Southwest Grill and, to a lesser extent, Panchero's Mexican Grill, Salsarita's Fresh Mexican Grill, and Rubio's Coastal Grill.


title: Qdoba

text: In 2006, the company was involved in a lawsuit in which Panera Bread attempted to invoke a clause in Panera's contract with the White City Shopping Center in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, to stop the opening of a Qdoba Mexican Grill. The clause provided that Panera would be the only sandwich shop in the shopping center. Panera argued that burritos and other tortilla-based foods were, in fact, sandwiches. Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Locke ruled against Panera, concluding, "A sandwich is not commonly understood to include burritos, tacos and quesadillas, which are typically made with a single tortilla and stuffed with a choice filling of meat, rice, and beans."


title: Qdoba

text: Three customers who got sick after eating at a Qdoba restaurant in Firestone, Colorado, were found to have been infected with the bacterium "Salmonella typhi" which causes typhoid fever. Two of the customers had to be hospitalized. The source of the infect was traced to an infected food handler who was asymptomatic.


title: Qdoba

text: In 2019, a minor filed a complaint to the General Attorney's Office at Newton, Massachusetts stating that they had worked overtime at Qdoba. This led to a state-wide investigation that resulted in auditing all locations in Massachusetts. Qdoba paid over $400,000 in citations due to the thousands of violations they received due to Massachusetts' child labor laws.


title: Qdoba

text: In 2020, four customers were hospitalized after consuming contaminated food in Glenwood Springs, Colorado Qdoba. The food was contaminated by an unspecified chemical. Only two out of the four customers experienced symptoms. The incident caused Qdoba to close down temporarily. After the release of the individuals, Qdoba reopened. No action was taken by the individuals.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: The Tom & Jerry Show is a 1975 American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions in association with MGM Television. Based on the "Tom and Jerry" theatrical cartoon series, which was created by H-B co-founders and former MGM cartoon studio staff William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the show originally aired on ABC from September 6 to December 13, 1975 (for a total of 16 episodes) as the first half of "The Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape/Mumbly Show", with "The Great Grape Ape Show" representing the series' second half and "The Mumbly Cartoon Show" representing the series' third half. This series marked the first time that Tom and Jerry appeared in animated installments produced specifically for television.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: This series does not use the slapstick chases and the violence central to the theatrical shorts, due to ABC's ban on violence.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: A total of 48 seven-minute Tom & Jerry shorts were produced in 1975 and originally aired in these following formats on ABC Saturday morning:


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: Immediately following the end of the original ABC run, these cartoons were edited within the main and end title credits and added to run with theatrical-era MGM Tom and Jerry cartoons from 1940 to 1967 for syndication by MGM until 1986 (H-B retained ancillary rights to the "Mumbly" and "Grape Ape" segments, with syndication rights to those segments going to Worldvision Enterprises from 1979 until 1991). Some independent television stations in the 1980s have aired the Tom and Jerry segments without the "Mumbly" and "Grape Ape" segments in their syndicated "Tom and Jerry" package as part of some stations' lineup, such as WFLD in Chicago and WYAH in Portsmouth, Virginia.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: Since 1986, it has been rebroadcast on TBS, Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Canada's Teletoon and Teletoon Retro (the former three networks are part of Warner Bros. Discovery's Warner Bros. Discovery Networks, which Turner Broadcasting System purchased the pre-1986 MGM library in 1986 and Hanna-Barbera in 1991).


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: The cartoons have been shown with the main and end title credits intact on TBS, Boomerang streaming service, and Cartoon Network.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: From 1985 until 1995, ATN, later Seven Network (the Australian "American Broadcasting Company") aired the show in Australia.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: The premiere episode (show #TJGA-1, ) of "The New Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show" was released as part of Warner Home Video's "Saturday Morning Cartoons – 1970s Volume 2" on ; it marked the first home video release of the 1975 made-for-TV version of Tom and Jerry. Another cartoon, episode #80-15, "Cosmic Cat and Meteor Mouse", is included as part of the "", which was released by Warner Home Video on . The episode (show #TJGA-11, ) of "The New Tom and Jerry/Grape Ape Show" was released as the digital version of "Tom and Jerry: School's Out". 2 episodes was released as the digital version of "Tom and Jerry: House Pests". Most episodes of this incarnation, with exceptions of "Gopher Broke", "Grim and Bear It", "The Flying Sorceress", "The Egg and Tom and Jerry", and "The Lost Duckling", are available on the Boomerang streaming service. A complete series DVD set has not yet been announced.


title: The Tom and Jerry Show (1975 TV series)

text: When Joseph Barbera was asked if public pressure had resulted in Tom and Jerry being less violent in this show, he said that the same arguments were going on 50 years ago.


title: Chrysotile

text: Chrysotile or white asbestos is the most commonly encountered form of asbestos, accounting for approximately 95% of the asbestos in the United States and a similar proportion in other countries. It is a soft, fibrous silicate mineral in the serpentine subgroup of phyllosilicates; as such, it is distinct from other asbestiform minerals in the amphibole group. Its idealized chemical formula is Mg(SiO)(OH). The material has physical properties which make it desirable for inclusion in building materials, but poses serious health risks when dispersed into air and inhaled.


title: Chrysotile

text: Three polytypes of chrysotile are known. These are very difficult to distinguish in hand specimens, and polarized light microscopy must normally be used. Some older publications refer to chrysotile as a group of minerals—the three polytypes listed below, and sometimes pecoraite as well—but the 2006 recommendations of the International Mineralogical Association prefer to treat it as a single mineral with a certain variation in its naturally occurring forms.


title: Chrysotile

text: Clinochrysotile is the most common of the three forms, found notably at Val-des-Sources, Quebec, Canada. Its two measurable refractive indices tend to be lower than those of the other two forms. The orthorhombic paratypes may be distinguished by the fact that, for orthochrysotile, the higher of the two observable refractive indices is measured parallel to the long axis of the fibres (as for clinochrysotile); whereas for parachrysotile the higher refractive index is measured perpendicular to the long axis of the fibres.


title: Chrysotile

text: Bulk chrysotile has a hardness similar to a human fingernail and is easily crumbled to fibrous strands composed of smaller bundles of fibrils. Naturally-occurring fibre bundles range in length from several millimetres to more than ten centimetres, although industrially-processed chrysotile usually has shorter fibre bundles. The diameter of the fibre bundles is 0.1–1 µm, and the individual fibrils are even finer, 0.02–0.03 µm, each fibre bundle containing tens or hundreds of fibrils.


title: Chrysotile

text: Chrysotile fibres have considerable tensile strength, and may be spun into thread and woven into cloth. They are also resistant to heat and are excellent thermal, electrical and acoustic insulators.


title: Chrysotile

text: The idealized chemical formula of chrysotile is Mg(SiO)(OH), although some of the magnesium ions may be replaced by iron or other cations. Substitution of the hydroxide ions for fluoride, oxide or chloride is also known, but rarer. A related, but much rarer, mineral is pecoraite, in which all the magnesium cations of chrysotile are substituted by nickel cations.


title: Chrysotile

text: Chrysotile is resistant to even strong bases (asbestos is thus stable in high pH pore water of Portland cement), but when the fibres are attacked by acids, the magnesium ions are selectively dissolved, leaving a silica skeleton. It is thermally stable up to around , at which temperature it starts to dehydrate. Dehydration is complete at about , with the final products being forsterite (magnesium silicate), silica and water.


title: Chrysotile

text: The chrysotile (serpentine) dehydration reaction corresponds to the reverse of the forsterite (Mg-olivine) hydrolysis in the presence of dissolved silica (silicic acid).


title: Chrysotile

text: Chrysotile has been included with other forms of asbestos in being classified as a human carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. These state that "Asbestos exposure is associated with parenchymal asbestosis, asbestos-related pleural abnormalities, peritoneal mesothelioma, and lung cancer, and it may be associated with cancer at some extra-thoracic sites". In other scientific publications, epidemiologists have published peer reviewed scientific papers establishing that chrysotile is the main cause of pleural mesothelioma.


title: Chrysotile

text: Chrysotile has been recommended for inclusion in the Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent, an international treaty that restricts the global trade in hazardous materials. If listed, exports of chrysotile would only be permitted to countries that explicitly consent to imports. Canada, a major producer of the mineral, has been harshly criticized by the Canadian Medical Association for its opposition to including chrysotile in the Convention.


title: Chrysotile

text: According to EU Regulation 1907/2006 (REACH) the marketing and use of chrysotile, and of products containing chrysotile, are prohibited.


title: Chrysotile

text: In May 1998, Canada requested consultations before the WTO and the European Commission concerning France's 1996 prohibition of the importation and sale of all forms of asbestos. Canada said that the French measures contravened provisions of the Agreements on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and on Technical Barriers to Trade, and the GATT 1994. The EC claimed that safer substitute materials existed to take the place of asbestos. It stressed that the French measures were not discriminatory under the terms of international trade treaties, and were fully justified for public health reasons. The EC further claimed that in the July consultations, it had tried to convince Canada that the measures were justified, and that just as Canada broke off consultations, it (the EC) was in the process of submitting substantial scientific data in favour of the asbestos ban.


title: Chrysotile

text: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Government of Canada continued to claim that chrysotile was much less dangerous than other types of asbestos. Chrysotile continued to be used in new construction across Canada, in ways that are very similar to those for which chrysotile was exported. Similarly, Natural Resources Canada once stated that chrysotile, one of the fibres that make up asbestos, was not as dangerous as once thought. According to a fact sheet from 2003, "current knowledge and modern technology can successfully control the potential for health and environmental harm posed by chrysotile". The Chrysotile Institute, an association partially funded by the Canadian government, also prominently asserted that the use of chrysotile did not pose an environmental problem and the inherent risks in its use were limited to the workplace.


title: Chrysotile

text: However, under increasing criticism by environmental groups, in May, 2012, the Canadian government stopped funding the Chrysotile Institute. As a result, the Chrysotile Institute has now closed.


title: Chrysotile

text: The Canadian government continues to draw both domestic and international criticism for its stance on chrysotile, most recently in international meetings about the Rotterdam Convention hearings regarding chrysotile. The CFMEU pointed out that most exports go to developing countries. Canada has pressured countries, including Chile, and other UN member states to avoid chrysotile bans.


title: Chrysotile

text: In September 2012, governments in Quebec and Canada ended official support for Canada's last asbestos mine in Asbestos, Quebec.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: Michael Robinette Greenberg (born August 6, 1967) is a television anchor, television show host, radio show host for ESPN and ABC, and novelist. At ESPN, he hosted the weekday evening, most often Monday, "SportsCenter" and previously ESPN Radio's "Mike & Mike" show with Mike Golic. At sister network ABC, he was the host of "Duel", which aired from 2007 to 2008, and co-hosted "Battle of the Network Stars" with Joe Tessitore.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: Mike was born to a Jewish family in New York, New York, and graduated from Stuyvesant High School in 1985. In 1989, Greenberg graduated from Northwestern University, where he joined the Theta Chi Fraternity, and started work as a sports anchor and reporter at WMAQ-AM in Chicago. He left WMAQ in 1992 to work for WSCR-Radio as a reporter (covering events such as the World Series and the Super Bowl) and talk show host. From 1993 to 1995, he also wrote a weekly syndicated column for the California-based Copley News Service. In 1994, he added reporting for SportsChannel Chicago to his résumé. In 1995, he left SportsChannel Chicago to work at CLTV, becoming an anchor, reporter, and host of a live call-in show. He left Chicago in September 1996 for ESPN, where he became one of the first hosts of ESPNEWS when it began broadcasting in November of that year.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: In 1999, with ESPN Radio airing in just four markets, Mike Greenberg was approached about returning to radio to be a part of a morning drive-time show with Mike Golic as co-host. Greenberg agreed, with the understanding that he would continue anchoring "SportsCenter" on a regular basis. On April 26, 2004, the show started a regular simulcast on ESPNEWS. Because of their continued success, the duo moved to ESPN2 in January 2005.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: One of the most popular segments of the entire year on "Mike & Mike" was the annual "Sheet of Integrity" wager, a bracket wager based on the NCAA men's basketball tournament and the massive ESPN.com bracket contest. The bet originated after Golic told of how he would enter a massive number of sheets into different pools to win the money involved in the pool. Greenberg, believing picks required a sort of integrity, insisted that any such entrant be required to enter only one "Sheet of Integrity". Golic would select one of his (presumably) dozens of sheets against Greenberg, with the loser having to perform a humiliating stunt, usually on the air. The first year, Greenberg won and Golic had to have an eyebrow wax on the air. The next two years, Golic won, and Greenberg had to wear the University of Notre Dame Leprechaun mascot costume on the air, the second time on the Notre Dame campus. In the 2007 competition Greenberg, an admitted die-hard New York Jets' fan, agreed to wear a New England Patriots' jersey to a Jets' game and to milk a cow live on-air. Greenberg received advice about milking a cow from ESPN baseball analyst Buster Olney, who grew up on a dairy farm.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: Mike Greenberg's final day as co-host of the "Mike & Mike" program was November 17, 2017. On November 27, Trey Wingo, host of NFL Live and ESPN's "SportsCenter", became Golic's new morning show co-host, and the duo hosted "Mike & Mike"'s successor show, "Golic and Wingo" from 2017 to 2020. Greenberg joined a new ESPN morning show, "Get Up!", which premiered April 2, 2018. He also returned to ESPN Radio with a new show, called Greeny.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: Greenberg hosted the ABC game show "Duel". The first season of the show, a week-long six-episode special, premiered on December 17, 2007, and ended on December 23, 2007. The show was renewed, and premiered its second season (consisting of ten episodes) on April 4, 2008; the show's sixteenth and final episode aired on July 30.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: On February 20, 2008, Greenberg appeared, along with his radio partner Mike Golic, on the soap opera "Guiding Light" as reported on ESPNradio.com.


title: Mike Greenberg

text: On March 7, 2006, Greenberg released his first book entitled "Why My Wife Thinks I'm An Idiot: The Life and Times of a Sportscaster Dad", which reached 14th on the New York Times Bestseller list and was nominated in the 2006 Quill Awards for best sports book. In April 2010, Greenberg, along with co-host Mike Golic, released a book entitled "Mike and Mike's Rules for Sports and Life". Along with the release, the two Mikes embarked on a 15-city book tour that included stops in New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Dallas, Boston, and Tampa. Greenberg released a novel entitled "All You Could Ask For" in 2013. He released the novel "My Father's Wives" in January 2015.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae () is a 2017 Indian Tamil-language horror comedy film written and directed by Ike, and produced by Fox Star Studios and Atlee under his production house 'A for Apple Productions'. The film stars Jiiva, Sri Divya, and Soori while Radha Ravi, Raadhika Sarathkumar, and Thambi Ramaiah play supporting roles. Featuring music composed by Vishal Chandrasekhar.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: The film began production during March 2016 and was released on 19 May 2017. It was dubbed in Hindi as "Sangili Bungli Darwaza Khol".


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: Vasu is a house broker who sells houses by using tricks with his friend Sooranam. Vasu and his mother Parvathy are living in her brother's house for rent. Vasu and his parents had lived in houses for rent throughout their lives. After Vasu's father's death, he took a vow of buying a bungalow on the outskirts.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: After some years, Vasu buys the bungalow and enters the house with his whole family. He later finds that there was a family that had lived there earlier. Jambulingam lived there with his wife, mother, and daughters. He refused to move out of the house, so Vasu decides to live there until he finds the owner who cheated him. Vasu and Jambulingam's daughter Shwetha fall in love with each other. Vasu and Sooranam try some ghost tricks to chase Jambulingam's family out of the house.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: On learning of Vasu and Shwetha, Vasu's aunt is angered because she believed that her daughter Sandhya and Vasu will marry. She goes on a tirade about Vasu's actions to Parvathy. Parvathy tells Vasu to apologize to his aunt. He refuses, and his family moves out of the house. While Vasu and Sooranam threaten Jambulingam's deaf and dumb mother with a ghost, she sees a real ghost and is admitted in the hospital. Jambulingam blames Vasu for threatening his mother with ghosts and shows a video taken in the phone unknowingly. Shwetha also fights with Vasu, and the family moves out of the house.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: Vasu brings E. B. Rajeshwari to learn about the ghost. Sangili Aandavar lived in the house and was killed by his family members for the house. She tells that if the two families live happily in the house, Aandavar will go out of the house. They live in the house happily, but Jambulingam does not like to stay there. He brings his family out and locks Vasu's family inside, but when he turns, he realises that he is inside the house and all others are outside. Aandavar takes Jambulingam, but the whole family tries to rescue Jambulingam by showing strength and unity. On seeing this, Aandavar leaves the house, and Vasu lives in the house with his mother, Shwetha, and the whole family.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: In December 2015, Jiiva announced that he would work on a new film to be directed by newcomer Ike, an erstwhile assistant of Kamal Haasan. Raja Rani Productions Atlee would work on the film as the producer alongside Fox Star Studios, while Sridivya would play the lead female role. Jiiva revealed that he shared a good comfort level with both Ike and Atlee, who he had worked with during the making of "Nanban" (2012). He further stated that the film would be reminiscent of the horror comedy films earlier made by director Priyadarshan.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: The film began production during March 2016 with the first schedule held in Pazhani. The title of the film, "Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae" (name of a song from "") was also unveiled during the first schedule. Actors Jai and Akshara Gowda appeared in cameo roles as a NRI couple in the film, and shot for the film during the first week of the shoot.


title: Sangili Bungili Kadhava Thorae

text: The soundtrack was composed by Vishal Chandrasekhar, while the film's audio rights are secured by Sony Music.


title: Jellyfin

text: Jellyfin is a suite of multimedia applications designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices. Jellyfin consists of a server application installed on a machine running Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux or in a Docker container, and another application running on a client device such as a smartphone, tablet, smart TV, streaming media player, game console or in a web browser. Jellyfin also can serve media to DLNA and Chromecast-enabled devices. It is a free and open-source software fork of Emby.


title: Jellyfin

text: Jellyfin follows a client–server model that allows for multiple users and clients to connect, even simultaneously, and stream digital media remotely. Because Jellyfin runs as a fully self-contained server, there is no subscription-based consumption model that exists, and Jellyfin does not utilize an external connection nor third-party authentication for any of its functionality. This enables Jellyfin to work on an isolated intranet in much the same fashion as it does over the Internet. Because it shares a heritage with Emby, some clients for that platform are unofficially compatible with Jellyfin, however as Jellyfin's codebase diverges from Emby, this becomes less possible. Jellyfin does not support a direct migration path from Emby.


title: Jellyfin

text: Jellyfin is extensible, and optional third-party plugins exist to provide additional feature functionality. The project hosts an official repository, however plugins need not be hosted in the official repository to be installable.


title: Jellyfin

text: Version 10.6.0 of the server software introduced a feature known as "SyncPlay", which provides functionality for multiple users to consume media content together in a synchronized fashion. Support to read epub ebooks with Jellyfin was also added. Also introduced is multiple plugin repositories. Anyone can now create unofficial plugins for Jellyfin and do not need to wait for them to be added to the official plugin repository. The web front end has been split off in a separate system in anticipation of the move towards a SQL backend and High Availability with multiple servers.


title: Jellyfin

text: The project began on December 8, 2018, when co-founders Andrew Rabert and Joshua Boniface, among other users, agreed to fork Emby as a direct reaction to closing of open-source development on that project. A reference to streaming, Jellyfin's name was conceived of by Rabert the following day. An initial release was made available on December 30, 2018.


title: Flag of Belize

text: The flag of Belize was adopted on 21 September 1981, the day Belize became independent. It consists of the Coat of Arms on a blue field with red stripes at the top and bottom.


title: Flag of Belize

text: British Honduras obtained a coat of arms on 28 January 1907, which formed the basis of the badge used on British ensigns. The coat of arms recalls the logging industry that first led to British settlement there. The figures, tools, and mahogany trees represent this industry. The national motto, "Sub Umbra Floreo", meaning "Under the Shade I Flourish", is written in the lower part of the coat of arms.


title: Flag of Belize

text: The flag is royal blue, with a white disc at the centre containing the national coat of arms held by a mestizo and a man of African descent. The flag of Belize is the only country to have humans depicted as a major design element on its national flag, although the flag of Malta contains an image of Saint George on the badge of the George Cross, and the flags of British overseas territories Montserrat and the Virgin Islands, and that of French Polynesia also depict humans.


title: Flag of Belize

text: Several other countries' flags have human body parts depicted. The flag of Brunei has human hands, and the flags of Uruguay and Argentina both have human facial features depicted in a personified sun.


title: Flag of Belize

text: The flag is bordered at top and bottom by two red stripes. In all, the flag incorporates 19 different colours and shades, making it one of the most colourful national flags in the world.


title: Flag of Belize

text: The colours on the flag are respectively those of the country's national parties, the People's United Party (PUP), and United Democratic Party (Belize) (UDP). The UDP, established in 1973, had objected to the original blue and white design, those two colours being the PUP's representative colours.


title: Flag of Belize

text: The two red stripes at the top and bottom were added to the original design at independence. The coat of arms was granted in 1907. Red stripes were added to denote the colour of the opposition party. The 50 leaves recall 1950, the year PUP came to power.


title: Flag of Belize

text: From 1950 onward, an unofficial national flag was in use. It was blue, with the coat of arms on a white disc in the centre (sometimes a blank white circle was used as the coat of arms because it was difficult to draw).


title: Flag of Belize

text: In 1981, Belize gained its independence and a competition was held to design a national flag for the country. The winning submission consisted of the unofficial national flag used by the People's United Party with a red border added to all four sides. This was changed to a red border on just the top and bottom before the design was officially adopted. The winning design, which was also known as the "Flag of Unity" was made by two government officials: Everal Waight, Public Secretary, and Inez Sanchez, Chief Education Officer.


title: Flag of Belize

text: There were no standardised specifications for the flag of Belize until 2019. The hue of the flag's colours, proportions, the shading of the two men, and other elements often varied. In 2019, the National Celebrations Commission started a standardisation process of the flag with consent from both the PUP and the UDP. They planned to have the standardised flags be hoisted on 1 September 2019, the National Flag Day of Belize. There are plans to formalise the standardisation through national legislation.


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales (systematic name Ziphiidae) are a family of cetaceans noted as being one of the least known groups of mammals because of their deep-sea habitat and apparent low abundance. Only three or four of the 24 species are reasonably well-known. Baird's beaked whales and Cuvier's beaked whales were subject to commercial exploitation, off the coast of Japan, while the northern bottlenose whale was extensively hunted in the northern part of the North Atlantic late in the 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: Beaked whale

text: Reports emerged in late 2020 of the possible discovery of a new beaked whale species off the coast of Mexico, the taxonomy of which had not been determined .


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales are moderate in size, ranging from and weighing from . Their key distinguishing feature is the presence of a 'beak', somewhat similar to many dolphins. Other distinctive features include a pair of converging grooves under the throat, and the absence of a notch in the tail fluke. Although Shepherd's beaked whale is an exception, most species have only one or two pairs of teeth, and even these do not erupt in females. Beaked whale species are often sexually dimorphic one or the other sex is significantly larger. The adult males often possess a large bulging forehead, some to an extreme feature. However, aside from dentition and size, very few morphological differences exist between male and female beaked whales.


title: Beaked whale

text: Individual species are very difficult to identify in the wild, since body form varies little from one species to another. The observer must rely on often subtle differences in size, color, forehead shape, and beak length. In the skull, the expansion of the premaxillary process can be a key feature to indentification.


title: Beaked whale

text: The blubber of these whales is almost entirely (94%) composed of wax ester, a unique characteristic of this family.


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales are unique among toothed whales in that most species only have one pair of teeth. The teeth are tusk-like, but are only visible in males, which are presumed to use these teeth in combat for females for reproductive rights. In females, the teeth do not develop and remain hidden in the gum tissues.


title: Beaked whale

text: In December 2008, researchers from the Marine Mammal Institute at Oregon State University completed a DNA tree of 13 of 15 known species of "Mesoplodon" beaked whales (excluding the spade-toothed whale, which was then only known from a skeletal specimen and a few stranded specimens). Among the results of this study was the conclusion that the male's teeth are actually a secondary sexual characteristic, similar to the antlers of male deer. Each species' teeth have a characteristically unique shape. In some cases, these teeth even hinder feeding; in the strap-toothed whale, for example, the teeth curve over the upper jaw, effectively limiting the gape to a few centimeters. Females are presumed to select mates based on the shape of the teeth, because the different species are otherwise quite similar in appearance.


title: Beaked whale

text: The social structure is not well known, but sightings of single males accompanying multiple females suggest a polygynous mating system, which would considerably limit the number of males a female can choose.


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales comprise at least 22 species. Several species have been described only in the last two decades. Six genera have been identified.


title: Beaked whale

text: The beaked whales are the second-largest family of cetaceans (after the dolphins). They were one of the first groups to diverge from the ancestral lineage. The earliest known beaked whale fossils date to the Miocene, about 15 million years ago.


title: Beaked whale

text: As many as 26 genera antedate humans. These include ancestors of giant beaked whales ("Berardius"), such as "Microberardius", and ancestors of Cuvier's beaked whale ("Ziphius"); they had many relatives, such as "Caviziphius", "Archaeoziphius", and "Izikoziphius". They were probably preyed upon by predatory whales and sharks, including "Otodus megalodon". Recently, a large fossil ziphiid sample was discovered off the South African coast, confirming the extant ziphiid diversity might just be a remnant of a higher past diversity. After studying numerous fossil skulls off the shore of Iberia and South Africa, researchers discovered the absence of functional maxillary teeth in all South African fossil ziphiids, which is evidence that suction feeding had already developed in several beaked whale lineages during the Miocene. Researchers also found fossil ziphiids with robust skulls, signaling that tusks were used for male-male interactions (speculated with extant beaked whales).


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales are deep divers with extreme dive profiles. They regularly dive deeper than to echolocate for food, and these deep dives are often followed by multiple shallower dives less than 500 m. This pattern is not always followed, however. Animals have been observed spending more than an hour at or near the surface breathing. Beaked whales are often seen surfacing synchronously, but asynchronous surfacing has also been observed. In March 2014, a study by Cascadia Research revealed that Cuvier's beaked whales were recorded to dive at least 2992 m in depth, a mammalian record. Another study, published in 2020, reported a Cuvier's beaked whale making a dive that lasted 222 minutes, another mammalian record.


title: Beaked whale

text: Deep-diving mammals face a number of challenges related to extended breath-holding and hydrostatic pressure. Cetaceans and pinnipeds that prolong apnea must optimize the size and use of their oxygen stores, and they must deal with the accumulation of lactic acid due to anaerobic metabolism. Beaked whales have several anatomical adaptations to deep diving: large spleens, livers, and body shape. Most cetaceans have small spleens. However, beaked whales have much larger spleens than delphinids, and may have larger livers, as well. These anatomical traits, which are important for filtering blood, could be adaptations to deep diving. Another notable anatomical adaptation among beaked whales is a slight depression in the body wall that allows them to hold their pectoral flippers tightly against their bodies for increased streamlining. However, they are not invulnerable to the effects of diving so deep and so often. Cascadia Research shows that the deeper the whales dive, the less often they dive per day, cutting their efforts by at least 40%.


title: Beaked whale

text: The challenges of deep diving are also overcome by the unique diving physiology of beaked whales. Oxygen storage during dives is mostly achieved by blood hemoglobin and muscle myoglobin. While the whale is diving, its heart rate slows and blood flow changes. This physiological dive response ensures oxygen-sensitive tissues maintain a supply of oxygen, while those tissues tolerant to hypoxia receive less blood flow. Additionally, lung collapse obviates the exchange of lung gas with blood, likely minimizing the uptake of nitrogen by tissues.


title: Beaked whale

text: The throats of all beaked whales have a bilaterally paired set of grooves that are associated with their unique feeding mechanism, suction feeding. Instead of capturing prey with their teeth, beaked whales suck it into their oral cavity. Suction is aided by the throat grooves, which stretch and expand to accommodate food. Their tongues can move very freely. By suddenly retracting the tongue and distending the gular (throat) floor, pressure immediately drops within the mouth, sucking the prey in with the water.


title: Beaked whale

text: Dietary information is available from stomach contents analyses of stranded beaked whales and from whaling operations. Their preferred diet is primarily deep-water squid, but also benthic and benthopelagic fish and some crustaceans, mostly taken near the sea floor. In a recent study, gouge marks in the sea floor were interpreted to be a result of feeding activities by beaked whales.


title: Beaked whale

text: To understand the hunting and foraging behavior of beaked whales, researchers used sound and orientation recording devices on two species: Cuvier's beaked whale ("Ziphius cavirostris") and Blainville's beaked whale ("Mesoplodon densirostris"). These whales hunt by echolocation in deep water (where the majority of their prey is located) between about and usually catch about 30 prey per dive. Cuvier's beaked whales must forage on average at for 58 minutes and Blainville's beaked whales typically forage at deep for an average of 47 minutes.


title: Beaked whale

text: The family Ziphiidae is one of the most widespread families of cetaceans, ranging from the ice edges at both the north and south poles, to the equator in all the oceans. Specific ranges vary greatly by species, though beaked whales typically inhabit offshore waters that are at least 300 m deep.


title: Beaked whale

text: Beaked whales are known to congregate in deep waters off the edge of continental shelves, and bottom features, such as seamounts, canyons, escarpments, and oceanic islands, including the Azores and the Canary Islands, and even off the coasts of Hawaii.


title: Beaked whale

text: Very little is known about the life history of beaked whales. The oldest recorded age is 84 years for a male Baird's beaked whale and 54 years for a female. For all other beaked whale species studied, the oldest recorded age is between 27 and 39 years. Sexual maturity is reached between seven and 15 years of age in Baird's beaked whales and northern bottlenose whales. Gestation varies greatly between species, lasting 17 months for Baird's beaked whales and 12 months for the northern bottlenose whale. No data are available on their reproductive rates.


title: Beaked whale

text: Determining group size for beaked whales is difficult, due to their inconspicuous surfacing behavior. Groups of beaked whales, defined as all individuals found in the same location at the same time, have been reported as ranging from one to 100 individuals. Nevertheless, some populations' group size has been estimated from repeated observations. For example, northern and southern bottlenose whales ("H. ampullatus" and "H. planifrons"), Cuvier's beaked whales, and Blainville's beaked whales ("Mesoplodon densirostris") have a reported maximum group size of 20 individuals, with the average ranging from 2.5 to 3.5 individuals. "Berardius" species and Longman's beaked whales ("Indopacetus pacificus") are found in larger groups of up to 100 individuals.


title: Beaked whale

text: Not much information is available about group composition of beaked whales. Only three species have been studied in any detail: northern bottlenose whales, Blainville's beaked whales, and Baird's beaked whales. Female northern bottlenose whales appear to form a loose network of social partners with no obvious long-term associations. In contrast to females, some male northern bottlenose whales have been repeatedly recorded together over several years, and possibly form long-term associations. Studies of Blainville's beaked whales have revealed groups usually consist of a number of females, calves, and/or juvenile animals. These whales are assumed to live in "harem-like" groups, where several females and young are accompanied by a single male. Baird's beaked whales are known to occur in multiple male groups, and in large groups consisting of adult animals of both sexes. Arnoux's beaked whales have also been observed to form large pods of up to 47 individuals off the Southern Ocean off the coast of Kemp Land, Antarctica.


title: Beaked whale

text: For many years, most beaked whale species were insulated from anthropogenic impacts because of their remote habitat. However, now several issues of concern include:


title: Beaked whale

text: A major conservation concern for beaked whales (family Ziphiidae) is they appear to be vulnerable to modern sonar operations, which arises from recent strandings that temporally and physically coincide with naval sonar exercises. Mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS), developed in the 1950s for submarine detection, is thought to induce panic when experienced by whales at depth. This raises their heart-rates, forcing them to attempt to rapidly ascend toward the surface in search of air. This artificially-induced rapid ascent can cause decompression.


title: Beaked whale

text: "Post mortem" examinations of the stranded whales in concurrence with naval exercises have reported the presence of hemorrhaging near the ears or gas and fat emboli, which could have a deleterious impact on beaked whales that is analogous to decompression sickness in humans. Gas and fat emboli have been shown to cause nervous and cardiovascular system dysfunction, respiratory distress, pain, and disorientation in both humans and animals. In the inner ear, gas embolism can cause hemorrhages, leading to disorientation or vestibular dysfunction.