History.

IFK Göteborg was founded on October 4, 1904, at Café Olivedal in the Annedal district of Linnéstaden in downtown Gothenburg. It was the third, but the only remaining, IFK association founded in Gothenburg, becoming the 39th overall. A committee for football was created at the historic first meeting; the association's first football match ended in a 4–1 victory against another club from the area, IK Viking. The foundation of IFK Göteborg was important for the development of football in the city, as until that point, Örgryte IS, the largest of Gothenburg clubs, were dominant, with IFK Göteborg offering some needed competition.  In 1907 IFK Göteborg became the first Swedish team in four years to beat Örgryte IS. They then went on to win their first Swedish Championship in 1908 by winning the cup tournament Svenska Mästerskapet, and three players from the club were selected to play for Sweden in the national team's first match. That year IFK played teams from outside Sweden for the first time, meeting the Danish clubs Østerbro BK and Boldklubben af 1893.  In 1910, the team played in blue and white striped jerseys for the first time. Two years later the team drew 1–1 in a game against the 1912 Swedish Olympic team, and the newspapers in Stockholm nominated IFK Göteborg as "the best Swedish football club ever". IFK Göteborg won Svenska Serien, the highest Swedish league at the time, but not the Swedish Championship deciding competition, for the fifth time in a row in 1917. The early IFK Göteborg team had no trainer; the club gained its first such official in 1921, when Hungarian manager Sándor Bródy was hired. Bródy was appointed manager for IFK two years later. The first Swedish official national league, Allsvenskan, started in late 1924, the year the legendary Filip Johansson made his debut for IFK Göteborg. The club finished second, but Johansson scored 39 goals in 22 games and was the league's top goalscorer. IFK won their first Allsvenskan title in 1934–35, the ten previous seasons of the league saw the club finish in the top four. Swedish football was dominated by teams from Gothenburg during these years, but IFK Göteborg were surprisingly relegated in 1937–38, although the team was promoted back to Allsvenskan the next season. Back in the highest division, IFK finished second, with the league continuing despite the outbreak of World War II. IFK won another title in 1941–42 with a strong team, but the rest of the decade saw mixed results. The 1940s team included the talented Gunnar Gren, who became the top scorer in 1946–47. He was also awarded Guldbollen as the best player in Sweden, and won an Olympic gold medal with the Swedish team at the 1948 Olympics. When Gren left in 1949, IFK were relegated from Allsvenskan the following season. As happened the last time IFK played in a lower league, they were promoted directly back to Allsvenskan after one season in Division 2. IFK went on to compete in a European Cup, the European Champion Clubs' Cup, for the first time in 1958, but were eliminated in the second round by SC Wismut. In 1959, the all-time Allsvenskan record attendance of 52,194 was set when IFK played Örgryte IS at Nya Ullevi.  After an unglamorous decade, IFK were led by manager and retired footballer Bertil Johansson to a surprising championship title in 1969. The following season was one of the darkest in their history. IFK were relegated, and unlike previous relegations they did not make an immediate return. After three seasons in the second league IFK had lost all signs of being a team from Allsvenskan, and had still not managed to gain promotion. But after hard work from board member Anders Bernmar and others to get the club on the right track, IFK were promoted to Allsvenskan in 1976. In 1979, IFK hired Sven-Göran Eriksson as manager. He introduced the 4–4–2 system with "pressure and support", called the Swenglish model, which would give IFK great success later on, and his first season at the club ended with a second place in Allsvenskan and the club's first gold medal in Svenska Cupen. After reinforcing the team with several expensive players, including Thomas Wernerson and Stig Fredriksson, IFK had finished second in the league and reached the quarter-finals in the UEFA Cup as 1981 came to an end. 1982 then became a turbulent season as the whole board was replaced and the club almost went bankrupt, even needing to borrow money from the official supporter's association to travel to Valencia to play the quarter-final of the UEFA Cup. After the troubled start IFK won every competition they entered, including Allsvenskan, the Allsvenskan play-off, Svenska Cupen, and the UEFA Cup, defeating Hamburger SV 4–0 on aggregate in the finals. During the following 15 years the club was the leading club in Swedish football, winning the Swedish championship ten times, the domestic cup three times and the UEFA Cup twice.  IFK managed to field a strong team for a couple of years and won gold in the league in both 1983 and 1984, and the cup in 1983. In 1986, the team reached the semi-finals of the European Cup but were defeated on penalties against FC Barcelona. A new team of talents won both the UEFA Cup and Allsvenskan once again in 1987, after beating Dundee United in the UEFA Cup final. The youth manager Roger Gustafsson took over the team from Gunder Bengtsson in 1990, and his time with IFK was to become very successful, winning Allsvenskan five times between 1990 and 1995.  As IFK won the 1993 Allsvenskan, they qualified for European competition. IFK advanced to the group stage of the Champions League, where they faced FC Barcelona, Manchester United and Galatasaray. Elimination at the group stage was widely anticipated, but IFK Göteborg confounded expectations by winning the group and advancing to the knockout stage. However, IFK Göteborg was eliminated in the quarter-finals by Bayern Munich on away goals.  The last years before the new millennium were disappointing for IFK, providing a stark contrast to the earlier success. The team only managed a silver in 1997 and an eighth place in 1998, after buying several expensive players who failed to produce. In both 1998 and 1999 IFK changed managers mid-season, something which had previously never happened in the club's history. The last year of the decade ended with a sixth-place finish. The new millennium offered varied results, with the club playing a relegation play-off in 2002, but challenging for the championship in 2001, 2004, and 2005. In 2007, the first title in eleven years was secured in the last round of Allsvenskan. The club then won the national cup Svenska Cupen the next season. IFK Göteborg are still considered to be one of the "Big Three" in Swedish football, along with Malmö FF and AIK, despite only having won the Allsvenskan title once during the last 20 years.

Colours, crest and sponsorship.

Colours and kit.

The traditional colours of all IFK associations are blue and white, and IFK Göteborg is no exception. Soon after the club's foundation in 1904, it was decided that the kit should consist of a blue and white striped shirt with blue shorts. But the design was too costly and instead a cheaper alternative was used. Thus the club's first kit used a blue shirt with a single horizontal white stripe and a four-pointed star, one of the IFK association symbols, in white on the chest. During the next few years, white or blue shirts without stripes were used. In 1910, a kit comprising a blue and white vertically striped shirt and blue shorts was used for the first time inspired by the kit of Kjøbenhavns Boldklub. This kit has remained as the home colours ever since. The small amount of sponsor logos, together with the longtime use of blue and white stripes, has made the kit a classic in Swedish football. The most common away kit has been red and white in different styles, though other colour combinations, for example orange and white, have been used, mainly in the 1990s and 2000s. The away kit introduced in 2005 once again used red and white. An almost completely white third kit with blue details was introduced in mid-2007 after requests from supporters. In the 2010s, the away-kit colours have seen much variation, including a pink shirt with black shorts, a black kit with light-grey details, the more traditional red kit with white trimmings, and a purple kit with white details introduced in 2016.

Crest.

The crest of IFK Göteborg has its origins in the coat of arms of the city of Gothenburg which in turn is based on several other heraldic arms. The lion on a field of silver and blue is the heraldic arms of the House of Folkung, and the lion holds the Three Crowns of Sweden, both symbols being used in the coat of arms of Sweden. This arms was granted to Gothenburg by Gustavus Adolphus. The coat of arms of the city sees the lion facing the sinister (heraldic left, which is viewer's right) side which often is interpreted as a fleeing lion, the normal being a lion facing the dexter (heraldic right) side, and IFK chose to use the latter on the club crest. Finally the three letters IFK were added on top. This crest has been used since it first appeared on the kit in 1919. These main elements have not been modified since then, but during the years several different designs of the crest have been used, occasionally having the lion facing the sinister side. In the early 1980s, the club standardised the design and only minor changes, such as element colours and different hues, have been made since then, with the exception of the years 1997–1999 when IFK, with Reebok as kit sponsors, used a crest with some more distinct changes to the standard elements. Before 1919 various other symbols were used, with the four-pointed star of the IFK associations featuring on the shirts until 1910.

Sponsorship.

Kappa is the club's kit manufacturer since 2016, replacing Adidas, who had supplied the kit for a majority of the seasons since the 1970s.  Apart from the Kappa brand, IFK Göteborg has the logos of the following companies visible on their shirt and shorts: Serneke, a construction company; Elkontakt, an electrical contractor; Morris Law, a law firm; Atea, an IT-infrastructure company; Länsförsäkringar, an insurance company and bank; Rasta, a chain of road restaurants and motels; German automakers Volkswagen; and league sponsors Svenska Spel, a government-owned gambling company.  Serneke replaced Prioritet Finans as the main shirt sponsor before the 2019 season, becoming the third main sponsor in the club's history. The grocery-store chain ICA had sponsored IFK Göteborg since 1974, and their logo was displayed on the chest of the shirt 1980–2010, leading some to consider it an integral part of the shirt. The ICA logo was reproduced in its original red colour for the first few years, but was then changed to a blue-and-white version to better blend with the kit colours.

Facilities and stadiums.

Facilities.

IFK Göteborg played its first match, a training match between the first and second team of the club, at Karlsrofältet. A memorial stone with the caption "Here at Karlsrofältet, IFK Göteborg played their first ever football match in the year 1904" () has been raised by the field to commemorate the event. Karlsrofältet was mainly used as a training pitch in the early years of the club, until IFK stopped using the field completely in 1910. Between 1946 and 1964, IFK's clubhouse was Lilla Sjödala, located in Pixbo, Mölnlycke, just outside Gothenburg. The house was mostly used by the club's orienteering and athletics departments. On 1 October 1961, a new complex, Kamratgården, was officially opened near Delsjön. A number of additions were made over the years, and by 2004 the floor area of Kamratgården had grown to, a nearby indoor hall and two full-size grass pitches. The buildings were demolished in February 2011, and a new modern facility was opened on 18 March 2012, housing an administrative and sports area on two floors and.  The football academy of IFK Göteborg as well as Änglagårdsskolan, an elementary school affiliated with IFK, are housed at Prioritet Serneke Arena, a multi-sport complex in the district of Kviberg. The indoor full-size football pitch at Prioritet Serneke Arena is also, on occasion, used for first-team friendly matches.

Stadiums.

Historically, IFK Göteborg's main home stadium has been Gamla Ullevi, where the majority of the competitive games have been played. The club has played there in two separate periods, most recently after leaving Ullevi (Nya Ullevi) in 1992, although matches attracting large crowds, such as derbies against the rivals Örgryte IS and GAIS, or international games, were still played at the larger Ullevi stadium. Gamla Ullevi's capacity was 18,000 when used in the 1990s and 2000s, while Nya Ullevi has a capacity of 43,200.  Gamla Ullevi was demolished on 9 January 2007 to make place for a new stadium with the same name, Gamla Ullevi, with a capacity of 18,800. The new stadium was completed in late 2008, but not opened until the start of the 2009 season. During construction, IFK Göteborg played the 2007 and 2008 seasons at Nya Ullevi. On 11 April 2009 IFK Göteborg played their first game on the new Gamla Ullevi stadium and won against Djurgården with 6–0 in front of 18,276 spectators. IFK Göteborg have used three other stadia as official home grounds. The first ground was Idrottsplatsen, in use from 1905 to 1915. It was built in 1896 for the cycling club Göteborgs Velocipedklubb, and was originally used for track cycling. During the 1909 season IFK Göteborg also used Örgryte's then home ground, Balders Hage, due to a conflict with the owners of Idrottsplatsen. The third official stadium was Walhalla Idrottsplats, used for a number of home matches at the same time as Idrottsplatsen. A fourth ground, Slottsskogsvallen, has never been the official home ground, but has nonetheless been used a number of times for IFK Göteborg home matches.  Idrottsplatsen fell into decline due to poor leadership and a troubled economy in the 1910s, and a decision was made to completely renovate the arena with the help of outside sponsorship and funding. The construction of the new football ground was started in 1915 and used the site of Idrottsplatsen as foundation. The new stadium, originally named Ullervi, but later changed to Ullevi and finally Gamla Ullevi, was opened in 1916. It was the home ground of IFK Göteborg until 1958, when Nya Ullevi, built for the 1958 World Cup held in Sweden, was opened. Due to a number of seasons with low attendance in Swedish football in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a move back to Gamla Ullevi was made in 1992.

Supporters and club relationships.

Supporters.

Before the foundation of IFK Göteborg, the dominant club in the Gothenburg area was Örgryte IS, which was considered a middle and upper class club. IFK became popular amongst the working class, creating a fierce rivalry based upon both local pride and social class. In the early 20th century, supporters were supposed to act as gentlemen, applauding and supporting both their own team, and the opponents. However, this proved a hard task for supporters of the Gothenburg teams. Local patriotism and class differences sometimes resulted in fights and pitch invasions, making the Swedish press view IFK and Örgryte fans as the scum of Swedish football.  After World War I, the rivalry calmed, and Gothenburg supporters became known as friendly and sportsmanlike fans. However, this only applied to the behaviour on home ground, as IFK supporters continued to behave badly when travelling to away matches by train (called "Göteborgstågen", the Gothenburg trains), a phenomenon that grew quickly in the 1920s. This behaviour peaked in 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II, when approximately 1,900 IFK fans travelled to Borås to see IFK play Elfsborg. After a 2–3 loss, the fans fought with the Borås police, before returning home to Gothenburg and disturbing a wartime blackout exercise. As in most other parts of the world, the decades following the World War II were relatively free from football violence and the supporter culture did not change much. Swedish football culture started to change in the late 1960s, becoming heavily inspired and influenced by the English supporter culture. This flourished in the 1970s and 1980s, giving birth to some of the most well-known Swedish supporters clubs, AIK's Black Army, Djurgårdens IF's Blue Saints (later Järnkaminerna), and IFK Göteborg's supporters club, Änglarna (the Angels). The first attempt to found an IFK supporters club was made in 1969, but interest diminished when IFK Göteborg were relegated from the highest league the following year. The supporters club was not re-founded until 1973, which is considered the year of foundation of Änglarna.  As the club gained success in European club tournaments in the 1980s and 1990s, and thousands of IFK fans travelled to Hamburg, Barcelona, Dundee, Milan, Manchester and Munich, the supporters gained influence on the club, for example by lending money to the almost bankrupt IFK Göteborg so the team could go to Valencia to play the quarter-final in the UEFA Cup in 1982, or by being the main force behind the move back to Gamla Ullevi in 1992. The early 1990s saw a downward trend in attendance numbers, even though the club was successful on the pitch, but the trend turned in the later years of the decade and the first few years of the new millennium brought the club's highest average attendance since the early 1980s.  In the 2000s, supporter culture in Sweden started to shift from being English-influenced to being more influenced by the Southern European countries and their football culture, making tifos and ultras a common sight in Swedish arenas. From acting as an almost uniform group of fans gathered under the same flag, (Änglarna), IFK fans created separate supporter factions, including Ultra Bulldogs, Young Lions and West Coast Angelz. IFK is the most popular football club in Sweden; a 2004 survey concluded that IFK Göteborg had support from 13% of Swedish football fans, and surveys in 2016 and 2017 again confirmed that IFK was the most popular club in Sweden, with a support of 10%. A majority, 55%, of football fans in Gothenburg support IFK, and the club is the fourth most popular in Stockholm (after AIK, Djurgårdens IF and Hammarby IF) and the second most popular in Malmö, after Malmö FF.  Since 2009, the club's entrance music is "Snart skiner Poseidon" ("Soon Poseidon will shine"), referring to one of Gothenburg's landmarks, Poseidon med brunnskar, a bronze statue created by Carl Milles. The song was written by singer/songwriter Joel Alme.

Club relationships.

IFK Göteborg is part of Göteborgsalliansen, an alliance including two other major teams from Gothenburg: GAIS and Örgryte IS. Besides arranging tournaments, they together hosted big games in which the best players from each club represented the side. In 2015, IFK announced a partnership with Utsiktens BK, an agreement involving IFK's players to be loaned out to the club for first team experience. The supporter group "Ultras Göteborg" have a supporter friendship with Ultras Nürnberg, fans of the German football club 1. FC Nürnberg.

Management.

Notable managers.

The following 15 managers either have won at least one major honour with IFK Göteborg or have managed the team for 100 or more league matches. The managers are listed according to when they were first appointed manager for IFK Göteborg.

Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna Göteborg (officially IFK Göteborg Fotboll), commonly known as IFK Göteborg, IFK (especially locally) or simply Göteborg, is a Swedish professional football club based in Gothenburg. Founded in 1904, it is the only club in the Nordic countries that has won one of the main UEFA competitions, having won the UEFA Cup in both 1982 and 1987. IFK is affiliated with Göteborgs Fotbollförbund and play their home games at Gamla Ullevi. The club colours are blue and white, colours shared both with the sports society which the club originated from, Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna, and with the coat of arms of the city of Gothenburg.

IFK Göteborg je švédský fotbalový klub z Göteborgu. Je to jediný klub ze Skandinávie, který vyhrál evropský pohár, a to dokonce 2x (Pohár UEFA v letech 1982 a 1987).


Launch and Sea Trials.

"Da Barbiano" was launched on 23 August 1930. During her trials she managed to reach a speed of, but to do that the propulsion was pushed to, far beyond the safety limits. She could only maintain this speed for about 30 minutes.

Service history.

During the late 1930s, "Da Barbiano" participated in the Spanish Civil War, escorting Italian ships that carried supplies for the Spanish Nationalist forces the Western Mediterranean.  During World War II, "Alberico Da Barbiano" was part of the 4th Cruiser Division. On 9 July 1940 "Da Barbiano" was present at the Battle of Calabria (Punto Stilo). In summer 1940 she also participated in some escort and minelaying missions between Italy and North Africa. Due to the weakness of the class, on 1 September 1940 she was assigned as a training ship in Pola, but on 1 March 1941 was returned to active service.  In December 1941 the Italian naval staff, in the face of a deteriorating supply situation between Italy and Libya, decided to use the 4th Cruiser Division, then composed of "Da Barbiano" (flagship of ammiraglio di divisione Antonino Toscano, the commander of the Division) and her sistership "Alberto Di Giussano", for an urgent transport mission to North Africa.  "Da Barbiano" and "Di Giussano" left Taranto at 8:15 on 5 December 1941, reached Brindisi at 17:50 and there loaded about 50 tons of supplies, then proceeded to Palermo on 8 December, where they loaded an additional 22 tons of aviation fuel, which was especially needed in Libya (otherwise, aircraft based there would soon become unable to escort incoming convoys with vital supplies). The fuel, contained in unsealed barrels, was placed on the stern deck, thus posing great danger in case of enemy attacks (not only it would be set afire by mere strafing, but even by the flames of the ships’ own guns, thus preventing the use of the stern turrets). The two cruisers sailed unescorted from Palermo at 17:20 on 9 December, heading for Tripoli, but at 22:56 they were spotted by a British reconnaissance plane north of Pantelleria. The plane, which had located Toscano's ships thanks to Ultra intercepts, started to shadow them. At 23:55 Toscano (who was at that time in the middle of the Sicilian Channel), since the surprise (required for the success of the mission) had vanished, heavy enemy radio traffic foreshadowed upcoming air strikes, and worsening sea conditions would delay his ships, further exposing them to British attacks, decided to turn back to base. "Da Barbiano" and "Di Giussano" reached Palermo at 8:20 on 10 December, after overcoming a British air attack off Marettimo. Toscano was heavily criticized by Supermarina for his decision to abort the mission.  As for 13 December a new convoy operation, called M. 41, was planned, and the air cover by aircraft based in Libya would only be possible if they received new fuel, on 12 December it was decided that the 4th Division would attempt again the trip to Tripoli. The cruiser "Bande Nere" was to join "Da Barbiano" and "Di Giussano" to carry more supplies, but she was prevented from sailing by a breakdown, thus her cargo had to be transferred to the other two cruisers. "Da Barbiano" and "Di Giussano" were overall loaded with 100 tons of aviation fuel, 250 tons of gasoline, 600 tons of naphtha and 900 tons of food stores, as well as 135 ratings on passage to Tripoli. As the stern of "Da Barbiano" (and, to a lesser extent, "Di Giussano") was packed with fuel barrels, so thickly that it was not possible anymore to bring the guns to bear, Toscano held a last assembly with his staff and officers from both ships, where it was decided that, in case of encounter with enemy ships, the barrels would be discarded overboard, and then the cruisers would open fire (otherwise, the fuel would have been set afire by the firing of the cruisers' own guns). "Da Barbiano", "Di Giussano" and their only escort, the Spica-class torpedo boat "Cigno" (a secondo torpedo boat, "Climene", was left in the port due to a breakdown), sailed from Palermo at 18:10 on 12 December. The 4th Division was ordered to pass northwest of the Aegadian Islands and then head for Cape Bon and follow the Tunisian coast; the ships would keep a speed of 22-23 knots (not more, because they were to spare part of their own fuel and deliver it at Tripoli). Air cover, air reconnaissance and defensive MAS ambushes were planned to safeguard the mission.  The British 4th Destroyer Flotilla, consisting of the destroyers,, and the Dutch destroyer Hr. Ms. "Isaac Sweers", (Commander G. H. Stokes), had departed Gibraltar on 11 December, to join the Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria. By 8 December, the British had de-coded Italian C-38 wireless signals about the Italian supply operation and its course for Tripoli. The RAF sent a Wellington bomber on a reconnaissance sortie to sight the ships as a deception and on 12 December, the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, heading east from Gibraltar towards the Italian ships, was ordered to increase speed to and intercept. In the afternoon of 12 December, a CANT Z. 1007 bis of Regia Aeronautica spotted the four destroyers heading east at an estimated speed of 20 knots, 60 miles off Algiers; Supermarina was immediately informed but calculated that, even in the case the destroyers would increase their speed to 28 knots, they would have reached Cape Bon around 3:00 AM on 13 December, about one hour after the 4th Division, so Toscano (who learned of the sighting while he was still in harbour) was not ordered to increase speed or alter course to avoid them. Following new Ultra decodes, a new reconnaissance plane was sent and spotted Toscano's ships at sunset on 12 December, after which the 4th Destroyer Flotilla was directed to intercept the two cruisers, increasing speed to 30 knots. This speed, along with a one-hour delay that the 4th Division had accrued (and that Toscano omitted to report to Supermarina), frustrated all previous Supermarina calculations about the advantage that the 4th Division would have. At 22:23 Toscano was informed that he would possibly meet ""enemy steamers coming from Malta"", and at 23:15 he ordered action stations.  The 4th Destroyer Flotilla sighted the Italian cruisers near Cap Bon, at 02:30 on 13 December. At 2:45 on 13 December, seven miles off Cape Bon, the Italian ships heard the noise of a British plane (a radar-equipped Vickers Wellington, which located the ships and informed Stokes about their position), and at 3:15 they altered course to 157° to pass about one mile off Cape Bon. Five minutes later, Toscano suddenly ordered full speed ahead and to alter course to 337°, effectively reversing course; this sudden change disrupted the Italian formation, as neither "Cigno" (which was about two miles ahead of the cruisers) neither "Di Giussano" (which was following "Da Barbiano" in line) received the order, and while "Di Giussano" saw the flagship reverse course and imitated her (but remained misaligned), "Cigno" did not noticed the change till 3:25, when she also reversed course, but remained much behind the two cruisers. The reasons for Toscano's decision of reverse course have never been fully explained: it has been suggested that, upon realizing that he had been spotted by aircraft, he decided to turn back like on 9 December (but in this case, a course towards the Aegadian islands would have made more sense, instead that the northwesterly course ordered by Toscano; and the change was suddenly ordered more than 30 minutes after the cruisers had been spotted); that he wanted to mislead the reconnaissance plane about his real course, wait for it to go away, and then go back on the previous course to Tripoli; that he thought from the noise that torpedo bombers were coming, and he wanted to get in more open waters (farther away from the shore and the Italian minefields) to obtain more freedom of manoeuvre; or that he had spotted the Allied destroyers astern and, not wanting to present his stern to them (as the aft turrets were unusable and most fuel was stowed there), he decided to reverse course to fire on them with his bow turrets (upon ordering the change of course, he also ordered the gunners to keep ready).  Stokes's destroyers were, indeed, just off Cape Bon by then, and they had spotted the Italian ships. Arriving from astern, under the cover of darkness and using radar, the British ships sailed close inshore and surprised the Italians who were further out to sea, by launching torpedoes from short range. The course reversal accelerated the approach between the two groups, and the Allied destroyers attacked together; "Sikh" fired her guns and four torpedoes against "Da Barbiano" (the distance was less than 1,000 meters) and "Legion" did the same, while "Maori" and "Isaac Sweers" attacked "Di Giussano". Toscano ordered full speed and to open fire (and also, to "Di Giussano", to increase speed to 30 knots) and "Da Barbiano" also started a turn to port (on orders from the ship's commanding officer, Captain Giorgio Rodocanacchi), but at 3:22, before her guns were able to fire (only some machine guns managed to), the cruiser was hit by a torpedo below the forwardmost turret, which caused her to list to port. "Da Barbiano" was then raked with machine gun fire, which killed or wounded many men and set fire to the fuel barrels, and hit by a second torpedo in the engine room. At 3.26 "Maori" also fired two torpedoes at "Da Barbiano", and opened fire with her guns, hitting the bridge. Moments after, the cruiser was hit by another torpedo in the stern (possibly launched by "Legion"); meanwhile, "Di Giussano" was disabled as well. "Da Barbiano" rapidly listed to port, while the fires quickly spread all over the ship and also into the sea, fueled by the floating fuel, and the crew started to abandon ship. At 3:35, "Da Barbiano" capsized and sank in a sea of flame. 534 men, including Admiral Antonino Toscano, the commander of Italian Fourth Naval Division, his entire staff and the commanding officer of "Alberico Da Barbiano", Captain Giorgio Rodocanacchi, were lost with the ship. 250 survivors reached the Tunisian coast or were picked up by rescuing vessels.  "Da Barbiano"<nowiki>'</nowiki>s wreck was located in 2007 by an Italian expedition.

Alberico da Barbiano was an Italian light cruiser, that served in the Regia Marina during World War II. She was named after Alberico da Barbiano, an Italian condottiero of the 14th century.

Alberico da Barbiano byl italský lehký křižník třídy "Di Giussano", tedy první skupiny třídy "Condottieri", který sloužil v italské Regia Marina během druhé světové války.


Classicism.

In the middle of the 18th century, Europe began to move toward a new style in architecture, literature, and the arts, generally known as Classicism. This style sought to emulate the ideals of Classical antiquity, especially those of Classical Greece. Classical music used formality and emphasis on order and hierarchy, and a "clearer", "cleaner" style that used clearer divisions between parts (notably a clear, single melody accompanied by chords), brighter contrasts and "tone colors" (achieved by the use of dynamic changes and modulations to more keys). In contrast with the richly layered music of the Baroque era, Classical music moved towards simplicity rather than complexity. In addition, the typical size of orchestras began to increase, giving orchestras a more powerful sound.  The remarkable development of ideas in "natural philosophy" had already established itself in the public consciousness. In particular, Newton's physics was taken as a paradigm: structures should be well-founded in axioms and be both well-articulated and orderly. This taste for structural clarity began to affect music, which moved away from the layered polyphony of the Baroque period toward a style known as homophony, in which the melody is played over a subordinate harmony. This move meant that chords became a much more prevalent feature of music, even if they interrupted the melodic smoothness of a single part. As a result, the tonal structure of a piece of music became more audible.  The new style was also encouraged by changes in the economic order and social structure. As the 18th century progressed, the nobility became the primary patrons of instrumental music, while public taste increasingly preferred lighter, funny comic operas. This led to changes in the way music was performed, the most crucial of which was the move to standard instrumental groups and the reduction in the importance of the "continuo"—the rhythmic and harmonic groundwork of a piece of music, typically played by a keyboard (harpsichord or organ) and usually accompanied by a varied group of bass instruments, including cello, double bass, bass viol, and theorbo. One way to trace the decline of the continuo and its figured

Main characteristics.

In the classical period, the theme is made up of phrases with contrasting melodic figures and rhythms. These phrases are relatively brief, typically four bars in length, and can occasionally seem sparse or terse. The texture is mainly homophonic, with a clear melody above a subordinate chordal accompaniment, for instance an Alberti bass. This contrasts with the practice in Baroque music, where a piece or movement would typically have only one musical subject, which would then be worked out in a number of voices according to the principles of counterpoint, while maintaining a consistent rhythm or metre throughout. As a result, Classical music tends to have a lighter, clearer texture than the Baroque. The classical style draws on the "style galant", a musical style which emphasised light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur.  Structurally, Classical music generally has a clear musical form, with a well-defined contrast between tonic and dominant, introduced by clear cadences. Dynamics are used to highlight the structural characteristics of the piece. In particular, sonata form and its variants were developed during the early classical period and was frequently

History.

Baroque/Classical transition c. 1730–1760.

In his book "The Classical Style", author and pianist Charles Rosen claims that from 1755 to 1775, composers groped for a new style that was more effectively dramatic. In the Baroque, dramatic expression was limited to the representation of individual sentiments (what Rosen terms "dramatic sentiment"). For example, in Handel's oratorio "Jephtha", the composer renders four different emotions, one for each character, in the quartet "O, spare your daughter". Eventually this depiction of individual emotions came to be seen as simplistic and unrealistic; composers sought to portray multiple emotions, simultaneously or progressively, within a single character or movement ("dramatic action"). Thus in the finale of act 2 of Mozart's "Die Entführung aus dem Serail", the lovers move "from joy through

1750–1775.

By the late 1750s there were flourishing centers of the new style in Italy, Vienna, Mannheim, and Paris; dozens of symphonies were composed and there were bands of players associated with musical theatres. Opera or other vocal music accompanied by orchestra was the feature of most musical events, with concertos and symphonies (arising from the overture) serving as instrumental interludes and introductions for operas and church services. Over the course of the Classical period, symphonies and concertos developed and were presented independently of vocal music.  The "normal"

1775–1790.

Haydn, having worked for over a decade as the music director for a prince, had far more resources and scope for composing than most other composers. His position also gave him the ability to shape the forces that would play his music, as he could select skilled musicians. This opportunity was not wasted, as Haydn, beginning quite early on his career, sought to press forward the technique of building and developing ideas in his music. His next important breakthrough was in the Opus 33 string quartets (1781), in which the melodic and the harmonic roles segue among the instruments: it is often momentarily unclear what is melody and what is harmony. This changes the way the ensemble works its way between dramatic moments of transition and climactic sections: the music flows smoothly and without obvious interruption. He then took

Around 1790–1820.

When Haydn and Mozart began composing, symphonies were played as single movements—before, between, or as interludes within other works—and many of them lasted only ten or twelve minutes; instrumental groups had varying standards of playing, and the continuo was a central part of music-making.  In the intervening years, the social world of music had seen dramatic changes. International publication and touring had grown explosively, and concert societies formed. Notation became more specific, more descriptive—and schematics for works had been simplified (yet became more varied in their exact working out). In 1790, just before Mozart's death, with his reputation spreading rapidly, Haydn was poised for a series of successes, notably his late oratorios and "London" symphonies. Composers in Paris, Rome, and all

First Viennese School.

The First Viennese School is a name mostly used to refer to three composers of the Classical period in late-18th-century Vienna: Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven. Franz Schubert is occasionally added to the list.  In German-speaking countries, the term "Wiener Klassik" (lit. "Viennese classical era/art") is used. That term is often more broadly applied to the Classical era in music as a whole, as a means to distinguish it from other periods that are colloquially referred to as "classical", namely Baroque and Romantic music.  The term "Viennese School" was first used by Austrian musicologist Raphael Georg Kiesewetter in 1834, although he only

Classical influence on later composers.

Musical eras and their prevalent styles, forms and instruments seldom disappear at once; instead, features are replaced over time, until the old approach is simply felt as "old-fashioned". The Classical style did not "die" suddenly; rather, it gradually got phased out under the weight of changes. To give just one example, while it is generally stated that the Classical era stopped using the harpsichord in orchestras, this did not happen all of a sudden at the start of the Classical era in 1750. Rather, orchestras slowly stopped using the harpsichord to play basso continuo until the practice was discontinued by the end of the 1700s.  One crucial change was the shift towards harmonies centering on "flatward" keys: shifts in the subdominant direction. In the Classical style, major key was far more common than minor, chromaticism being moderated through the use of "sharpward" modulation (e.g., a piece in C major modulating to G major, D major, or A major, all of which are keys with more sharps). As well, sections in the minor mode were often used for contrast. Beginning with Mozart and Clementi, there began a creeping colonization of the subdominant region (the ii or IV chord, which in the key of C major would be the keys of d minor or F major). With Schubert, subdominant modulations flourished after being introduced in contexts in which earlier composers would have confined themselves to dominant shifts (modulations to the dominant chord, e.g., in the key of C major, modulating to G major). This introduced darker colors to music, strengthened the minor mode, and made structure harder to maintain. Beethoven contributed to this by his increasing use of the fourth as a consonance, and modal ambiguity—for example, the opening of the Symphony No. 9 in D minor.  Franz Schubert, Carl Maria von Weber, and John Field are among the most prominent in this

Classical period instruments.

Guitar.

The Baroque guitar, with four or five sets of double strings or "courses" and elaborately decorated soundhole, was a very different instrument from the early classical guitar which more closely

Strings.

In the Baroque era, there was more variety in the bowed stringed instruments used in ensembles, with instruments such as the viola d'amore and a range of fretted viols being used, ranging from small viols to large bass viols. In the Classical period, the string section of the orchestra was standardized as just four instruments:  In the Baroque era, the double bass

The Classical period was an era of classical music between roughly 1730 and 1820. The Classical period falls between the Baroque and the Romantic periods. Classical music has a lighter, clearer texture than Baroque music and is less complex. It is mainly homophonic, using a clear melody line over a subordinate chordal accompaniment, but counterpoint was by no means forgotten, especially later in the period. It also makes use of "style galant" which emphasized light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and impressive grandeur. Variety and contrast within a piece became more pronounced than before and the orchestra increased in size, range, and power.

Období hudebního klasicismu se datuje zhruba mezi lety 1750-1820. Je to éra zejména Wolfganga Amadea Mozarta, Josepha Haydna a Ludwiga van Beethovena. Melodicky a harmonicky se snaží o ucelené a přehledné hudební dílo. Oproti hudbě baroka a následujícího romantismu je klasicismus klidnější směr.


Background.

At the end of 1918, the final year of World War I, the collapse of Austria-Hungary led to the declaration of the formed Czechoslovakia. The newly proclaimed Czechoslovak state wanted to ensure the success of their territorial demands and started an attack. During the war, the Hungarian Red Army fought separate battles against troops from Czechoslovakia and Romania, while France was also highly involved diplomatically in the conflicts, too. By its final stage, more than 120,000 troops on both sides were involved.  Appealing to Hungarians with promises of regaining the land lost until then to neighboring countries within a week of his rise to power, Béla Kun declared war upon Czechoslovakia, which would increase his domestic support by making good on his promise to restore Hungary's borders. The Hungarian army recruited men between 19 and 25 years of age. Industrial workers from Budapest volunteered. Many former Austro-Hungarian officers re-enlisted through patriotism. The Hungarian army moved its 1st and 5th artillery divisions (40 battalions) to Upper Hungary (partially modern day Slovakia). The Hungarian counterattack launched on May 9, 1919 in the area of Hatvan. On May 20, 1919, Colonel Aurél Stromfeld, attacked in force and routed Czechoslovak troops from Miskolc, also recapturing Košice and Prešov, thus successfully separated the Czechoslovak and Romanian armies from each other. Through this successful action, Hungary controlled territory up to its old northern borders; regained control of industrial areas around Miskolc, Salgótarján and Banská Štiavnica.

The proclamation of Slovak Soviet Republic and the moral collapse of the army.

Despite communist promises on the restoration of the former borders of Hungary, the communist declared the establishment of the Slovak Soviet Republic in Prešov on 16 June 1919. After the proclamation of the Slovak Soviet Republic, the Hungarian nationalists and patriots soon realized that the new communist government had no intentions to recapture the lost territories, only to spread communist ideology and establish other communist states in Europe, and thus sacrificing Hungarian national interests. Despite the series of military victories against the Czechoslovak army, the Hungarian Red Army started to disintegrate due to this fundamental tension between patriots and communists during the establishment of the Independent Slovak Soviet Republic, and this concession shook the popular and military support of the communist government, particularly among professional military officers, patriots and nationalists in the Hungarian Red Army; even the chief of the general staff Aurél Stromfeld, in fact, resigned his post in protest.

Combat turnaround.

Meanwhile, the Czechoslovak army had changed. The few not reliable Italian commanders were replaced by French generals and officers. The head of the newly organized Czechoslovak 2nd Infantry Division was the French Legion Colonel and veteran Foreign Legion Josef Šnejdárek. Battalions and regiments broken in previous battles were formed and, along with new units, receded in mountainous terrain from one defensive line to another. It was enough for a week for Snejdark to consolidate subordinate troops and prepare them for offensive actions.

Battle of Zvolen.

Rest of soldiers and weapons cleaning at the time of the fighting against the Hungarian Red Army - May 1919 On the morning of June 10, the 2nd Infantry Brigade launched a demonstration attack on Zvolen. Her left wing surprisingly appeared in the side of the Hungarian troops, the right wing entered Banská Štiavnica. All Hungarian attacks the following day were repelled and the 2nd Division continued to attack. Snejdar changed the direction of the strike and on June 13 he ordered a by-pass attack on Zvolen. After four hours of fighting, his troops occupied the dominant dimensions and began attacking the key positions of the Hungarian defense. At around noon, the first unit of the Elected and the queue were punched to a depth of 10 kilometers. The whole central flow of Hron was given to the Czechoslovak control, and the Hungarian command no longer had advances to break the breakthrough.  The conquest of Zvolen meant a combat turnaround. The Czechoslovak army took the initiative and attacked the Hungarians in two directions - Levice and Lučenec. Weekly battles exploded and all Hungarian advances were exhausted. The Hungarian Army Command agreed with the ceasefire and retreated to the demarcation line. The Czech soldiers, the majority of whom fought in World War I in the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian Army and slovak army volunteers, showed that they were as good as Czechoslovak legion who were still in Russia in 1919.

Aftermath.

In the face of advancing Hungarian troops, the Allies began to put pressure on the Hungarian government and, within three weeks with Kun's assurances of Russian support failing to materialize, Hungary was forced to withdraw from Slovakia after given an ultimatum from France together with a guarantee that Romanian forces would retreat from Tiszántúl. General Aurél Stromfeld resigned after the acceptance of Clemenceau's proposition of Hungary's new borders. Following a brief war between Hungary and Romania, Slovakia was incorporated into Czechoslovakia.

The Hungarian–Czechoslovak War, or Northern Campaign (), was fought between the Hungarian Soviet Republic and the First Czechoslovak Republic from April to June 1919.

Maďarsko-československá válka, též válka o Slovensko, (maďarsky "északi hadjárat") byl válečný konflikt mezi Československem a Rumunskem na jedné straně a Maďarskou republikou rad na straně druhé, probíhajícím v rámci širšího střetu, zahrnujícího i boj o Sedmihradsko a Podkarpatskou Rus. Trvala od roku 1918 až do srpna 1919.


Raster.

Raster images have a finite set of digital values, called "picture elements" or pixels. The digital image contains a fixed number of rows and columns of pixels. Pixels are the smallest individual element in an image, holding antiquated values that represent the brightness of a given color at any specific point.  Typically, the pixels are stored in computer memory as a raster image or raster map, a two-dimensional array of small integers. These values are often transmitted or stored in a compressed form.  Raster images can be created by a variety of input devices and techniques, such as digital cameras, scanners, coordinate-measuring machines, seismographic profiling, airborne radar, and more. They can also be synthesized from arbitrary non-image data, such as mathematical functions or three-dimensional geometric models; the latter being a major sub-area of computer graphics. The field of digital image processing is the study of algorithms for their transformation.

Raster file formats.

Most users come into contact with raster images through digital cameras, which use any of several image file formats.  Some digital cameras give access to almost all the data captured by the camera, using a raw image format."The Universal Photographic Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG)" suggests these formats be used when possible since raw files produce the best quality images. These file formats allow the photographer and the processing agent the greatest level of control and accuracy for output. Their use is inhibited by the prevalence of proprietary information (trade secrets) for some camera makers, but there have been initiatives such as OpenRAW to influence manufacturers to release these records publicly. An alternative may be Digital Negative (DNG), a proprietary Adobe product described as "the public, archival format for digital camera raw data". Although this format is not yet universally accepted, support for the product is growing, and increasingly professional archivists and conservationists, working for respectable organizations, variously suggest or recommend DNG for archival purposes.

Vector.

Vector images resulted from mathematical geometry (vector). In mathematical terms, a vector consists of both a magnitude, or length, and a direction.  Often, both raster and vector elements will be combined in one image; for example, in the case of a billboard with text (vector) and photographs (raster).

Image viewing.

Image viewer software displays images. Web browsers can display standard internet image formats including JPEG, GIF and PNG. Some can show SVG format which is a standard W3C format. In the past, when Internet was still slow, it was common to provide "preview" image that would load and appear on the web site before being replaced by the main image (to give at preliminary impression). Now Internet is fast enough and this preview image is seldom used.  Some scientific images can be very large (for instance, the 46 gigapixel size image of the Milky Way, about 194 Gb in size). Such images are difficult to download and are usually browsed online through more complex web interfaces.  Some viewers offer a slideshow utility to display a sequence of images.

History.

Early digital fax machines such as the Bartlane cable picture transmission system preceded digital cameras and computers by decades. The first picture to be scanned, stored, and recreated in digital pixels was displayed on the Standards Eastern Automatic Computer (SEAC) at NIST. The advancement of digital imagery continued in the early 1960s, alongside development of the space program and in medical research. Projects at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, MIT, Bell Labs and the University of Maryland, among others, used digital images to advance satellite imagery, wirephoto standards conversion, medical imaging, videophone technology, character recognition, and photo enhancement.  Rapid advances in digital imaging began with the introduction of MOS integrated circuits in the 1960s and microprocessors in the early 1970s, alongside progress in related computer memory storage, display technologies, and data compression algorithms.  The invention of computerized axial tomography (CAT scanning), using x-rays to produce a digital image of a "slice" through a three-dimensional object, was of great importance to medical diagnostics. As well as origination of digital images, digitization of analog images allowed the enhancement and restoration of archaeological artifacts and began to be used in fields as diverse as nuclear medicine, astronomy, law enforcement, defence and industry.  Advances in microprocessor technology paved the way for the development and marketing of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for use in a wide range of image capture devices and gradually displaced the use of analog film and tape in photography and videography towards the end of the 20th century. The computing power necessary to process digital image capture also allowed computer-generated digital images to achieve a level of refinement close to photorealism.

Digital image sensors.

The basis for digital image sensors is metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) technology, which originates from the invention of the MOSFET (MOS field-effect transistor) by Mohamed M. Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs in 1959. This led to the development of digital semiconductor image sensors, including the charge-coupled device (CCD) and later the CMOS sensor.  The first semiconductor image sensor was the CCD, developed by Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs in 1969. While researching MOS technology, they realized that an electric charge was the analogy of the magnetic bubble and that it could be stored on a tiny MOS capacitor. As it was fairly straighforward to fabricate a series of MOS capacitors in a row, they connected a suitable voltage to them so that the charge could be stepped along from one to the next. The CCD is a semiconductor circuit that was later used in the first digital video cameras for television broadcasting.  Early CCD sensors suffered from shutter lag. This was largely resolved with the invention of the pinned photodiode (PPD). It was invented by Nobukazu Teranishi, Hiromitsu Shiraki and Yasuo Ishihara at NEC in 1980. It was a photodetector structure with low lag, low noise, high quantum efficiency and low dark current. In 1987, the PPD began to be incorporated into most CCD devices, becoming a fixture in consumer electronic video cameras and then digital still cameras. Since then, the PPD has been used in nearly all CCD sensors and then CMOS sensors.  The NMOS active-pixel sensor (APS) was invented by Olympus in Japan during the mid-1980s. This was enabled by advances in MOS semiconductor device fabrication, with MOSFET scaling reaching smaller micron and then sub-micron levels. The NMOS APS was fabricated by Tsutomu Nakamura's team at Olympus in 1985. The CMOS active-pixel sensor (CMOS sensor) was later developed by Eric Fossum's team at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1993. By 2007, sales of CMOS sensors had surpassed CCD sensors.

Digital image compression.

An important development in digital image compression technology was the discrete cosine transform (DCT), a lossy compression technique first proposed by Nasir Ahmed in 1972. DCT compression became the basis for JPEG, which was introduced by the Joint Photographic Experts Group in 1992. JPEG compresses images down to much smaller file sizes, and has become the most widely used image file format on the Internet. Its highly efficient DCT compression algorithm was largely responsible for the wide proliferation of digital images and digital photos, with several billion JPEG images produced every day as of 2015.

A digital image is an image composed of picture elements, also known as "pixels", each with "finite", "discrete quantities" of numeric representation for its intensity or gray level that is an output from its two-dimensional functions fed as input by its spatial coordinates denoted with "x", "y" on the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. Depending on whether the image resolution is fixed, it may be of vector or raster type.

Digitální obraz je reprezentace dvojrozměrného obrazu, který používá jedničky a nuly (binární soustavu). Rozlišují se dva typy obrázků. vektorový nebo rastrový (bitmapový) typ. Bez hlubšího rozlišení se termín "digitální obraz" obvykle používá pro rastrové obrázky.


Early.

Early photo books are characterized by their use of photographic printing as part of their reprographic technology. Photographic prints were tipped-in rather than printed directly onto the same paper stock used for letterpress printed text. Many early titles were printed in very small editions and were released as partworks to a network of well-informed and privileged readers. Few original examples of these books survive today, due to their vulnerability to light and damage caused by frequent handling.  What is arguably the first photo book, "" (1843–1853) was created by Anna Atkins. The book was released as a partwork to assist the scientific community in the identification of marine specimens. The non-silver cyanotype printing process worked by pressing actual specimens in contact with light-sensitive paper; hence the word "impression" in the book's title.  "The Pencil of Nature" (1844–46) was produced by William Henry Fox Talbot, who had invented the Calotype photographic process in 1839. Although significant as the first negative/positive photography process, the Calotype was also envisioned as a commercial prospect for the reproduction of images in books through mass publication. Anticipating commercial success, Fox Talbot established purpose-made printing premises in Reading to carry out the reproduction of his book. "The Pencil of Nature" was released in six parts between 1844 and 1846, to an initially promising list of private subscribers whose numbers dwindled, causing the premature termination of his project.  Julia Margaret Cameron created the first photo book to illustrate a literary work. The 1874 edition of Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" contained twelve Cameron images that had been specially created, but reproduced as wood engravings. Cameron sought her own publisher, creating a new version of "Idylls of the King," containing her original photographs as albumen prints, which came out in December of the same year.

Japanese.

Photographers such as Shinzō Fukuhara were producing photography books in the 1920s. The postwar years brought low-priced photography books, such as the many volumes of Iwanami Shashin Bunko magazine. From the 1950s onward, most Japanese photographers of note have had photo books published.  The simplest Japanese translation of photo book is "shashinshū" (), and the "shashinshū" section of a typical Japanese bookstore displays books of photographs with various levels of documentary or artistic merit. They primarily portray currently popular celebrities in a variety of settings and outfits. Many are of cheesecake models ("guradoru"), or porn starlets ("nūdoru"); others are of singers, television personalities, professional sportswomen (often wrestlers) and so forth.  One of the best selling Japanese photobooks of all time, "Santa Fe" (1991), a fine art nude photo book modelled by Rie Miyazawa and photographed by Kishin Shinoyama, sold 1.5 million copies in the early 1990s.

Personalized.

Storing digital images in traditional photo albums means printed copies are inserted in the pages of an album. Companies allow users to create personalized photo books. The resulting book is printed on digital color printers and case bound.  Professional printing and binding services offer easy creation of photo books with professional layouts and individual layout capabilities. Because of the integrated design and order workflow, hardcover bound books with customized pictures and text can be produced very cost-effectively.  Currently there are many photo book software companies who sell licensed solutions to photo labs and print houses so that their customers can create photo books (and other photo related paraphernalia) with ease. These software solutions are available for free download or online access or through apps.

Online.

The development of digital cameras and the Internet allowed an enormous production and exchange of pictures, taken from different corners of the globe. There are many possibilities nowadays for users to upload and share pictures (examples are Google and Facebook). However, many people and institutions also publish 'photo books' on the web, by providing the community with a huge web database freely available for everybody.

A photo book or photobook is a book in which photographs make a significant contribution to the overall content. A photo book is related to and also often used as a coffee table book.

Fotokniha nebo fotografická kniha je kniha, ve které fotografie tvoří významnou součást jejího obsahu. Dříve se běžně používalo označení fotografická kniha, v internetové současnosti převládá kratší pojem fotokniha, asi i vlivem angličtiny.


Biochemical function.

The products of Hox genes are Hox proteins. Hox proteins are a subset of transcription factors, which are proteins that are capable of binding to specific nucleotide sequences on DNA called enhancers through which they either activate or repress hundreds of other genes. The same Hox protein can act as a repressor at one gene and an activator at another. The ability of Hox proteins to bind DNA is conferred by a part of the protein referred to as the homeodomain. The homeodomain is a 60-amino-acid-long DNA-binding domain (encoded by its corresponding 180-base-pair DNA sequence, the homeobox). This amino acid sequence folds into a "helix-turn-helix" (i.e. homeodomain fold) motif that is stabilized by a third helix. The consensus polypeptide chain is shown below:. Hox proteins often act in partnership with co-factors, such as PBC and Meis proteins encoded by very different types of homeobox gene.

Conservation.

Homeobox genes, and thus the homeodomain protein motif, are found in most eukaryotes. Hox genes, being a subset of homeobox genes, arose more recently in evolution within the animal kingdom or Metazoa. Within the animal kingdom, Hox genes are present across the bilateria (animals with a clear head-to-tail axis), and have also been found in Cnidaria such as sea anemones. This implies that Hox genes arose over 550 million years ago. In bilateria, Hox genes are often arranged in gene clusters, although there are many exceptions where the genes have been separated by chromosomal rearrangements. Comparing homeodomain sequences between Hox proteins often reveals greater similarity between species than within a species; this observation led to the conclusion that Hox gene clusters evolved early in animal evolution from a single Hox gene via tandem duplication and subsequent divergence, and that a prototypic Hox gene cluster containing at least seven different Hox genes was present in the common ancestor of all bilaterian animals.  In most bilaterian animals, Hox genes are expressed in staggered domains along the head-to-tail axis of the embryo, suggesting that their role in specifying position is a shared, ancient feature. The functional conservation of Hox proteins can be demonstrated by the fact that a fly can function to a large degree with a chicken Hox protein in place of its own. So, despite having a last common ancestor that lived over 550 million years ago, the chicken and fly version of the same Hox gene are similar enough to target the same downstream genes in flies.

In "Drosophila".

"Drosophila melanogaster" is an important model for understanding body plan generation and evolution. The general principles of Hox gene function and logic elucidated in flies will apply to all bilaterian organisms, including humans. "Drosophila", like all insects, has eight Hox genes. These are clustered into two complexes, both of which are located on chromosome 3. The Antennapedia complex (not to be confused with the "Antp" gene) consists of five genes: labial ("lab"), proboscipedia ("pb"), deformed ("Dfd"), sex combs reduced ("Scr"), and Antennapedia ("Antp"). The Bithorax complex, named after the Ultrabithorax gene, consists of the remaining three genes: Ultrabithorax ("Ubx"), abdominal-A ("abd-A") and abdominal-B ("abd-B").

Labial.

The "lab" gene is the most anteriorly expressed gene. It is expressed in the head, primarily in the intercalary segment (an appendageless segment between the antenna and mandible), and also in the midgut. Loss of function of "lab" results in the failure of the "Drosophila" embryo to internalize the mouth and head structures that initially develop on the outside of its body (a process called head involution). Failure of head involution disrupts or deletes the salivary glands and pharynx. The "lab" gene was initially so named because it disrupted the labial appendage; however, the lab gene is not expressed in the labial segment, and the labial appendage phenotype is likely a result of the broad disorganization resulting from the failure of head involution.

Proboscipedia.

The "pb" gene is responsible for the formation of the labial and maxillary palps. Some evidence shows "pb" interacts with "Scr".

Deformed.

The "Dfd" gene is responsible for the formation of the maxillary and mandibular segments in the larval head. The mutant phenotypes of "Dfd" are similar to those of labial. Loss of function of "Dfd" in the embryo results in a failure of head involution (see labial gene), with a loss of larval head structures. Mutations in the adult have either deletions of parts of the head or transformations of head to thoracic identity.

Sex combs reduced.

The "Scr" gene is responsible for cephalic and thoracic development in "Drosophila" embryo and adult.

Antennapedia.

The second thoracic segment, or T2, develops a pair of legs and a pair of wings. The" Antp" gene specifies this identity by promoting leg formation and allowing (but not directly activating) wing formation. A dominant "Antp" mutation, caused by a chromosomal inversion, causes "Antp" to be expressed in the antennal imaginal disc, so that, instead of forming an antenna, the disc makes a leg, resulting in a leg coming out of the fly's head.

Ultrabithorax.

The third thoracic segment, or T3, bears a pair of legs and a pair of halteres (highly reduced wings that function in balancing during flight). "Ubx" patterns T3 largely by repressing genes involved in wing formation. The wing blade is composed of two layers of cells that adhere tightly to one another, and are supplied with nutrient by several wing veins. One of the many genes that "Ubx" represses is blistered, which activates proteins involved in cell-cell adhesion, and spalt, which patterns the placement of wing veins. In "Ubx" loss-of-function mutants, "Ubx" no longer represses wing genes, and the halteres develop as a second pair of wings, resulting in the famous four-winged flies. When "Ubx" is misexpressed in the second thoracic segment, such as occurs in flies with the "Cbx" enhancer mutation, it represses wing genes, and the wings develop as halteres, resulting in a four-haltered fly.

Abdominal-A.

In "Drosophila", "abd-A" is expressed along most of the abdomen, from abdominal segments 1 (A1) to A8. Expression of "abd-A" is necessary to specify the identity of most of the abdominal segments. A major function of "abd-A" in insects is to repress limb formation. In "abd-A" loss-of-function mutants, abdominal segments A2 through A8 are transformed into an identity more like A1. When "abd-A" is ectopically expressed throughout the embryo, all segments anterior of A4 are transformed to an A4-like abdominal identity. The "abd-A gene" also affects the pattern of cuticle generation in the ectoderm, and pattern of muscle generation in the mesoderm.

Abdominal-B.

Gene "abd-B" is transcribed in two different forms, a regulatory protein, and a morphogenic protein. Regulatory "abd-B" suppress embryonic ventral epidermal structures in the eighth and ninth segments of the "Drosophila" abdomen. Both the regulatory protein and the morphogenic protein are involved in the development of the tail segment.

Classification of Hox proteins.

Proteins with a high degree of sequence similarity are also generally assumed to exhibit a high degree of functional similarity, i.e. Hox proteins with identical homeodomains are assumed to have identical DNA-binding properties (unless additional sequences are known to influence DNA-binding). To identify the set of proteins between two different species that are most likely to be most similar in function, classification schemes are used. For Hox proteins, three different classification schemes exist: phylogenetic inference based, synteny-based, and sequence similarity-based. The three classification schemes provide conflicting information for Hox proteins expressed in the middle of the body axis ("Hox6-8" and "Antp, Ubx" and" abd-A"). A combined approach used phylogenetic inference-based information of the different species and plotted the protein sequence types onto the phylogenetic tree of the species. The approach identified the proteins that best represent ancestral forms ("Hox7" and "Antp") and the proteins that represent new, derived versions (or were lost in an ancestor and are now missing in numerous species).

Genes regulated by Hox proteins.

Hox genes act at many levels within developmental gene hierarchies: at the "executive" level they regulate genes that in turn regulate large networks of other genes (like the gene pathway that forms an appendage). They also directly regulate what are called realisator genes or effector genes that act at the bottom of such hierarchies to ultimately form the tissues, structures, and organs of each segment. Segmentation involves such processes as morphogenesis (differentiation of precursor cells into their terminal specialized cells), the tight association of groups of cells with similar fates, the sculpting of structures and segment boundaries via programmed cell death, and the movement of cells from where they are first born to where they will ultimately function, so it is not surprising that the target genes of Hox genes promote cell division, cell adhesion, apoptosis, and cell migration.

Enhancer sequences bound by homeodomains.

The DNA sequence bound by the homeodomain protein contains the nucleotide sequence TAAT, with the 5' terminal T being the most important for binding. This sequence is conserved in nearly all sites recognized by homeodomains, and probably distinguishes such locations as DNA binding sites. The base pairs following this initial sequence are used to distinguish between homeodomain proteins, all of which have similar recognition sites. For instance, the nucleotide following the TAAT sequence is recognized by the amino acid at position 9 of the homeodomain protein. In the maternal protein Bicoid, this position is occupied by lysine, which recognizes and binds to the nucleotide guanine. In Antennapedia, this position is occupied by glutamine, which recognizes and binds to adenine. If the lysine in Bicoid is replaced by glutamine, the resulting protein will recognize Antennapedia-binding enhancer sites.  However, all homeodomain-containing transcription factors bind essentially the same DNA sequence. The sequence bound by the homeodomain of a Hox protein is only six nucleotides long, and such a short sequence would be found at random many times throughout the genome, far more than the number of actual functional sites. Especially for Hox proteins, which produce such dramatic changes in morphology when misexpressed, this raises the question of how each transcription factor can produce such specific and different outcomes if they all bind the same sequence. One mechanism that introduces greater DNA sequence specificity to Hox proteins is to bind protein cofactors. Two such Hox cofactors are Extradenticle (Exd) and Homothorax (Hth). Exd and Hth bind to Hox proteins and appear to induce conformational changes in the Hox protein that increase its specificity.

Regulation of Hox genes.

Just as Hox genes regulate realisator genes, they are in turn regulated themselves by other genes. In Drosophila and some insects (but not most animals), Hox genes are regulated by gap genes and pair-rule genes, which are in their turn regulated by maternally-supplied mRNA. This results in a transcription factor cascade: maternal factors activate gap or pair-rule genes; gap and pair-rule genes activate Hox genes; then, finally, Hox genes activate realisator genes that cause the segments in the developing embryo to differentiate. Regulation is achieved via protein concentration gradients, called morphogenic fields. For example, high concentrations of one maternal protein and low concentrations of others will turn on a specific set of gap or pair-rule genes. In flies, stripe 2 in the embryo is activated by the maternal proteins Bicoid and Hunchback, but repressed by the gap proteins Giant and Kruppel. Thus, stripe 2 will only form wherever there is Bicoid and Hunchback, but "not" where there is Giant and Kruppel.  MicroRNA strands located in Hox clusters have been shown to inhibit more anterior hox genes ("posterior prevalence phenomenon"), possibly to better fine tune its expression pattern.  Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) has been shown to be abundant in Hox clusters. In humans, 231 ncRNA may be present. One of these, HOTAIR, silences in trans (it is transcribed from the HOXC cluster and inhibits late HOXD genes) by binding to Polycomb-group proteins (PRC2).  The chromatin structure is essential for transcription but it also requires the cluster to loop out of the chromosome territory.  In higher animals including humans, retinoic acid regulates differential expression of Hox genes along the anteroposterior axis. Genes in the 3' ends of Hox clusters are induced by retinoic acid resulting in expression domains that extend more anteriorly in the body compared to 5' Hox genes that are not induced by retinoic acid resulting in expression domains that remain more posterior.  Quantitative PCR has shown several trends regarding colinearity: the system is in equilibrium and the total number of transcripts depends on the number of genes present according to a linear relationship.

Collinearity.

In some organisms, especially vertebrates, the various Hox genes are situated very close to one another on the chromosome in groups or clusters. The order of the genes on the chromosome is the same as the expression of the genes in the developing embryo, with the first gene being expressed in the anterior end of the developing organism. The reason for this colinearity is not yet completely understood, but could be related to the activation of Hox genes in a temporal sequence by gradual unpacking of chromatin along a gene cluster. The diagram above shows the relationship between the genes and protein expression in flies.

Nomenclature.

The Hox genes are named for the homeotic phenotypes that result when their function is disrupted, wherein one segment develops with the identity of another (e.g. legs where antennae should be). Hox genes in different phyla have been given different names, which has led to confusion about nomenclature. The complement of Hox genes in "Drosophila" is made up of two clusters, the Antennapedia complex and the Bithorax complex, which together were historically referred to as the HOM-C (for Homeotic Complex). Although historically HOM-C genes have referred to "Drosophila" homologues, while Hox genes referred to vertebrate homologues, this distinction is no longer made, and both HOM-C and Hox genes are called Hox genes.

In other species.

Vertebrates.

Mice and humans have 39 Hox genes in four clusters:  The ancestors of vertebrates had a single Hox gene cluster, which was duplicated (twice) early in vertebrate evolution by whole genome duplications to give four Hox gene clusters: Hoxa, Hoxb, Hoxc and Hoxd. It is currently unclear whether these duplications occurred before or after divergence of lampreys and hagfish from the rest of vertebrates. Most mammals, amphibians, reptiles and birds have four HOX clusters, while most teleost fish, including zebrafish and medaka, have seven or eight Hox gene clusters because of an additional genome duplication which occurred in their evolutionary history. In zebrafish, one of the eight Hox gene clusters (a Hoxd cluster) has lost all protein-coding genes, and just a single microRNA gene marks the location of the original cluster.. In some teleost fish, such as salmon, an even more recent genome duplication occurred, doubling the seven or eight Hox gene clusters to give at least 13 clusters  Hox genes, especially those of the HoxA and HoxD clusters, are implicated in the limb regeneration abilities of Amphibians and Reptiles. In addition, one of the bat accelerated regions (analogous to human accelerated regions) called BAR116 is an enhancer that defines a unique expression pattern of HoxD genes in the fore and hind limbs, possibly playing a role in the evolution of wings.

Amphioxus.

Amphioxus such as "Branchiostoma floridae" have a single Hox cluster with 15 genes, known as "AmphiHox1" to "AmphiHox15".

Other Invertebrates.

Six Hox genes are dispersed in the genome of "Caenorhabditis elegans", a roundworm. "Hydra" and "Nematostella vectensis", both in the Phylum Cnidaria, have a few Hox/ParaHox-like homeobox genes. Hox gene expression has also been studied in brachiopods, annelids, and a suite of molluscs.

History.

The Hox genes are so named because mutations in them cause homeotic transformations. Homeotic transformations were first identified and studied by William Bateson in 1894, who coined the term "homeosis". After the rediscovery of Mendel's genetic principles, Bateson and others realized that some examples of homeosis in floral organs and animal skeletons could be attributed to variation in genes.  Definitive evidence for a genetic basis of some homeotic transformations was obtained by isolating homeotic mutants. The first homeotic mutant was found by Calvin Bridges in Thomas Hunt Morgan's laboratory in 1915. This mutant shows a partial duplication of the thorax and was therefore named Bithorax ("bx"). It transforms the third thoracic segment (T3) toward the second (T2). Bithorax arose spontaneously in the laboratory and has been maintained continuously as a laboratory stock ever since.  The genetic studies by Morgan and others provided the foundation for the systematic analyses of Edward B. Lewis and Thomas Kaufman, which provided preliminary definitions of the many homeotic genes of the Bithorax and Antennapedia complexes, and also showed that the mutant phenotypes for most of these genes could be traced back to patterning defects in the embryonic body plan.  Ed Lewis, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard and Eric F. Wieschaus identified and classified 15 genes of key importance in determining the body plan and the formation of body segments of the fruit fly "D. melanogaster" in 1980. For their work, Lewis, Nüsslein-Volhard, and Wieschaus were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995.  In 1983, the homeobox was discovered independently by researchers in two labs: Ernst Hafen, Michael Levine, and William McGinnis (in Walter Gehring's lab at the University of Basel, Switzerland) and Matthew P. Scott and Amy Weiner (in Thomas Kaufman's lab at Indiana University in Bloomington).

Future.

Hox genes play critical roles in the development of structures such as limbs, lungs, the nervous system, and eyes. As T. R. Lappin and colleagues observed in 2006, "Evolutionary conservation provides unlimited scope for experimental investigation of the functional control of the Hox gene network which is providing important insights into human disease." In the future, more research can be done in investigating the roles of Hox genes in Leukaemia and cancer (such as EOC).

Hox genes, a subset of homeobox genes, are a group of related genes that specify regions of the body plan of an embryo along the head-tail axis of animals. Hox proteins encode and specify the characteristics of 'position', ensuring that the correct structures form in the correct places of the body. For example, Hox genes in insects specify which appendages form on a segment (e.g. legs, antennae, and wings in fruit flies), and Hox genes in vertebrates specify the types and shape of vertebrae that will form. In segmented animals, Hox proteins thus confer segmental or positional identity, but do not form the actual segments themselves.

Hox gen či homeotický gen (Hox je zkratka pro "homeotický box", tedy homeobox) je označení pro některé geny, které hrají významnou roli v ontogenetickém (embryonálním) vývoji mnohých mnohobuněčných živočichů. Tyto geny pro ontogenetický vývoj obsahují homeobox, zvláštní sekvenci asi 183 párů bází. Hox geny obvykle tvoří na řetězci DNA shluky a společně se podílejí na vzniku např. anterior-posteriorální (předozadní) osy budoucího živočicha.


Description.

The missile is designed to engage vital ground targets, including armoured targets fitted out with built-in and add-on explosive reactive armor, at a range of up to 8 km when fired from a helicopter and 10 km when fired from a fixed-wing aircraft in daytime and up to 5 km at night, as well as air targets in conditions of air defense assets activity.  The Vikhr-1 missile is part of the Vikhr-M system, which also includes an automatic sight and a depressible launcher. Adopted in 1990.  The automatic sight is provided with TV and IR channels for target sighting, a laser beam channel for missile control, a laser rangefinder, an automatic target tracking unit, a digital computer and a system for stabilization and aiming the sighting and beam channels. The automatic sight provides for target detection and identification both by day and night, automatic target tracking and missile guidance, and generates exact information for gun and rocket firing. The guided missile consists of a HEAT fragmentation warhead fitted with a contact and a proximity fuze, an air-dynamic control actuator, control electronics, a motor and laser detector. It is kept in a sealed launching transporting container.  The multi-purpose warhead (two-stage HEAT and an additional fragmentation sleeve) allows the missile to be used against armoured, airborne and area targets alike. This is an advantage compared to the three different missiles required in the 9M120 Ataka-V complex. The use of the proximity fuze allows a near miss of up to 5 m and makes it possible to engage an air target at speeds of 500 m/s.  The Vikhr missile laser beam control system provides for its precise guidance owing to data transmission to the missile in the course of its launch, which is excluded in homing systems. The laser guidance principle is identical to that used by 9M117 Bastion or 9M119 Svir antiarmor missiles. The Vikhr missile control system has high jamming immunity because its receiver faces the carrier, thereby protecting it from jamming signals.  The high pinpoint target hit probability (reported 0.95 against stationary targets) is provided by the automatic target tracking system and highly accurate missile control system that makes allowance for changes in the parameters of the carrier and the target in the course of firing.  The missiles can be fired singly or in pairs (at the same target to increase lethality). The high flight speed allows it to engage targets rapidly. The system is capable of launching Vikhr missiles against two to four targets during a 30-second period and starting at a range of 10 km, which increases its lethality to three to four times that of earlier systems.

The 9K121 "Vikhr" (, ; NATO reporting name: AT-16 Scallion) is a Russian laser guided anti-tank missile. "9K121" is the GRAU designation for the missile system. The missile can be launched from warships, Ka-50 and Ka-52 helicopters, and Su-25T aircraft. It was first shown publicly at the 1992 Farnborough Airshow.

9K121 Vichr (v kódu NATO AT-16 „Scallion“) je ruský protitankový raketový komplet dlouhého dosahu naváděný laserovým paprskem. Raketa se pomocí vzadu umístěných zpětných senzorů navádí na střed laserového paprsku, který je vysílán ze zaměřovacího systému střelce směrem na cíl. Liší se tak od poloaktivního laserového navádění použitého např. u raket AGM-114 Hellfire. Řízená střela nese označení 9A1472. Byl vyvinut v konstrukční kanceláři KBP během osmdesátých let speciálně pro nový bitevní vrtulník Ka-50. Při jeho vývoji byl kladen velký důraz na podstatné zvýšení dosahu střely až na 10 km. Střela 9A1472 s tandemovou kumulativní hlavicí se k cíli pohybuje vysoce nadzvukovou rychlostí a vzdálenost 8 km překoná za 21 s. Celý proces navádění střely na cíl je automatizovaný.


Types of indices by weighting method.

Stock market indices could be segmented by their index weight methodology, or the rules on how stocks are allocated in the index, independent of its stock coverage. For example, the S&P 500 and the S&P 500 Equal Weight both covers the same group of stocks, but S&P 500 is weighted by market capitalization and S&P 500 Equal Weight is an equal weight index. Below is sample of common index weighting methods. In practice, many indices will impose constraints, such as concentration limits, on these rules.  Market-Capitalization Weighting based indices weight constituent stocks by its market capitalization (often shortened to "market-cap"), or its stock price by its number of shares outstanding, divided by the total market capitalization of all the constituents in the index. Under Capital Asset Pricing Model, the market-cap weighted market portfolio, which could be approximated with the market-cap weighted equity index portfolio, is mean-variance efficient, meaning that it produces the highest return for a given level of risk. Tracking portfolios of the market-cap weighted equity index could also be mean-variance efficient under the right assumptions, and they could be attractive investment portfolios. A market-cap weighted index can also be thought of as a liquidity-weighted index since the largest-cap stocks tend to have the highest liquidity and the greatest capacity to handle investor flows; portfolios with such stocks could have very high investment capacity.  Free-float adjusted Market-Capitalization Weighting based indices adjust market-cap index weights by each constituent's shares outstanding for closely or strategically held shares that are not generally available to the public market. Such shares may be held by governments, affiliated companies, founders, and employees. Foreign ownership limits imposed by government regulation could also be subject to free-float adjustments. These adjustments inform investors of potential liquidity issues from these holdings that are not apparent from the raw number of a stock's shares outstanding. Free-float adjustments are complex undertakings, and different index providers have different free-float adjustment methods, which could sometimes produce different results.  Price Weighting based indices weight constituent stocks by its price per share divided by the sum of all share prices in the index. A price-weighted index can be thought of as a portfolio with one share of each constituent stock. However, a stock split for any constituent stock of the index would cause the weight in the index of the stock that split to decrease, even in the absence of any meaningful change in the fundamentals of that stock. This feature makes price-weighted indices unattractive as benchmarks for passive investment strategies and portfolio managers. Nonetheless, many price-weighted indices, such as the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the Nikkei 225, are followed widely as visible indicators of day-to-day market movements.  Equal Weighting based indices give each constituent stocks weights of 1/n, where n represents the number of stocks in the index. This method produces the least-concentrated portfolios. Equal weighting of stocks in an index is considered a naive strategy because it does not show preference towards any single stock. Zeng and Luo (2013) notes that broad market equally weighted indices are factor-indifferent and randomizes factor mispricing. Equal weight stock indices tends to overweight small-cap stocks and to underweight large-cap stocks compared to a market-cap weighted index. These biases tend to give equal weight stock indices higher volatility and lower liquidity than market-cap weight indices. For example, the Barron's 400 Index assigns an equal value of 0.25% to each of the 400 stocks included in the index, which together add up to the 100% whole.  Fundamental Factor Weighting based indices, or Fundamentally based indexes, weight constituent stocks based on stock fundamental factors rather stock financial market data. Fundamental factors could include sales, income, dividends, and other factors analyzed in fundamental analysis. Similar to fundamental analysis, fundamental weighting assumes that stock market prices will converge to an intrinsic price implied by fundamental attributes. Certain fundamental factors are also used in generic factor weighting indices.  Factor Weighting based indices weight constituent stocks based on market risk factors of stocks as measured in the context of factor models, such as the Fama–French three-factor model. These indices Common factors include Growth, Value, Size, Yield, Momentum, Quality, and Volatility. Passive factor investing strategies are sometimes known as "smart beta" strategies. Investors could use factor investment strategies or portfolios to complement a market-cap weighted indexed portfolio by tilting or changing their portfolio exposure to certain factors.  Volatility Weighting based indices weight constituent stocks by the inverse of their relative price volatility. Price volatility is defined differently by each index provider, but two common methods include the standard deviation of the past 252 trading days (approximately one calendar year), and the weekly standard deviation of price returns for the past 156 weeks (approximately three calendar years).  Minimum Variance Weighting based indices weight constituent stocks using a mean-variance optimization process. In a volatility weighted indices, highly volatile stocks are given less weight in the index, while in a minimum variance weighting index, highly volatile stocks that are negatively correlated with the rest of the index can be given relatively larger weights than they would be given in the volatility weighted index.

Ethical stock market indices.

Several indices are based on ethical investing, and include only companies that meet certain ecological or social criteria, such as the Calvert Social Index, Domini 400 Social Index, FTSE4Good Index, Dow Jones Sustainability Index, STOXX Global ESG Leaders Index, several Standard Ethics Aei indices, and the Wilderhill Clean Energy Index. Other ethical stock market indices may be based on diversity weighting (Fernholz, Garvy, and Hannon 1998). In 2010, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation announced the initiation of a stock index that complies with Sharia's ban on alcohol, tobacco and gambling.  Critics of such initiatives argue that many firms satisfy mechanical "ethical criteria", e.g. regarding board composition or hiring practices, but fail to perform ethically with respect to shareholders, e.g. Enron. Indeed, the seeming "seal of approval" of an ethical index may put investors more at ease, enabling scams. One response to these criticisms is that trust in the corporate management, index criteria, fund or index manager, and securities regulator, can never be replaced by mechanical means, so "market transparency" and "disclosure" are the only long-term-effective paths to fair markets. From a financial perspective, it is not obvious whether ethical indices or ethical funds will out-perform their more conventional counterparts. Theory might suggest that returns would be lower since the investible universe is artificially reduced and with it portfolio efficiency. On the other hand, companies with good social performances might be better run, have more committed workers and customers, and be less likely to suffer reputation damage from incidents (oil spillages, industrial tribunals, etc.) and this might result in lower share price volatility. The empirical evidence on the performance of ethical funds and of ethical firms versus their mainstream comparators is very mixed for both stock and debt markets.

Types of indices by coverage.

Stock market indices may be classified and segmented by the index coverage set of stocks. The coverage of an index is the underlying group of stocks, typically grouped together with some rationale from their underlying economics or underlying investor demand, that the index is trying to represent or track. For example, a 'world' or 'global' stock market index — such as the MSCI World or the S&P Global 100 — includes stocks from all over the world, and satisfies investor demand for an index for broad global stocks. Regional indices that make up the MSCI World index, such as the MSCI Emerging Markets index, includes stocks from countries with a similar level of economic development, which satisfies the investor demand for an index for emerging market stocks that may face similar economic fundamentals. The coverage of a stock market index is independent from the weighting method. For example, the S&P 500 market-cap weighted index covers the 500 largest stocks from the S&P Total Market Index, but an equally weighted S&P 500 index is also available with the same coverage.  Country Coverage indices represents the performance of the stock market of a given nation—and by proxy, reflects investor sentiment on the state of its economy. The most regularly quoted market indices are national indices composed of the stocks of large companies listed on a nation's largest stock exchanges, such as the S&P 500 Index in the United States, the Nikkei 225 in Japan, the NIFTY 50 in India, and the FTSE 100 in the United Kingdom.  Regional Coverage indices represents the performance of the stock market of a given geographical region. Some examples of these indices are the FTSE Developed Europe Index, and the FTSE Developed Asia Pacific Index.  Global Coverage indices represents the performance of the global stock market. The FTSE Global Equity Index Series includes over 16,000 companies.  Exchange-based Coverage indices may be based on exchange, such as the NASDAQ-100 or groups of exchanges, such as the Euronext 100 or OMX Nordic 40.  Sector-based coverage indices track the performance of specific sectors of the market. Some examples include the Wilshire US REIT Index which tracks more than 80 real estate investment trusts and the NASDAQ Biotechnology Index which consists of approximately 200 firms in the biotechnology industry.  Other indices may track companies of a certain size, a certain type of management, or more specialized criteria such as in fundamentally based indexes.

Presentation of index returns.

Some indices, such as the S&P 500 Index, have returns shown calculated with different methods. These versions can differ based on how the index components are weighted and on how dividends are accounted. For example, there are three versions of the S&P 500 Index: price return, which only considers the price of the components, total return, which accounts for dividend reinvestment, and net total return, which accounts for dividend reinvestment after the deduction of a withholding tax.  The Wilshire 4500 and Wilshire 5000 indices have five versions each: full capitalization total return, full capitalization price, float-adjusted total return, float-adjusted price, and equal weight. The difference between the full capitalization, float-adjusted, and equal weight versions is in how index components are weighted.

Criticism of capitalization-weighting.

One argument for capitalization weighting is that investors must, in aggregate, hold a capitalization-weighted portfolio anyway. This then gives the average return for all investors; if some investors do worse, other investors must do better (excluding costs).  Investors use theories such as modern portfolio theory to determine allocations. This considers risk and return and does not consider weights relative to the entire market. This may result in overweighting assets such as value or small-cap stocks, if they are believed to have a better return for risk profile. These investors believe that they can get a better result because other investors are not very good. The capital asset pricing model says that "all" investors are highly intelligent, and it is impossible to do better than the market portfolio, the capitalization-weighted portfolio of all assets. However, empirical tests conclude that market indices are not efficient. This can be explained by the fact that these indices do not include all assets or by the fact that the theory does not hold. The practical conclusion is that using capitalization-weighted portfolios is not necessarily the optimal method.  As a consequence, capitalization-weighting has been subject to severe criticism (see e.g. Haugen and Baker 1991, Amenc, Goltz, and Le Sourd 2006, or Hsu 2006), pointing out that the mechanics of capitalization-weighting lead to trend following strategies that provide an inefficient risk-return trade-off.

Indices and passive investment management.

Passive management is an investing strategy involving investing in index funds, which are structured as mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that track market indices. The SPIVA (S&P Indices vs. Active) annual "U.S. Scorecard", which measures the performance of indices versus actively managed mutual funds, finds the vast majority of active management mutual funds underperform their benchmarks, such as the S&P 500 Index, after fees. Since index funds attempt to replicate the holdings of an index, they eliminate the need for — and thus many costs of — the research entailed in active management, and have a lower churn rate (the turnover of securities, which can result in transaction costs and capital gains taxes).  Unlike a mutual fund, which is priced daily, an exchange-traded fund is priced continuously, is optionable, and can be sold short.

A stock index, or stock market index, is an index that measures a stock market, or a subset of the stock market, that helps investors compare current price levels with past prices to calculate market performance. It is computed from the prices of selected stocks (typically a weighted arithmetic mean).

Burzovní index je ukazatelem vývoje daného trhu jako celku, slouží ke sledování vývoje trhu v čase a jeho vývojovým tendencím. Protože burzovní index odráží jak současný stav vývoje trhu, tak i dlouhodobý vývoj trhu s jeho tendencemi, lze jej také použít jako určité měřítko úspěšnosti dlouhodobého vývoje investorova portfolia z hlediska výnosů. Každý burzovní či akciový, mimoburzovní trh má svůj vlastní index za jednotlivé druhy cenných papírů obchodovaných na trhu. Za nejdůležitější jsou považovány indexy akciové.