title: Marshawn Lynch

text: During the regular season finale, in a loss against the Los Angeles Chargers, Lynch became the 31st player in NFL history to rush for over 10,000 rushing yards. Overall, in the 2017 season, he finished with 207 carries for 891 rushing yards and seven rushing touchdowns to go along with 20 receptions for 151 receiving yards.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch returned to the Raiders' backfield for the 2018 season opener under new head coach Jon Gruden. He recorded a rushing touchdown in the first three games of the season against the Los Angeles Rams, Denver Broncos, and Miami Dolphins, all losses for the Raiders. In Week 4, he recorded 20 carries for 130 rushing yards in the 45–42 overtime victory over the Cleveland Browns. On October 22, Lynch was placed on injured reserve with a groin injury. Overall, he finished the 2018 season with 90 carries for 376 rushing yards and three rushing touchdowns in six games. After the 2018 season, Lynch's plans were to not play football again and retire.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch returned to the NFL during the final week of the 2019 regular season, signing with the Seahawks alongside former teammate Robert Turbin on December 23, 2019, after Seattle lost three running backs to injury. Lynch made his debut with the Seahawks in Week 17 against the San Francisco 49ers on "NBC Sunday Night Football". During the game, Lynch rushed 12 times for 34 yards and a touchdown in the 26–21 loss. During the Seahawks' 17–9 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in the of the playoffs, Lynch broke a tackle to score a five-yard, first half touchdown. In the against the Green Bay Packers, Lynch rushed 12 times for 26 yards and two touchdowns during the 28–23 loss.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: With his three additional playoff touchdowns in the 2019–20 NFL playoffs, Lynch moved into fourth place on the all-time postseason rushing touchdowns list. He is tied with Terrell Davis and John Riggins with 12.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: During a postgame interview on January 12, 2020, Lynch was asked if he'll return for the Seahawks in the 2020 NFL season. “I mean, shoot," he responded, "We’ll see what's happening." In media ahead of the 2020 NFL Scouting Combine, Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll was also asked about Lynch returning and said "We'll see. You never know." Lynch was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame All-2010s Team.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In a December 2020 interview with Conan O'Brien, Lynch said that teams have expressed interest in signing him and that he is willing to sign with a team that is a Super Bowl contender.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: The nickname "Beast Mode" became a popular way to refer to Lynch and his style of play. While the term was in use since 1996 with the debut of the animated "Transformers" series "", Lynch claims it developed as his nickname because one of his childhood coaches would refer to him as a beast.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch has since developed the nickname into his Beast Mode brand, which includes an apparel line, retail store, and at least one partnership with international brands. The first Beast Mode store opened in Oakland, California on February 7, 2016, during Super Bowl 50. On April 8, 2015, rapper Ludacris released the video for his single "Beast Mode," named after Lynch, who appears in the video. Ludacris mimics Lynch's interview at the Super Bowl media day by saying "I'm just here so I won't get fined" to reporters before Lynch comes in and adds "You know why we here". Lynch makes a cameo in the video game "". He also appeared in the fourth episode of the sixth season of "Tanked" where they created a special fish tank for "BeastMode" first aired June 19, 2015. He is featured in the game "" as the playable character "Dante 'Beast Mode' Jefferson".


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch was approached by former Pro BMX rider Todd Lyons, who noticed that Lynch rode his BMX products. Lyons, acting as the current brand manager for SE Bikes BMX company, partnered with Marshawn to create a Beast Mode Ripper: an adult-sized BMX bike with customized Beast Mode branding as a 2018 SE Bicycle.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: On September 19, 2017, Lynch launched his own ad-supported Beast Mobile cellphone service that allows subscribers to pay their phone bill by engaging in ads and offers.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In November 2018, Lynch and Richard Sherman were announced as the first two team owners in a proposed Fan Controlled Football League, a concept based on Project Fanchise's use of a mobile app for fans to call plays for the team that they had initiated with the Salt Lake Screaming Eagles of the Indoor Football League (IFL) a year earlier. The league was delayed and eventually played its first game, rebranded as just Fan Controlled Football (FCF), in February 2021 with Lynch as one of three owners of a team called the Beasts. Lynch dressed for the game, but decided not to play.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In 2019, Lynch was also announced as co-owner of the Oakland Panthers of the Indoor Football League (IFL) alongside Roy Choi, who also owns the IFL's Cedar Rapids River Kings and San Diego Strike Force. Introduced to Choi by his brother Davonte Sapp-Lynch who plays in the IFL, Lynch saw the indoor football team as a way to keep professional football in Oakland after the departure of the Raiders for Las Vegas. Davonte Sapp-Lynch was one of the first players the Panthers signed. The Panthers were to start playing in the 2020 season, but it was cancelled after the opening week due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Panthers also went dormant for the 2021 season.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch has several relatives who have also played professional football. His cousins are wide receiver Robert Jordan, who played alongside Lynch at Cal from 2004 to 2006, and journeyman quarterback Josh Johnson. Lynch's uncle, Lorenzo Lynch, had an eleven-year career in the NFL.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: While in Buffalo, Lynch embraced the Buffalo community, in stark contrast to former Bills running back Willis McGahee, as noted in an interview with ESPN's Kenny Mayne. In the video interview, which has become an internet sensation, Lynch talks about his love of Applebee's and his teammates joke that he loves chain restaurants. Lynch is also known for his frequent community involvement. In 2013, he was featured in Red Bull's campaign "Athletes Give Back" when he put together a successful food drive for his hometown. During his first stint in Seattle, Lynch once gave his backpack to junior teammate Doug Baldwin after Baldwin had inquired where he got it from. When the Seahawks defensive coordinator Ken Norton Jr's father died, Lynch was the only member of the organization who went to console him at the airport. In 2014, he found a lost wallet outside Seattle at a gas station. Lynch went to the address to return it.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch frequently ate Skittles during games, a habit that started when he was in high school. After Lynch was shown eating the candy during a nationally televised game on December 5, 2011, Mars offered him a two-year supply of Skittles and a custom dispenser for his locker. On December 30, 2011, he was fined $10,000 for wearing cleats featuring a Skittles pattern. On January 28, 2014, an official deal with Skittles was announced. The agreement stated that in addition to personal compensation, $10,000 would be donated to his Fam First Foundation for each touchdown he scored in Super Bowl XLVIII.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch also has an affinity for purchasing grills, saying he has been wearing the gold jewelry since his junior year in high school. After the 2011 season, Lynch purchased a customized Seahawks grill in time for the 2012 season.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch is an entrepreneur in the cannabis industry, launching a line of cannabis products in 2021 under the brand name Dodi Blunts. The company distributes blunts to dispensaries throughout the Bay Area, with a portion of the proceeds going to Last Prisoner Project, a drug policy reform group. Lynch says he has been a long-time consumer of cannabis and that it helped him deal with pain during his football career.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In April 2021, Lynch joined the ownership group of the Oakland Roots SC of the USL Championship. In the same month, he also joined the PFL as a brand ambassador and investor. On April 18, 2022, the Seattle Kraken of the National Hockey League announced that Lynch had joined its ownership group.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In November 2021, Lynch was revealed as an investor in PORTL Inc., the hologram startup, as part of its $12M Series A round. Other investors included Tim Draper, Quavo of Migos, Albert Pujols, Breanna Stewart, and Luke Walton.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: In June 2008, Lynch pled guilty to a hit and run charge and had his driver's license revoked. Lynch was driving his 2008 Porsche Cayenne at 3:30 a.m. through Buffalo's bar district when he struck a woman in the street and failed to stop. When questioned, Lynch stated, "I didn't know my car had hit anyone or anything."


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: The California Highway Patrol arrested Lynch for driving under the influence (DUI) on July 14, 2012, after he was observed driving erratically. He was reported to have registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.10 on a breathalyzer at the Alameda County Sheriff's Office North County Jail in Oakland. He was incarcerated hours before hosting a youth football camp. A motion to dismiss the case was denied in November 2013, but in December the trial date was pushed back until after the NFL season. Lynch's attorney, Ivan Golde, accused the police of bending the truth and changing stories to try to convict Lynch. The case was settled in February 2014 when Lynch pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of reckless driving. Lynch received two years of probation and a $1,033 fine, and had to attend drivers' safety classes, but did not have his license suspended.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: On August 9, 2022, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers arrested Lynch on suspicion of DUI near the Las Vegas Strip. The police report stated that Lynch was found asleep in a parked car that had noticeable damage. Lynch was charged with driving under the influence, as well as three other crimes. He posted bail of $3,381 and was released. Lynch's lawyers disputed the charges.


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch is known for being reluctant to talk to the media. He was fined $50,000 by the NFL for refusing to talk to the media throughout the 2013 NFL season, which inspired fans of the Seattle Seahawks to fundraise that amount. However, the fine was subsequently pulled back in an agreement that he would be fined another $50,000 if he broke the same rule, after which he donated the money raised by Seahawks fans to pay his fine to charity. Lynch was fined $100,000 on November 19, 2014, for once again refusing to speak to the media. A few days later, after the Seahawks' win over Arizona, he answered nearly every question from reporters with "Yeah". On December 21, 2014, after the second Seahawks–Cardinals game, he answered nearly every question from reporters with some version of "Thanks for asking" or "I appreciate you asking." The only people to get an "extended interview" were Deion Sanders, former teammate turned analyst Michael Robinson, and Michael Silver, in which they discovered his reluctance came from his upbringing and the fact that he felt that he was "forced to do something." On January 27, 2015, during Super Bowl Media Day in Glendale, Arizona, Lynch continued the trend of declining to give detailed media interviews by showing up for five minutes, and answering every question with some variation of "I'm just here so I won't get fined," and the following day "You know why I'm here."


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Four days before Super Bowl XLIX, Lynch appeared in a guest segment on "Conan", playing a head-to-head game of the then-unreleased "Mortal Kombat X" against prospective Super Bowl opponent tight end Rob Gronkowski. Contrary to his media appearances earlier that week, Lynch appeared upbeat and loquacious, discussing his fondness of "Mario Kart" and explaining his touchdown celebration moves. The video went viral, was widely covered in media, and gathered about 8 million views before the Super Bowl. Lynch re-appeared on the show prior to Super Bowl LI along with Gronkowski, Tom Brady, LeGarrette Blount, and Dwight Freeney playing the game "For Honor".


title: Marshawn Lynch

text: Lynch appeared as himself alongside Will Arnett in an episode of "Murderville", a comedic murder-mystery streaming television series released by Netflix in February 2022. Within the episode, Lynch improvises alongside Arnett and attempts to solve a fictional murder mystery.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Star Wars Rebels is an American 3D animated science fiction television series produced by Lucasfilm Animation and set in the "Star Wars" universe. It takes place over a decade after "" and progressing toward the events of the original "Star Wars" film. It depicts the Galactic Empire hunting down the last of the Jedi while a fledgling rebellion against the Empire emerges. The visual style of the series is inspired by the original "Star Wars" trilogy concept art by Ralph McQuarrie. The series features new characters, along with some from the original trilogy and from the previous animated series, "". The series comprises four seasons.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The series premiered as a one-hour television film, "Spark of Rebellion", on October 3, 2014, on Disney Channel prior to the premiere of the series on October 13 on Disney XD. The second season premiered on June 20, 2015, with a one-hour television film, "The Siege of Lothal". The third season premiered on September 24, 2016, with the television film, "Steps Into Shadow". The fourth and final season premiered on October 16, 2017, with another one-hour television film, "Heroes of Mandalore". Its final episode aired on March 5, 2018.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Dave Filoni, Simon Kinberg and Greg Weisman served as executive producers of the first season. Weisman left the show after the first season. Filoni was also the supervising director for the first two seasons, a role he relinquished after accepting a promotion that expanded his creative role into overseeing all Lucasfilm Animation projects; he chose Justin Ridge to succeed him for the third season. Filoni re-assumed the role for the fourth season.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The series has been generally well received with several award wins and nominations. "Rebels" garnered praise for its writing, characters, voice acting, score, and expansion of the franchise's mythology, although it received some criticism for its animation. The show was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Animated Series and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Program. "Rebels" became the first recipient of the Saturn Award for Best Animated Series on Television, winning for its final two seasons.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: A number of tie-in media have been released to expand upon the series' lore such as the comic book series "Kanan", the novel "", and the novel series . Characters, storylines, and elements introduced in the series would also appear in subsequent "Star Wars" media.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Fourteen years after the of both the Galactic Republic and the Jedi Order and the rise of the Galactic Empire, a motley group of rebels unite aboard a light freighter called the "Ghost" and begin to conduct covert operations against Imperial forces on and around the planet Lothal and on other planets that are menaced by the Empire.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The first two episodes, titled "Spark of Rebellion", premiered on October 3, 2014, on Disney Channels worldwide and on Family Channel in Canada. In Australia, the series premiered on October 17 on Disney XD. "The Siege of Lothal" premiered on June 28, 2015, and the second season debuted on October 18. In Canada, the series premiered on October 19 on the DHX-owned Disney XD. However, due to DHX Media losing the rights to Disney content, the show was later moved to Disney Channel. The second season premiered on November 7, and it was moved to the Corus-owned Disney XD channel on December 1.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: In the Middle East and Africa, "Spark of Rebellion" premiered on October 11 and the series debuted on October 18 on Disney XD. "Siege of Lothal" premiered on October 10, followed the official season premiere on October 17. In Southeast Asia, "Spark of Rebellion" premiered on Disney XD on October 4 and the series officially started on November 29. "Siege of Lothal" premiered on October 3 on Disney XD and Disney Channel, and the second season was released on October 24. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the series debuted on October 16 on Disney XD. "Siege of Lothal" premiered on July 18, 2015, followed by the second-season debut on October 17.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: "Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on DVD in the US at all retailers on October 14, 2014. DVD bonus features include character shorts, a 3D model kit of the "Ghost" ship, and a preview of season 1.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The Complete Season One of "Star Wars Rebels" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on September 1, 2015, in America, and in Germany on September 10, 2015. The Season 1 collection contains the expanded version of "Spark of Rebellion" with the Darth Vader/Grand Inquisitor prologue shown on ABC-TV. The Complete Season Two of "Star Wars Rebels" was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on DVD and Blu-ray on August 30, 2016, in North America. The Complete Season Three of "Star Wars Rebels" was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on August 29, 2017. The Complete Season Four is announced to be released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 15, 2018, in Germany, and July 31, 2018, in the United States.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: In the United States, the one-hour special garnered 2.74 million viewers on Disney Channel and 2.40 million viewers on ABC (excluding Boston, whose local station WCVB preempted it for a Steve Harvey special). Worldwide, it delivered a total of 6.5 million viewers. On Disney Channel, the first and second episodes delivered 2.33 million and 1.92 million viewers, respectively. The third and fourth episodes garnered 2.32 million and 1.84 million, respectively. The fifth, sixth and seventh episodes were watched by 1.43 million, 1.30 million and 1.60 million viewers, respectively. The eighth and ninth episodes got 1.92 and 1.44 million viewers, respectively.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: In Canada, the second episode was watched by 274,500 viewers, making it the most-watched broadcast ever on the network. In the United Kingdom, the film was the highest-rated broadcast that week, with 81,000 viewers.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has received a 92% positive score, based on 13 reviews with an average rating of 8.20/10, the website's critics consensus reads, ""Rebels" adds new dimension to an unexplored sector of the "Star Wars" timeline, inserting a ragtag group of lovable characters into a galactic adventure that all ages can enjoy." Seasons 2 and 3 have received a 100% score based on 6 reviews for season 2 and 6 reviews for season 3, with an average rating of 7.40/10 for season 2 and 9/10 for season 3. Season 4 has received a 100% score based on 10 reviews with an average rating of 9.20/10, the website's critics consensus reads, "The Force is with these "Rebels" in a thrilling conclusion that plays to its characters' strengths while serving up plenty of galactic spectacle." On Metacritic, the first season has a weighted average score of 78 out of 100 based on 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: "IGN" and "Variety" in particular had strong praise for the pilot film, "Spark of Rebellion", with their only criticism being the appearance of the Wookiees in the film, being cited as not all that impressive compared to the rest of the animation. SyFy Wire calls the series "Pure fun", further stating that it "captures the awe and joy of "A New Hope"" and is "thematically ambitious" with a "dramatic edge". Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media called the series "exciting" with cartoon violence and "positive messages." Ashby also argued that the series has a "broad appeal for kids and adults" particularly those interested in Star Wars.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Chopper and the "Ghost" appear in the 2016 film "". Hera's surname is called on a loudspeaker at the Rebel base on Yavin IV, where Chopper can briefly be seen. In addition, the "Ghost" takes part in the climactic battle over Scarif.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The "Ghost" also appears in the 2019 film "" during the final battle over Exegol. The voice of Freddie Prinze Jr. as Kanan Jarrus can also be heard in the film as one of the voices of Jedi past who provide Rey with encouragement to defeat Emperor Palpatine.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: On September 2, 2014, Del Rey Books published "Star Wars: A New Dawn", a prequel novel by John Jackson Miller telling the story of how Kanan and Hera met (set about six years before the series). One of the first canon "Star Wars" novels to be released by Disney Publishing Worldwide and Del Rey Books, It includes a foreword by Dave Filoni.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: In 2017, a new novel, entitled "", was released. The book marked the entrance of Grand Admiral Thrawn into the current canon. It was written by the character's original creator, Timothy Zahn.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: A sequel to "Thrawn", titled "", was released on July 24, 2018. It explored Thrawn's partnerships with Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker. Another Thrawn novel, "" was released on July 23, 2019. It takes place during the events of "Star Wars Rebels" fourth season.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Hera Syndulla would go on to appear in Alexander Freed's "Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron" novel trilogy, as a general of the recently christened New Republic's eponymous starfighter squadron in the final days of the Galactic Civil War, hunting down the weakened Imperial forces after the battle of Endor and the death of Emperor Palpatine.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: From April 1, 2015, through March 16, 2016, Marvel Comics published a 12-issue comic series, titled "Kanan", and set during the events of the first season. Written by former executive producer of the series Greg Weisman and illustrated by Pepe Larraz, Jacopo Camagni and Andrea Broccardo, the story is centered on Kanan having flashbacks to his days as a Padawan in the Jedi Temple and the Clone Wars. The other members of the "Ghost" crew also appear.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: In the summer of 2017, Marvel announced that a comic book miniseries adaptation of Zahn's "Thrawn" novel was being planned, scheduled to be released in early 2018. The first issue was released on February 14, 2018, with new issues being released over the following five months.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: A few days after the series finale was aired, IDW Publishing released the seventh issue of the long-running "Star Wars Adventures" multi-era comic book series, which contained the first of a two-part comic arc, set between the second and third season, in which the Spectres embark on a mission to save a rare endangered bird from Imperial custody. The second part appeared in the next issue, which was released on March 28, 2018.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: A side-scrolling run-and-gun game based on the show's first season, titled "Star Wars Rebels: Recon Missions", was released by Disney Mobile on iOS, Android and Windows Store in early 2015, before being discontinued on July 28, 2016, due to the limitations of the support team. Ezra Bridger is the only playable character, with other characters available via in-app purchases, which also grant early access to most of the game's levels in the mobile versions and are required to play the full campaign in the Windows Store version.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Additionally, several of the characters from the series are playable in other games such as "Disney Infinity 3.0", "Angry Birds Star Wars II", "Roblox" (as virtual accessories and gears), "" (as downloadable content only), "Star Wars: Galactic Defense", "" and "".


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Vanessa Marshall reprises her role as Hera Syndulla for the 2020 video game "", providing voice work and motion capture for the character.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: The characters will be making their live action debuts in the upcoming series "Ahsoka" with Sabine being portrayed by Natasha Liu Bordizzo and Ezra will be portrayed by Eman Esfandi. Hera Syndulla, Huyang and Chopper are also set to appear in the series.


title: Star Wars Rebels

text: Characters in Star Wars Rebels have taken influence from Biblical, Hebrew, and Greco-Roman mythological names. Star Wars writers have often used biblical names for Jedi while giving galactic Imperial characters Roman names. In 2015 an interview was conducted with Dave Filoni and Simon Kinberg where Kinsberg stated that they wanted to connect to the original films by using the biblical naming scheme seen in the films. Both Caleb and Ezra are historically Hebrew names with Ezra translating to "Helper". Characters with Roman names include Clone Captain Rex which translates to "King" in Latin (although that character was created for "The Clone Wars") along with Sabine Wren, Admiral Brom Titus and Admiral Kassius Konstantine.


title: Wormhole

text: A wormhole (Einstein-Rosen bridge) is a hypothetical structure connecting disparate points in spacetime, and is based on a special solution of the Einstein field equations.


title: Wormhole

text: A wormhole can be visualized as a tunnel with two ends at separate points in spacetime (i.e., different locations, different points in time, or both).


title: Wormhole

text: Wormholes are consistent with the general theory of relativity, but whether wormholes actually exist remains to be seen. Many scientists postulate that wormholes are merely projections of a fourth spatial dimension, analogous to how a two-dimensional (2D) being could experience only part of a three-dimensional (3D) object.


title: Wormhole

text: Theoretically, a wormhole might connect extremely long distances such as a billion light years, or short distances such as a few meters, or different points in time, or even different universes.


title: Wormhole

text: In 1995, Matt Visser suggested there may be many wormholes in the universe if cosmic strings with negative mass were generated in the early universe. Some physicists, such as Frank Tipler and Kip Thorne, have suggested how to make wormholes artificially.


title: Wormhole

text: For a simplified notion of a wormhole, space can be visualized as a two-dimensional surface. In this case, a wormhole would appear as a hole in that surface, lead into a 3D tube (the inside surface of a cylinder), then re-emerge at another location on the 2D surface with a hole similar to the entrance. An actual wormhole would be analogous to this, but with the spatial dimensions raised by one. For example, instead of circular holes on a 2D plane, the entry and exit points could be visualized as spherical holes in 3D space leading into a four-dimensional "tube" similar to a spherinder.


title: Wormhole

text: Another way to imagine wormholes is to take a sheet of paper and draw two somewhat distant points on one side of the paper. The sheet of paper represents a plane in the spacetime continuum, and the two points represent a distance to be traveled, but theoretically a wormhole could connect these two points by folding that plane ("i.e." the paper) so the points are touching. In this way it would be much easier to traverse the distance since the two points are now touching.


title: Wormhole

text: In 1928, German mathematician, philosopher and theoretical physicist Hermann Weyl proposed a wormhole hypothesis of matter in connection with mass analysis of electromagnetic field energy; however, he did not use the term "wormhole" (he spoke of "one-dimensional tubes" instead).


title: Wormhole

text: American theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (inspired by Weyl's work) coined the term "wormhole" in a 1957 paper co-authored by Charles Misner:


title: Wormhole

text: Wormholes have been defined both "geometrically" and "topologically". From a topological point of view, an intra-universe wormhole (a wormhole between two points in the same universe) is a compact region of spacetime whose boundary is topologically trivial, but whose interior is not simply connected. Formalizing this idea leads to definitions such as the following, taken from Matt Visser's "Lorentzian Wormholes" (1996).


title: Wormhole

text: Geometrically, wormholes can be described as regions of spacetime that constrain the incremental deformation of closed surfaces. For example, in Enrico Rodrigo's "The Physics of Stargates, "a wormhole is defined informally as:


title: Wormhole

text: The first type of wormhole solution discovered was the Schwarzschild wormhole, which would be present in the Schwarzschild metric describing an "eternal black hole", but it was found that it would collapse too quickly for anything to cross from one end to the other. Wormholes that could be crossed in both directions, known as traversable wormholes, were thought to be possible only if exotic matter with negative energy density could be used to stabilize them. However, physicists later reported that microscopic traversable wormholes may be possible and not require any exotic matter, instead requiring only electrically charged fermionic matter with small enough mass that it cannot collapse into a charged black hole. While such wormholes, if possible, may be limited to transfers of information, humanly traversable wormholes may exist if reality can broadly be described by the Randall–Sundrum model 2, a brane-based theory consistent with string theory.


title: Wormhole

text: Schwarzschild wormholes, also known as "Einstein–Rosen bridges" (named after Albert Einstein and Nathan Rosen), are connections between areas of space that can be modeled as vacuum solutions to the Einstein field equations, and that are now understood to be intrinsic parts of the maximally extended version of the Schwarzschild metric describing an eternal black hole with no charge and no rotation. Here, "maximally extended" refers to the idea that the spacetime should not have any "edges": it should be possible to continue this path arbitrarily far into the particle's future or past for any possible trajectory of a free-falling particle (following a geodesic in the spacetime).


title: Wormhole

text: In order to satisfy this requirement, it turns out that in addition to the black hole interior region that particles enter when they fall through the event horizon from the outside, there must be a separate white hole interior region that allows us to extrapolate the trajectories of particles that an outside observer sees rising up "away" from the event horizon. And just as there are two separate interior regions of the maximally extended spacetime, there are also two separate exterior regions, sometimes called two different "universes", with the second universe allowing us to extrapolate some possible particle trajectories in the two interior regions. This means that the interior black hole region can contain a mix of particles that fell in from either universe (and thus an observer who fell in from one universe might be able to see light that fell in from the other one), and likewise particles from the interior white hole region can escape into either universe. All four regions can be seen in a spacetime diagram that uses Kruskal–Szekeres coordinates.


title: Wormhole

text: In this spacetime, it is possible to come up with coordinate systems such that if a hypersurface of constant time (a set of points that all have the same time coordinate, such that every point on the surface has a space-like separation, giving what is called a 'space-like surface') is picked and an "embedding diagram" drawn depicting the curvature of space at that time, the embedding diagram will look like a tube connecting the two exterior regions, known as an "Einstein–Rosen bridge". Note that the Schwarzschild metric describes an idealized black hole that exists eternally from the perspective of external observers; a more realistic black hole that forms at some particular time from a collapsing star would require a different metric. When the infalling stellar matter is added to a diagram of a black hole's geography, it removes the part of the diagram corresponding to the white hole interior region, along with the part of the diagram corresponding to the other universe.


title: Wormhole

text: The Einstein–Rosen bridge was discovered by Ludwig Flamm in 1916, a few months after Schwarzschild published his solution, and was rediscovered by Albert Einstein and his colleague Nathan Rosen, who published their result in 1935. However, in 1962, John Archibald Wheeler and Robert W. Fuller published a paper showing that this type of wormhole is unstable if it connects two parts of the same universe, and that it will pinch off too quickly for light (or any particle moving slower than light) that falls in from one exterior region to make it to the other exterior region.


title: Wormhole

text: According to general relativity, the gravitational collapse of a sufficiently compact mass forms a singular Schwarzschild black hole. In the Einstein–Cartan–Sciama–Kibble theory of gravity, however, it forms a regular Einstein–Rosen bridge. This theory extends general relativity by removing a constraint of the symmetry of the affine connection and regarding its antisymmetric part, the torsion tensor, as a dynamic variable. Torsion naturally accounts for the quantum-mechanical, intrinsic angular momentum (spin) of matter. The minimal coupling between torsion and Dirac spinors generates a repulsive spin–spin interaction that is significant in fermionic matter at extremely high densities. Such an interaction prevents the formation of a gravitational singularity. Instead, the collapsing matter reaches an enormous but finite density and rebounds, forming the other side of the bridge.


title: Wormhole

text: Although Schwarzschild wormholes are not traversable in both directions, their existence inspired Kip Thorne to imagine traversable wormholes created by holding the "throat" of a Schwarzschild wormhole open with exotic matter (material that has negative mass/energy).


title: Wormhole

text: Other non-traversable wormholes include "Lorentzian wormholes" (first proposed by John Archibald Wheeler in 1957), wormholes creating a spacetime foam in a general relativistic spacetime manifold depicted by a Lorentzian manifold, and "Euclidean wormholes" (named after Euclidean manifold, a structure of Riemannian manifold).


title: Wormhole

text: The Casimir effect shows that quantum field theory allows the energy density in certain regions of space to be negative relative to the ordinary matter vacuum energy, and it has been shown theoretically that quantum field theory allows states where energy can be "arbitrarily" negative at a given point. Many physicists, such as Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, and others, argued that such effects might make it possible to stabilize a traversable wormhole.The only known natural process that is theoretically predicted to form a wormhole in the context of general relativity and quantum mechanics was put forth by Leonard Susskind in his ER = EPR conjecture. The quantum foam hypothesis is sometimes used to suggest that tiny wormholes might appear and disappear spontaneously at the Planck scale, and stable versions of such wormholes have been suggested as dark matter candidates. It has also been proposed that, if a tiny wormhole held open by a negative mass cosmic string had appeared around the time of the Big Bang, it could have been inflated to macroscopic size by cosmic inflation.


title: Wormhole

text: Lorentzian traversable wormholes would allow travel in both directions from one part of the universe to another part of that same universe very quickly or would allow travel from one universe to another. The possibility of traversable wormholes in general relativity was first demonstrated in a 1973 paper by Homer Ellis and independently in a 1973 paper by K. A. Bronnikov. Ellis analyzed the topology and the geodesics of the Ellis drainhole, showing it to be geodesically complete, horizonless, singularity-free, and fully traversable in both directions. The drainhole is a solution manifold of Einstein's field equations for a vacuum spacetime, modified by inclusion of a scalar field minimally coupled to the Ricci tensor with antiorthodox polarity (negative instead of positive). (Ellis specifically rejected referring to the scalar field as 'exotic' because of the antiorthodox coupling, finding arguments for doing so unpersuasive.) The solution depends on two parameters: , which fixes the strength of its gravitational field, and , which determines the curvature of its spatial cross sections. When is set equal to 0, the drainhole's gravitational field vanishes. What is left is the Ellis wormhole, a nongravitating, purely geometric, traversable wormhole.


title: Wormhole

text: Kip Thorne and his graduate student Mike Morris, unaware of the 1973 papers by Ellis and Bronnikov, manufactured, and in 1988 published, a duplicate of the Ellis wormhole for use as a tool for teaching general relativity. For this reason, the type of traversable wormhole they proposed, held open by a spherical shell of exotic matter, was from 1988 to 2015 referred to in the literature as a "Morris–Thorne wormhole".


title: Wormhole

text: Later, other types of traversable wormholes were discovered as allowable solutions to the equations of general relativity, including a variety analyzed in a 1989 paper by Matt Visser, in which a path through the wormhole can be made where the traversing path does not pass through a region of exotic matter. However, in the pure Gauss–Bonnet gravity (a modification to general relativity involving extra spatial dimensions which is sometimes studied in the context of brane cosmology) exotic matter is not needed in order for wormholes to exist—they can exist even with no matter. A type held open by negative mass cosmic strings was put forth by Visser in collaboration with Cramer "et al.", in which it was proposed that such wormholes could have been naturally created in the early universe.


title: Wormhole

text: Wormholes connect two points in spacetime, which means that they would in principle allow travel in time, as well as in space. In 1988, Morris, Thorne and Yurtsever worked out how to convert a wormhole traversing space into one traversing time by accelerating one of its two mouths. However, according to general relativity, it would not be possible to use a wormhole to travel back to a time earlier than when the wormhole was first converted into a time "machine". Until this time it could not have been noticed or have been used.


title: Wormhole

text: To see why exotic matter is required, consider an incoming light front traveling along geodesics, which then crosses the wormhole and re-expands on the other side. The expansion goes from negative to positive. As the wormhole neck is of finite size, we would not expect caustics to develop, at least within the vicinity of the neck. According to the optical Raychaudhuri's theorem, this requires a violation of the averaged null energy condition. Quantum effects such as the Casimir effect cannot violate the averaged null energy condition in any neighborhood of space with zero curvature, but calculations in semiclassical gravity suggest that quantum effects may be able to violate this condition in curved spacetime. Although it was hoped recently that quantum effects could not violate an achronal version of the averaged null energy condition, violations have nevertheless been found, so it remains an open possibility that quantum effects might be used to support a wormhole.


title: Wormhole

text: In some hypotheses where general relativity is modified, it is possible to have a wormhole that does not collapse without having to resort to exotic matter. For example, this is possible with R gravity, a form of () gravity.


title: Wormhole

text: The impossibility of faster-than-light relative speed applies only locally. Wormholes might allow effective superluminal (faster-than-light) travel by ensuring that the speed of light is not exceeded locally at any time. While traveling through a wormhole, subluminal (slower-than-light) speeds are used. If two points are connected by a wormhole whose length is shorter than the distance between them "outside" the wormhole, the time taken to traverse it could be less than the time it would take a light beam to make the journey if it took a path through the space "outside" the wormhole. However, a light beam traveling through the same wormhole would beat the traveler.


title: Wormhole

text: If traversable wormholes exist, they might allow time travel. A proposed time-travel machine using a traversable wormhole might hypothetically work in the following way: One end of the wormhole is accelerated to some significant fraction of the speed of light, perhaps with some advanced propulsion system, and then brought back to the point of origin. Alternatively, another way is to take one entrance of the wormhole and move it to within the gravitational field of an object that has higher gravity than the other entrance, and then return it to a position near the other entrance. For both these methods, time dilation causes the end of the wormhole that has been moved to have aged less, or become "younger", than the stationary end as seen by an external observer; however, time connects differently "through" the wormhole than "outside" it, so that synchronized clocks at either end of the wormhole will always remain synchronized as seen by an observer passing through the wormhole, no matter how the two ends move around. This means that an observer entering the "younger" end would exit the "older" end at a time when it was the same age as the "younger" end, effectively going back in time as seen by an observer from the outside. One significant limitation of such a time machine is that it is only possible to go as far back in time as the initial creation of the machine; it is more of a path through time rather than it is a device that itself moves through time, and it would not allow the technology itself to be moved backward in time.


title: Wormhole

text: According to current theories on the nature of wormholes, construction of a traversable wormhole would require the existence of a substance with negative energy, often referred to as "exotic matter". More technically, the wormhole spacetime requires a distribution of energy that violates various energy conditions, such as the null energy condition along with the weak, strong, and dominant energy conditions. However, it is known that quantum effects can lead to small measurable violations of the null energy condition, and many physicists believe that the required negative energy may actually be possible due to the Casimir effect in quantum physics. Although early calculations suggested a very large amount of negative energy would be required, later calculations showed that the amount of negative energy can be made arbitrarily small.


title: Wormhole

text: In 1993, Matt Visser argued that the two mouths of a wormhole with such an induced clock difference could not be brought together without inducing quantum field and gravitational effects that would either make the wormhole collapse or the two mouths repel each other, or otherwise prevent information from passing through the wormhole. Because of this, the two mouths could not be brought close enough for causality violation to take place. However, in a 1997 paper, Visser hypothesized that a complex "Roman ring" (named after Tom Roman) configuration of an N number of wormholes arranged in a symmetric polygon could still act as a time machine, although he concludes that this is more likely a flaw in classical quantum gravity theory rather than proof that causality violation is possible.


title: Wormhole

text: A possible resolution to the paradoxes resulting from wormhole-enabled time travel rests on the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.


title: Wormhole

text: In 1991 David Deutsch showed that quantum theory is fully consistent (in the sense that the so-called density matrix can be made free of discontinuities) in spacetimes with closed timelike curves. However, later it was shown that such a model of closed timelike curves can have internal inconsistencies as it will lead to strange phenomena like distinguishing non-orthogonal quantum states and distinguishing proper and improper mixture. Accordingly, the destructive positive feedback loop of virtual particles circulating through a wormhole time machine, a result indicated by semi-classical calculations, is averted. A particle returning from the future does not return to its universe of origination but to a parallel universe. This suggests that a wormhole time machine with an exceedingly short time jump is a theoretical bridge between contemporaneous parallel universes.


title: Wormhole

text: Because a wormhole time-machine introduces a type of nonlinearity into quantum theory, this sort of communication between parallel universes is consistent with Joseph Polchinski's proposal of an Everett phone (named after Hugh Everett) in Steven Weinberg's formulation of nonlinear quantum mechanics.


title: Wormhole

text: Wormhole can also be depicted in Penrose diagram of Schwarzschild black hole. In the Penrose diagram, an object traveling faster than light will cross the black hole and will emerge from another end into a different space, time or universe. This will be an interuniversal wormhole.


title: Wormhole

text: Theories of "wormhole metrics" describe the spacetime geometry of a wormhole and serve as theoretical models for time travel. An example of a (traversable) wormhole metric is the following:


title: Wormhole

text: For the combined field, gravity and electricity, Einstein and Rosen derived the following Schwarzschild static spherically symmetric solution


title: Wormhole

text: In order to eliminate singularities, if one replaces formula_3 by formula_4 according to the equation:


title: Wormhole

text: Wormholes are a common element in science fiction because they allow interstellar, intergalactic, and sometimes even interuniversal travel within human lifetime scales. In fiction, wormholes have also served as a method for time travel.


title: Millet

text: Millets () are a highly varied group of small-seeded grasses, widely grown around the world as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food. Most species generally referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets also belong to various other taxa.


title: Millet

text: Millets are important crops in the semiarid tropics of Asia and Africa (especially in India, Mali, Nigeria, and Niger), with 97% of millet production in developing countries. This crop is favored due to its productivity and short growing season under dry, high-temperature conditions.


title: Millet

text: Millets are indigenous to many parts of the world. The most widely grown millets are sorghum and pearl millets, which are important crops in India and parts of Africa. Finger millet, proso millet, and foxtail millet are also important crop species.


title: Millet

text: Millets may have been consumed by humans for about 7,000 years and potentially had "a pivotal role in the rise of multi-crop agriculture and settled farming societies."


title: Millet

text: Generally, millets are small-grained, annual, warm-weather cereals belonging to the grass family. They are highly tolerant of drought and other extreme weather conditions and have a similar nutrient content to other major cereals.


title: Millet

text: The different species of millets are not necessarily closely related. All are members of the family Poaceae (the grasses) but can belong to different tribes or even subfamilies.


title: Millet

text: The various species called millet were initially domesticated in different parts of the world most notably East Asia, South Asia, West Africa, and East Africa. However, the domesticated varieties have often spread well beyond their initial area.


title: Millet

text: Specialized archaeologists called palaeoethnobotanists, relying on data such as the relative abundance of charred grains found in archaeological sites, hypothesize that the cultivation of millets was of greater prevalence in prehistory than rice, especially in northern China and Korea. Millets also formed important parts of the prehistoric diet in Indian, Chinese Neolithic and Korean Mumun societies.


title: Millet

text: Proso millet ("Panicum miliaceum") and foxtail millet ("Setaria italica") were important crops beginning in the Early Neolithic of China. Some of the earliest evidence of millet cultivation in China was found at Cishan (north), where proso millet husk phytoliths and biomolecular components have been identified around 10,300–8,700 years ago in storage pits along with remains of pit-houses, pottery, and stone tools related to millet cultivation. Evidence at "Cishan" for foxtail millet dates back to around 8,700 years ago. The oldest evidence of noodles in China were made from these two varieties of millet in a 4,000-year-old earthenware bowl containing well-preserved noodles found at the Lajia archaeological site in north China.


title: Millet

text: Palaeoethnobotanists have found evidence of the cultivation of millet in the Korean Peninsula dating to the Middle Jeulmun pottery period (around 3500–2000 BCE). Millet continued to be an important element in the intensive, multicropping agriculture of the Mumun pottery period (about 1500–300 BCE) in Korea. Millets and their wild ancestors, such as barnyard grass and panic grass, were also cultivated in Japan during the Jōmon period some time after 4000 BCE.


title: Millet

text: Chinese myths attribute the domestication of millet to Shennong, a legendary Emperor of China, and Hou Ji, whose name means Lord Millet.


title: Millet

text: Little millet ("Panicum sumatrense") is believed to have been domesticated around 5000 before present in India subcontinent and Kodo millet ("Paspalum scrobiculatum") around 3700 before present, also in Indian subcontinent. Various millets have been mentioned in some of the Yajurveda texts, identifying foxtail millet ("priyaṅgu"), Barnyard millet ("aṇu") and black finger millet ("śyāmāka"), indicating that millet cultivation was happening around 1200 BCE in India.


title: Millet

text: Pearl millet ("Pennisetum glaucum") was definitely domesticated in Africa by 3500 before present, though 8000 before present is thought likely. Early evidence includes finds at Birimi in West Africa with the earliest at Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania.


title: Millet

text: Pearl millet was domesticated in the Sahel region of West Africa, where its wild ancestors are found. Evidence for the cultivation of pearl millet in Mali dates back to 2500 BCE, and pearl millet is found in the Indian subcontinent by 2300 BCE.


title: Millet

text: Finger millet is originally native to the highlands of East Africa and was domesticated before the third millennium BCE. Its cultivation had spread to South India by 1800 BCE.


title: Millet

text: The cultivation of common millet as the earliest dry crop in East Asia has been attributed to its resistance to drought, and this has been suggested to have aided its spread.


title: Millet

text: Millet was growing wild in Greece as early as 3000 BCE, and bulk storage containers for millet have been found from the Late Bronze Age in Macedonia and northern Greece. Hesiod describes that "the beards grow round the millet, which men sow in summer." And millet is listed along with wheat in the third century BCE by Theophrastus in his "Enquiry into Plants".


title: Millet

text: Research on millets is carried out by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and ICAR-Indian Institute of Millets Research in Telangana, India, and by the United States Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Research Service at Tifton, Georgia, United States.


title: Millet

text: Pearl millet is one of the two major crops in the semiarid, impoverished, less fertile agriculture regions of Africa and southeast Asia. Millets are not only adapted to poor, dry infertile soils, but they are also more reliable under these conditions than most other grain crops. This has, in part, made millet production popular, particularly in countries surrounding the Sahara in western Africa.


title: Millet

text: Millets, however, do respond to high fertility and moisture. On a per-hectare basis, millet grain production can be 2–4 times higher with use of irrigation and soil supplements. Improved breeds of millet with enhanced disease resistance can significantly increase farm yield. There has been cooperation between poor countries to improve millet yields. For example, 'Okashana 1', a variety developed in India from a natural-growing millet variety in Burkina Faso, doubled yields. This breed was selected for trials in Zimbabwe. From there it was taken to Namibia, where it was released in 1990 and enthusiastically adopted by farmers. 'Okashana 1' became the most popular variety in Namibia, the only non-Sahelian country where pearl millet—locally known as "mahangu"—is the dominant food staple for consumers. 'Okashana 1' was then introduced to Chad. The breed has significantly enhanced yields in Mauritania and Benin.


title: Millet

text: In 2020, global production of millet was 30.5 million tonnes, led by India with 41% of the world total (table). Niger also had significant production.


title: Millet

text: In India, various alcoholic beverages are produced from millets. Millet is also the base ingredient for the distilled liquor "rakshi".


title: Millet

text: Millets are major food sources in arid and semiarid regions of the world, and feature in the traditional cuisine of many others. In western India, sorghum (called "jowar", "jola", "jonnalu", "jwaarie", or "jondhahlaa" in Gujarati, Kannada, Telugu, Hindi and Marathi languages, respectively; "mutthaari", "kora", or "panjappullu" in Malayalam; or "cholam" in Tamil) has been commonly used with millet flour (called "jowari" in western India) for hundreds of years to make the local staple, hand-rolled (that is, made without a rolling pin) flat bread ("rotla" in Gujarati, "bhakri" in Marathi, or "roti" in other languages). Another cereal grain popularly used in rural areas and by poor people to consume as a staple in the form of "roti". Other millets such as "ragi" (finger millet) in Karnataka, "naachanie" in Maharashtra, or "kezhvaragu" in Tamil, "ragulu" in Telugu, with the popular "ragi rotti" and "Ragi mudde" is a popular meal in Karnataka. Ragi, as it is popularly known, is dark in color like rye, but rougher in texture.


title: Millet

text: Millet porridge is a traditional food in Russian, German, and Chinese сuisines. In Russia, it is eaten sweet (with milk and sugar added at the end of the cooking process) or savoury with meat or vegetable stews. In China, it is eaten without milk or sugar, frequently with beans, sweet potato, and/or various types of squash. In Germany, it is also eaten sweet, boiled in water with apples added during the boiling process and honey added during the cooling process.


title: Millet

text: Millet is also the main ingredient in a Vietnamese sweet snack called bánh đa kê. It contains a layer of smashed millet and mungbean topped with sliced dried coconut meat wrapped in a crunchy rice cake. It is a specialty of Hanoi.


title: Millet

text: Per capita consumption of millets as food varies in different parts of the world, with consumption being the highest in Western Africa. In the Sahel region, millet is estimated to account for about 35 percent of total cereal food consumption in Burkina Faso, Chad and the Gambia. In Mali and Senegal, millets constitute roughly 40 percent of total cereal food consumption per capita, while in Niger and arid Namibia it is over 65 percent (see "mahangu"). Other countries in Africa where millets are a significant food source include Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda. Millet is also an important food item for the population living in the drier parts of many other countries, especially in eastern and central Africa, and in the northern coastal countries of western Africa. In developing countries outside Africa, millet has local significance as a food in parts of some countries, such as China, India, Burma and North Korea.


title: Millet

text: The use of millets as food fell between the 1970s and the 2000s, both in urban and rural areas, as developing countries such as India have experienced rapid economic growth and witnessed a significant increase in per capita consumption of other cereals.


title: Millet

text: People affected by gluten-related disorders, such as coeliac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and wheat allergy sufferers, who need a gluten-free diet, can replace gluten-containing cereals in their diets with millet. Nevertheless, while millet does not contain gluten, its grains and flour may be contaminated with gluten-containing cereals.


title: Millet

text: In addition to being used for seed, millet is also used as a grazing forage crop. Instead of letting the plant reach maturity, it can be grazed by stock and is commonly used for sheep and cattle.


title: Millet

text: Millet is a C4 plant, which means that it has good water-use efficiency and utilizes high temperature and is therefore a summer crop. A C4 plant uses a different enzyme in photosynthesis from C3 plants, and this is why it improves water efficiency.


title: Millet

text: In southern Australia millet is used as a summer quality pasture, utilizing warm temperatures and summer storms. Millet is frost-sensitive and is sown after the frost period, once soil temperature has stabilised at 14 °C or higher. It is sown at a shallow depth.


title: Millet

text: Millet grows rapidly and can be grazed 5–7 weeks after sowing, when it is 20–30 cm high. The highest feed value is from the young green leaf and shoots. The plant can quickly come to head, so it must be managed accordingly because as the plant matures, the value and palatability of feed reduces.


title: Millet

text: The Japanese millets ("Echinochloa esculenta") are considered the best for grazing and in particular Shirohie, a new variety of Japanese millet, is the best suited variety for grazing. This is due to a number of factors: it gives better regrowth and is later to mature compared to other Japanese millets; it is cheap – cost of seed is $2–$3 per kg, and sowing rates are around 10 tons per hectare for dryland production; it is quick to establish, can be grazed early, and is suitable for both sheep and cattle.


title: Millet

text: Compared to forage sorghum, which is grown as an alternative grazing forage, animals gain weight faster on millet, and it has better hay or silage potential, although it produces less dry matter. Lambs do better on millet compared to sorghum. Millet does not contain prussic acid, which can be in sorghum. Prussic acid poisons animals by inhibiting oxygen utilisation by the cells and is transported in the blood around the body — ultimately the animal will die from asphyxia. There is no need for additional feed supplements such as Sulphur or salt blocks with millet.


title: Millet

text: The rapid growth of millet as a grazing crop allows flexibility in its use. Farmers can wait until sufficient late spring / summer moisture is present and then make use of it. It is ideally suited to irrigation where livestock finishing is required.


title: Millet

text: A reference serving of raw millet ("Panicum miliaceum" or proso millet) provides of food energy and is a rich source (20% or more of the Daily Value, DV) of protein, dietary fiber, several B vitamins and numerous dietary minerals, especially manganese at 76% DV (USDA nutrient table). Raw millet is 9% water, 73% carbohydrates, 4% fat and 11% protein (table).


title: Millet

text: The following table shows the nutrient content of millet compared to major staple foods in a raw form. Raw forms, however, are not edible and cannot be fully digested. These must be prepared and cooked as appropriate for human consumption. In processed and cooked form, the relative nutritional and antinutritional contents of each of these grains is remarkably different from that of raw forms reported in this table. The nutritional value in the cooked form depends on the cooking method.


title: Junji Ito

text: Junji Ito was born on July 31, 1963 in Sakashita, now a part of Nakatsugawa, Gifu. He began his experience in the horror world at a very young age, with his first manga being "Mummy Teacher" by Kazuo Umezu; his two older sisters read Umezu and Shinichi Koga in magazines, and consequently, he began reading them too. He grew up in the countryside, in a small city next to Nagano. In the house where he lived, the bathroom was at the end of an underground tunnel, where there were spider crickets; such experiences were later reflected in his works.


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito began to draw manga at the age of 4, taking inspiration from the works he read in magazines. He continued to draw as a hobby until he became a dental technician in 1984, where he struggled to find a balance between the two.


title: Junji Ito

text: In 1987, he submitted a short story to "Monthly Halloween" that won an honorable mention in the Kazuo Umezu Prize (with Umezu himself as one of the judges). This story ran for 13 years and was later serialized as "Tomie".


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito drew the cover of Mucc's 2002 album "Hōmura Uta". He collaborated with the band again in 2020, for the cover of their made-to-order single "Shōfu 2020". Ito teamed up with Takashi Nagasaki and former diplomat Masaru Sato to create "Yūkoku no Rasputin" (2010–2012), based on Sato's personal experiences in Russia, for "Big Comic".


title: Junji Ito

text: Film director Guillermo del Toro cited on his official Twitter account that Ito was originally a collaborator for the video game "Silent Hills", of which both Del Toro and game designer Hideo Kojima were the main directors. However, a year after its announcement, the project was canceled by Konami, the IP's owner. Ito and Del Toro would later lend their likenesses to Kojima's next project, "Death Stranding".


title: Junji Ito

text: In 2019, Ito received his first Eisner Award for his manga adaptation of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" for "Best Adaptation from Another Medium."


title: Junji Ito

text: In 2021, Ito received two more Eisner Awards for his works "Remina" and "Venus in the Blind Spot", receiving """Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Asia" and "Best Writer/Artist."


title: Junji Ito

text: In 2006, Ito married Ayako Ishiguro (石黒亜矢子), a picture book artist. As of 2013, they have two children.


title: Junji Ito

text: In addition to Kazuo Umezu, Ito has cited Hideshi Hino, Shinichi Koga, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Edogawa Ranpo and H. P. Lovecraft as being major influences on his work. Ito has stated that Umezu has inspired his storytelling, and Hino has inspired his ability in creating a mood for a work. He has also stated that he admires Guillermo del Toro's work.


title: Junji Ito

text: A connection between Lovecraft's work and the spirals of "Uzumaki" has been placed before, as well as a common theme of cosmic horror.


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito has been inspired by horror since childhood, with his first manga being written about a protagonist with an eye in the middle of his hand, attacking him; this was heavily influenced by "Kappa no Sanpei". Ito was inspired by the occult horror films of the 1970’s (such as Dracula and Frankenstein), as well as period dramas of ghosts. He has also found inspiration from Rakugo storytellers who tell Kaiden ghost stories, incorporating it into "No Longer Human".


title: Junji Ito

text: "Tomie" was inspired by the death of one of his classmates. Ito felt strange that a boy he knew suddenly disappeared from the world, and he kept expecting the boy to show up again; from this came the idea of a girl who is supposed to have died but then just shows up as if nothing had happened. "Gyo" was influenced by his childhood anti-war feelings, due to his parents' tragic and frightening war stories, and the shark attack scenes from "Jaws". "The Hanging Balloons" was based on a childhood dream. "Long Dream" was inspired by his sister mentioning research of dreams being instantaneous, and "Slug Girl" was inspired by Ito moving his tongue around in the mirror and finding that it resembled a slug.


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito studied and graduated from a vocational school with a degree in Dental Technology before working as a dental technician, where he worked for 3 years until he became a full-time mangaka. Ito found anatomical interest in the books for the medical students, which he used to study muscles. He is also cited stating the schooling gave him more inspiration for his tools in drawing, namely pens and how to whittle pencils like dentures.


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito's work consists of many subgenres of horror, mainly being host to the subgenres of body horror and cosmic horror. Much of his work is based solely in them, with other themes including a relationship of predator to prey, a loss of humanity, and obsession being common. The universe Ito depicts is cruel and capricious; his characters often find themselves victims of malevolent unnatural circumstances for no discernible reason or punished out of proportion for minor infractions against an unknown and incomprehensible natural order. He takes inspiration from his own fears as well, including death, war, insects, and being watched.


title: Junji Ito

text: Ito has been cited saying that he draws the manifestation of the mind becoming reality, represented in body horror.


title: Junji Ito

text: "Tomie" was adapted into a series of films, beginning in 1999. Several other works of Ito's have subsequently been adapted for film, television and videogaming:


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed during the Cold War (1947–1991). These states followed the ideology of Marxism–Leninism, in opposition to the capitalist Western Bloc. The Eastern Bloc was often called the Second World, whereas the term "First World" referred to the Western Bloc and "Third World" referred to the non-aligned countries that were mainly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America but notably also included former pre-1948 Soviet ally SFR Yugoslavia, which was located in Europe.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In Western Europe, the term Eastern Bloc generally referred to the USSR and Central and Eastern European countries in the Comecon (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania). In Asia, the Soviet Bloc comprised Mongolia, Vietnam, Laos, Kampuchea, North Korea and China. In the Americas the countries aligned with the Soviet Union included Cuba from 1961 and for limited periods Nicaragua and Grenada.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The term Eastern Bloc was often used interchangeably with the term Second World. This broadest usage of the term would include not only Maoist China and Cambodia, but also short-lived Soviet satellites such as the Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949), the People's Republic of Azerbaijan (1945–1946) and the Republic of Mahabad (1946), as well as the Marxist–Leninist states straddling the Second and Third Worlds before the end of the Cold War: the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (from 1967), the People's Republic of the Congo (from 1969), the People's Republic of Benin, the People's Republic of Angola and People's Republic of Mozambique from 1975, the People's Revolutionary Government of Grenada from 1979 to 1983, the Derg/People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia from 1974, and the Somali Democratic Republic from 1969 until the Ogaden War in 1977. Many states were accused by the Western Bloc of being in the Eastern Bloc when they were actually part of the Non-Aligned Movement. The most limited definition of the Eastern Bloc would only include the Warsaw Pact states and the Mongolian People's Republic as former satellite states most dominated by the Soviet Union. Cuba's defiance of complete Soviet control was noteworthy enough that Cuba was sometimes excluded as a satellite state altogether, as it sometimes intervened in other Third World countries even when the Soviet Union opposed this.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Post-1991 usage of the term "Eastern Bloc" may be more limited in referring to the states forming the Warsaw Pact (1955–1991) and Mongolia (1924–1992), which are no longer communist states. Sometimes they are more generally referred to as "the countries of Eastern Europe under communism", excluding Mongolia, but including Yugoslavia and Albania which had both split with the Soviet Union by the 1960s.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Even though Yugoslavia was a socialist country, it was not a member of the COMECON or the Warsaw Pact. Parting with the USSR in 1948, Yugoslavia did not belong to the East, but it also did not belong to the West because of its socialist system and its status as a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement. However, some sources consider Yugoslavia to be a member of the Eastern Bloc. Others consider Yugoslavia not to be a member after it broke with Soviet policy in the 1948 Tito–Stalin split.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1922, the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Byelorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian SFSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Soviet Union. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who viewed the Soviet Union as a "socialist island", stated that the Soviet Union must see that "the present capitalist encirclement is replaced by a socialist encirclement".


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1939, the USSR entered into the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany that contained a secret protocol that divided Romania, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Finland into German and Soviet spheres of influence. Eastern Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Bessarabia in northern Romania were recognized as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence. Lithuania was added in a second secret protocol in September 1939.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The Soviet Union had invaded the portions of eastern Poland assigned to it by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact two weeks after the German invasion of western Poland, followed by co-ordination with German forces in Poland. During the Occupation of East Poland by the Soviet Union, the Soviets liquidated the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting addressed the future structure of the "Polish region". Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization of the newly Soviet-annexed areas. Soviet authorities collectivized agriculture, and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Initial Soviet occupations of the Baltic countries had occurred in mid-June 1940, when Soviet NKVD troops raided border posts in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, followed by the liquidation of state administrations and replacement by Soviet cadres. Elections for parliament and other offices were held with single candidates listed and the official results fabricated, purporting pro-Soviet candidates' approval by 92.8 percent of the voters in Estonia, 97.6 percent in Latvia, and 99.2 percent in Lithuania. The fraudulently installed "people's assemblies" immediately declared each of the three corresponding countries to be "Soviet Socialist Republics" and requested their "admission into Stalin's Soviet Union". This formally resulted in the Soviet Union's annexation of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia in August 1940. The international community condemned this annexation of the three Baltic countries and deemed it illegal.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1939, the Soviet Union unsuccessfully attempted an invasion of Finland, subsequent to which the parties entered into an interim peace treaty granting the Soviet Union the eastern region of Karelia (10% of Finnish territory), and the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic was established by merging the ceded territories with the KASSR. After a June 1940 Soviet Ultimatum demanding Bessarabia, Bukovina, and the Hertsa region from Romania, the Soviets entered these areas, Romania caved to Soviet demands and the Soviets occupied the territories.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In June 1941, Germany broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact by invading the Soviet Union. From the time of this invasion to 1944, the areas annexed by the Soviet Union were part of Germany's Ostland (except for the Moldavian SSR). Thereafter, the Soviet Union began to push German forces westward through a series of battles on the Eastern Front.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In the aftermath of World War II on the Soviet-Finnish border, the parties signed another peace treaty ceding to the Soviet Union in 1944, followed by a Soviet annexation of roughly the same eastern Finnish territories as those of the prior interim peace treaty as part of the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: From 1943 to 1945, several conferences regarding Post-War Europe occurred that, in part, addressed the potential Soviet annexation and control of countries in Central Europe. There were various Allied plans for state order in Central Europe for post-war. While Joseph Stalin tried to get as many states under Soviet control as possible, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill preferred a Central European Danube Confederation to counter these countries against Germany and Russia. Churchill's Soviet policy regarding Central Europe differed vastly from that of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, with the former believing Soviet leader Stalin to be a "devil"-like tyrant leading a vile system.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: When warned of potential domination by a Stalin dictatorship over part of Europe, Roosevelt responded with a statement summarizing his rationale for relations with Stalin: "I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of a man. ... I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask for nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace". While meeting with Stalin and Roosevelt in Tehran in 1943, Churchill stated that Britain was vitally interested in restoring Poland as an independent country. Britain did not press the matter for fear that it would become a source of inter-allied friction.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In February 1945, at the conference at Yalta, Stalin demanded a Soviet sphere of political influence in Central Europe. Stalin eventually was convinced by Churchill and Roosevelt not to dismember Germany. Stalin stated that the Soviet Union would keep the territory of eastern Poland they had already taken via invasion in 1939, and wanted a pro-Soviet Polish government in power in what would remain of Poland. After resistance by Churchill and Roosevelt, Stalin promised a re-organization of the current pro-Soviet government on a broader democratic basis in Poland. He stated that the new government's primary task would be to prepare elections.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The parties at Yalta further agreed that the countries of liberated Europe and former Axis satellites would be allowed to "create democratic institutions of their own choice", pursuant to "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live". The parties also agreed to help those countries form interim governments "pledged to the earliest possible establishment through free elections" and "facilitate where necessary the holding of such elections".


title: Eastern Bloc

text: At the beginning of the July–August 1945 Potsdam Conference after Germany's unconditional surrender, Stalin repeated previous promises to Churchill that he would refrain from a "sovietization" of Central Europe. In addition to reparations, Stalin pushed for "war booty", which would permit the Soviet Union to directly seize property from conquered nations without quantitative or qualitative limitation. A clause was added permitting this to occur with some limitations.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: At first, the Soviets concealed their role in other Eastern Bloc politics, with the transformation appearing as a modification of Western "bourgeois democracy". As a young communist was told in East Germany, "it's got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control". Stalin felt that socioeconomic transformation was indispensable to establish Soviet control, reflecting the Marxist–Leninist view that material bases, the distribution of the means of production, shaped social and political relations. The Soviet Union also co-opted the Eastern European countries into its sphere of influence by making reference to some cultural commonalities.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Moscow-trained cadres were put into crucial power positions to fulfill orders regarding sociopolitical transformation. Elimination of the bourgeoisie's social and financial power by expropriation of landed and industrial property was accorded absolute priority. These measures were publicly billed as "reforms" rather than socioeconomic transformations. Except for initially in Czechoslovakia, activities by political parties had to adhere to "Bloc politics", with parties eventually having to accept membership in an "antifascist bloc" obliging them to act only by mutual "consensus". The bloc system permitted the Soviet Union to exercise domestic control indirectly.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Crucial departments such as those responsible for personnel, general police, secret police and youth were strictly Communist run. Moscow cadres distinguished "progressive forces" from "reactionary elements" and rendered both powerless. Such procedures were repeated until Communists had gained unlimited power and only politicians who were unconditionally supportive of Soviet policy remained.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In June 1947, after the Soviets had refused to negotiate a potential lightening of restrictions on German development, the United States announced the Marshall Plan, a comprehensive program of American assistance to all European countries wanting to participate, including the Soviet Union and those of Eastern Europe. The Soviets rejected the Plan and took a hard-line position against the United States and non-communist European nations. However, Czechoslovakia was eager to accept the US aid; the Polish government had a similar attitude, and this was of great concern to the Soviets.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In one of the clearest signs of Soviet control over the region up to that point, the Czechoslovakian foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, was summoned to Moscow and berated by Stalin for considering joining the Marshall Plan. Polish Prime minister Józef Cyrankiewicz was rewarded for the Polish rejection of the Plan with a huge 5-year trade agreement, including $450 million in credit, 200,000 tons of grain, heavy machinery and factories.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In July 1947, Stalin ordered these countries to pull out of the Paris Conference on the European Recovery Programme, which has been described as "the moment of truth" in the post-World War II division of Europe. Thereafter, Stalin sought stronger control over other Eastern Bloc countries, abandoning the prior appearance of democratic institutions. When it appeared that, in spite of heavy pressure, non-communist parties might receive in excess of 40% of the vote in the August 1947 Hungarian elections, repressions were instituted to liquidate any independent political forces.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In that same month, annihilation of the opposition in Bulgaria began on the basis of continuing instructions by Soviet cadres. At a late September 1947 meeting of all communist parties in Szklarska Poręba, Eastern Bloc communist parties were blamed for permitting even minor influence by non-communists in their respective countries during the run up to the Marshall Plan.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In the former German capital Berlin, surrounded by Soviet-occupied Germany, Stalin instituted the Berlin Blockade on 24 June 1948, preventing food, materials and supplies from arriving in West Berlin. The blockade was caused, in part, by early local elections of October 1946 in which the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) was rejected in favor of the Social Democratic Party, which had gained two and a half times more votes than the SED. The United States, Britain, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and several other countries began a massive "Berlin airlift", supplying West Berlin with food and other supplies.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The Soviets mounted a public relations campaign against the western policy change and communists attempted to disrupt the elections of 1948 preceding large losses therein, while 300,000 Berliners demonstrated and urged the international airlift to continue. In May 1949, Stalin lifted the blockade, permitting the resumption of Western shipments to Berlin.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: After disagreements between Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet Union regarding Greece and Albania, a Tito–Stalin split occurred, followed by Yugoslavia being expelled from the Cominform in June 1948 and a brief failed Soviet putsch in Belgrade. The split created two separate communist forces in Europe. A vehement campaign against Titoism was immediately started in the Eastern Bloc, describing agents of both the West and Tito in all places as engaging in subversive activity.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Stalin ordered the conversion of the Cominform into an instrument to monitor and control the internal affairs of other Eastern Bloc parties. He also briefly considered converting the Cominform into an instrument for sentencing high-ranking deviators, but dropped the idea as impractical. Instead, a move to weaken communist party leaders through conflict was started. Soviet cadres in communist party and state positions in the Bloc were instructed to foster intra-leadership conflict and to transmit information against each other. This accompanied a continuous stream of accusations of "nationalistic deviations", "insufficient appreciation of the USSR's role", links with Tito and "espionage for Yugoslavia". This resulted in the persecution of many major party cadres, including those in East Germany.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The first country to experience this approach was Albania, where leader Enver Hoxha immediately changed course from favoring Yugoslavia to opposing it. In Poland, leader Władysław Gomułka, who had previously made pro-Yugoslav statements, was deposed as party secretary-general in early September 1948 and subsequently jailed. In Bulgaria, when it appeared that Traicho Kostov, who was not a Moscow cadre, was next in line for leadership, in June 1949, Stalin ordered Kostov's arrest, followed soon thereafter by a death sentence and execution. A number of other high ranking Bulgarian officials were also jailed. Stalin and Hungarian leader Mátyás Rákosi met in Moscow to orchestrate a show trial of Rákosi opponent László Rajk, who was thereafter executed. The preservation of the Soviet bloc relied on maintaining a sense of ideological unity that would entrench Moscow's infuence in Eastern Europe as well as the power of the local Communist elites.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The port city of Trieste was a particular focus after the Second World War. Until the break between Tito and Stalin, the Western powers and the Eastern bloc faced each other uncompromisingly. The neutral buffer state Free Territory of Trieste, founded in 1947 with the United Nations, was split up and dissolved in 1954 and 1975, also because of the détente between the West and Tito.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Despite the initial institutional design of communism implemented by Joseph Stalin in the Eastern Bloc, subsequent development varied across countries. In satellite states, after peace treaties were initially concluded, opposition was essentially liquidated, fundamental steps towards socialism were enforced, and Kremlin leaders sought to strengthen control therein. Right from the beginning, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, capitalist parliamentary democracy (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The resulting states aspired to total control of a political center backed by an extensive and active repressive apparatus, and a central role of Marxist–Leninist ideology.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: However, the vestiges of democratic institutions were never entirely destroyed, resulting in the façade of Western style institutions such as parliaments, which effectively just rubber-stamped decisions made by rulers, and constitutions, to which adherence by authorities was limited or non-existent. Parliaments were still elected, but their meetings occurred only a few days per year, only to legitimize politburo decisions, and so little attention was paid to them that some of those serving were actually dead, and officials would openly state that they would seat members who had lost elections.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The first or General Secretary of the central committee in each communist party was the most powerful figure in each regime. The party over which the politburo held sway was not a mass party but, conforming with Leninist tradition, a smaller selective party of between three and fourteen percent of the country's population who had accepted total obedience. Those who secured membership in this selective group received considerable rewards, such as access to special lower priced shops with a greater selection of high-quality domestic and/or foreign goods (confections, alcohol, cigars, cameras, televisions, and the like), special schools, holiday facilities, homes, high-quality domestic and/or foreign-made furniture, works of art, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates so that police and others could identify these members from a distance.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In addition to emigration restrictions, civil society, defined as a domain of political action outside the party's state control, was not allowed to firmly take root, with the possible exception of Poland in the 1980s. While the institutional design on the communist systems were based on the rejection of rule of law, the legal infrastructure was not immune to change reflecting decaying ideology and the substitution of autonomous law. Initially, communist parties were small in all countries except Czechoslovakia, such that there existed an acute shortage of politically "trustworthy" persons for administration, police, and other professions. Thus, "politically unreliable" non-communists initially had to fill such roles. Those not obedient to communist authorities were ousted, while Moscow cadres started a large-scale party programs to train personnel who would meet political requirements. Former members of the middle-class were officially discriminated against, though the state's need for their skills and certain opportunities to re-invent themselves as good Communist citizens did allow many to nonetheless achieve success.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc viewed marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein. The suppression of dissidence and opposition was considered a central prerequisite to retain power, though the enormous expense at which the population in certain countries were kept under secret surveillance may not have been rational. Following a totalitarian initial phase, a post-totalitarian period followed the death of Stalin in which the primary method of Communist rule shifted from mass terror to selective repression, along with ideological and sociopolitical strategies of legitimation and the securing of loyalty. Juries were replaced by a tribunal of a professional judges and two lay assessors that were dependable party actors.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The police deterred and contained opposition to party directives. The political police served as the core of the system, with their names becoming synonymous with raw power and the threat of violent retribution should an individual become active against the State. Several state police and secret police organizations enforced communist party rule, including the following:


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The press in the communist period was an organ of the state, completely reliant on and subservient to the communist party. Before the late 1980s, Eastern Bloc radio and television organizations were state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the local communist party. Youth newspapers and magazines were owned by youth organizations affiliated with communist parties.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The control of the media was exercised directly by the communist party itself, and by state censorship, which was also controlled by the party. Media served as an important form of control over information and society. The dissemination and portrayal of knowledge were considered by authorities to be vital to communism's survival by stifling alternative concepts and critiques. Several state Communist Party newspapers were published, including:


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) served as the central agency for collection and distribution of internal and international news for all Soviet newspapers, radio and television stations. It was frequently infiltrated by Soviet intelligence and security agencies, such as the NKVD and GRU. TASS had affiliates in 14 Soviet republics, including the Lithuanian SSR, Latvian SSR, Estonian SSR, Moldavian SSR. Ukrainian SSR and Byelorussian SSR.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Western countries invested heavily in powerful transmitters which enabled services such as the BBC, VOA and Radio Free Europe (RFE) to be heard in the Eastern Bloc, despite attempts by authorities to jam the airways.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Under the state atheism of many Eastern Bloc nations, religion was actively suppressed. Since some of these states tied their ethnic heritage to their national churches, both the peoples and their churches were targeted by the Soviets.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1949, the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania founded the Comecon in accordance with Stalin's desire to enforce Soviet domination of the lesser states of Central Europe and to mollify some states that had expressed interest in the Marshall Plan, and which were now, increasingly, cut off from their traditional markets and suppliers in Western Europe. The Comecon's role became ambiguous because Stalin preferred more direct links with other party chiefs than the Comecon's indirect sophistication; it played no significant role in the 1950s in economic planning. Initially, the Comecon served as cover for the Soviet taking of materials and equipment from the rest of the Eastern Bloc, but the balance changed when the Soviets became net subsidizers of the rest of the Bloc by the 1970s via an exchange of low cost raw materials in return for shoddily manufactured finished goods.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1955, the Warsaw Pact was formed partly in response to NATO's inclusion of West Germany and partly because the Soviets needed an excuse to retain Red Army units in Hungary. For 35 years, the Pact perpetuated the Stalinist concept of Soviet national security based on imperial expansion and control over satellite regimes in Eastern Europe. This Soviet formalization of their security relationships in the Eastern Bloc reflected Moscow's basic security policy principle that continued presence in East Central Europe was a foundation of its defense against the West. Through its institutional structures, the Pact also compensated in part for the absence of Joseph Stalin's personal leadership since his death in 1953. The Pact consolidated the other Bloc members' armies in which Soviet officers and security agents served under a unified Soviet command structure.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Beginning in 1964, Romania took a more independent course. While it did not repudiate either Comecon or the Warsaw Pact, it ceased to play a significant role in either. Nicolae Ceaușescu's assumption of leadership one year later pushed Romania even further in the direction of separateness. Albania, which had become increasingly isolated under Stalinist leader Enver Hoxha following de-Stalinization, undergoing a Soviet–Albanian split in 1961, withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968 following the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In 1917, Russia restricted emigration by instituting passport controls and forbidding the exit of belligerent nationals. In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, both the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR issued general rules for travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal emigration impossible. Border controls thereafter strengthened such that, by 1928, even illegal departure was effectively impossible. This later included internal passport controls, which when combined with individual city Propiska ("place of residence") permits, and internal freedom of movement restrictions often called the 101st kilometre, greatly restricted mobility within even small areas of the Soviet Union.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, emigration out of the newly occupied countries, except under limited circumstances, was effectively halted in the early 1950s, with the Soviet approach to controlling national movement emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc. However, in East Germany, taking advantage of the Inner German border between occupied zones, hundreds of thousands fled to West Germany, with figures totaling 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953. One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the Berlin city sector borders remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because of their administration by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, it effectively comprised a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still move west. The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961, called Republikflucht, totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population. In August 1961, East Germany erected a barbed-wire barrier that would eventually be expanded through construction into the Berlin Wall, effectively closing the loophole.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: With virtually non-existent conventional emigration, more than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration". About 10% were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of 1951. Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to emigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations. The fall of the Iron Curtain was accompanied by a massive rise in European East-West migration. Famous Eastern Bloc defectors included Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva, who denounced Stalin after her 1967 defection.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: Eastern Bloc countries such as the Soviet Union had high rates of population growth. In 1917, the population of Russia in its present borders was 91 million. Despite the destruction in the Russian Civil War, the population grew to 92.7 million in 1926. In 1939, the population increased by 17 percent to 108 million. Despite more than 20 million deaths suffered throughout World War II, Russia's population grew to 117.2 million in 1959. The Soviet census of 1989 showed Russia's population at 147 million people.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: The Soviet economical and political system produced further consequences such as, for example, in Baltic states, where the population was approximately half of what it should have been compared with similar countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway over the years 1939–1990. Poor housing was one factor leading to severely declining birth rates throughout the Eastern Bloc. However, birth rates were still higher than in Western European countries. A reliance upon abortion, in part because periodic shortages of birth control pills and intrauterine devices made these systems unreliable, also depressed the birth rate and forced a shift to pro-natalist policies by the late 1960s, including severe checks on abortion and propagandist exhortations like the 'heroine mother' distinction bestowed on those Romanian women who bore ten or more children.


title: Eastern Bloc

text: In October 1966, artificial birth control was proscribed in Romania and regular pregnancy tests were mandated for women of child-bearing age, with severe penalties for anyone who was found to have terminated a pregnancy. Despite such restrictions, birth rates continued to lag, in part because of unskilled induced abortions. The populations of the Eastern Bloc countries were as follows: