title: Peloponnesian War

text: After the destruction of the Sicilian Expedition, Lacedaemon encouraged the revolt of Athens's tributary allies, and indeed, much of Ionia rose in revolt. The Syracusans sent their fleet to the Peloponnesians, and the Persians decided to support the Spartans with money and ships. Revolt and faction threatened in Athens itself.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: The Athenians managed to survive for several reasons. First, their foes lacked initiative. Corinth and Syracuse were slow to bring their fleets into the Aegean, and Sparta's other allies were also slow to furnish troops or ships. The Ionian states that rebelled expected protection, and many rejoined the Athenian side. The Persians were slow to send promised funds and ships, frustrating battle plans.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: At the start of the war, the Athenians had prudently put aside some money and 100 ships that were to be used only as a last resort.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: These ships were then released, and served as the core of the Athenians' fleet throughout the rest of the war. An oligarchical revolution occurred in Athens, in which a group of 400 seized power. Peace with Sparta might have been possible, but the Athenian fleet, now based on the island of Samos, refused the change. In 411 BC, this fleet engaged the Spartans at the Battle of Syme. The fleet appointed Alcibiades their leader, and continued the war in Athens's name. Their opposition led to the reinstitution of a democratic government in Athens within two years.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Alcibiades, while condemned as a traitor, still carried weight in Athens. He prevented the Athenian fleet from attacking Athens; instead, he helped restore democracy by more subtle pressure. He also persuaded the Athenian fleet to attack the Spartans at the battle of Cyzicus in 410. In the battle, the Athenians obliterated the Spartan fleet, and succeeded in re-establishing the financial basis of the Athenian Empire.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Between 410 and 406, Athens won a continuous string of victories, and eventually recovered large portions of its empire. All of this was due, in no small part, to Alcibiades.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: From 414 BC, Darius II, ruler of the Achaemenid Empire had started to resent increasing Athenian power in the Aegean. He had his satrap Tissaphernes make alliance with Sparta against Athens. In 412 BC this led to the Persian reconquest of most of Ionia. Tissaphernes also helped fund the Peloponnesian fleet.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Facing the resurgence of Athens, from 408 BC, Darius II decided to continue the war against Athens and give stronger support to the Spartans. He sent his son Cyrus the Younger into Asia Minor as satrap of Lydia, Phrygia Major and Cappadocia, and general commander ("Karanos", κἀρανος) of the Persian troops. There, Cyrus allied with the Spartan general Lysander. In him, Cyrus found a man willing to help him become king, just as Lysander himself hoped to become absolute ruler of Greece by the aid of the Persian prince. Thus, Cyrus put all his means at the disposal of Lysander in the Peloponnesian War. When Cyrus was recalled to Susa by his dying father Darius, he gave Lysander the revenues from all of his cities of Asia Minor.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Cyrus the Younger would later obtain the support of the Spartans in return, after having asked them "to show themselves as good friend to him, as he had been to them during their war against Athens", when he led his own expedition to Susa in 401 BC in order to topple his brother, Artaxerxes II.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: The faction hostile to Alcibiades triumphed in Athens following a minor Spartan victory by their skillful general Lysander at the naval battle of Notium in 406 BC. Alcibiades was not re-elected general by the Athenians and he exiled himself from the city. He would never again lead Athenians in battle. Athens won the naval battle of Arginusae. The Spartan fleet under Callicratidas lost 70 ships and the Athenians lost 25 ships. But, due to bad weather, the Athenians were unable to rescue their stranded crews or finish off the Spartan fleet. Despite their victory, these failures caused outrage in Athens and led to a controversial trial. The trial resulted in the execution of six of Athens's top naval commanders. Athens's naval supremacy would now be challenged without several of its most able military leaders and a demoralized navy.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Unlike some of his predecessors, the new Spartan general, Lysander, was not a member of the Spartan royal families and was also formidable in naval strategy; he was an artful diplomat, who had even cultivated good personal relationships with the Achaemenid prince Cyrus the Younger, son of Emperor Darius II. Seizing its opportunity, the Spartan fleet sailed at once to the Dardanelles, the source of Athens's grain. Threatened with starvation, the Athenian fleet had no choice but to follow. Through cunning strategy, Lysander totally defeated the Athenian fleet, in 405 BC, at the Battle of Aegospotami, destroying 168 ships. Only 12 Athenian ships escaped, and several of these sailed to Cyprus, carrying the "strategos" (general) Conon, who was anxious not to face the judgment of the Assembly.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Facing starvation and disease from the prolonged siege, Athens surrendered in 404 BC, and its allies soon surrendered as well. The democrats at Samos, loyal to the bitter last, held on slightly longer, and were allowed to flee with their lives. The surrender stripped Athens of its walls, its fleet, and all of its overseas possessions. Corinth and Thebes demanded that Athens should be destroyed and all its citizens should be enslaved. However, the Spartans announced their refusal to destroy a city that had done a good service at a time of greatest danger to Greece, and took Athens into their own system. Athens was "to have the same friends and enemies" as Sparta.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: The overall effect of the war in Greece proper was to replace the Athenian Empire with a Spartan empire. After the battle of Aegospotami, Sparta took over the Athenian empire and kept all its tribute revenues for itself; Sparta's allies, who had made greater sacrifices in the war than had Sparta, got nothing.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: For a short time, Athens was ruled by the Thirty Tyrants, a reactionary regime set up by Sparta. In 403 BC, the oligarchs were overthrown and a democracy was restored by Thrasybulus.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: Although the hegemony of Athens was broken, the Attic city completed the recovery of its autonomy in the Corinthian War and continued to play an active role in Greek politics. Sparta was later defeated by Thebes at the Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC. A few decades later, the rivalry between Athens and Sparta ended when Macedonia became the most powerful entity in Greece and Philip II of Macedon unified all of the Greek world except Sparta, which was later subjugated by Philip's son Alexander in 331 BC.


title: Peloponnesian War

text: A symbolic peace treaty was signed by the mayors of modern Athens and Sparta 2,500 years after the war ended, on March 12, 1996.


title: Cream (band)

text: Cream were a British rock band formed in London in 1966. The group consisted of bassist Jack Bruce, guitarist Eric Clapton, and drummer Ginger Baker. Bruce was the primary songwriter and vocalist, although Clapton and Baker also sang and contributed songs. Formed from members of previously successful bands, they are widely regarded as the world's first supergroup. Cream were highly regarded for the instrumental proficiency of each of their members.


title: Cream (band)

text: During their brief three-year career together, the band produced four albums, "Fresh Cream" (1966), "Disraeli Gears" (1967), "Wheels of Fire" (1968), and "Goodbye" (1969). Beginning with "Disraeli Gears", the band was joined in the studio by producer and multi-instrumentalist Felix Pappalardi, who became an important influence on the band's sound. Cream's music spanned many genres of rock music, including blues rock ("Crossroads", "Born Under a Bad Sign"), psychedelic rock ("Tales of Brave Ulysses", "White Room"), and hard rock ("Sunshine of Your Love", "SWLABR"). In their career, they sold more than 15 million records worldwide. The group's third album, "Wheels of Fire" (1968), is the world's first platinum-selling double album.


title: Cream (band)

text: Tensions between Bruce and Baker led to their decision in May 1968 to break up, though the band were persuaded to make a final album, "Goodbye", and to tour, culminating in two final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 and 26 November 1968 which were filmed and shown in theatres, then in 1977 released as a home video, "Farewell Concert".


title: Cream (band)

text: In 1993, Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They were included in both "Rolling Stone" and VH1's lists of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", at number 67 and 61 respectively. They were also ranked number 16 on VH1's "100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock".


title: Cream (band)

text: By July 1966, Eric Clapton's career with the Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers had earned him a reputation as the premier blues guitarist in Britain. Clapton, however, found the environment of Mayall's band confining, and sought to expand his playing in a new band. In 1966, Clapton met Ginger Baker, then the drummer of the Graham Bond Organisation, for which Jack Bruce had played bass guitar, harmonica and piano. Baker felt stifled in the Graham Bond Organisation and had grown tired of Graham Bond's drug addictions and bouts of mental instability. "I had always liked Ginger", explained Clapton. "Ginger had come to see me play with the Bluesbreakers. After the gig he drove me back to London in his Rover. I was very impressed with his car and driving. He was telling me that he wanted to start a band, and I had been thinking about it too."


title: Cream (band)

text: Each was impressed with the other's playing abilities, prompting Baker to ask Clapton to join his new, then-unnamed group. Clapton immediately agreed, on the condition that Baker hire Bruce as the group's bassist; according to Clapton, Baker was so surprised at the suggestion that he almost crashed the car. Clapton had met Bruce when the bassist/vocalist briefly played with the Bluesbreakers in November 1965; the two also had recorded together as part of an "ad hoc" group dubbed Powerhouse (which also included Steve Winwood and Paul Jones). Impressed with Bruce's vocals and technical prowess, Clapton wanted to work with him on an ongoing basis.


title: Cream (band)

text: In contrast, while Bruce was in Bond's band, he and Baker had been notorious for their quarrelling. Their volatile relationship included on-stage fights and the sabotage of one another's instruments. After Baker fired Bruce from the band, Bruce continued to arrive for gigs; ultimately, Bruce was driven away from the band after Baker threatened him at knifepoint.


title: Cream (band)

text: Baker and Bruce tried to put aside their differences for the good of Baker's new trio, which he envisioned as collaborative, with each of the members contributing to music and lyrics. The band was named "Cream", as Clapton, Bruce, and Baker were already considered the "cream of the crop" amongst blues and jazz musicians in the exploding British music scene. Initially, the group were referred to and billed as "The Cream", but starting officially with its first record releases, the trio came to be known as "Cream". Despite this, the band was referred to as "The Cream" on several occasions by promoters and disc jockeys, and even on occasion by the band members themselves. Before deciding upon "Cream", the band considered calling themselves "Sweet 'n' Sour Rock 'n' Roll". Of the trio, Clapton had the biggest reputation in England; however, he was unknown in the US, having left the Yardbirds before "For Your Love" hit the American Top Ten.


title: Cream (band)

text: The band made its unofficial debut at the Twisted Wheel on 29 July 1966. Its official debut came two nights later at the Sixth Annual Windsor Jazz & Blues Festival. Being new and with few original songs to its credit, they performed blues reworkings that thrilled the large crowd and earned it a warm reception. In October the band also got a chance to jam with Jimi Hendrix, who had recently arrived in London. Hendrix was a fan of Clapton's music, and wanted a chance to play with him onstage.


title: Cream (band)

text: It was during the early organisation that they decided Bruce would serve as the group's lead vocalist. While Clapton was shy about singing, he occasionally harmonised with Bruce and, in time, took lead vocals on several Cream tracks including "Four Until Late", "Strange Brew", "World of Pain", "Outside Woman Blues", "Crossroads", and "Badge".


title: Cream (band)

text: The band's debut album, "Fresh Cream", was recorded and released in 1966. The album reached number 6 in the UK charts and number 39 in the US. It was evenly split between self-penned originals and blues covers, including "Four Until Late", "Rollin' and Tumblin'", "Spoonful", "I'm So Glad" and "Cat's Squirrel". The rest of the songs were written by either Jack Bruce or Ginger Baker. ("I Feel Free", a UK hit single, was included on only the American edition of the LP.) The track "Toad" contained one of the earliest examples of a drum solo in rock music as Ginger Baker expanded upon his early composition "Camels and Elephants", written in 1965 with the Graham Bond Organisation.


title: Cream (band)

text: Early Cream bootlegs display a much tighter band showcasing more songs. All of the songs are reasonably short, including five-minute versions of "N.S.U.", "Sweet Wine" and "Toad". But a mere two months later, the setlist shortened, with the songs then much longer.


title: Cream (band)

text: The band first visited the US in March 1967 to play nine dates at the RKO 58th Street Theatre in New York City. There was little impact, as impresario Murray the K placed them at the bottom of a six-act bill that performed three times per date, eventually reducing the band to one song per concert. They returned to record "Disraeli Gears" in New York between 11 and 15 May 1967. This, the band's second album, was released in November 1967 and reached the top five in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Produced by Felix Pappalardi (who later co-founded the Cream-influenced quartet Mountain) and engineer Tom Dowd, it was recorded at Atlantic Studios in New York. "Disraeli Gears" is often considered to be the band's defining effort, successfully blending psychedelic British rock with American blues.


title: Cream (band)

text: "Disraeli Gears" also included "Sunshine of Your Love", which became the group's unofficial anthem, and is probably their best-known song today. Bruce and Pete Brown came upon the idea in a state of near desperation in the wee hours. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage something from the long and fruitless night at his apartment, the bleary-eyed Bruce pulled out his double bass again and played a riff. At that point, Brown looked out the window and saw the sun was about to rise: "It's getting near dawn", he said to himself. Brown put the words on paper then thought some more: "When lights close their tired eyes".


title: Cream (band)

text: The album was originally slated for release in the summer of 1967, but the record label opted to scrap the planned cover and repackage it with a new psychedelic cover, designed by artist Martin Sharp, and the resulting changes delayed its release for several months. The cover was remarkable for the time, with a psychedelic design patterned over a publicity photo of the trio.


title: Cream (band)

text: Although the album is considered one of Cream's finest efforts, it has never been well represented in the band's live sets. Although they consistently played "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and "Sunshine of Your Love", several songs from "Disraeli Gears" were quickly dropped from performances in mid-1967, favouring longer jams instead of short pop songs. "We're Going Wrong" was the only additional song from the album the group performed live. In fact, at their 2005 reunion shows in London, the band played only three songs from "Disraeli Gears": "Outside Woman Blues", "We're Going Wrong", and "Sunshine of Your Love"; at their three October 2005 performances in New York, "Tales of Brave Ulysses" was also included in the setlist.


title: Cream (band)

text: In August 1967, the band played their first headlining dates in the US, first at The Fillmore in San Francisco and later at The Pinnacle in Los Angeles. The concerts were a great success and proved very influential on both the band itself and the flourishing hippie scene surrounding them. Upon discovering a growing listening audience, the band began to stretch out on stage, incorporating more time in their repertoire, some songs reaching jams of twenty minutes. Long, drawn-out jams in numbers like "Spoonful", "N.S.U.", "I'm So Glad", and "Sweet Wine" became live favourites, while songs like "Sunshine of Your Love", "Crossroads", and "Tales of Brave Ulysses" remained reasonably short.


title: Cream (band)

text: In 1968 came the band's third release, "Wheels of Fire", which topped the American charts. The album was recorded in a spate of short sessions from July 1967 to June 1968. Still a relative novelty, the double album of two LP records was well-suited to extended solos. The "Wheels of Fire" studio recordings showcased the band moving away from the blues and more towards a semi-progressive rock style highlighted by odd time signatures and various orchestral instruments. However, the band did record Howlin' Wolf's "Sitting on Top of the World" and Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign". According to a BBC interview with Clapton, the record company, Atco Records, also handling Albert King, asked the band to cover "Born Under a Bad Sign", which became a popular track off the record. The opening song, "White Room", became a radio staple. Another song, "Politician", was written by the band while waiting to perform live at the BBC. The album's second disc included three live recordings from the Winterland Ballroom and one from the Fillmore. Clapton's second solo from "Crossroads" has made it to the top 20 in multiple "greatest guitar solo" lists.


title: Cream (band)

text: After the completion of "Wheels of Fire" in mid-1968, the band members had grown tired of their exhausting touring schedule and increasingly loud jamming, and wanted to go their separate ways. Baker stated in a 2006 interview with "Music Mart" magazine, "It just got to the point where Eric said to me: 'I've had enough of this', and I said so have I. I couldn't stand it. The last year with Cream was just agony. It damaged my hearing permanently, and today I've still got a hearing problem because of the sheer volume throughout the last year of Cream. But it didn't start off like that. In 1966, it was great. It was really a wonderful experience musically, and it just went into the realms of stupidity." Bruce and Baker's combustible relationship proved even worse as a result of the strain put upon the band by non-stop touring, forcing Clapton to play the perpetual role of peacekeeper.


title: Cream (band)

text: Clapton had also become interested in the music of Bob Dylan's former backing group, now known as the Band, and their debut album, "Music from Big Pink", which proved to be a welcome breath of fresh air to Clapton in comparison to the psychedelia and volume that had defined Cream. Furthermore, he had read a scathing Cream review in "Rolling Stone", a publication he had much admired, in which the reviewer, Jon Landau, called him a "master of the blues cliché". In the wake of that article, Clapton wanted to end Cream and pursue a different musical direction.


title: Cream (band)

text: At the beginning of the band's farewell tour on 4 October 1968, in Oakland, California, nearly the entire set consisted of songs from "Wheels of Fire": "White Room", "Politician", "Crossroads", "Spoonful", and "Deserted Cities of the Heart", with "Passing the Time" taking the place of "Toad" for a drum solo. "Passing the Time" and "Deserted Cities" were quickly removed from the setlist and replaced by "Sitting on Top of the World" and "Toad".


title: Cream (band)

text: From its creation, Cream was faced with some fundamental problems that would later lead to its dissolution in November 1968. The antagonism between Bruce and Baker created tensions in the band. Clapton also felt that the members of the band did not listen to each other enough. Equipment during these years had also improved; new Marshall amplifier stacks produced more power, and Jack Bruce pushed the volume levels higher, creating tension for Baker, who would have trouble competing with roaring stacks. Clapton spoke of a concert during which he stopped playing and neither Baker nor Bruce noticed. Clapton has also commented that Cream's later gigs mainly consisted of its members showing off.


title: Cream (band)

text: Cream decided that they would break up in May 1968 during a tour of the US. Later, in July, the band announced that they would break up after a farewell tour of the US and after playing two concerts in London. Jack Bruce was quoted as saying "Travel can kill a group. It becomes boring, tiring and very depressing."


title: Cream (band)

text: Cream were eventually persuaded to do one final album, appropriately titled "Goodbye". The album was recorded in late 1968 and released in early 1969, after the band had broken up. It comprised six songs: three live recordings dating from a concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, California, on 19 October, and three new studio recordings (including "Badge", which was written by Clapton and George Harrison, who also played rhythm guitar and was credited as "L'Angelo Misterioso"). "I'm So Glad" was included among the live tracks.


title: Cream (band)

text: Cream's farewell tour consisted of 22 shows at 19 venues in the US from 4 October to 4 November 1968, and two final farewell concerts at the Royal Albert Hall on 25 and 26 November 1968. The final US gig was at the Rhode Island Auditorium on 4 November. The band arrived late and, due to local restrictions, were able to perform only two songs, "Toad" and a 20+ minute version of "Spoonful". The two Royal Albert Hall concerts were filmed for a BBC documentary and released on video (and later DVD) as "Farewell Concert". Both shows were sold out and attracted more attention than any other Cream concert, but their performance was regarded by many as below standard. Baker himself said of the concerts: "It wasn't a good gig ... Cream was better than that ... We knew it was all over. We knew we were just finishing it off, getting it over with." Bruce had three Marshall stacks on stage for the farewell shows but one acted only as a spare, and he only used one or two, depending on the song. In an interview from "Cream: Classic Artists", he added that the band was getting worse by the minute.


title: Cream (band)

text: Blind Faith, a band that included both Clapton and Baker, was formed after the demise of Cream, following an attempt by Clapton to recruit Steve Winwood into Cream in the hope that he would help act as a buffer between Bruce and Baker. Inspired by more song-based acts, Clapton went on to perform very different, less improvisational material with Delaney & Bonnie, Derek and the Dominos, and in his own long and varied solo career.


title: Cream (band)

text: Bruce began a varied and successful solo career with the 1969 release of "Songs for a Tailor", while Baker formed a jazz-fusion ensemble out of the ashes of Blind Faith called Ginger Baker's Air Force, with Winwood, Blind Faith bassist Rick Grech, Graham Bond on saxophone, and guitarist Denny Laine of the Moody Blues and (later) Wings.


title: Cream (band)

text: All three members continued to explore new musical ideas and partnerships, play concerts and record music for over four decades after ending Cream.


title: Cream (band)

text: In 1993, Cream were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and re-formed to perform at the induction ceremony. Initially, the trio were wary about performing, until encouraging words from Robbie Robertson inspired them to try. The set consisted of "Sunshine of Your Love", "Crossroads", and "Born Under a Bad Sign", a song they had not previously played live. Clapton mentioned in his acceptance speech that their rehearsal the day before the ceremony had marked the first time they had played together in 25 years. This performance spurred rumours of a reunion tour. Bruce and Baker said in later interviews that they were, indeed, interested in touring as Cream. A formal reunion did not take place immediately, as Clapton, Bruce and Baker continued to pursue solo projects, although the latter two worked together again in the mid-1990s as two-thirds of the power trio BBM with Irish blues rock guitarist Gary Moore.


title: Cream (band)

text: At Clapton's request, Cream reunited for a series of four shows, on 2, 3, 5, and 6 May 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the venue of their final concerts in 1968. Although the three musicians chose not to speak publicly about the shows, Clapton would later state that he had become more "generous" in regard to his past, and that the physical health of Bruce and Baker was a major factor: Bruce had recently undergone a transplant for liver cancer in 2003, and had almost lost his life, while Baker had severe arthritis.


title: Cream (band)

text: Tickets for all four shows sold out in under an hour. The performances were recorded for a live CD and DVD. Among those in attendance were Bill Wyman, Steve Winwood, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Roger Waters, Brian May, Jimmy Page, and Mick Taylor. The reunion marked the first time the band had played "Badge" and "Pressed Rat and Warthog" live.


title: Cream (band)

text: Inspired by the success of the reunion, the band agreed to an additional set of three shows at the Madison Square Garden in New York City, from 24–26 October 2005. According to Clapton, these concerts did not live up to the Royal Albert Hall performances due to, among other reasons, lack of rehearsal and the resurgence of old grudges among band members.


title: Cream (band)

text: In February 2006, Cream received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of their contribution to, and influence upon, modern music. That same month, a "Classic Albums" DVD was released detailing the story behind the creation and recording of "Disraeli Gears". On the day prior to the Grammy ceremony, Bruce made a public statement that more one-off performances of Cream had been planned: multiple dates in a few cities, similar to the Royal Albert Hall and Madison Square Garden shows.


title: Cream (band)

text: However, this story was refuted by both Clapton and Baker, first by Clapton in "The Times" in April 2006. When asked about Cream, Clapton said: "No. Not for me. We did it and it was fun. But life is too short. I've got lots of other things I would rather do, including staying at home with my kids. The thing about that band was that it was all to do with its limits ... it was an experiment." In an interview in the UK magazine "Music Mart", about the release of a DVD about the Blind Faith concert in Hyde Park 1969, Baker commented about his unwillingness to continue the Cream reunion. These comments were far more specific and explosive than Clapton's, as they were centred around his relationship with Jack Bruce. Ginger said, "When he's Dr. Jekyll, he's fine ... It's when he's Mr. Hyde that he's not. And I'm afraid he's still the same. I tell you this – there won't ever be any more Cream gigs, because he did Mr. Hyde in New York last year."


title: Cream (band)

text: Baker and Bruce appeared on stage in London when Baker was awarded a lifetime achievement award by legendary cymbal manufacturer Zildjian. Bruce told Detroit's WCSX radio station in May 2007 that there were plans for a Cream reunion later in the year. It was later revealed that the potential performance was to be November 2007 in London as a tribute to Ahmet Ertegun. The band decided against it and this was confirmed by Bruce in a letter to the editor of the Jack Bruce fanzine, "The Cuicoland Express", dated 26 September 2007:


title: Cream (band)

text: The headlining act for the O2 Arena Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert (postponed to December 2007) turned out to be from another reunited English hard-rock act, Led Zeppelin. In an interview with BBC 6 Music in April 2010, Bruce confirmed that there would be no more Cream shows, stating simply, "Cream is over." Bruce died on 25 October 2014 and Baker died on 6 October 2019, leaving Clapton as the last surviving member.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Shroud of Turin (), also known as the Holy Shroud ( or ), is a length of linen cloth bearing the negative image of a man. Some describe the image as depicting Jesus of Nazareth and believe the fabric is the burial shroud in which he was wrapped after crucifixion.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: First mentioned in 1354, the shroud was denounced in 1389 by the local bishop of Troyes as a fake. Currently the Catholic Church neither formally endorses nor rejects the shroud, and in 2013 Pope Francis referred to it as an "icon of a man scourged and crucified". The shroud has been kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Turin, in northern Italy, since 1578.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1988, radiocarbon dating established that the shroud was from the Middle Ages, between the years 1260 and 1390. All hypotheses put forward to challenge the radiocarbon dating have been scientifically refuted, including the medieval repair hypothesis, the bio-contamination hypothesis and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The image on the shroud is much clearer in black and white negative—first observed in 1898 by photographer Secondo Pia—than in its natural sepia color. A variety of methods have been proposed for the formation of the image, but the actual method used has not yet been conclusively identified. The shroud continues to be intensely studied, and remains a controversial issue among scientists and biblical scholars.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The shroud is rectangular, measuring approximately . The cloth is woven in a three-to-one herringbone twill composed of flax fibrils. Its most distinctive characteristic is the faint, brownish image of a front and back view of a naked man with his hands folded across his groin. The two views are aligned along the midplane of the body and point in opposite directions. The front and back views of the head nearly meet at the middle of the cloth.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The image in faint straw-yellow colour on the crown of the cloth fibres appears to be of a man with a beard, moustache, and shoulder-length hair parted in the middle. He is muscular and tall (various experts have measured him as from ). Reddish-brown stains are found on the cloth, correlating, according to proponents, with the wounds in the Biblical description of the crucifixion of Jesus.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In May 1898 Italian photographer Secondo Pia was allowed to photograph the shroud. He took the first photograph of the shroud on 28 May 1898. In 1931, another photographer, Giuseppe Enrie, photographed the shroud and obtained results similar to Pia's. In 1978, ultraviolet photographs were taken of the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The shroud was damaged in a fire in 1532 in the chapel in Chambery, France. There are some burn holes and scorched areas down both sides of the linen, caused by contact with molten silver during the fire that burned through it in places while it was folded. Fourteen large triangular patches and eight smaller ones were sewn onto the cloth by Poor Clare nuns to repair the damage.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: There are no definite historical records concerning the particular shroud currently at Turin Cathedral prior to the 14th century. A burial cloth, which some historians maintain was the Shroud, was owned by the Byzantine emperors but disappeared during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. Although there are numerous reports of Jesus's burial shroud, or an image of his head, of unknown origin, being venerated in various locations before the 14th century, there is no historical evidence that these refer to the shroud currently at Turin Cathedral.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The first possible historical record of the Shroud of Turin dates from 1353 or 1357, and the first certain record is from 1390 when Bishop Pierre d'Arcis in Lirey, France wrote a memorandum to Antipope Clement VII (Avignon Obedience), stating that the shroud was a forgery and that the artist had confessed. Historical records seem to indicate that a shroud bearing an image of a crucified man existed in the small town of Lirey around the years 1353 to 1357 in the possession of a French knight, Geoffroi de Charny, who died at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Some images of the Pray Codex are claimed by some to include a representation of the shroud. However the image on the Pray Codex has crosses on what may be one side of the supposed shroud, an interlocking step pyramid pattern on the other, and no image of Jesus. Critics point out that it may not be a shroud at all, but rather a rectangular tombstone, as seen on other sacred images. A crumpled cloth can be seen discarded on the coffin, and the text of the codex fails to mention any miraculous image on the codex shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The history of the shroud from the 15th century is well recorded. In 1453 Margaret de Charny deeded the Shroud to the House of Savoy. In 1532, the shroud suffered damage from a fire in a chapel of Chambéry, capital of the Savoy region, where it was stored. A drop of molten silver from the reliquary produced a symmetrically placed mark through the layers of the folded cloth. Poor Clare Nuns attempted to repair this damage with patches. In 1578 Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy ordered the cloth to be brought from Chambéry to Turin and it has remained at Turin ever since.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Since the 17th century the shroud has been displayed in the chapel built for that purpose by Guarino Guarini. Repairs were made to the shroud in 1694 by Sebastian Valfrè to improve the repairs of the Poor Clare nuns. Further repairs were made in 1868 by Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy. The shroud remained the property of the House of Savoy until 1983, when it was given to the Holy See by Umberto II of Italy.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: A fire, possibly caused by arson, threatened the shroud on 11 April 1997. In 2002, the Holy See had the shroud restored. The cloth backing and thirty patches were removed, making it possible to photograph and scan the reverse side of the cloth, which had been hidden from view. A faint part-image of the body was found on the back of the shroud in 2004.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Shroud was placed back on public display (the 18th time in its history) in Turin from 10 April to 23 May 2010; and according to Church officials, more than 2 million visitors came to see it.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: On Holy Saturday (30 March) 2013, images of the shroud were streamed on various websites as well as on television for the first time in 40 years. Roberto Gottardo of the diocese of Turin stated that for the first time ever they had released high definition images of the shroud that can be used on tablet computers and can be magnified to show details not visible to the naked eye. As this rare exposition took place, Pope Francis issued a carefully worded statement which urged the faithful to contemplate the shroud with awe but, like his predecessors, he "stopped firmly short of asserting its authenticity".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The shroud was again placed on display in the cathedral in Turin from 19 April 2015 until 24 June 2015. There was no charge to view it, but an appointment was required.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The shroud has undergone several restorations and several steps have been taken to preserve it to avoid further damage and contamination. It is kept under laminated bulletproof glass in an airtight case. The temperature- and humidity-controlled case is filled with argon (99.5%) and oxygen (0.5%) to prevent chemical changes. The shroud itself is kept on an aluminum support sliding on runners and stored flat within the case.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke state that Joseph of Arimathea wrapped the body of Jesus in a piece of linen cloth and placed it in a new tomb. The Gospel of John says he used strips of linen.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: After the resurrection, the Gospel of John states: "Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen."


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Gospel of Luke states: "Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves."


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1543, John Calvin, in his book "Treatise on Relics", explained the reason why the Shroud cannot be genuine:


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Although pieces said to be of burial cloths of Jesus are held by at least four churches in France and three in Italy, none has gathered as much religious following as the Shroud of Turin. The religious beliefs and practices associated with the shroud predate historical and scientific discussions and have continued in the 21st century, although the Catholic Church has never passed judgment on its authenticity. An example is the Holy Face Medal bearing the image from the shroud, worn by some Catholics. Indeed, the Shroud of Turin is respected by Christians of several traditions, including Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Orthodox, Pentecostals, and Presbyterians. Several Lutheran parishes have hosted replicas of the Shroud of Turin, for didactic and devotional purposes.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Although the shroud image is currently associated with Catholic devotions to the Holy Face of Jesus, the devotions themselves predate Secondo Pia's 1898 photograph. Such devotions had been established in 1844 by the Carmelite nun Marie of St Peter (based on "pre-crucifixion" images associated with the Veil of Veronica) and promoted by Leo Dupont, also called the Apostle of the Holy Face. In 1851 Dupont formed the "Archconfraternity of the Holy Face" in Tours, France, well before Secondo Pia took the photograph of the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The religious concept of the miraculous "acheiropoieton" (Greek: made without hands) has a long history in Christianity, going back to at least the 6th century. Among the most prominent portable early "acheiropoieta" are the Image of Camuliana and the Mandylion or Image of Edessa, both painted icons of Christ held in the Byzantine Empire and now generally regarded as lost or destroyed, as is the Hodegetria image of the Virgin Mary. Other early images in Italy, all heavily and unfortunately restored, that have been revered as "acheiropoieta" now have relatively little following, as attention has focused on the Shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1389, the bishop of Troyes sent a memorial to Antipope Clement VII, declaring that the cloth had been "artificially painted in an ingenious way" and that "it was also proved by the artist who had painted it that it was made by human work, not miraculously produced". In 1390, Clement VII consequently issued four papal bulls, with which he allowed the exposition, but ordered to "say aloud, to put an end to all fraud, that the aforementioned representation is not the true Shroud of Our Lord Jesus Christ, but a painting or panel made to represent or imitate the Shroud ". However, in 1506 Pope Julius II reversed this position and declared the Shroud to be authentic and authorized the public veneration of it with its own mass and office.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Vatican newspaper "L'Osservatore Romano" covered the story of Secondo Pia's photograph of 28 May 1898 in its edition of 15 June 1898, but it did so with no comment and thereafter Church officials generally refrained from officially commenting on the photograph for almost half a century.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The first official modern association between the image on the Shroud and the Catholic Church was made in 1940 based on the formal request by Sister Maria Pierina De Micheli to the curia in Milan to obtain authorization to produce a medal with the image. The authorization was granted and the first medal with the image was offered to Pope Pius XII who approved the medal. The image was then used on what became known as the Holy Face Medal worn by many Catholics, initially as a means of protection during World War II. In 1958 Pope Pius XII approved of the image in association with the devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus, and declared its feast to be celebrated every year the day before Ash Wednesday. Following the approval by Pope Pius XII, Catholic devotions to the Holy Face of Jesus have been almost exclusively associated with the image on the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1936, Pope Pius XII called the Shroud a "holy thing perhaps like nothing else", and went on to approve of the devotion accorded to it as the Holy Face of Jesus.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1998, Pope John Paul II called the Shroud a "distinguished relic" and "a mirror of the Gospel". His successor, Pope Benedict XVI, called it an "icon written with the blood of a whipped man, crowned with thorns, crucified and pierced on his right side". In 2013, Pope Francis referred to it as an "icon of a man scourged and crucified".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Members of other Christian denominations, such as Anglicans and Methodists, have also shown devotion to the Shroud of Turin.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1983, the Shroud was given to the Holy See by the House of Savoy. However, as with all relics of this kind, the Roman Catholic Church made no pronouncements on its authenticity. As with other approved Catholic devotions, the matter has been left to the personal decision of the faithful, as long as the Church does not issue a future notification to the contrary. In the Church's view, whether the cloth is authentic or not has no bearing whatsoever on the validity of what Jesus taught or on the saving power of his death and resurrection.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Pope John Paul II stated in 1998 that: "Since it is not a matter of faith, the Church has no specific competence to pronounce on these questions. She entrusts to scientists the task of continuing to investigate, so that satisfactory answers may be found to the questions connected with this Sheet." Pope John Paul II showed himself to be deeply moved by the image of the Shroud and arranged for public showings in 1998 and 2000. In his address at the Turin Cathedral on Sunday 24 May 1998 (the occasion of the 100th year of Secondo Pia's 28 May 1898 photograph), he said: "The Shroud is an image of God's love as well as of human sin... The imprint left by the tortured body of the Crucified One, which attests to the tremendous human capacity for causing pain and death to one's fellow man, stands as an icon of the suffering of the innocent in every age."


title: Shroud of Turin

text: On 30 March 2013, as part of the Easter celebrations, there was an exposition of the shroud in the Cathedral of Turin. Pope Francis recorded a video message for the occasion, in which he described the image on the shroud as "this Icon of a man", and stated that "the Man of the Shroud invites us to contemplate Jesus of Nazareth." In his carefully worded statement, Pope Francis urged the faithful to contemplate the shroud with awe, but "stopped firmly short of asserting its authenticity".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Pope Francis went on a pilgrimage to Turin on 21 June 2015, to pray before and venerate the Holy Shroud and honor St. John Bosco on the bicentenary of his birth.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Sindonology (from the Greek σινδών—sindon, the word used in the Gospel of Mark to describe the type of the burial cloth of Jesus) is the formal study of the Shroud. The "Oxford English Dictionary" cites the first use of this word in 1964: "The investigation ... assumed the stature of a separate discipline and was given a name, sindonology," but also identifies the use of "sindonological" in 1950 and "sindonologist" in 1953.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Secondo Pia's 1898 photographs of the shroud allowed the scientific community to begin to study it. A variety of scientific theories regarding the shroud have since been proposed, based on disciplines ranging from chemistry to biology and medical forensics to optical image analysis. The scientific approaches to the study of the Shroud fall into three groups: "material analysis" (both chemical and historical), "biology and medical forensics" and "image analysis".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The first direct examination of the shroud by a scientific team was undertaken in 1969–1973 in order to advise on preservation of the shroud and determine specific testing methods. This led to the appointment of an 11-member Turin Commission to advise on the preservation of the relic and on specific testing. Five of the commission members were scientists, and preliminary studies of samples of the fabric were conducted in 1973.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1976 physicist John P. Jackson, thermodynamicist Eric Jumper and photographer William Mottern used image analysis technologies developed in aerospace science for analyzing the images of the Shroud. In 1977 these three scientists and over thirty other experts in various fields formed the Shroud of Turin Research Project. In 1978 this group, often called STURP, was given direct access to the Shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Also in 1978, independently from the STURP research, Giovanni Tamburelli obtained at CSELT a 3D-elaboration from the Shroud with higher resolution than Jumper and Mottern. A second result of Tamburelli was the electronic removal from the image of the blood that apparently covers the face.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In the 1970s, a special eleven-member Turin Commission conducted several tests. Conventional and electron microscopic examination of the Shroud at that time revealed an absence of heterogeneous coloring material or pigment. In 1979, Walter McCrone, upon analyzing the samples he was given by STURP, concluded that the image is actually made up of billions of submicrometre pigment particles. The only fibrils that had been made available for testing of the stains were those that remained affixed to custom-designed adhesive tape applied to thirty-two different sections of the image.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Mark Anderson, who was working for McCrone, analyzed the Shroud samples. In his book Ray Rogers states that Anderson, who was McCrone's Raman microscopy expert, concluded that the samples acted as organic material when he subjected them to the laser.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: John Heller and Alan Adler examined the same samples and agreed with McCrone's result that the cloth contains iron oxide. However, they concluded, the exceptional purity of the chemical and comparisons with other ancient textiles showed that, while retting flax absorbs iron selectively, the iron itself was not the source of the image on the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: After years of discussion, the Holy See permitted radiocarbon dating on portions of a swatch taken from a corner of the shroud. Independent tests in 1988 at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology concluded with 95% confidence that the shroud material dated to 1260–1390 AD. This 13th- to 14th-century dating is much too recent for the shroud to have been associated with Jesus. The dating does on the other hand match the first appearance of the shroud in church history. This dating is also slightly more recent than that estimated by art historian W. S. A. Dale, who postulated on artistic grounds that the shroud is an 11th-century icon made for use in worship services.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Some proponents for the authenticity of the shroud have attempted to discount the radiocarbon dating result by claiming that the sample may represent a medieval "invisible" repair fragment rather than the image-bearing cloth. However, all of the hypotheses used to challenge the radiocarbon dating have been scientifically refuted, including the medieval repair hypothesis, the bio-contamination hypothesis and the carbon monoxide hypothesis.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In recent years, the radiocarbon dating data have been repeatedly statistically analysed, in attempts to draw some conclusions about the reliability of the C14 dating from studying the data rather than studying the shroud itself. The studies have all concluded that the data lack homogeneity, which might be due to unidentified abnormalities in the fabric tested, or to differences in the pre-testing cleaning processes used by the different laboratories. The most recent analysis (2020) concluded that the stated date range needs to be adjusted by up to 88 years in order to properly meet the requirement of "95% confidence".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1998, shroud researcher Joe Nickell wrote that no examples of herringbone weave are known from the time of Jesus. The few samples of burial cloths that are known from the era are made using plain weave. In 2000, fragments of a burial shroud from the 1st century were discovered in a tomb near Jerusalem, believed to have belonged to a Jewish high priest or member of the aristocracy. Based on this discovery, the researchers concluded that the Turin Shroud did not originate from Jesus-era Jerusalem.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: There are several reddish stains on the shroud suggesting blood, but it is uncertain whether these stains were produced at the same time as the image, or afterwards. McCrone (see painting hypothesis) believed that these contain iron oxide, and theorised that its presence was likely due to simple pigment materials used in medieval times.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Skeptics cite forensic blood tests whose results dispute the authenticity of the Shroud, and point to the possibility that the blood could belong to a person who handled the shroud, and that the apparent blood flows on the shroud are unrealistically neat.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: A study published in 2011 by Salvatore Lorusso of the University of Bologna and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or anything else on either image.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 2015, Italian researchers Barcaccia et al. published a new study in "Scientific Reports". They examined the human and non-human DNA found when the shroud and its backing cloth were vacuumed in 1977 and 1988. They found traces of 19 different plant taxa, including plants native to Mediterranean countries, Central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Asia (China) and the Americas. Of the human mtDNA, sequences were found belonging to haplogroups that are typical of various ethnicities and geographic regions, including Europe, North and East Africa, the Middle East and India. A few non-plant and non-human sequences were also detected, including various birds and one ascribable to a marine worm common in the Northern Pacific Ocean, next to Canada. After sequencing some DNA of pollen and dust found on the shroud, they confirmed that many people from many different places came in contact with the shroud. According to the scientists, "such diversity does not exclude a Medieval origin in Europe but it would be also compatible with the historic path followed by the Turin Shroud during its presumed journey from the Near East. Furthermore, the results raise the possibility of an Indian manufacture of the linen cloth."


title: Shroud of Turin

text: A number of studies on the anatomical consistency of the image on the shroud and the nature of the wounds on it have been performed, following the initial study by Yves Delage in 1902. While Delage declared the image anatomically flawless, others have presented arguments to support both authenticity and forgery.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The analysis of a crucified Roman, discovered near Venice in 2007, shows heel wounds that are consistent with those found on Jehohanan but which are not consistent with wounds depicted on the shroud. Also, neither of the crucifixion victims known to archaeology shows evidence of wrist wounds.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Joe Nickell in 1983, and Gregory S. Paul in 2010, separately state that the proportions of the image are not realistic. Paul stated that the face and proportions of the shroud image are impossible, that the figure cannot represent that of an actual person and that the posture was inconsistent. They argued that the forehead on the shroud is too small; and that the arms are too long and of different lengths and that the distance from the eyebrows to the top of the head is non-representative. They concluded that the features can be explained if the shroud is a work of a Gothic artist.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 2018, an experimental Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) was performed to study the behaviour of blood flows from the wounds of a crucified person, and to compare this to the evidence on the Turin Shroud. The comparison between different tests demonstrated that the blood patterns on the forearms and on the back of the hand are not connected, and would have had to occur at different times, as a result of a very specific sequence of movements. In addition, the rivulets on the front of the image are not consistent with the lines on the lumbar area, even supposing there might have been different episodes of bleeding at different times. These inconsistencies suggest that the Turin linen was an artistic or "didactic" representation, rather than an authentic burial shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: As Raymond E. Brown noticed, it is impossible for a corpse lying prostrate to cover his own genitals.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Both art-historical digital image processing and analog techniques have been applied to the shroud images.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1976, scientists used NASA imaging equipment to analyse a photograph of the shroud image and decoded the shroud image into a 3-dimensional image.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Optical physicist and former STURP member John Dee German has noted that it is not difficult to make a photograph which has 3D qualities. If the object being photographed is lit from the front, and a non-reflective "fog" of some sort exists between the camera and the object, then less light will reach and reflect back from the portions of the object that are farther from the lens, thus creating a contrast which is dependent on distance.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The image on the front of the Turin Shroud, long, is not exactly the same size as the image on the back, long. Analysis of the images found them to be compatible with the shroud having been used to wrap a body long.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The image could be compared to oshiguma, the making of face-prints as an artform, in Japan. Furthermore, the subject's physical appearance corresponds to Byzantine iconography.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Shroud cloth is composed of threads of a nominal diameter of 0.15 mm, woven with fibers of linen with a diameter of about 10-20 µm.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Shroud image is a faint and superficial image caused by a translucent and discontinuous yellow discoloration of the fibers. In the points where the image is present, the discoloration affects only 2 or 3 fibers on the topmost part of the threads of the cloth. In each fiber, the yellow discoloration penetrates only for 200nm in the external cell layer.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: A fiber is not necessarily colored for all its length, but, in the parts where it is, it has the property of being colored all around its cylindrical surface.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The discoloration seems caused by a kind of dehydrative oxidation process, which has discolored and chemically altered the surfaces of certain surface fibrils.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The image of the Shroud is an areal density image, in the sense that the levels of darkness are not given by variations of the color, which instead is approximately constant all over the image, but by a variation of the number of yellowed fibers per unit area. Therefore, it can be considered a halftone image. Furthermore, there is no difference in terms of distribution of fiber coloration and maximum densities between the front and the rear of the image.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Even if we can conclude that the blood images come from a contact mechanism, for the origin of the body image this doesn't seem to apply as well. The mapping between body-only image densities and expected cloth-body distances suggests that the image instead comes from some sort of "projection" mechanism, as it is present even when it does not seem possible for the cloth to be in contact with the body.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The technique used for producing the image is, according to Walter McCrone, described in a book about medieval painting published in 1847 by Charles Lock Eastlake ("Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters"). Eastlake describes in the chapter "Practice of Painting Generally During the XIVth Century" a special technique of painting on linen using tempera paint, which produces images with unusual transparent features—which McCrone compares to the image on the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 2009, Luigi Garlaschelli, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, stated that he had made a full size reproduction of the Shroud of Turin using only medieval technologies. Garlaschelli placed a linen sheet over a volunteer and then rubbed it with an acidic pigment. The shroud was then aged in an oven before being washed to remove the pigment. He then added blood stains, scorches and water stains to replicate the original. Giulio Fanti, professor of mechanical and thermic measurements at the University of Padua, commented that "the technique itself seems unable to produce an image having the most critical Turin Shroud image characteristics".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Garlaschelli's reproduction was shown in a 2010 National Geographic documentary. Garlaschelli's technique included the bas-relief approach (described below) but only for the image of the face. The resultant image was visibly similar to the Turin Shroud, though lacking the uniformity and detail of the original.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The art historian Nicholas Allen has proposed that the image on the shroud could have been formed as early as the 13th century using techniques described in the "Book of Optics".


title: Shroud of Turin

text: However, according to Mike Ware, a chemist and expert on the history of photography, Allen's proposal "encounters serious obstacles with regard to the technical history of the lens. Such claimants tend to draw upon the wisdom of hindsight to project a distorted historical perspective, wherein their cases rest upon a particular concatenation of procedures which is exceedingly improbable; and their 'proofs' amount only to demonstrating (none too faithfully) that it was not totally impossible." Among other difficulties, Allen's hypothesized process would have required that the subject (Jesus's corpse) be exposed, motionlessly, in the sun for months.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Scientists Emily Craig and Randall Bresee have attempted to recreate the likenesses of the shroud through the dust-transfer technique, which could have been done by medieval arts. They first did a carbon-dust drawing of a Jesus-like face (using collagen dust) on a newsprint made from wood pulp (which is similar to 13th- and 14th-century paper). They next placed the drawing on a table and covered it with a piece of linen. They then pressed the linen against the newsprint by firmly rubbing with the flat side of a wooden spoon. By doing this they managed to create a reddish-brown image with a lifelike positive likeness of a person, a three-dimensional image and no sign of brush strokes.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 1978, Joe Nickell noted that the Shroud image had a three-dimensional quality and thought its creation may have involved a sculpture of some type. He advanced the hypothesis that a medieval rubbing technique was used to explain the image, and set out to demonstrate this. He noted that while wrapping a cloth around a sculpture with normal contours would result in a distorted image, Nickell believed that wrapping a cloth over a bas-relief might result in an image like the one seen on the shroud, as it would eliminate wraparound distortions. For his demonstration, Nickell wrapped a wet cloth around a bas-relief sculpture and allowed it to dry. He then applied powdered pigment rather than wet paint (to prevent it soaking into the threads). The pigment was applied with a dauber, similar to making a rubbing from a gravestone. The result was an image with dark regions and light regions convincingly arranged. In a photo essay in "Popular Photography" magazine, Nickell demonstrated this technique step-by-step. Other researchers later replicated this process.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: In 2005, researcher Jacques di Costanzo constructed a bas-relief of a Jesus-like face and draped wet linen over it. After the linen dried, he dabbed it with a mixture of ferric oxide and gelatine. The result was an image similar to that of the face on the Shroud. The imprinted image turned out to be wash-resistant, impervious to temperatures of and was undamaged by exposure to a range of harsh chemicals, including bisulphite which, without the gelatine, would normally have degraded ferric oxide to the compound ferrous oxide.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Instead of painting, it has been suggested that the bas-relief could also be heated and used to scorch an image onto the cloth. However researcher Thibault Heimburger performed some experiments with the scorching of linen, and found that a scorch mark is only produced by direct contact with the hot object—thus producing an all-or-nothing discoloration with no graduation of color as is found in the shroud.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: The Maillard reaction is a form of non-enzymatic browning involving an amino acid and a reducing sugar. The cellulose fibers of the shroud are coated with a thin carbohydrate layer of starch fractions, various sugars, and other impurities. The potential source for amines required for the reaction is a decomposing body, and no signs of decomposition have been found on the Shroud. Rogers also notes that their tests revealed that there were no proteins or bodily fluids on the image areas. Also, the image resolution and the uniform coloration of the linen resolution seem to be incompatible with a mechanism involving diffusion.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Various people have claimed to have detected images of flowers on the shroud, as well as coins over the eyes of the face in the image, writing and other objects. However a study published in 2011 by Lorusso and others subjected two photographs of the shroud to detailed modern digital image processing, one of them being a reproduction of the photographic negative taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. They did not find any images of flowers or coins or writing or any other additional objects on the shroud in either photograph, they noted that the faint images were "only visible by incrementing the photographic contrast", and they concluded that these signs may be linked to protuberances in the yarn, and possibly also to the alteration and influence of the texture of the Enrie photographic negative during its development in 1931. The use of coins to cover the eyes of the dead is not attested for 1st-century Palestine. The existence of the coin images is rejected by most scientists.


title: Shroud of Turin

text: Some proponents for the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin have argued that the image on the shroud was created by some form of radiation emission at the "moment of resurrection". However, STURP member Alan Adler has stated that this theory is not generally accepted as scientific, given that it runs counter to the laws of physics. Raymond Rogers also criticized the theory, saying: "It is clear that a corona discharge (plasma) in air will cause easily observable changes in a linen sample. No such effects can be observed in image fibers from the Shroud of Turin. Corona discharges and/or plasmas made no contribution to image formation."


title: French Bulldog

text: The French Bulldog, , is a French breed of companion dog or toy dog. It appeared in Paris in the mid-nineteenth century, apparently the result of cross-breeding of Toy Bulldogs imported from England and local Parisian ratters.


title: French Bulldog

text: It is commonly kept as a pet, and is among the most frequently registered dogs in a number of countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.


title: French Bulldog

text: From the beginning of the nineteenth century bulldogs were bred in the United Kingdom for purposes other than traditional blood sports such as bull-baiting, which were banned in 1835. By the middle of the century there were miniature bulldogs, often weighing some , though some weighed considerably less.


title: French Bulldog

text: At the same time, lace workers from Nottingham who were displaced by the Industrial Revolution began to settle in Normandy, France. They brought a variety of dogs with them, including Toy Bulldogs. The dogs became popular in France and a trade in imported small Bulldogs was created, with breeders in England sending over Bulldogs that they considered to be too small, or with faults such as ears that stood up. By 1860, there were few Toy Bulldogs left in England, such was their popularity in France, and due to the exploits of specialist dog exporters.


title: French Bulldog

text: The small Bulldog type gradually became thought of as a breed, and received a name, the Bouledogue Francais. This Francization of the English name is also a contraction of the words "boule" (ball) and "dogue" (mastiff). The dogs were highly fashionable and were sought after by society ladies and Parisian prostitutes alike, as well as creatives such as artists, writers, and fashion designers. The artists Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec are thought to have French Bulldogs in their paintings. However, records were not kept of the breed's development as it diverged further away from its original Bulldog roots. As it changed, terrier stock had been brought in to develop traits such as the breed's long straight ears.


title: French Bulldog

text: Bulldogs were very popular in the past, especially in Western Europe. One of its ancestors was the English bulldog. Americans had been importing French Bulldogs for a while, but it was not until 1885 when they were brought over in order to set up an American-based breeding program. They were mostly owned by society ladies, who first displayed them at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in 1896. They arrived again in the following year with even more entries, where the judging of the breed would go on to have future ramifications. The judge in question at the dog show, George Raper, only chose winners with "rose ears"—ears that folded at the tip, as with the standard for Bulldogs. The ladies formed the French Bull Dog Club of America and created the breed standard which stated for the first time that the "erect bat ear" was the correct type.


title: French Bulldog

text: In the early 20th century, the breed remained in vogue for high society, with dogs changing hands for up to $3,000 and being owned by members of influential families such as the Rockefellers and the J. P. Morgans. The American Kennel Club recognized the breed quickly after the breed club was formed, and by 1906 the French Bulldog was the fifth most popular dog breed in America. In 2013, the American Kennel Club (AKC) ranked the French Bulldog as the 10th most popular breed in the United States, enjoying a sharp rise in popularity from 54th place a decade before, in 2003. By 2014, they had moved up to become the ninth most popular AKC registered dog breed in the US and by the 2017 they were the fourth most popular.


title: French Bulldog

text: This new Bulldog breed arrived for the first time in England in 1893, with English Bulldog breeders in an uproar as the French imports did not meet the new breed standards in place by this time, and they wanted to prevent the English stock from crossbreeding with the French. The Kennel Club initially recognized them as a subset of the existing Bulldog breed rather than an entirely new breed. Some English breeders in this period bred the French Bulldogs in order to resurrect the Toy Bulldog. On 10 July 1902, at the house of Frederick W. Cousens, a meeting was held to set up a breed club in order to seek individual recognition for the French breed. The adopted breed standard was the same one which was already in use in America, France, Germany and Austria. Despite opposition from Miniature Bulldog (the new breed name for the Toy Bulldog) and Bulldog breeders, in 1905, the Kennel Club changed its policy on the breed and recognized them separate from the English variety, initially as the Bouledogue Francais, then later in 1912 with the name changed to the French Bulldog.


title: French Bulldog

text: It is commonly kept as a pet: in 2020 it was the second-most registered dog in the United Kingdom, and the fourth-most in the United States. They were rated the third-most popular dog in Australia in 2017. In 2019, in the United Kingdom, the French Bulldog had 375 export pedigrees and a total of 33,661 registered dogs. By comparison, the Labrador Retriever had over 36,700 dogs and the Cocker Spaniel fewer than 22,000.


title: French Bulldog

text: The American Kennel Club standard for the French Bulldog states that it should be muscular, with a soft and loose coat forming wrinkles.


title: French Bulldog

text: The AKC Standard weight for a French Bulldog is maximum 28 pounds. The head of a French bulldog should be square shaped and large, with ears that resemble bat ears. French bulldogs are a flat-faced breed. Eyes that are AKC Standard approved for French Bulldogs are dark and almost to the point of being black. Blue eyed French bulldogs are not AKC approved. The coat of a French bulldog should be short haired and fine and silky. Acceptable colors under the breed standard are the various shades of brindle, fawn, cream or white with brindle patches (known as "pied"). The fawn colors can be any light through red. The most common colors are brindle, then fawn, with pieds being less common than the other colors. The breed clubs do not recognize any other colors or patterns. This is because some colors come linked with genetic health problems not usually found in the breed. These include blue coloration, which is linked with a form of alopecia (hair loss or baldness), sometimes known as "blue dog alopecia". Even dogs that are not blue can develop "blue dog alopecia" or canine follicular dysplasia.


title: French Bulldog

text: The French Bulldog, like many other companion dog breeds, requires close contact with humans. If left alone for more than a few hours, it may experience separation anxiety.


title: French Bulldog

text: French Bulldogs are often kept as companions. The breed is patient and affectionate with their owners, and can live with other breeds. French Bulldogs are agreeable dogs, and are human-oriented, and this makes them easier to train, though they do have tendencies to be stubborn.


title: French Bulldog

text: They are ranked 58th in Stanley Coren's "The Intelligence of Dogs". There are certain exceptions to this average level of canine intelligence; a French Bulldog named Princess Jacqueline which died in 1934 was claimed to be able to speak 20 words, in appropriate situations.


title: French Bulldog

text: As a consequence of selective breeding, French Bulldogs are disproportionately affected by health related problems.


title: French Bulldog

text: The skull malformation brachycephaly was increased by breeding selection which led to the occurrence of the brachycephalic airway obstructive syndrome. Therefore many French Bulldogs often pant sticking out their tongue even at slight efforts like walking. The brachycephalic syndrome causes them to have multiple side effects, as in difficulty breathing (which includes snoring, loud breathing). It happens because they have narrow nostril openings, a long soft palate, and fairly narrow tracheas. This issue can lead to death in French Bulldogs if they are not undergoing proper treatment.


title: French Bulldog

text: In order to treat these dogs and create a smoother airway to the lungs, a procedure must be done that takes out a portion of their soft palate. The results of the procedure show a minimum of 60% better airway passage to the lungs.


title: French Bulldog

text: A study of the deaths of dogs in the United Kingdom in 2016–2020 found the French Bulldog to have a life expectancy at birth of , the lowest by large margin all breeds in the study, which found an average for all dogs of . Analysis of data from Japan suggested that its life expectancy there is considerably higher, at .


title: French Bulldog

text: In 2013, a UK Medical Study reviewed the health of 2228 French Bulldogs under veterinary care in the UK. The study found that 1612 (72.4%) of these French Bulldog had at least one recorded health issue: "The most common disorders recorded were ear infections (14.0%), diarrhea (7.5%) and conjunctivitis (3.2%). Skin problems were the most commonly reported group of disorders (17.9%). This study of over two thousand French Bulldogs provides a framework to identify the most important health priorities in French Bulldogs in the UK and can assist with reforms to improve health and welfare within the breed."


title: French Bulldog

text: As they are a brachycephalic breed, French Bulldogs are banned by several commercial airlines due to the numbers that have died while in the air. This is because dogs with snub noses find it difficult to breathe when they are hot and stressed. The temperature in a cargo space in an aircraft can rise as high as when waiting on the runway.


title: French Bulldog

text: French Bulldogs sometimes require artificial insemination and, frequently, Caesarean section to give birth, with over 80% of litters delivered this way.


title: French Bulldog

text: French Bulldogs are prone to having congenital hemivertebrae (also called "butterfly vertebrae"), which will show on an X-ray.


title: French Bulldog

text: In October 2010, the UK French Bulldog Health Scheme was launched. The scheme consists of three levels: the first level, Bronze, designates a basic veterinary check which covers all the Kennel Club Breed Watch points of concern for the breed. The next level, Silver, requires a DNA test for hereditary cataracts, a simple cardiology test, and patella grading. The final level, Gold, requires a hip score and a spine evaluation. The European and UK French Bulldog fanciers and Kennel Clubs are moving away from the screw, cork-screw or 'tight' tail (which is an inbreed spinal defect), and returning to the short drop tail which the breed originally had. The UK breed standard requires that the tail be "undocked, set low, thick at root, tapering quickly towards tip, preferably straight, and long enough to cover anus" and "never curling over back nor carried gaily".


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol (), also called glycerine in British English and glycerin in American English, is a simple triol compound. It is a colorless, odorless, viscous liquid that is sweet-tasting and non-toxic. The glycerol backbone is found in lipids known as glycerides. Because it has antimicrobial and antiviral properties, it is widely used in wound and burn treatments approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Conversely, it is also used as a bacterial culture medium. It can be used as an effective marker to measure liver disease. It is also widely used as a sweetener in the food industry and as a humectant in pharmaceutical formulations. Because of its three hydroxyl groups, glycerol is miscible with water and is hygroscopic in nature.


title: Glycerol

text: Although achiral, glycerol is prochiral with respect to reactions of one of the two primary alcohols. Thus, in substituted derivatives, the stereospecific numbering labels the molecule with a "sn-" prefix before the stem name of the molecule.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is generally obtained from plant and animal sources where it occurs in triglycerides, esters of glycerol with long-chain carboxylic acids. The hydrolysis, saponification, or transesterification of these triglycerides produces glycerol as well as the fatty acid derivative:


title: Glycerol

text: Triglycerides can be saponified with sodium hydroxide to give glycerol and fatty sodium salt or soap.


title: Glycerol

text: Typical plant sources include soybeans or palm. Animal-derived tallow is another source. Approximately 950,000 tons per year are produced in the United States and Europe; 350,000 tons of glycerol were produced per year in the U.S. alone from 2000 to 2004. The EU directive 2003/30/EC set a requirement that 5.75% of petroleum fuels were to be replaced with biofuel sources across all member states by 2010. It was projected in 2006 that by 2020, production would be six times more than demand, creating an excess of glycerol as a byproduct of biofuel production.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol from triglycerides is produced on a large scale, but the crude product is of variable quality, with a low selling price of as low as 2–5 U.S. cents per kilogram in 2011. It can be purified, but the process is expensive. Some glycerol is burned for energy, but its heat value is low.


title: Glycerol

text: Crude glycerol from the hydrolysis of triglycerides can be purified by treatment with activated carbon to remove organic impurities, alkali to remove unreacted glycerol esters, and ion exchange to remove salts. High purity glycerol (> 99.5%) is obtained by multi-step distillation; a vacuum chamber is necessary due to its high boiling point (290 °C).


title: Glycerol

text: Although usually not cost-effective, glycerol can be produced by various routes from propene. The epichlorohydrin process is the most important: it involves the chlorination of propylene to give allyl chloride, which is oxidized with hypochlorite to dichlorohydrins, which reacts with a strong base to give epichlorohydrin. This epichlorohydrin is then hydrolyzed to give glycerol. Chlorine-free processes from propylene include the synthesis of glycerol from acrolein and propylene oxide.


title: Glycerol

text: Because of the large-scale production of biodiesel from fats, where glycerol is a waste product, the market for glycerol is depressed. Thus, synthetic processes are not economical. Owing to oversupply, efforts are being made to convert glycerol to synthetic precursors, such as acrolein and epichlorohydrin.


title: Glycerol

text: In food and beverages, glycerol serves as a humectant, solvent, and sweetener, and may help preserve foods. It is also used as filler in commercially prepared low-fat foods (e.g., cookies), and as a thickening agent in liqueurs. Glycerol and water are used to preserve certain types of plant leaves. As a sugar substitute, it has approximately 27 kilocalories per teaspoon (sugar has 20) and is 60% as sweet as sucrose. It does not feed the bacteria that form a dental plaque and cause dental cavities. As a food additive, glycerol is labeled as E number E422. It is added to icing (frosting) to prevent it from setting too hard.


title: Glycerol

text: As used in foods, glycerol is categorized by the U.S. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics as a carbohydrate. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) carbohydrate designation includes all caloric macronutrients excluding protein and fat. Glycerol has a caloric density similar to table sugar, but a lower glycemic index and different metabolic pathway within the body, so some dietary advocates accept glycerol as a sweetener compatible with low-carbohydrate diets.


title: Glycerol

text: It is also recommended as an additive when using polyol sweeteners such as erythritol and xylitol which have a cooling effect, due to its heating effect in the mouth, if the cooling effect is not wanted.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerin is mildly antimicrobial and antiviral and is an FDA-approved treatment for wounds. The Red Cross reports that an 85% solution of glycerin shows bactericidal and antiviral effects, and wounds treated with glycerin show reduced inflammation after roughly 2 hours. Due to this it is used widely in wound care products, including glycerin based hydrogel sheets for burns and other wound care. It is approved for all types of wound care except third degree burns, and is used to package donor skin used in skin grafts.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is used in medical, pharmaceutical and personal care preparations, often as a means of improving smoothness, providing lubrication, and as a humectant.


title: Glycerol

text: Ichthyosis and xerosis have been relieved by the topical use of glycerin. It is found in allergen immunotherapies, cough syrups, elixirs and expectorants, toothpaste, mouthwashes, skin care products, shaving cream, hair care products, soaps, and water-based personal lubricants. In solid dosage forms like tablets, glycerol is used as a tablet holding agent. For human consumption, glycerol is classified by the FDA among the sugar alcohols as a caloric macronutrient. Glycerol is also used in blood banking to preserve red blood cells prior to freezing.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is a component of glycerin soap. Essential oils are added for fragrance. This kind of soap is used by people with sensitive, easily irritated skin because it prevents skin dryness with its moisturizing properties. It draws moisture up through skin layers and slows or prevents excessive drying and evaporation.


title: Glycerol

text: Taken rectally, glycerol functions as a laxative by irritating the anal mucosa and inducing a hyperosmotic effect, expanding the colon by drawing water into it to induce peristalsis resulting in evacuation. It may be administered undiluted either as a suppository or as a small-volume (2–10 ml) enema. Alternatively, it may be administered in a dilute solution, e.g., 5%, as a high volume enema.


title: Glycerol

text: Taken orally (often mixed with fruit juice to reduce its sweet taste), glycerol can cause a rapid, temporary decrease in the internal pressure of the eye. This can be useful for the initial emergency treatment of severely elevated eye pressure.


title: Glycerol

text: In 2017 researchers showed that the probiotic "Limosilactobacillus reuteri" bacteria can be supplemented with glycerol to enhance its production of antimicrobial substances in the human gut. This was confirmed to be as effective as the antibiotic Vancomycin at inhibiting "Clostridioides difficile" infection without having a significant effect on the overall microbial composition of the gut.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol has also been incorporated as a component of bio-ink formulations in the field of bioprinting. The glycerol content acts to add viscosity to the bio-ink without adding large protein, carbohydrate, or glycoprotein molecules.


title: Glycerol

text: When utilized in "tincture" method extractions, specifically as a 10% solution, glycerol prevents tannins from precipitating in ethanol extracts of plants (tinctures). It is also used as an "alcohol-free" alternative to ethanol as a solvent in preparing herbal extractions. It is less extractive when utilized in a standard tincture methodology. Alcohol-based tinctures can also have the alcohol removed and replaced with glycerol for its preserving properties. Such products are not "alcohol-free" in a scientific or FDA regulatory sense, as glycerol contains three hydroxyl groups. Fluid extract manufacturers often extract herbs in hot water before adding glycerol to make glycerites.


title: Glycerol

text: When used as a primary "true" alcohol-free botanical extraction solvent in non-tincture based methodologies, glycerol has been shown to possess a high degree of extractive versatility for botanicals including removal of numerous constituents and complex compounds, with an extractive power that can rival that of alcohol and water–alcohol solutions. That glycerol possesses such high extractive power assumes it is utilized with dynamic (i.e. critical) methodologies as opposed to standard passive "tincturing" methodologies that are better suited to alcohol. Glycerol possesses the intrinsic property of not denaturing or rendering a botanical's constituents inert like alcohols (i.e. ethyl (grain) alcohol, methyl (wood) alcohol, etc.) do. Glycerol is a stable preserving agent for botanical extracts that, when utilized in proper concentrations in an extraction solvent base, does not allow inverting or mitigates reduction-oxidation of a finished extract's constituents, even over several years. Both glycerol and ethanol are viable preserving agents. Glycerol is bacteriostatic in its action, and ethanol is bactericidal in its action.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerin, along with propylene glycol, is a common component of e-liquid, a solution used with electronic vaporizers (electronic cigarettes). This glycerol is heated with an atomizer (a heating coil often made of Kanthal wire), producing the aerosol that delivers nicotine to the user.


title: Glycerol

text: Like ethylene glycol and propylene glycol, glycerol is a non-ionic kosmotrope that forms strong hydrogen bonds with water molecules, competing with water-water hydrogen bonds. This interaction disrupts the formation of ice. The minimum freezing point temperature is about corresponding to 70% glycerol in water.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol was historically used as an anti-freeze for automotive applications before being replaced by ethylene glycol, which has a lower freezing point. While the minimum freezing point of a glycerol-water mixture is higher than an ethylene glycol-water mixture, glycerol is not toxic and is being re-examined for use in automotive applications.


title: Glycerol

text: In the laboratory, glycerol is a common component of solvents for enzymatic reagents stored at temperatures below 0 °C due to the depression of the freezing temperature. It is also used as a cryoprotectant where the glycerol is dissolved in water to reduce damage by ice crystals to laboratory organisms that are stored in frozen solutions, such as fungi, bacteria, nematodes, and mammalian embryos. Some organisms like the moor frog produce glycerol to survive freezing temperatures during hibernation.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is used to produce nitroglycerin, which is an essential ingredient of various explosives such as dynamite, gelignite, and propellants like cordite. Reliance on soap-making to supply co-product glycerol made it difficult to increase production to meet wartime demand. Hence, synthetic glycerol processes were national defense priorities in the days leading up to World War II. Nitroglycerin, also known as glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) is commonly used to relieve "angina pectoris", taken in the form of sub-lingual tablets, patches, or as an aerosol spray.


title: Glycerol

text: Trifunctional polyether polyols are produced from glycerol and propylene oxide. An oxidation of glycerol affords mesoxalic acid. Dehydrating glycerol affords hydroxyacetone.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is used as fill for pressure gauges to damp vibration. External vibrations, from compressors, engines, pumps, etc., produce harmonic vibrations within Bourdon gauges that can cause the needle to move excessively, giving inaccurate readings. The excessive swinging of the needle can also damage internal gears or other components, causing premature wear. Glycerol, when poured into a gauge to replace the air space, reduces the harmonic vibrations that are transmitted to the needle, increasing the lifetime and reliability of the gauge.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is used by set decorators when filming scenes involving water to prevent an area meant to look wet from drying out too quickly.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerine is also used in the generation of theatrical smoke and fog as a component of the fluid used in fog machines as a replacement for glycol, which has been shown to be an irritant if exposure is prolonged.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol can be sometimes used as replacement for water in ultrasonic testing, as it has favourably higher acoustic impedance (2.42MRayl vs 1.483MRayl for water) while being relatively safe, non-toxic, non-corrosive and relatively low cost.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is also used to power diesel generators supplying electricity for the FIA Formula E series of electric race cars.


title: Glycerol

text: Research has been conducted to produce value-added products from glycerol obtained from biodiesel production. Examples (aside from combustion of waste glycerol):


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is a precursor for synthesis of triacylglycerols and of phospholipids in the liver and adipose tissue. When the body uses stored fat as a source of energy, glycerol and fatty acids are released into the bloodstream.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol is mainly metabolized in the liver. Glycerol injections can be used as a simple test for liver damage, as its rate of absorption by the liver is considered an accurate measure of liver health. Glycerol metabolism is reduced in both cirrhosis and fatty liver disease.


title: Glycerol

text: Blood glycerol levels are highly elevated during diabetes, and is believed to be the cause of reduced fertility in patients who suffer from diabetes and metabolic syndrome. Blood glycerol levels in diabetic patients average three times higher than healthy controls. Direct glycerol treatment of testes has been found to cause significant long-term reduction in sperm count. Further testing on this subject was abandoned due to the unexpected results, as this was not the goal of the experiment.


title: Glycerol

text: Circulating glycerol does not glycate proteins as do glucose or fructose, and does not lead to the formation of advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs). In some organisms, the glycerol component can enter the glycolysis pathway directly and, thus, provide energy for cellular metabolism (or, potentially, be converted to glucose through gluconeogenesis).


title: Glycerol

text: Before glycerol can enter the pathway of glycolysis or gluconeogenesis (depending on physiological conditions), it must be converted to their intermediate glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate in the following steps:


title: Glycerol

text: The enzyme glycerol kinase is present mainly in the liver and kidneys, but also in other body tissues, including muscle and brain. In adipose tissue, glycerol 3-phosphate is obtained from dihydroxyacetone phosphate with the enzyme glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase.


title: Glycerol

text: Glycerol has very low toxicity when ingested; its LD oral dose for rats is 12600 mg/kg and 8700 mg/kg for mice. It does not appear to cause toxicity when inhaled, although changes in cell maturity occurred in small sections of lung in animals under the highest dose measured. A sub-chronic 90-day nose-only inhalation study in Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats exposed to 0.03, 0.16 and 0.66 mg/L glycerin (Per liter of air) for 6-hour continuous sessions revealed no treatment-related toxicity other than minimal metaplasia of the epithelium lining at the base of the epiglottis in rats exposed to 0.66 mg/L glycerin.


title: Glycerol

text: On 4 May 2007, the FDA advised all U.S. makers of medicines to test all batches of glycerol for the toxic diethylene glycol. This followed an occurrence of hundreds of fatal poisonings in Panama resulting from a falsified import customs declaration by Panamanian import/export firm Aduanas Javier de Gracia Express, S. A. The cheaper diethylene glycol was relabeled as the more expensive glycerol. Between 1990 and 1998, incidents of DEG poisoning reportedly occurred in Argentina, Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria, and resulted in hundreds of deaths. In 1937, more than one hundred people died in the United States after ingesting DEG-contaminated elixir sulfanilamide, a drug used to treat infections.


title: Glycerol

text: The origin of the gly- and glu- prefixes for glycols and sugars is from Greek γλυκύς "glukus" which means sweet.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: In computer storage, the standard RAID levels comprise a basic set of RAID ("redundant array of independent disks" or "redundant array of inexpensive disks") configurations that employ the techniques of striping, mirroring, or parity to create large reliable data stores from multiple general-purpose computer hard disk drives (HDDs). The most common types are RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring) and its variants, RAID 5 (distributed parity), and RAID 6 (dual parity). Multiple RAID levels can also be combined or "nested", for instance RAID 10 (striping of mirrors) or RAID 01 (mirroring stripe sets). RAID levels and their associated data formats are standardized by the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) in the Common RAID Disk Drive Format (DDF) standard. The numerical values only serve as identifiers and do not signify performance, reliability, generation, or any other metric.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: While most RAID levels can provide good protection against and recovery from hardware defects or defective sectors/read errors ("hard errors"), they do not provide any protection against data loss due to catastrophic failures (fire, water) or "soft errors" such as user error, software malfunction, or malware infection. For valuable data, RAID is only one building block of a larger data loss prevention and recovery scheme – it cannot replace a backup plan.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 0 (also known as a "stripe set" or "striped volume") splits ("stripes") data evenly across two or more disks, without parity information, redundancy, or fault tolerance. Since RAID 0 provides no fault tolerance or redundancy, the failure of one drive will cause the entire array to fail; as a result of having data striped across all disks, the failure will result in total data loss. This configuration is typically implemented having speed as the intended goal. RAID 0 is normally used to increase performance, although it can also be used as a way to create a large logical volume out of two or more physical disks.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: A RAID 0 setup can be created with disks of differing sizes, but the storage space added to the array by each disk is limited to the size of the smallest disk. For example, if a 120 GB disk is striped together with a 320 GB disk, the size of the array will be 120 GB × 2 = 240 GB. However, some RAID implementations would allow the remaining 200 GB to be used for other purposes.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: The diagram in this section shows how the data is distributed into stripes on two disks, with A1:A2 as the first stripe, A3:A4 as the second one, etc. Once the stripe size is defined during the creation of a RAID 0 array, it needs to be maintained at all times. Since the stripes are accessed in parallel, an -drive RAID 0 array appears as a single large disk with a data rate times higher than the single-disk rate.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: A RAID 0 array of drives provides data read and write transfer rates up to times as high as the individual drive rates, but with no data redundancy. As a result, RAID 0 is primarily used in applications that require high performance and are able to tolerate lower reliability, such as in scientific computing or computer gaming.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Some benchmarks of desktop applications show RAID 0 performance to be marginally better than a single drive. Another article examined these claims and concluded that "striping does not always increase performance (in certain situations it will actually be slower than a non-RAID setup), but in most situations it will yield a significant improvement in performance". Synthetic benchmarks show different levels of performance improvements when multiple HDDs or SSDs are used in a RAID 0 setup, compared with single-drive performance. However, some synthetic benchmarks also show a drop in performance for the same comparison.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: RAID 1 consists of an exact copy (or "mirror") of a set of data on two or more disks; a classic RAID 1 mirrored pair contains two disks. This configuration offers no parity, striping, or spanning of disk space across multiple disks, since the data is mirrored on all disks belonging to the array, and the array can only be as big as the smallest member disk. This layout is useful when read performance or reliability is more important than write performance or the resulting data storage capacity.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Any read request can be serviced and handled by any drive in the array; thus, depending on the nature of I/O load, random read performance of a RAID 1 array may equal up to the sum of each member's performance, while the write performance remains at the level of a single disk. However, if disks with different speeds are used in a RAID 1 array, overall write performance is equal to the speed of the slowest disk.


title: Standard RAID levels

text: Synthetic benchmarks show varying levels of performance improvements when multiple HDDs or SSDs are used in a RAID 1 setup, compared with single-drive performance. However, some synthetic benchmarks also show a drop in performance for the same comparison.