title: Allosaurus

text: Similar conclusions were drawn by another study using finite element analysis on an "Allosaurus" skull. According to their biomechanical analysis, the skull was very strong but had a relatively small bite force. By using jaw muscles only, it could produce a bite force of 805 to 8,724 N, but the skull could withstand nearly 55,500 N of vertical force against the tooth row. The authors suggested that "Allosaurus" used its skull like a machete against prey, attacking open-mouthed, slashing flesh with its teeth, and tearing it away without splintering bones, unlike "Tyrannosaurus", which is thought to have been capable of damaging bones. They also suggested that the architecture of the skull could have permitted the use of different strategies against different prey; the skull was light enough to allow attacks on smaller and more agile ornithopods, but strong enough for high-impact ambush attacks against larger prey like stegosaurids and sauropods. Their interpretations were challenged by other researchers, who found no modern analogues to a hatchet attack and considered it more likely that the skull was strong to compensate for its open construction when absorbing the stresses from struggling prey. The original authors noted that "Allosaurus" itself has no modern equivalent, that the tooth row is well-suited to such an attack, and that articulations in the skull cited by their detractors as problematic actually helped protect the palate and lessen stress. Another possibility for handling large prey is that theropods like "Allosaurus" were "flesh grazers" which could take bites of flesh out of living sauropods that were sufficient to sustain the predator so it would not have needed to expend the effort to kill the prey outright. This strategy would also potentially have allowed the prey to recover and be fed upon in a similar way later. An additional suggestion notes that ornithopods were the most common available dinosaurian prey, and that allosaurs may have subdued them by using an attack similar to that of modern big cats: grasping the prey with their forelimbs, and then making multiple bites on the throat to crush the trachea. This is compatible with other evidence that the forelimbs were strong and capable of restraining prey. Studies done by Stephen Lautenschager "et al." from the University of Bristol also indicate "Allosaurus" could open its jaws quite wide and sustain considerable muscle force. When compared with "Tyrannosaurus" and the therizinosaurid "Erlikosaurus" in the same study, it was found that "Allosaurus" had a wider gape than either; the animal was capable of opening its jaws to a 92-degree angle at maximum. The findings also indicate that large carnivorous dinosaurs, like modern carnivores, had wider jaw gapes than herbivores.


title: Allosaurus

text: A biomechanical study published in 2013 by Eric Snively and colleagues found that "Allosaurus" had an unusually low attachment point on the skull for the longissimus capitis superficialis neck muscle compared to other theropods such as "Tyrannosaurus". This would have allowed the animal to make rapid and forceful vertical movements with the skull. The authors found that vertical strikes as proposed by Bakker and Rayfield are consistent with the animal's capabilities. They also found that the animal probably processed carcasses by vertical movements in a similar manner to falcons, such as kestrels: the animal could have gripped prey with the skull and feet, then pulled back and up to remove flesh. This differs from the prey-handling envisioned for tyrannosaurids, which probably tore flesh with lateral shakes of the skull, similar to crocodilians. In addition, "Allosaurus" was able to "move its head and neck around relatively rapidly and with considerable control", at the cost of power.


title: Allosaurus

text: Other aspects of feeding include the eyes, arms, and legs. The shape of the skull of "Allosaurus" limited potential binocular vision to 20° of width, slightly less than that of modern crocodilians. As with crocodilians, this may have been enough to judge prey distance and time attacks. The arms, compared with those of other theropods, were suited for both grasping prey at a distance or clutching it close, and the articulation of the claws suggests that they could have been used to hook things. Finally, the top speed of "Allosaurus" has been estimated at 30 to 55 kilometers per hour (19 to 34 miles per hour).


title: Allosaurus

text: A paper on the cranio-dental morphology of "Allosaurus" and how it worked has deemed the hatchet jaw attack unlikely, reinterpreting the unusually wide gape as an adaptation to allow "Allosaurus" to deliver a muscle-driven bite to large prey, with the weaker jaw muscles being a trade-off to allow for the widened gape.


title: Allosaurus

text: An alternate hypothesis by Pahl and Ruedas in 2021 suggested instead that "Allosaurus" subsisted primarily on carrion produced by giant sauropods, based on ecological modelling. They proposed that sauropod carcasses were analogous to modern whale falls, in that they may have provided dense energy reservoirs to the entire ecosystem as the animals died naturally of starvation or exhaustion. They also suggested that "Allosaurus" obtained most of its calories from scavenging these carcasses.


title: Allosaurus

text: It has been speculated since the 1970s that "Allosaurus" preyed on sauropods and other large dinosaurs by hunting in groups.


title: Allosaurus

text: Such a depiction is common in semitechnical and popular dinosaur literature. Robert T. Bakker has extended social behavior to parental care, and has interpreted shed allosaur teeth and chewed bones of large prey animals as evidence that adult allosaurs brought food to lairs for their young to eat until they were grown, and prevented other carnivores from scavenging on the food. However, there is actually little evidence of gregarious behavior in theropods, and social interactions with members of the same species would have included antagonistic encounters, as shown by injuries to gastralia and bite wounds to skulls (the pathologic lower jaw named "Labrosaurus ferox" is one such possible example). Such head-biting may have been a way to establish dominance in a pack or to settle territorial disputes.


title: Allosaurus

text: Although "Allosaurus" may have hunted in packs, it has been argued that "Allosaurus" and other theropods had largely aggressive interactions instead of cooperative interactions with other members of their own species. The study in question noted that cooperative hunting of prey much larger than an individual predator, as is commonly inferred for theropod dinosaurs, is rare among vertebrates in general, and modern diapsid carnivores (including lizards, crocodiles, and birds) rarely cooperate to hunt in such a way. Instead, they are typically territorial and will kill and cannibalize intruders of the same species, and will also do the same to smaller individuals that attempt to eat before they do when aggregated at feeding sites. According to this interpretation, the accumulation of remains of multiple "Allosaurus" individuals at the same site; e.g., in the Cleveland–Lloyd Quarry, are not due to pack hunting, but to the fact that "Allosaurus" individuals were drawn together to feed on other disabled or dead allosaurs, and were sometimes killed in the process. This could explain the high proportion of juvenile and subadult allosaurs present, as juveniles and subadults are disproportionally killed at modern group feeding sites of animals like crocodiles and Komodo dragons. The same interpretation applies to Bakker's lair sites. There is some evidence for cannibalism in "Allosaurus", including "Allosaurus" shed teeth found among rib fragments, possible tooth marks on a shoulder blade, and cannibalized allosaur skeletons among the bones at Bakker's lair sites.


title: Allosaurus

text: The brain of "Allosaurus", as interpreted from spiral CT scanning of an endocast, was more consistent with crocodilian brains than those of the other living archosaurs, birds. The structure of the vestibular apparatus indicates that the skull was held nearly horizontal, as opposed to strongly tipped up or down. The structure of the inner ear was like that of a crocodilian, and so "Allosaurus" probably could have heard lower frequencies best, and would have had trouble with subtle sounds. The olfactory bulbs were large and seem to have been well suited for detecting odors, although the area for evaluating smells was relatively small.


title: Allosaurus

text: In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by the behavior of the animal than other kinds of injury. Stress fractures and tendon avulsions occurring in the forelimb have special behavioral significance since while injuries to the feet could be caused by running or migration, resistant prey items are the most probable source of injuries to the hand. "Allosaurus" was one of only two theropods examined in the study to exhibit a tendon avulsion, and in both cases the avulsion occurred on the forelimb. When the researchers looked for stress fractures, they found that "Allosaurus" had a significantly greater number of stress fractures than "Albertosaurus", "Ornithomimus" or "Archaeornithomimus". Of the 47 hand bones the researchers studied, three were found to contain stress fractures. Of the feet, 281 bones were studied and 17 were found to have stress fractures. The stress fractures in the foot bones "were distributed to the proximal phalanges" and occurred across all three weight-bearing toes in "statistically indistinguishable" numbers. Since the lower end of the third metatarsal would have contacted the ground first while an allosaur was running, it would have borne the most stress. If the allosaurs' stress fractures were caused by damage accumulating while walking or running this bone should have experience more stress fractures than the others. The lack of such a bias in the examined "Allosaurus" fossils indicates an origin for the stress fractures from a source other than running. The authors conclude that these fractures occurred during interaction with prey, like an allosaur trying to hold struggling prey with its feet. The abundance of stress fractures and avulsion injuries in "Allosaurus" provide evidence for "very active" predation-based rather than scavenging diets.


title: Allosaurus

text: The left scapula and fibula of an "Allosaurus fragilis" specimen catalogued as USNM 4734 are both pathological, both probably due to healed fractures. The specimen USNM 8367 preserved several pathological gastralia which preserve evidence of healed fractures near their middle. Some of the fractures were poorly healed and "formed pseudoarthroses". A specimen with a fractured rib was recovered from the Cleveland-Lloyd Quarry. Another specimen had fractured ribs and fused vertebrae near the end of the tail. An apparent subadult male "Allosaurus fragilis" was reported to have extensive pathologies, with a total of fourteen separate injuries. The specimen MOR 693 had pathologies on five ribs, the sixth neck vertebra, the third, eighth, and thirteenth back vertebrae, the second tail vertebra and its chevron, the gastralia right scapula, manual phalanx I left ilium metatarsals III and V, the first phalanx of the third toe and the third phalanx of the second. The ilium had "a large hole...caused by a blow from above". The near end of the first phalanx of the third toe was afflicted by an involucrum.


title: Allosaurus

text: "Allosaurus" was the most common large theropod in the vast tract of Western American fossil-bearing rock known as the Morrison Formation, accounting for 70 to 75% of theropod specimens, and as such was at the top trophic level of the Morrison food chain. The Morrison Formation is interpreted as a semiarid environment with distinct wet and dry seasons, and flat floodplains. Vegetation varied from river-lining forests of conifers, tree ferns, and ferns (gallery forests), to fern savannas with occasional trees such as the "Araucaria"-like conifer "Brachyphyllum".


title: Allosaurus

text: The Morrison Formation has been a rich fossil hunting ground. The flora of the period has been revealed by fossils of green algae, fungi, mosses, horsetails, ferns, cycads, ginkgoes, and several families of conifers. Animal fossils discovered include bivalves, snails, ray-finned fishes, frogs, salamanders, turtles, sphenodonts, lizards, terrestrial and aquatic crocodylomorphs, several species of pterosaur, numerous dinosaur species, and early mammals such as docodonts, multituberculates, symmetrodonts, and triconodonts. Dinosaurs known from the Morrison include the theropods "Ceratosaurus", "Ornitholestes", "Tanycolagreus", and "Torvosaurus", the sauropods "Haplocanthosaurus", "Camarasaurus", "Cathetosaurus", "Brachiosaurus", "Suuwassea", "Apatosaurus", "Brontosaurus", "Barosaurus", "Diplodocus", "Supersaurus", "Amphicoelias", and "Maraapunisaurus", and the ornithischians "Camptosaurus", "Dryosaurus", and "Stegosaurus". "Allosaurus" is commonly found at the same sites as "Apatosaurus", "Camarasaurus", "Diplodocus", and "Stegosaurus". The Late Jurassic formations of Portugal where "Allosaurus" is present are interpreted as having been similar to the Morrison, but with a stronger marine influence. Many of the dinosaurs of the Morrison Formation are the same genera as those seen in Portuguese rocks (mainly "Allosaurus", "Ceratosaurus", "Torvosaurus", and "Stegosaurus"), or have a close counterpart ("Brachiosaurus" and "Lusotitan", "Camptosaurus" and "Draconyx").


title: Allosaurus

text: "Allosaurus" coexisted with fellow large theropods "Ceratosaurus" and "Torvosaurus" in both the United States and Portugal. The three appear to have had different ecological niches, based on anatomy and the location of fossils. "Ceratosaurus" and "Torvosaurus" may have preferred to be active around waterways, and had lower, thinner bodies that would have given them an advantage in forest and underbrush terrains, whereas "Allosaurus" was more compact, with longer legs, faster but less maneuverable, and seems to have preferred dry floodplains. "Ceratosaurus", better known than "Torvosaurus", differed noticeably from "Allosaurus" in functional anatomy by having a taller, narrower skull with large, broad teeth. "Allosaurus" was itself a potential food item to other carnivores, as illustrated by an "Allosaurus" pubic foot marked by the teeth of another theropod, probably "Ceratosaurus" or "Torvosaurus". The location of the bone in the body (along the bottom margin of the torso and partially shielded by the legs), and the fact that it was among the most massive in the skeleton, indicates that the "Allosaurus" was being scavenged.


title: Allosaurus

text: A bone assemblage in the Upper Jurassic Mygatt-Moore Quarry preserves an unusually high occurrence of theropod bite marks, most of which can be attributed to "Allosaurus" and "Ceratosaurus", while others could have been made by "Saurophaganax" or "Torvosaurus" given the size of the striations. While the position of the bite marks on the herbivorous dinosaurs is consistent with predation or early access to remains, bite marks found on "Allosaurus" material suggest scavenging, either from the other theropods or from another "Allosaurus". The unusually high concentration of theropod bite marks compared to other assemblages could be explained either by a more complete utilization of resources during a dry season by theropods, or by a collecting bias in other localities.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: Brian Joseph McCook, known by his drag persona Yekaterina Petrovna Zamolodchikova (), or mononymously as Katya (), is an American drag queen, actor, author, recording artist, and comedian. is best known for placing fifth on the seventh season of "RuPaul's Drag Race" and placing as a runner-up on the second season of "RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars", as well as for appearing in the World of Wonder web series "UNHhhh" and the Viceland series "The Trixie & Katya Show" with co-host and fellow season 7 alum Trixie Mattel. Trixie and Katya often appear together as a popular comedy duo.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: McCook was born to Pat McCook (born December 10, 1956), is of Irish descent and was raised in a Catholic household with an older brother and a younger sister. McCook was raised in Marlborough, Massachusetts and graduated from Marlborough High School in 2000. In a 2019 interview, McCook described growing up as "boring, nondescript, [and] a boiler-plate white suburb". He then attended Boston University for one year before transferring to Massachusetts College of Art and Design, where he studied video and performance art in the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) program with a minor in psychology, and first became interested in drag.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: McCook created the Russian drag character in 2006, taking the stage name from a combination of Russian names and one of his favorite gymnasts, . When creating his drag character, McCook stated that he was inspired by "female comedians and just funny interesting women like Tracy Ullman, Maria Bamford, Lana Del Rey [and] Amy Sedaris." McCook stated on "Drag Race" that the Russian-based aspect of his persona was inspired by a professor he had while studying at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, who "never left the house without a full face of makeup [with] six inch stilettos in the snow." McCook is not of Russian descent himself, but took several Russian language courses and used a cassette tape called "Pronounce It Perfectly" to master the accent. In addition to speaking Russian, he can also speak fluent French and is known to speak Japanese and Portuguese.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: As Katya, McCook hosted a monthly drag show called "Perestroika" at the Jacques Cabaret. Katya became known on the local drag scene in Boston for performing songs by popular Russian artists such as Alla Pugacheva, t.A.T.u. and Glukoza.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: Katya auditioned for "RuPaul's Drag Race" on Logo TV four times before being chosen to participate in season 7. She is seen auditioning for the show back in Season 3's Casting Extravaganza. She won two challenges before being eliminated in episode 11, finishing in fifth place after losing a lip-sync against Kennedy Davenport. The decision to eliminate her was controversial, as she was popular among viewers. During the Season 7 reunion, she was voted Miss Congeniality by fans. On May 16, 2016, Katya appeared at the finale of "RuPaul's Drag Race Season 8" to crown the next Miss Congeniality: Cynthia Lee Fontaine. On June 17, 2016, Katya was announced as one of the cast members on the . She placed in the top three times throughout the season, and eventually finished as a runner-up along with fellow contestant Detox.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: Katya has uploaded several web series on her YouTube channel, "welovekatya", including "RuGRETs", "RuFLECTIONS", "Drag 101", "Total RuCall", and "Irregardlessly Trish", the last of which is about a Bostonian hairdresser who lives in a dumpster. Katya improvises some of her material and also writes with a creative partner, Avi Paul Weinstein.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In November 2015, Katya appeared on the "Christmas Queens" album, singing a modified version of the song "12 Days of Christmas". Katya also features in Trixie Mattel's album "Homemade Christmas" in the song "The Night Before Contact".


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: Along with fellow "Drag Race" contestant Trixie Mattel, Katya co-hosts a web series on the World of Wonder YouTube channel called "UNHhhh", which debuted in March 2016. On August 21, 2017, it was announced that Katya and Mattel would have their own show on Viceland, titled "The Trixie & Katya Show", which premiered on November 15, 2017.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: Katya had a role in the 2018 film "", directed by Matt Kugelman and starring Bianca del Rio in the lead role. In 2018, Katya co-hosted a podcast called "Whimsically Volatile" with Craig MacNeil. In November 2019, it was announced on the podcast that Katya will be leaving the show. In the fall of 2018, Katya and Mattel revitalized their web series "UNHhhh" on WOWPresents Plus as well as YouTube due to the overall popularity and success of the show.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In the spring of 2019, Katya announced her touring comedy show, "Help Me, I'm Dying". The tour was filmed for a comedy special of the same name that aired on OutTV in Canada in October 2019. It was available on demand in February 2020 and aired on Logo TV on March 4, 2020. In November 2019, Katya and Mattel cohosted a new show on the Netflix YouTube channel called "I Like to Watch" where they react to various shows on Netflix. In June 2019, a panel of judges from "New York" magazine placed 13th on their list of "the most powerful drag queens in America", a ranking of 100 former "Drag Race" contestants.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: She released her first book, "Trixie and Katya's Guide to Modern Womanhood", on July 14, 2020. Published by Plume Books, it was co-written with fellow "Drag Race" contestant Mattel, debuting at number two on The New York Times Best Seller list for "Advice, How-To, and Miscellaneous".


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In 2020, Katya and co-host Trixie Mattel launched the weekly podcast "The Bald and The Beautiful." In October Katya confirmed she would release her debut EP "Vampire Fitness" on November 13. In December, it was announced that Katya and Mattel would co-host the 10th Streamy Awards in Los Angeles.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In August 2021, Katya and Mattel launched a Substack advice newsletter, "Gooped", which ran until July 2022.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In January 2018, McCook announced a hiatus from drag for mental health reasons, and his comedy tour as , "Help Me, I'm Dying", was postponed until spring 2019. Returning to Twitter in March 2018, McCook announced that the tour would likely be renamed due to his recovery.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: In the first episode of "Whimsically Volatile" in March 2018, McCook discussed the hiatus in detail. He described suffering a psychotic break after a methamphetamine relapse and briefly returning to live with his family in Massachusetts before entering a rehabilitation center in Arizona.


title: Katya Zamolodchikova

text: On an episode titled "Time...Again" from season 7 of "UNHhhh" Katya shared that she had gotten her tattoos during a manic episode while on drugs but that she did not regret getting them.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian (; alternately romanized as Fukien or Hokkien) is a province on the southeastern coast of China. Fujian is bordered by Zhejiang to the north, Jiangxi to the west, Guangdong to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the east. Its capital is Fuzhou, while its largest city by population is Quanzhou, both located near the coast of the Taiwan Strait in the east of the province.


title: Fujian

text: While its population is predominantly of Chinese ethnicity, it is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse provinces in China. The dialects of the language group Min Chinese were most commonly spoken within the province, including the Fuzhou dialect of northeastern Fujian and various Hokkien dialects of southeastern Fujian. Hakka Chinese is also spoken, by the Hakka people in Fujian. Min dialects, Hakka and Mandarin Chinese are mutually unintelligible. Due to emigration, a sizable amount of the ethnic Chinese populations of Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines speak Southern Min (or Hokkien).


title: Fujian

text: With a population of 41.5 million, Fujian ranks 15th in population among Chinese provinces. As of 2021, Fujian's GDP (nominal) reached 768 billion US dollars (CNY 4.88 trillion), ranking 4th in East China region and 8th nationwide in GDP. Fujian's GDP per capita is above the national average, at CN¥117,500 (approx.US$28,658 in PPP), the second highest GDP per capita of all Chinese provinces after Jiangsu. It has benefited from its geographical proximity with Taiwan. As a result of the Chinese Civil War, a small proportion of Historical Fujian is now within the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan). The Fujian province of the ROC consist of three offshore archipelagos namely the Kinmen Islands, the Matsu Islands and the Wuqiu Islands.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is considered one of China's leading provinces in education and research. As of 2022, two major cities ranked in the top 65 cities in the world (Fuzhou 50th and Xiamen 63rd) by scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index.


title: Fujian

text: The name "Fujian" (福建) originated from the combination of the city names of Fuzhou (福州) and nearby Jianzhou (建州 present-day Nanping (南平)).


title: Fujian

text: Recent archaeological discoveries in 2011 demonstrate that Fujian had entered the Neolithic Age by the middle of the 6th millennium BC. From the Keqiutou site (7450–5590 BP), an early Neolithic site in Pingtan Island located about southeast of Fuzhou, numerous tools made of stones, shells, bones, jades, and ceramics (including wheel-made ceramics) have been unearthed, together with spinning wheels, which is definitive evidence of weaving.


title: Fujian

text: The Tanshishan () site (5500–4000 BP) in suburban Fuzhou spans the Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age where semi-underground circular buildings were found in the lower level. The Huangtulun () site (ca.1325 BC), also in suburban Fuzhou, was of the Bronze Age in character.


title: Fujian

text: Tianlong Jiao (2013) notes that the Neolithic appeared on the coast of Fujian around 6,000 B.P. During the Neolithic, the coast of Fujian had a low population density, with the population depending on mostly on fishing and hunting, along with limited agriculture.


title: Fujian

text: There were four major Neolithic cultures in coastal Fujian, with the earliest Neolithic cultures originating from the north in coastal Zhejiang.


title: Fujian

text: There were two major Neolithic cultures in inland Fujian, which were highly distinct from the coastal Fujian Neolithic cultures. These are the Niubishan culture () from 5000 to 4000 years ago, and the Hulushan culture () from 2050 to 1550 BC.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian was also where the kingdom of Minyue was located. The word "Mǐnyuè" was derived by combining "Mǐn" (), which is perhaps an ethnic name (), and "Yuè", after the State of Yue, a Spring and Autumn period kingdom in Zhejiang to the north. This is because the royal family of Yuè fled to Fujian after its kingdom was annexed by the State of Chu in 306 BC. Mǐn is also the name of the main river in this area, but the ethnonym is probably older.


title: Fujian

text: The Qin deposed the King of Minyue, establishing instead a paramilitary province there called Minzhong Commandery. Minyue was a "de facto" kingdom until one of the emperors of the Qin dynasty, the first unified imperial Chinese state, abolished its status.


title: Fujian

text: In the aftermath of the Qin dynasty's fall, civil war broke out between two warlords, Xiang Yu and Liu Bang. The Minyue king Wuzhu sent his troops to fight with Liu and his gamble paid off. Liu was victorious and founded the Han dynasty. In 202 BC, he restored Minyue's status as a tributary independent kingdom. Thus Wuzhu was allowed to construct his fortified city in Fuzhou as well as a few locations in the Wuyi Mountains, which have been excavated in recent years. His kingdom extended beyond the borders of contemporary Fujian into eastern Guangdong, eastern Jiangxi, and southern Zhejiang.


title: Fujian

text: After Wuzhu's death, Minyue maintained its militant tradition and launched several expeditions against its neighboring kingdoms in Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, primarily in the 2nd century BC. This was stopped by the Han dynasty as it expanded southward. The Han emperor eventually decided to get rid of the potential threat by launching a military campaign against Minyue. Large forces approached Minyue simultaneously from four directions via land and sea in 111 BC. The rulers in Fuzhou surrendered to avoid a futile fight and destruction and the first kingdom in Fujian history came to an abrupt end.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian was part of the much larger Yang Province (Yangzhou), whose provincial capital was designated in Liyang (歷陽; present-day He County, Anhui).


title: Fujian

text: The Han dynasty collapsed at the end of the 2nd century AD, paving the way for the Three Kingdoms era. Sun Quan, the founder of the Kingdom of Wu, spent nearly 20 years subduing the Shan Yue people, the branch of the Yue living in mountains.


title: Fujian

text: The first wave of immigration of the noble class arrived in the province in the early 4th century when the Western Jin dynasty collapsed and the north was torn apart by invasions by nomadic peoples from the north, as well as a civil war. These immigrants were primarily from eight families in central China:


title: Fujian

text: Nevertheless, isolation from nearby areas owing to rugged terrain contributed to Fujian's relatively undeveloped economy and level of development, despite major population boosts from northern China during the "barbarian" invasions. The population density in Fujian remained low compared to the rest of China. Only two commanderies and sixteen counties were established by the Western Jin dynasty. Like other southern provinces such as Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan, Fujian often served as a destination for exiled prisoners and dissidents at that time.


title: Fujian

text: During the Southern and Northern Dynasties era, the Southern Dynasties (Liu Song, Southern Qi, Liang (Western Liang), and Chen) reigned south of the Yangtze River, including Fujian.


title: Fujian

text: During the Tang, Fujian was part of the larger Jiangnan East Circuit, whose capital was at Suzhou. Modern-day Fujian was composed of around 5 prefectures and 25 counties.


title: Fujian

text: The Tang dynasty (618–907) oversaw the next golden age of China, which contributed to a boom in Fujian's culture and economy. Fuzhou's economic and cultural institutions grew and developed. The later years of the Tang dynasty saw several political upheavals in the Chinese heartland, prompting even larger waves of northerners to immigrate to the northern part of Fujian.


title: Fujian

text: As the Tang dynasty ended, China was torn apart in the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. During this time, a second major wave of immigration arrived in the safe haven of Fujian, led by General Wang, who set up an independent Kingdom of Min with its capital in Fuzhou. After the death of the founding king, however, the kingdom suffered from internal strife, and was soon absorbed by Southern Tang, another southern kingdom.


title: Fujian

text: Parts of northern Fujian were conquered by the Wuyue Kingdom to the north as well, including the Min capital Fuzhou.


title: Fujian

text: Quanzhou city was blooming into a seaport under the reign of the Min Kingdom and was the largest seaport in the world. For a long period its population was also greater than Fuzhou.


title: Fujian

text: "Qingyuan Jiedushi" was a military/governance office created in 949 by Southern Tang's second emperor Li Jing for the warlord Liu Congxiao, who nominally submitted to him but controlled Quan (, in modern Quanzhou, Fujian) and Zhang (, in modern Zhangzhou, Fujian) Prefectures in "de facto" independence from the Southern Tang state. (Zhang Prefecture was, at times during the circuit's existence, also known as Nan Prefecture ().) Starting in 960, in addition to being nominally submissive to Southern Tang, Qingyuan Circuit was also nominally submissive to Song, which had itself become Southern Tang's nominal overlord.


title: Fujian

text: After Liu's death, the circuit was briefly ruled by his biological nephew/adoptive son Liu Shaozi, who was then overthrown by the officers Zhang Hansi and Chen Hongjin. Zhang then ruled the circuit briefly, before Chen deposed him and took over. In 978, with Song's determination to unify Chinese lands in full order, Chen decided that he could not stay "de facto" independent, and offered the control of the circuit to Song's Emperor Taizong, ending Qingyuan Circuit as a "de facto" independent entity.


title: Fujian

text: The area was reorganized into the Fujian Circuit in 985, which was the first time the name "Fujian" was used for an administrative region.


title: Fujian

text: Many Chinese migrated from Fujian's major ports to Vietnam's Red River Delta. The settlers then created Trần port and Vân Đồn. Fujian and Guangdong Chinese moved to the Vân Đồn coastal port to engage in commerce.


title: Fujian

text: During the Lý and Trần dynasties, many Chinese ethnic groups with the surname Trần (陳) migrated to Vietnam from what is now Fujian or Guangxi. They settled along the coast of Vietnam and the capital's southeastern area. The Vietnamese Trần clan traces their ancestry to Trần Tự Minh (227 BC). He was a Qin General during the Warring state period who belonged to the indigenous Mân, a Baiyue ethnic group of Southern China and Northern Vietnam. Tự Minh also served under King An Dương Vương of Âu Lạc kingdom in resisting Qin's conquest of Âu Lạc. Their genealogy also included Trần Tự Viễn (582 - 637) of Giao Châu and Trần Tự An (1010 - 1077) of Đại Việt. Near the end of the 11th century the descendants of a fisherman named Trần Kinh, whose hometown was in Tức Mạc village in Đại Việt (Modern day Vietnam), would marry the royal Lý clan, which was then founded the Vietnam Tran Dynasty in the year 1225.


title: Fujian

text: In Vietnam, the Trần served as officials. The surnames are found in the Trần and Lý dynasty Imperial exam records. Chinese ethnic groups are recorded in Trần and Lý dynasty records of officials. Clothing, food, and languages were fused with the local Vietnamese in Vân Đồn district where the Chinese ethnic groups had moved after leaving their home province of what is now Fujian, Guangxi, and Guangdong.


title: Fujian

text: After the establishment of the Yuan dynasty, Fujian became part of Jiangzhe province, whose capital was at Hangzhou. From 1357 to 1366 Muslims in Quanzhou participated in the Ispah Rebellion, advancing northward and even capturing Putian and Fuzhou before the rebellion was crushed by the Yuan. Afterward, Quanzhou city lost foreign interest in trading and its formerly welcoming international image as the foreigners were all massacred or deported.


title: Fujian

text: Yuan dynasty General Chen Youding, who had put down the Ispah Rebellion, continued to rule over the Fujian area even after the outbreak of the Red Turban Rebellion. Forces loyal to the eventual Ming dynasty founder Zhu Yuanzhang (Hongwu Emperor) defeated Chen in 1367.


title: Fujian

text: After the establishment of the Ming dynasty, Fujian became a province, with its capital at Fuzhou. In the early Ming era, Fuzhou Changle was the staging area and supply depot of Zheng He's naval expeditions. Further development was severely hampered by the sea trade ban, and the area was superseded by nearby ports of Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai despite the lifting of the ban in 1550. Large-scale piracy by Wokou was eventually wiped out by the Chinese military.


title: Fujian

text: The late Ming and early Qing dynasty symbolized an era of a large influx of refugees and another 20 years of sea trade ban under the Kangxi Emperor, a measure intended to counter the refuge Ming government of Koxinga in the island of Taiwan.


title: Fujian

text: The sea ban implemented by the Qing forced many people to evacuate the coast to deprive Koxinga's Ming loyalists of resources. This has led to the myth that it was because Manchus were "afraid of water".


title: Fujian

text: Incoming refugees did not translate into a major labor force, owing to their re-migration into prosperous regions of Guangdong. In 1683, the Qing dynasty conquered Taiwan in the Battle of Penghu and annexed it into the Fujian province, as Taiwan Prefecture. Many more Han Chinese then settled in Taiwan. Today, most Taiwanese are descendants of Hokkien people from Southern Fujian. Fujian and Taiwan were originally treated as one province (Fujian-Taiwan-Province), but starting in 1885, they split into two separate provinces.


title: Fujian

text: In the 1890s, the Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan via the Treaty of Shimonoseki after the First Sino-Japanese War. In 1905-1907 Japan made overtures to enlarge its sphere of influence to include Fujian. Japan was trying to obtain French loans and also avoid the Open Door Policy. Paris provided loans on condition that Japan respects the Open Door principles and does not violate China's territorial integrity.


title: Fujian

text: The Xinhai revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and brought the province into the rule of the Republic of China.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian briefly established the independent Fujian People's Government in 1933. It was re-controlled by the Republic of China in 1934.


title: Fujian

text: After the Chinese Civil War, the People's Republic of China unified the country and took over most of Fujian, excluding the Quemoy and Matsu Islands.


title: Fujian

text: In its early days, Fujian's development was relatively slow in comparison to other coastal provinces due to potential conflicts with Kuomintang-controlled Taiwan. Today, the province has the highest forest coverage rate while enjoying a high growth rate in the economy. The GDP per capita in Fujian is ranked 4-6th place among provinces of China in recent years.


title: Fujian

text: Development has been accompanied by a large influx of population from the overpopulated areas to Fujian's north and west, and much of the farmland and forest, as well as cultural heritage sites such as the temples of king Wuzhu, have given way to ubiquitous high-rise buildings. Fujian faces challenges to sustain development while at the same time preserving Fujian's natural and cultural heritage.


title: Fujian

text: The province is mostly mountainous and is traditionally said to be "eight parts mountain, one part water, and one part farmland" (). The northwest is higher in altitude, with the Wuyi Mountains forming the border between Fujian and Jiangxi. It is the most forested provincial-level administrative region in China, with a 62.96% forest coverage rate in 2009. Fujian's highest point is Mount Huanggang in the Wuyi Mountains, with an altitude of .


title: Fujian

text: Fujian faces East China Sea to the east, South China Sea to the south, and the Taiwan Strait to the southeast. The coastline is rugged and has many bays and islands. Major islands include Quemoy (also known as Kinmen, controlled by the Republic of China), Haitan Island, and Nanri Island. Meizhou Island occupies a central place in the cult of the goddess Matsu, the patron deity of Chinese sailors.


title: Fujian

text: The Min River and its tributaries cut through much of northern and central Fujian. Other rivers include the Jin and the Jiulong. Due to its uneven topography, Fujian has many cliffs and rapids.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is separated from Taiwan by the -wide Taiwan Strait. Some of the small islands in the Taiwan Strait are also part of the province. The islands of Kinmen and Matsu are under the administration of the Republic of China.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian contains several faults, the result of a collision between the Asiatic Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. The Changle-Naoao and Longan-Jinjiang fault zones in this area have annual displacement rates of 3–5 mm. They could cause major earthquakes in the future.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian has a subtropical climate, with mild winters. In January, the coastal regions average around while the hills average . In the summer, temperatures are high, and the province is threatened by typhoons coming in from the Pacific. Average annual precipitation is .


title: Fujian

text: , there are of highways in Fujian, including of expressways. The top infrastructure projects in recent years have been the Zhangzhou-Zhaoan Expressway (US$624 million) and the Sanmingshi-Fuzhou expressway (US$1.40 billion). The 12th Five-Year Plan, covering the period from 2011 to 2015, aims to double the length of the province's expressways to .


title: Fujian

text: Due to Fujian's mountainous terrain and traditional reliance on maritime transportation, railways came to the province comparatively late. The first rail links to neighboring Jiangxi, Guangdong, and Zhejiang Province, opened respectively, in 1959, 2000, and 2009. As of October 2013, Fujian has four rail links with Jiangxi to the northwest: the Yingtan–Xiamen Railway (opened 1957), the Hengfeng–Nanping Railway (1998), Ganzhou–Longyan Railway (2005) and the high-speed Xiangtang–Putian Railway (2013). Fujian's lone rail link to Guangdong to the west, the Zhangping–Longchuan Railway (2000), will be joined with the high-speed Xiamen–Shenzhen Railway (Xiashen Line) in late 2013. The Xiashen Line forms the southernmost section of China's Southeast Coast High-Speed Rail Corridor. The Wenzhou–Fuzhou and Fuzhou–Xiamen sections of this corridor entered operation in 2009 and link Fujian with Zhejiang with trains running at speeds of up to .


title: Fujian

text: Within Fujian, coastal and interior cities are linked by the Nanping–Fuzhou (1959), Zhangping–Quanzhou–Xiaocuo (2007) and Longyan–Xiamen Railways, (2012). To attract Taiwanese investment, the province intends to increase its rail length by 50 percent to .


title: Fujian

text: The major airports are Fuzhou Changle International Airport, Xiamen Gaoqi International Airport, Quanzhou Jinjiang International Airport, Nanping Wuyishan Airport, Longyan Guanzhishan Airport and Sanming Shaxian Airport. Xiamen is capable of handling 15.75 million passengers as of 2011. Fuzhou is capable of handling 6.5 million passengers annually with a cargo capacity of more than 200,000 tons. The airport offers direct links to 45 destinations including international routes to Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong.


title: Fujian

text: The People's Republic of China controls most of the province and divides it into nine prefecture-level divisions: all prefecture-level cities (including a sub-provincial city):


title: Fujian

text: These nine prefecture-level cities are subdivided into 85 county-level divisions (28 districts, 13 county-level cities, and 44 counties). Those are in turn divided into 1,107 township-level divisions (605 towns, 328 townships, 18 ethnic townships, and 156 subdistricts).


title: Fujian

text: The People's Republic of China claims five of the six townships of Kinmen County, Republic of China (Taiwan) as a county of the prefecture-level city of Quanzhou.


title: Fujian

text: The PRC claims Wuqiu Township, Kinmen County, Republic of China (Taiwan) as part of Xiuyu District of the prefecture-level city of Putian.


title: Fujian

text: Finally, the PRC claims Lienchiang County (Matsu Islands), Republic of China (Taiwan) as a township of its Lianjiang County, which is part of the prefecture-level city of Fuzhou.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is one of the more affluent provinces with many industries spanning tea production, clothing, and sports manufacturers such as Anta, 361 Degrees, Xtep, Peak Sport Products and Septwolves. Many foreign firms have operations in Fujian. They include Boeing, Dell, GE, Kodak, Nokia, Siemens, Swire, TDK, and Panasonic.


title: Fujian

text: As of 2021, Fujian's nominal GDP was CNY 4.88 trillion (US$ 768 billion), ranking 8th in GDP nationwide and appearing in the world's top 20 largest sub-national economies with its GDP (Purchasing Power Parity) being over US$1.19 trillion. Along with its coastal neighbours Zhejiang and Guangdong, Fujian's GDP per capita is above the national average, at CN¥117,500 (approx.US$18,217 in nominal value and US$28,658 in Purchasing Power Parity), the second highest GDP per capita of all Chinese provinces after Jiangsu.


title: Fujian

text: As of 2021, Fujian's nominal GDP exceeded that of Poland with a GDP of US$ 674 billion, the 21st largest in the world.


title: Fujian

text: In terms of agricultural land, Fujian is hilly and farmland is sparse. Rice is the main crop, supplemented by sweet potatoes and wheat and barley. Cash crops include sugar cane and rapeseed. Fujian leads the provinces of China in longan production, and is also a major producer of lychees and tea. Seafood is another important product, with shellfish production especially prominent.


title: Fujian

text: Because of its geographic location with Taiwan, Fujian has been considered the battlefield frontline in a potential war between mainland China and Taiwan. Hence, it received much less investment from the Chinese central government and developed much slower than the rest of China before 1978. Since 1978, when China opened to the world, Fujian has received significant investment from overseas Fujianese around the world, Taiwanese and foreign investment.


title: Fujian

text: Minnan Golden Triangle which includes Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou accounts for 40 percent of the GDP of Fujian province.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian province will be the major economic beneficiary of the opening up of direct transport with Taiwan which commenced on December 15, 2008. This includes direct flights from Taiwan to major Fujian cities such as Xiamen and Fuzhou. In addition, ports in Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Fuzhou will upgrade their port infrastructure for increased economic trade with Taiwan.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is the host of China International Fair for Investment and Trade annually. It is held in Xiamen to promote foreign investment for all of China.


title: Fujian

text: Fujianese who are legally classified as Han Chinese make up 98% of the population. Various Min Chinese speakers make up the largest subgroups classified as Han Chinese in Fujian such as Hoklo people, Fuzhounese people, Putian people and Fuzhou Tanka.


title: Fujian

text: Hakka, a Han Chinese people with their own distinct identity, live in the central and southwestern parts of Fujian. The She, scattered over mountainous regions in the north, is the largest minority ethnic group of the province.


title: Fujian

text: Many ethnic Chinese around the world, especially in Southeast Asia, trace their ancestries to the Fujianese branches of Hoklo people and Teochew people. Descendants of Southern Min speaking emigrants make up the predominant majority ethnic Chinese populations of Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Brunei, Thailand, Indonesia and Philippines. While Eastern Min speaking people, especially Fuzhounese people, are one of the major sources of China immigrants in the United States, especially since the 1990s.


title: Fujian

text: The predominant religions in Fujian are Chinese folk religions, Taoist traditions, and Chinese Buddhism. According to surveys conducted in 2007 and 2009, 31.31% of the population believes and is involved in Chinese ancestral religion, while 3.5% of the population identifies as Christian. The reports did not give figures for other types of religion; 65.19% of the population may be either irreligious or involved in Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, folk religious sects, and small minorities of Muslims.


title: Fujian

text: Because of its mountainous nature and waves of migration from central China and assimilation of numerous foreign ethnic groups such as maritime traders in the course of history, Fujian is one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse places in China. Local dialects can become unintelligible within , and the regional cultures and ethnic composition can be completely different from each other as well. This is reflected in the expression that "if you drive five miles in Fujian the culture changes, and if you drive ten miles, the language does". Most varieties spoken in Fujian are assigned to a broad Min category. Recent classifications subdivide Min into


title: Fujian

text: The seventh subdivision of Min, Qiong Wen, is not spoken in Fujian. Hakka, another subdivision of spoken Chinese, is spoken around Longyan by the Hakka people who live there.


title: Fujian

text: As is true of other provinces, the official language in Fujian is Mandarin, which is used for communication between people of different localities, although native Fujian peoples still converse in their native languages and dialects respectively.


title: Fujian

text: Several regions of Fujian have their own form of Chinese opera. Min opera is popular around Fuzhou; Gaojiaxi around Jinjiang and Quanzhou; Xiangju around Zhangzhou; Fujian Nanqu throughout the south, and Puxianxi around Putian and Xianyou County.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian cuisine, with an emphasis on seafood, is one of the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine. It is composed of traditions from various regions, including Fuzhou cuisine and Min Nan cuisine. The most prestigious dish is Fotiaoqiang (literally "Buddha jumps over the wall"), a complex dish making use of many ingredients, including shark fin, sea cucumber, abalone and Shaoxing wine (a type of Chinese alcoholic beverage).


title: Fujian

text: Many well-known teas originate from Fujian, including oolong, Wuyi Yancha, Lapsang souchong and Fuzhou jasmine tea. Indeed, the tea processing techniques for three major classes of tea, namely, oolong, white tea, and black tea were all developed in the province. Fujian tea ceremony is an elaborate way of preparing and serving tea. The English word "tea" is borrowed from Hokkien of the Min Nan languages. Mandarin and Cantonese pronounce the word "chá".


title: Fujian

text: Fuzhou bodiless lacquer ware, a noted type of lacquer ware, is noted for using a body of clay and/or plaster to form its shape; the body later removed. Fuzhou is also known for Shoushan stone carvings.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is home to several tourist attractions, including four UNESCO World Heritage Sites, one of the highest in China.


title: Fujian

text: The Wuyi Mountains was the first location in Fujian to be listed by UNESCO as one of the World Heritage Sites in 1999. They are a mountain range in the prefecture of Nanping and contain the highest peak in Fujian, Mount Huanggang. It is famous as a natural landscape garden and a summer resort in China.


title: Fujian

text: The Fujian Tulou are Chinese rural dwellings unique to the Hakka in southwest Fujian. They were listed by the UNESCO as one of the World Heritage Sites in 2008.


title: Fujian

text: Gulangyu Island, Xiamen, is notable for its beaches, winding lanes, and rich architecture. The island is on China's list of National Scenic Spots and is classified as a 5A tourist attraction by the China National Tourism Administration (CNTA). It was listed by the UNESCO as one of the World Heritage Site in 2017. Also in Xiamen is the South Putuo Temple.


title: Fujian

text: The Guanghua Temple is a Buddhist temple in Putian. It was built in the penultimate year of the Southern Chen Dynasty. Located in the northern half of the mouth of Meizhou Bay, it is about 1.8 nautical miles from the mainland and faces the Strait of Taiwan to the southeast. Covering an area of six square miles, the island is swathed in luxuriant green foliage. The coastline is indented with over 12 miles of the beach area. Another Buddhist temple, Nanshan Temple is located in Zhangzhou.


title: Fujian

text: The Kaiyuan Temple, is a Buddhist temple in West Street, Quanzhou, the largest in Fujian province with an area of . Although it is known as both a Hindu and Buddhist temple, on account of added Tamil-Hindu influences, the main statue in the most important hall is that of Vairocana Buddha, the main Buddha according to Huayan Buddhism.


title: Fujian

text: Mount Taimu is a mountain and a scenic resort in Fuding. It offers a grand view of mountains and sea and is famous for its natural scenery including granite caves, odd-shaped stones, cliffs, clear streams, cascading waterfalls, and cultural attractions such as ancient temples and cliff Inscriptions.


title: Fujian

text: The Danxia landform in Taining was listed by the UNESCO as one of the World Heritage Sites in 2010. It is a unique type of petrographic geomorphology found in China. Danxia landform is formed from red-coloured sandstones and conglomerates of largely Cretaceous age. The landforms look very much like karst topography that forms in areas underlain by limestones, but since the rocks that form danxia are sandstones and conglomerates, they have been called "pseudo-karst" landforms. They were formed by endogenous forces (including uplift) and exogenous forces (including weathering and erosion).


title: Fujian

text: The province and its diaspora abroad also have a tradition of educational achievement and have produced many important scholars, statesmen, and other notable people. These include people whose ancestral home (祖籍) is Fujian (their ancestors originated from Fujian). In addition to the below list, many notable individuals of Han Chinese descent in Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere have ancestry that can be traced to Fujian.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian includes professional sports teams in both the Chinese Basketball Association and the Chinese League One.


title: Fujian

text: The representative of the province in the Chinese Basketball Association is the Fujian Sturgeons, who are based in Jinjiang, Quanzhou. The Fujian Sturgeons made their debut in the 2004–2005 season, and finished in seventh and last place in the South Division, out of the playoffs. In the 2005–2006 season, they tied for fifth, just one win away from making the playoffs.


title: Fujian

text: The Xiamen Blue Lions formerly represented Fujian in the Chinese Super League, before the team's closure in 2007. Today the province is represented by Fujian Tianxin F.C., who play in the China League Two, and the Fujian Broncos.


title: Fujian

text: Fujian is considered one of China's leading provinces in education and research. As of 2022, two major cities ranked in the top 65 cities in the world (Fuzhou 50th and Xiamen 63th) by scientific research output, as tracked by the Nature Index.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) is a large evergreen shrub or tree, grown commercially for its orange fruit and for its leaves, which are used to make herbal tea. It is also cultivated as an ornamental plant.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat is in the family Rosaceae, and is native to the cooler hill regions of south-central China. In Japan the loquat is known as biwa (枇杷, びわ) and has been grown for over 1,000 years. The loquat has been introduced to regions with subtropical to mild temperate climates throughout the world.


title: Loquat

text: "Eriobotrya japonica" was formerly thought to be closely related to the genus "Mespilus", and is still sometimes mistakenly known as the Japanese medlar. It is also known as Japanese plum and Chinese plum, as well as pipa in China, naspli in Malta, Lukaat in India, Lucat in Sri Lanka, níspero in Spain, nêspera in Portugal, shések in Israel, akidéné in Lebanon, Ebirangweti in Kisii and nespolo in Italy (where the name is shared with "Mespilus germanica").


title: Loquat

text: "Eriobotrya japonica" is a large evergreen shrub or small tree, with a rounded crown, short trunk and woolly new twigs. The tree can grow to tall, but is often smaller, about . The fruit begins to ripen during spring to summer depending on the temperature in the area. The leaves are alternate, simple, long, dark green, tough and leathery in texture, with a serrated margin, and densely velvety-hairy below with thick yellow-brown pubescence; the young leaves are also densely pubescent above, but this soon rubs off.


title: Loquat

text: Loquats are unusual among fruit trees in that the flowers appear in the autumn or early winter, and the fruits are ripe at any time from early spring to early summer. The flowers are in diameter, white, with five petals, and produced in stiff panicles of three to ten flowers. The flowers have a sweet, heady aroma that can be smelled from a distance.


title: Loquat

text: Loquat fruits, growing in clusters, are oval, rounded or pear-shaped, long, with a smooth or downy, yellow or orange, sometimes red-blushed skin. The succulent, tangy flesh is white, yellow or orange and sweet to subacid or acid, depending on the cultivar.


title: Loquat

text: Each fruit contains from one to ten ovules, with three to five being most common. A variable number of the ovules mature into large brown seeds (with different numbers of seeds appearing in each fruit on the same tree, usually between one and four).


title: Loquat

text: The plant is originally from China, where related species can be found growing in the wild. It has been cultivated there for over a thousand years. It has also become naturalised in Georgia, Armenia, Afghanistan, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bermuda, Chile, Kenya, Lebanon, India, Iran, Iraq, Israel, South Africa, the whole Mediterranean Basin, Pakistan, New Zealand, Réunion, Tonga, Central America, Mexico, South America and in warmer parts of the United States (Hawaii, California, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina). In Louisiana, many refer to loquats as "misbeliefs" and they grow in yards of homes. Chinese immigrants are presumed to have carried the loquat to Hawaii and California. It has been cultivated in Japan for about 1,000 years and presumably the fruits and seeds were brought back from China to Japan by the many Japanese scholars visiting and studying in China during the Tang Dynasty.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat was often mentioned in medieval Chinese literature, such as the poems of Li Bai. Its original name is no longer used in most Chinese dialects, and has been replaced by "pipa" (), which is a reference to the fruit's visual resemblance to a miniature pipa lute.


title: Loquat

text: The first European record of the species might have been in the 16th century by Michał Boym, a Polish jesuit, orientalist, politician and missionary to China. He described loquat in his Flora sinensis, the first European natural history book about China. The common name for the fruit is from Portuguese "nêspera" (from the modified "nespilus", originally "mespilus", which referred to the medlar), (José Pedro Machado, Dicionário Etimológico da Língua Portuguesa, 1967). Since the first contact of the Portuguese with the Japanese and Chinese dates also from the sixteenth century, it is possible that some were brought back to Europe, as was probably the case with other species like the "hachiya" persimmon variety.


title: Loquat

text: "Eriobotrya japonica" was again described in Europe by Carl Peter Thunberg, as "Mespilus japonica" in 1780, and was relocated to the genus "Eriobotrya" (from Greek "εριο" "wool" and "βοτρυών" "cluster") by John Lindley, who published these changes in 1821.


title: Loquat

text: The most common variety in Portugal is the late ripening Tanaka, where it is popular in gardens and backyards, but not commercially produced. In northern Portugal it is also popularly called magnório/magnólio, probably something to do with the French botanist Pierre Magnol. In Spain, the fruits are similarly called "nísperos" and are commercially exploited, Spain being the largest producer worldwide, after China, with 41,487t annually, half of which is destined to export markets.


title: Loquat

text: Over 800 loquat cultivars exist in Asia. Self-fertile variants include the 'Gold Nugget' and 'Mogi' cultivars. The loquat is easy to grow in subtropical to mild temperate climates where it is often primarily grown as an ornamental plant, especially for its sweet-scented flowers, and secondarily for its delicious fruit. The boldly textured foliage adds a tropical look to gardens, contrasting well with many other plants.


title: Loquat

text: There are many named cultivars, with orange or white flesh. Some cultivars are intended for home-growing, where the flowers open gradually, and thus the fruit also ripens gradually, compared to the commercially grown species where the flowers open almost simultaneously, and the whole tree's fruit also ripens together.


title: Loquat

text: China is the biggest producer of loquat in the world, more than 5 times the production of the 2nd biggest producer Spain, followed by Pakistan and Turkey. In Europe, Spain is the main producer of loquat.


title: Loquat

text: In temperate climates it is grown as an ornamental with winter protection, as the fruits seldom ripen to an edible state. In the United Kingdom, it has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.


title: Loquat

text: In the US, the loquat tree is hardy only in USDA zones 8 and above, and will flower only where winter temperatures do not fall below . In such areas, the tree flowers in autumn and the fruit ripens in late winter. It is popular in the East, as well as the South.


title: Loquat

text: However, loquats have been reported to survive temperatures as cold as for short periods of time. The loquat grows poorly if the temperature is "too tropical", but it is unclear at what maximum temperature it can be cultivated.


title: Loquat

text: Altitude is an important factor to consider as well. Loquats grow naturally anywhere from . However the right altitudes will vary depending on the temperature or how close it is to the equator. This contributes to why higher altitudes in China or the Andes mountains make excellent cultivating spots.


title: Loquat

text: China is a major country where loquats grow natively and they grow wild in forests around the mountains. However, loquats are cultivated on around with hundreds of different varieties.


title: Loquat

text: In the United States cultivation is not country-wide, typically with the southern and western states taking most of the responsibility. Cultivating in the United States has not been very popular due to its lack of interest in markets. However, the one advantage the loquat has among others is its fruit becomes available in late April – early May around a time many other fruits are not ready yet.


title: Loquat

text: In Russia, loquat produces fruits in subtropical and near-subtropical areas (Gelendzhik, Sochi). Loquat also produces fruits in subtropical areas of Georgia.


title: Loquat

text: In Canada, it can be found growing in Vancouver, though it does not produce fruits. More frost-resistant varieties grow and produce fruits in Sidney, British Columbia, though not every year.


title: Loquat

text: Loquat grows differently in tropical climates, typically blooming 2 to 3 times a year. Loquats usually mature 90 days after the bloom.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat has a high sugar, acid and pectin content. It is eaten as a fresh fruit and mixes well with other fruits in fresh fruit salads or fruit cups. The fruit is also commonly used to make jam, jelly and chutney, and is often served poached in light syrup. Firm, slightly immature fruits are best for making pies or tarts, while the fruits are the sweetest when soft and orange.


title: Loquat

text: The fruit is sometimes canned or processed into confections. The waste ratio is 30 percent or more, due to the seed size.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat can also be used in juices or smoothies. In South American countries such as Ecuador, the loquat can be used for "batidos", where they are mixed with milk, ice, or other fruits.


title: Loquat

text: An American writer calls the loquat's flavor "floral" with hints of apricot and a peach, with the fruit's natural sweetness contributing to its popularity.


title: Loquat

text: Loquats are used commonly as a natural sweetener for many different types of food, and are used to make marmalade and jelly in various locales. Many people use loquats to create sauces and other juices since the acidity goes well with the sweetness, another reason why they are popular for making pies and other pastries.


title: Loquat

text: Loquats are often eaten as a fresh fruit, but need to have the seeds removed in order to be ready to eat. The seeds not only takes up a great deal of space relative to the size of the fruit ("cf." avocado) but also are slightly poisonous in large quantities. The fruit is often peeled, but the peel is edible and not overly thick.


title: Loquat

text: Some other uses for loquat include making alcohol, animal feed, and medicine to counter vomiting and thirst. The loquat's trees and flowers also are used in different forms. The loquat's wood is used as an alternative to pear wood and works well to make rulers/other writing instruments. The loquat's flowers are used to make perfume in places like Europe, although its yield is considered low. Powdered loquat leaves are also used to treat diarrhea, depression, and even help to counteract alcoholic intoxication.


title: Loquat

text: Loquats can also be used to make light wine. They are fermented into a fruit wine, sometimes using just crystal sugar and white liquor.


title: Loquat

text: The liquor nespolino is made from the seeds, reminiscent of nocino and amaretto, both prepared from nuts and apricot kernels. Both the loquat seeds and the apricot kernels contain cyanogenic glycosides, but the drinks are prepared from varieties that contain only small quantities (such as Mogi and Tanaka), so there is no risk of cyanide poisoning.


title: Loquat

text: The loquat is low in sodium and high in vitamin A, vitamin B6, dietary fiber, potassium, and manganese.


title: Loquat

text: Like most related plants, the seeds (pips) and young leaves of the plant are slightly poisonous, containing small amounts of cyanogenic glycosides (including amygdalin) which release cyanide when digested, though the low concentration and bitter flavour normally prevent enough being eaten to cause harm.


title: Loquat

text: The name loquat derives from "lou gwat", the Cantonese pronunciation of the classical , literally "black orange". The phrase "black orange" originally actually referred to unripened "kumquats", which are dark green in color. But the name was mistakenly applied to the loquat we know today by the ancient Chinese poet Su Shi when he was residing in southern China, and the mistake was widely taken up by the Cantonese region thereafter.


title: Loquat

text: In China, the loquat is known as the 'pipa' (枇杷) and because of its golden colour, represents gold and wealth. It is often one in a bowl or composite of fruits and vegetables (such as spring onions, artemisia leaves, pomegranates, kumquats, etc.) to represent auspicious wishes or the 'Five Prosperities' or "wurui" (五瑞).


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Phasmophobia is an investigative horror game developed and published by British indie game studio Kinetic Games. It is based primarily on the popular hobby of ghost hunting. The game became available in early access through Steam for Microsoft Windows with virtual reality support in September 2020. The game received a large influx of popularity the following month due to many well-known Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it, mainly for the Halloween season. As of October 15, 2020, the game was the sixth-most popular game on Twitch. It was the best selling game on Steam globally for several weeks in October to November 2020 and has been the most popular ghost hunting game since.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: "Phasmophobia" is a horror investigation survival game played from a first-person perspective. The player works solo or in a group with up to three other players to complete a contract in which they must identify the type of ghost haunting the specified site. Players can communicate through voice chat, both locally within a short distance and globally via walkie-talkies. "Phasmophobia" features speech recognition allowing certain pieces of equipment and even the ghost to hear players speaking and understand key words and phrases. Completing objectives and gathering evidence provide a payout; complete as much as possible to level up, unlock maps and difficulties and earn money.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Players create or join a lobby where preparation for the contracts is done. "Phasmophobia" gives players the option to customize their appearance by picking between eight different paranormal investigators to distinguish between group members. Located at a whiteboard in the lobby, a contract location and difficulty (Amateur, Intermediate, Professional, Nightmare, or one of three Custom difficulty presets that the player can modify) is selected. All equipment is purchased at this board and selected to be loaded into the Van from which the group will operate upon arriving at the site.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: As of September 2022, there are twelve sites of various sizes: small, medium and large. The small maps include four suburban-style houses, two farmhouses, a small campsite, and a restricted variant of the larger asylum map. The medium maps are a campsite and prison, and the large maps are an asylum and a high school. Potential future maps located at an apartment building, mansion and hospital have been hinted at. An October 2021 update brought a medium outside type map named Maple Lodge Campsite, the first map in the game to be primarily set outdoors.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Phasmophobia features twenty-four different ghosts, each of which behaves differently and provides unique clues. Upon arriving at the site, one of these ghost types will be randomly assigned for the mission. As players attempt to complete the contract, sanity will drain with certain events and circumstances affecting the rate at which it does so. When sanity is low enough, a ghost will begin to hunt and attempt to kill the players (assuming the "Friendly Ghost" custom difficulty setting, which disables hunts, is not enabled). During the hunting phase, all exit doors are locked so players must outrun and/or hide from the ghost until the end of the hunt. Depending on the ghost type's strengths and weaknesses, it may be able to hunt when sanity is higher or lower.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Players will start in the Van where they will find the equipment they have selected and another whiteboard, the Objective Board, listing the objectives they need to complete as well as the name of the ghost. It also houses the Surveillance Computer, Sanity Monitor, map of the current site, Sound Sensor Screen, and Site Activity Monitor. This set of equipment is permanently located inside the Van and is used to track the status of the players and ghost’s activity, although on Nightmare difficulty as well as with two specific Custom Difficulty settings, the Sanity Monitor and Site Activity monitor may be disabled and appear as smashed screens. Players who survive and have completed their objectives (or wish to give up) must return to the Van to leave. Players will also have a journal on hand permanently where information about the ghosts, evidence and photos can be found. Evidence and ghost identification must be marked in the Journal to receive money which can be used to purchase more equipment.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Basic equipment includes a spirit box, ghost writing book, photo camera, D.O.T.S. projector, EMF reader, video camera, UV flashlight, and conventional flashlight. Additional equipment types can be purchased and may be needed to complete the optional objectives. One cursed object - a haunted mirror, summoning circle, voodoo doll, music box, ouija board, or deck of tarot cards - will spawn per map and allow the player to interact with the ghost directly, though at the risk of provoking it into a hunt.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Players must utilize the various pieces of equipment to identify the three pieces of evidence unique to the type of ghost they are dealing with, and often to complete optional objectives as well. As of September 2022, there are seven possible pieces of ghost evidence: EMF level 5, fingerprints, freezing temperatures, ghost orbs, ghost writing, seeing movement on the D.O.T.S. projector, and hearing the ghost speak through the spirit box.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Additional photo evidence can be taken with a Photo Camera to earn extra money and will give points according to the category and distance from which the photo was taken (which is denoted by a star rating). A photo of the ghost will net the most money, but other items that count towards photo evidence include bones, dead bodies (of teammates), fingerprints, footprints, interactions, a sink full of dirty water, used crucifixes, writing in the ghost writing book, ghost sillouette when it walks through the D.O.T.S. projector, and cursed possessions.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: As of October 2022 Phasmophobia has 24 different ghost types. Most of these ghost types are based of creatures and entities from various cultures and religions.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: The Banshee, the Demon, the Deogen, the Goryo, the Hantu, the Jinn, the Mare, the Moroi, the Myling, the Obake, the Oni, the Onryo, the Phantom, the Poltergeist, the Raiju, the Revenant, the Shade, the Spirit, the Thaye, The Mimic, The Twins, the Wraith, the Yokai, and the Yurei.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: In September 2022 an update was released which added the custom difficulty to the game. This custom difficulty makes the player able to change certain settings to the mission. Changing the settings will result in a money and XP multiplier.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: The game was first seen on March 6, 2020, when its Steam page became live. An announcement trailer was then released three months later, announcing additional VR support and a release date for the early access build. On September 18, 2020, the game was released in early access for $14. After the release, the game received two major updates regarding bug fixes in the following week. Dknighter, the founder and sole member of Kinetic Games at the time, stated he hoped to release the full game somewhere in 2021. However, until that happened, he kept the game's price the same. During the course of game development after the early access release, one of the main goals for the updates was to improve the ghosts' AI, making them smarter and less predictable, and consequently harder for players to deal with. Kinetic Games plans to release console versions once the game has more content.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: Although first releasing around mid-September, the game began to pick up steam around the beginning of October for Halloween. This was the game's first time becoming trending and was being played by many notable Twitch streamers and YouTubers such as xQc, Jacksepticeye, Sodapoppin, Berleezy, POiiSED and Markiplier. This was likely due to the game becoming early access around the beginning of the Halloween season, as well as being similar in popularity to its inspiration "P.T." It could also be due to the start of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic causing many people to stay at home. With the influx of players due to the large amount of popular streamers playing the game, hackers became widespread during the later weeks of the game's release, mostly by trying to jumpscare players or spawn an infinite amount of items. One of the more concerning examples of hacking were stream snipers, who changed their player models to a more NSFW one, likely causing said streamers to receive warnings and bans for inappropriate content. The developers then began working on updates to solve the problem.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: On Twitch, the game grew exponentially and even reached the top 5 most viewed game in mid October, overtaking games such "Among Us", "Fortnite Battle Royale", "FIFA 21", and "Genshin Impact". According to online player tracker GitHyp, the game hit a peak of over 86,000 active players around October 10. The game became a Steam top-seller, and by the end of October 18, 2020, was the best selling game of that week, even beating out "Fall Guys" and pre-orders for "Cyberpunk 2077". It was the highest selling game on Steam for three weeks in a row. Many Twitch streamers now stream Phasmophobia as their main game. The most famous streamers who stream Phasmophobia as their main game are: Insym, PsychoHypnotic, Nuzzgard, and the game's Lead Artist, cjdxn.


title: Phasmophobia (video game)

text: "Phasmophobia" has received very positive reviews from critics. Rich Stanton of "PC Gamer" called it "the best ghost game ever made", as well as declaring that it was "unlike anything else I've played", and that it "comes up with shit that'll turn you white". Cass Marshall, writing in "Polygon", also gave a positive review, describing it as "a nice, cozy kind of horror and once it gets rolling, it is brilliant", while also finding that the game had numerous bugs which have since been fixed. John Wolfe, an American Horror Game reviewer also liked the game and appreciated many aspects of the game. "Jeuxvideo.com" described the game as being quite original and imaginative, on top of being creepy. They felt that the maps in the game were well thought out and that the level of progression was well-paced. Whilst the review criticized the game for its animations and certain redundancies, they felt that they would likely be smoothed out with constant updates before the game's release. A review by "CBR" described the game as "the perfect game for the Halloween season", praising it for its unique jumpscares, as well as for its sound design. The game has been compared to many other horror games of a similar nature, such as "" and "Dead by Daylight".


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: The Mule is a 2018 American crime drama film starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, who also produced with Dan Friedkin, Jessica Meier, Tim Moore, Kristina Rivera, and Bradley Thomas. The screenplay was written by Nick Schenk, and based on the 2014 "The New York Times" article "The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule" by Sam Dolnick, which recounts the story of Leo Sharp, a World War II veteran who became a drug courier for the Sinaloa Cartel in his 80s.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: The film co-stars Bradley Cooper, Laurence Fishburne, Michael Peña, Dianne Wiest, and Andy García. This was Eastwood's first acting project since 2012, and his first starring leading role in a film directed by him since 2008. Filming began in early June 2018, taking place in Atlanta and Augusta, Georgia, with other film locations in Las Cruces, New Mexico.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: "The Mule" was released in the United States on December 14, 2018, by Warner Bros. It has grossed over $174 million. The film received positive reviews, with critics calling it "poignant and charming" while also praising Eastwood's performance, but was criticized for its lack of dramatic heft.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: In 2005, Korean War veteran and famous horticulturalist Earl Stone misses his daughter Iris's wedding so he can receive a lifetime award celebrating his professional accomplishments. Enraged that her father once again chose his career over her, Iris stops speaking to him and his wife Mary files for divorce.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Twelve years later, Earl visits his granddaughter Ginny to attend her wedding rehearsal, not telling his family that the only reason he's there is because his flower farming business has gone bankrupt, and his home has just been foreclosed on by the bank. While there, he is spotted by a member of a drug cartel who had been tipped off by one of Earl's former employees as to his financial problems. Earl accepts the gangster's offer and becomes a "mule", transporting cocaine through Illinois for the cartel.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Facing little suspicion due to his age, ethnicity, spotless criminal history, and strict adherence to driving laws, Earl is soon entrusted with huge amounts of drugs, the delivery of which earns him thousands of dollars. Over time, Earl gets more involved with the cartel and becomes one of their best mules. With the money he buys a new truck, buys back his home, and even pays for badly needed renovations on behalf of the local VFW post (which had been damaged in a fire). Earl even pays for Ginny's wedding and tuition so she can attend college.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Meanwhile, Special Agent Colin Bates moves to the Chicago DEA office and is assigned Agent Trevino as his partner. They are tasked with narrowing in on the cartel's deliveries to Chicago. Bates and Trevino find an informant from within the cartel and start looking for their most profitable driver, "Tata" (grandfather). The head of the cartel, Laton, is overjoyed with Earl's success and invites him to a party. Earl mistakenly believes that the cartel considers him their friend. Things take a turn for the worse when Laton is assassinated and replaced by another gangster, Gustavo. Gustavo is more bloodthirsty and controlling than Laton and demands Earl be kept under tighter control.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: In the middle of a $12 million cocaine shipment, Earl winds up in a diner with Bates. Neither man recognizes the other, and the elderly Earl gives Bates advice to try and mend fences with his wife and not make the mistakes Earl has made. Earl then leaves to conclude the delivery of the shipment but then gets a call from Ginny, who informs him that Mary is gravely ill. Earl initially tells Ginny there's nothing he can do until she rebukes him for his perceived lack of care. Earl relents and disobeys Gustavo, making peace with Mary and staying with her in her final moments. Mary dies peacefully days later. After attending the funeral and finally reconciling with Iris and the rest of his family, Earl resumes the delivery as both the DEA and the cartel close in on him.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: The cartel's enforcers catch him and upon discovering that he disobeyed them to care for his wife, they call Gustavo to request leniency. Gustavo agrees to this demand and allows Earl to continue. Earl proceeds to the drop point but the DEA agents finally catch up and arrest him; Bates has a pleasant aside with Earl before sending him away. In court, Earl's lawyer starts to give an impassioned plea, asking for mercy for Earl due to his age and military service. However, a clearly guilt-ridden Earl interrupts her to plead guilty to all charges and is promptly sent to federal prison. His family lend him their support and promise to visit him. In prison, he returns to horticulture.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: During 2014, DEA Special Agent Jeff Moore, who arrested 87-year-old Leo Sharp in 2011, was interviewed by "The New York Times" regarding the investigation of Sharp, the world's oldest and most prolific drug mule. The rights to the subsequent article, "The Sinaloa Cartel's 90-Year-Old Drug Mule" by Sam Dolnick, were sold to Imperative Entertainment later that year.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Imperative hired Ruben Fleischer to direct and produce the film. In February 2015, Nick Schenk was hired to adapt the article into a film screenplay.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: In January 2018, it was revealed that the film would be titled "The Mule" and that Clint Eastwood would direct the film instead, as well as produce and star in it, for Warner Bros. Entertainment and Imperative. Producers include Eastwood for Malpaso Productions, along with Tim Moore, Kristina Rivera and Jessica Meier, and Dan Friedkin and Bradley Thomas for Imperative Entertainment. Fleischer executive produced.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: In January 2018, Eastwood was set to play the role of Earl Stone, a Korean War veteran in his 80s, based on World War II veteran Leo Sharp, who worked as a drug courier for a Mexican cartel. In May 2018, Bradley Cooper joined the cast to play DEA agent Colin Bates, based on agent Jeff Moore, who is chasing Stone, and along with Cooper, Lobo Sebastian also joined the film. In June 2018, Dianne Wiest and Michael Peña joined the film's cast to play Earl Stone's ex-wife and Bates' fellow DEA agent, respectively. More cast members were also confirmed, including Laurence Fishburne as a DEA special agent in charge, Alison Eastwood as Stone's daughter, Taissa Farmiga as Stone's granddaughter, and Ignacio Serricchio as Stone's cartel handler. That same month, Loren Dean joined the cast of the film. In July 2018, Victor Rasuk was cast, and Manny Montana was also confirmed.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Principal photography on the film began on June 4, 2018 in Atlanta, Rome, and Augusta, Georgia. It was also shot in Las Cruces, New Mexico.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: The film was released on December 14, 2018 in the United States and released on January 25, 2019 in the United Kingdom. It premiered on December 10, 2018 in Westwood, California.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: "The Mule" was released on digital HD on March 19, 2019 and on 4K UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray and DVD on April 2, 2019. It is also available for online streaming video and digital downloading through Apple's iTunes Store and Vudu.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: "The Mule" grossed $103.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $69.8 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $173.6 million, against a production budget of $50 million.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "The Mule" was released alongside "" and "Mortal Engines", and was projected to gross $15–18 million from 2,588 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $5.9 million on its first day and $17.5 million over the weekend, finishing second at the box office and marking the third-best opening of Eastwood's acting career, after "Gran Torino" and "Space Cowboys". It made $9.5 million in its second weekend, finishing fifth, and then $4.9 million on Christmas Day.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The website's critical consensus reads, "A flawed yet enjoyable late-period Eastwood entry, "The Mule" stubbornly retains its footing despite a few missteps on its occasionally unpredictable path." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 58 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it four out of five stars.


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: Peter Debruge of "Variety" wrote, "It's a great true story, colorfully told by Sam Dolnick in "The New York Times"".


title: The Mule (2018 film)

text: David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "B+" and called it Eastwood's best in over 25 years, writing: "This soulful and deeply satisfying filma fitting swan song, if ever there was onemakes a compelling argument that change is always possible, and that the path we're on is never as narrow as the highway makes it look."


title: Gecko

text: Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from .


title: Gecko

text: Geckos are unique among lizards for their vocalisations, which differ from species to species. Most geckos in the family Gekkonidae use chirping or clicking sounds in their social interactions. Tokay geckos ("Gekko gecko") are known for their loud mating calls, and some other species are capable of making hissing noises when alarmed or threatened. They are the most species-rich group of lizards, with about 1,500 different species worldwide.


title: Gecko

text: All geckos, except species in the family Eublepharidae lack eyelids; instead, the outer surface of the eyeball has a transparent membrane, the cornea. They have a fixed lens within each iris that enlarges in darkness to let in more light. Since they cannot blink, species without eyelids generally lick their own corneas when they need to clear them of dust and dirt, in order to keep them clean and moist.


title: Gecko

text: Unlike most lizards, geckos are usually nocturnal and have excellent night vision; their colour vision in low light is 350 times more sensitive than human eyes. The nocturnal geckos evolved from diurnal species, which had lost the rod cells from their eyes. The gecko eye, therefore, modified its cone cells that increased in size into different types, both single and double. Three different photo-pigments have been retained, and are sensitive to ultraviolet, blue, and green. They also use a multifocal optical system that allows them to generate a sharp image for at least two different depths. While most gecko species are nocturnal, some species are diurnal and active during the day, which has evolved multiple times independently.


title: Gecko

text: Many species are well known for their specialised toe pads, which enable them to grab and climb onto smooth and vertical surfaces, and even cross indoor ceilings with ease. Geckos are well known to people who live in warm regions of the world, where several species make their home inside human habitations. These, for example the house gecko, become part of the indoor menagerie and are often welcomed, as they feed on insect pests; including moths and mosquitoes. Like most lizards, geckos can lose their tails in defence, a process called autotomy; the predator may attack the wriggling tail, allowing the gecko to escape.


title: Gecko

text: The largest species, the kawekaweau, is only known from a single, stuffed specimen found in the basement of the Natural History Museum of Marseille in Marseille, France. This gecko was long, and it was likely endemic to New Zealand, where it lived in native forests. It was probably wiped out along with much of the native fauna of these islands in the late 19th century, when new invasive species such as rats and stoats were introduced to the country during European colonisation. The smallest gecko, the Jaragua sphaero, is a mere long, and was discovered in 2001 on a small island off the coast of Hispaniola.


title: Gecko

text: The New Latin "gekko" and English 'gecko' stem from Indonesian-Malaysian "gēkoq", it is a Malay word borrowed from Javanese, from "tokek", which imitates the sounds that some species like "Tokay gecko" make.


title: Gecko

text: Like other reptiles, geckos are ectothermic, producing very little metabolic heat. Essentially, a gecko's body temperature is dependent on its environment. Also, to accomplish their main functions; such as locomotion, feeding, reproduction, etc., geckos must have a relatively elevated temperature.


title: Gecko

text: All geckos shed their skin at fairly regular intervals, with species differing in timing and method. Leopard geckos shed at about two- to four-week intervals. The presence of moisture aids in the shedding. When shedding begins, the gecko speeds the process by detaching the loose skin from its body and eating it. For young geckos, shedding occurs more frequently, once a week, but when they are fully grown, they shed once every one to two months.


title: Gecko

text: About 60% of gecko species have adhesive toe pads which allow them to adhere to most surfaces without the use of liquids or surface tension. Such pads have been gained and lost repeatedly over the course of gecko evolution. Adhesive toepads evolved independently in about eleven different gecko lineages, and were lost in at least nine lineages.


title: Gecko

text: It was previously thought that the spatula-shaped setae arranged in lamellae on gecko footpads enable attractive van der Waals' forces (the weakest of the weak chemical forces) between the β-keratin lamellae / setae / spatulae structures and the surface. These van der Waals interactions involve no fluids; in theory, a boot made of synthetic setae would adhere as easily to the surface of the International Space Station as it would to a living-room wall, although adhesion varies with humidity. However, a 2014 study suggests that gecko adhesion is in fact mainly determined by electrostatic interaction (caused by contact electrification), not van der Waals or capillary forces.


title: Gecko

text: The setae on the feet of geckos are also self-cleaning, and usually remove any clogging dirt within a few steps. Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), which has very low surface energy, is more difficult for geckos to adhere to than many other surfaces.


title: Gecko

text: Gecko adhesion is typically improved by higher humidity, even on hydrophobic surfaces, yet is reduced under conditions of complete immersion in water. The role of water in that system is under discussion, yet recent experiments agree that the presence of molecular water layers (water molecules carry a very large dipole moment) on the setae, as well as on the surface, increase the surface energy of both, therefore the energy gain in getting these surfaces in contact is enlarged, which results in an increased gecko adhesion force. Moreover, the elastic properties of the b-keratin change with water uptake.


title: Gecko

text: Gecko toes seem to be double jointed, but this is a misnomer, and is properly called digital hyperextension. Gecko toes can hyperextend in the opposite direction from human fingers and toes. This allows them to overcome the van der Waals force by peeling their toes off surfaces from the tips inward. In essence, by this peeling action, the gecko separates spatula by spatula from the surface, so for each spatula separation, only some force necessary. (The process is similar to removing Scotch Tape from a surface.)


title: Gecko

text: Geckos' toes operate well below their full attractive capabilities most of the time, because the margin for error is great depending upon the surface roughness, and therefore the number of setae in contact with that surface.


title: Gecko

text: Use of small van der Waals force requires very large surface areas; every square millimetre of a gecko's footpad contains about 14,000 hair-like setae. Each seta has a diameter of 5 μm. Human hair varies from 18 to 180 μm, so the cross-sectional area of a human hair is equivalent to 12 to 1300 setae. Each seta is in turn tipped with between 100 and 1,000 spatulae. Each spatula is 0.2 μm long (one five-millionth of a metre), or just below the wavelength of visible light.


title: Gecko

text: The setae of a typical mature gecko would be capable of supporting a weight of : each spatula can exert an adhesive force of 5 to 25 nN. The exact value of the adhesion force of a spatula varies with the surface energy of the substrate to which it adheres. Recent studies have moreover shown that the component of the surface energy derived from long-range forces, such as van der Waals forces, depends on the material's structure below the outermost atomic layers (up to 100 nm beneath the surface); taking that into account, the adhesive strength can be inferred.


title: Gecko

text: Apart from the setae, phospholipids; fatty substances produced naturally in their bodies, also come into play. These lipids lubricate the setae and allow the gecko to detach its foot before the next step.


title: Gecko

text: The origin of gecko adhesion likely started as simple modifications to the epidermis on the underside of the toes. This was recently discovered in the genus "Gonatodes" from South America. Simple elaborations of the epidermal spinules into setae have enabled "Gonatodes humeralis" to climb smooth surfaces and sleep on smooth leaves.


title: Gecko

text: Biomimetic technologies designed to mimic gecko adhesion could produce reusable self-cleaning dry adhesives with many applications. Development effort is being put into these technologies, but manufacturing synthetic setae is not a trivial material design task.


title: Gecko

text: Gecko skin does not generally bear scales, but appears at a macro scale as a papillose surface, which is made from hair-like protuberances developed across the entire body. These confer superhydrophobicity, and the unique design of the hair confers a profound antimicrobial action. These protuberances are very small, up to 4 microns in length, and tapering to a point. Gecko skin has been observed to have an anti-bacterial property, killing gram-negative bacteria when they come in contact with the skin.


title: Gecko

text: The mossy leaf-tailed gecko of Madagascar, "U. sikorae", has coloration developed as camouflage, most being greyish brown to black, or greenish brown, with various markings meant to resemble tree bark; down to the lichens and moss found on the bark. It also has flaps of skin, running the length of its body, head and limbs, known as the "dermal flap", which it can lay against the tree during the day, scattering shadows, and making its outline practically invisible.


title: Gecko

text: Geckos are polyphyodonts, and able to replace each of their 100 teeth every 3 to 4 months. Next to the full grown tooth there is a small replacement tooth developing from the odontogenic stem cell in the dental lamina. The formation of the teeth is pleurodont; they are fused (ankylosed) by their sides to the inner surface of the jaw bones.


title: Gecko

text: The infraorder Gekkota is divided into seven families, containing about 125 genera of geckos, including the snake-like (legless) pygopods.


title: Gecko

text: Legless lizards of the family Dibamidae, also referred to as blind lizards, have occasionally been counted as gekkotans, but recent molecular phylogenies suggest otherwise.


title: Gecko

text: Several species of lizard from the Late Jurassic have been considered early relatives of geckos, the most prominent and most well supported being the arboreal "Eichstaettisaurus" from the Late Jurassic of Germany. "Norellius" from the Early Cretaceous of Mongolia is also usually placed as a close relative of geckos. The oldest known fossils of modern geckos are from the mid-Cretaceous Burmese amber of Myanmar (including "Cretaceogekko"), around 100 million years old, which have adhesive pads on the feet similar to those of living geckos.


title: Gecko

text: Most geckos lay a small clutch of eggs, a few are live-bearing and a few can reproduce asexually via parthenogenesis. Geckos also have a large diversity of sex-determining mechanisms including temperature-dependent sex determination and both XX/XY and ZZ/ZW sex chromosomes with multiple transitions among them over evolutionary time.