title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: A number of versions of the Ramakien epic were lost in the destruction of Ayutthaya in 1767. Three versions currently exist. One of these was prepared under the supervision (and partly written by) King Rama I. His son, Rama II, rewrote some parts for khon drama. The main differences from the original are an extended role for the monkey god Hanuman and the addition of a happy ending. Many of popular poems among the Thai nobles are also based on Indian stories. One of the most famous is Anirut Kham Chan which is based on an ancient Indian story of Prince Anirudha.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: In the Ayutthaya period, folktales also flourished. One of the most famous folktales is the story of "Khun Chang Khun Phaen" (), referred to in Thailand simply as ""Khun Phaen"", which combines the elements of romantic comedy and heroic adventures, ending in high tragedy. The epic of "Khun Chang Khun Phaen" (KCKP) revolves around "Khun Phaen", a Siamese general with superhuman magical powers who served the King of Ayutthaya, and his love-triangle relationship between himself, Khun Chang, and a beautiful Siamese girl named Wan-Thong. The composition of KCKP, much like other orally-transmitted epics, evolved over time. It originated as a recitation or "sepha" within the Thai oral tradition from around the beginning of the 17th century (c. 1600). Siamese troubadours and minstrels added more subplots and embellished scenes to the original story line as time went on. By the late period of the Ayutthaya Kingdom, it had attained the current shape as a long work of epic poem with the length of about 20,000 lines, spanning 43 "samut thai" books. The version that exists today was composed with "klon" meter throughout and is referred to in Thailand as "nithan Kham Klon" () meaning a 'poetic tale'.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The Ayutthaya Buddhist temple falls into one of two broad categories: the "stupa"-style solid temple and the "prang"-style (). The prangs can also be found in various forms in Sukhothai, Lopburi, Bangkok (Wat Arun). Sizes may vary, but usually the prangs measure between 15 and 40 meters in height, and resemble a towering corn-cob like structure.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Prangs essentially represent Mount Meru. In Thailand Buddha relics were often housed in a vault in these structures, reflecting the belief that the Buddha is a most significant being, having attained enlightenment and having shown the path to enlightenment to others.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The Thais never lacked a rich food supply. Peasants planted rice for their own consumption and to pay taxes. Whatever remained was used to support religious institutions. From the 13th to the 15th centuries, however, a transformation took place in Thai rice cultivation. In the highlands, where rainfall had to be supplemented by a system of irrigation to control water levels in flooded paddies, the Thais sowed the glutinous rice that is still the staple in the geographical regions of the north and northeast. But in the floodplain of the Chao Phraya, farmers turned to a different variety of rice—the so-called floating rice, a slender, non-glutinous grain introduced from Bengal—that would grow fast enough to keep pace with the rise of the water level in the lowland fields.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The new strain grew easily and abundantly, producing a surplus that could be sold cheaply abroad. Ayutthaya, at the southern extremity of the floodplain, thus became the hub of economic activity. Under royal patronage, corvée labour dug canals on which rice was brought from the fields to the king's ships for export to China. In the process, the Chao Phraya delta—mud flats between the sea and firm land hitherto considered unsuitable for habitation—was reclaimed and cultivated. Traditionally the king had a duty to perform a religious ceremony to bless the rice planting.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Although rice was abundant in Ayutthaya, rice exports were banned from time to time when famine occurred because of natural calamity or war. Rice was usually bartered for luxury goods and armaments from Westerners, but rice cultivation was mainly for the domestic market and rice export was evidently unreliable.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Ayutthaya officially used cowrie shells, "prakab" (baked clay coins), and "pod duang" as currencies. "Pod duang" became the standard medium of exchange from the early-13th century to the reign of King Chulalongkorn.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Trade with Europeans was lively in the 17th century. In fact European merchants traded their goods, mainly modern arms such as rifles and cannons, for local products from the inland jungle such as "sappan" (lit. 'bridge') woods, deerskin, and rice. Tomé Pires, a Portuguese voyager, mentioned in the 16th century that Ayutthaya, or "Odia", was "rich in good merchandise". Most of the foreign merchants coming to Ayutthaya were European and Chinese, and were taxed by the authorities. The kingdom had an abundance of rice, salt, dried fish, arrack, and vegetables.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Trade with foreigners, mainly the Dutch, reached its peak in the 17th century. Ayutthaya became a main destination for merchants from China and Japan. It was apparent that foreigners began taking part in the kingdom's politics. Ayutthaya's kings employed foreign mercenaries who sometimes joined the wars with the kingdom's enemies. However, after the purge of the French in the late-17th century, the major traders with Ayutthaya were the Chinese. The Dutch from the Dutch East Indies Company (Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC), were still active. Ayutthaya's economy declined rapidly in the 18th century, until the Burmese invasion caused the total collapse of Ayutthaya's economy in 1767.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: In 1511, immediately after having conquered Malacca, the Portuguese sent a diplomatic mission headed by Duarte Fernandes to the court of King Ramathibodi II of Ayutthaya. Having established amicable relations between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Siam, they returned with a Siamese envoy who carried gifts and letters to the King of Portugal. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to visit the country. Five years after that initial contact, Ayutthaya and Portugal concluded a treaty granting the Portuguese permission to trade in the kingdom. A similar treaty in 1592 gave the Dutch a privileged position in the rice trade.Foreigners were cordially welcomed at the court of Narai (1657–1688), a ruler with a cosmopolitan outlook who was nonetheless wary of outside influence. Important commercial ties were forged with Japan. Dutch and English trading companies were allowed to establish factories, and Thai diplomatic missions were sent to Paris and The Hague. By maintaining these ties, the Thai court skillfully played off the Dutch against the English and the French, avoiding the excessive influence of a single power.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: In 1664, however, the Dutch used force to exact a treaty granting them extraterritorial rights as well as freer access to trade. At the urging of his foreign minister, the Greek adventurer Constantine Phaulkon, Narai turned to France for assistance. French engineers constructed fortifications for the Thais and built a new palace at Lopburi for Narai. In addition, French missionaries engaged in education and medicine and brought the first printing press into the country. Louis XIV's personal interest was aroused by reports from missionaries suggesting that Narai might be converted to Christianity.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The French presence encouraged by Phaulkon, however, stirred the resentment and suspicions of the Thai nobles and Buddhist clergy. When word spread that Narai was dying, a general, Phetracha (reigned 1688–1693) staged a coup d'état, the 1688 Siamese revolution, seized the throne, killed the designated heir, a Christian, and had Phaulkon put to death along with a number of missionaries. He then expelled the remaining foreigners. Some studies said that Ayutthaya began a period of alienation from Western traders, while welcoming more Chinese merchants. But other recent studies argue that, due to wars and conflicts in Europe in the mid-18th century, European merchants reduced their activities in the East. However, it was apparent that the Dutch East Indies Company or VOC was still doing business in Ayutthaya despite political difficulties.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Between 1405 and 1433, the Chinese Ming dynasty sponsored a series of seven naval expeditions. Emperor Yongle designed them to establish a Chinese presence, impose imperial control over trade, and impress foreign peoples in the Indian Ocean basin. He also might have wanted to extend the tributary system. It is believed that the Chinese fleet under Admiral Zheng He travelled up the Chao Phraya River to Ayutthaya on three occasions.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Meanwhile, a Japanese colony was established in Ayutthaya. The colony was active in trade, particularly in the export of deer hides and saphan wood to Japan in exchange for Japanese silver and Japanese handicrafts (swords, lacquered boxes, high-quality paper). From Ayutthaya, Japan was interested in purchasing Chinese silks, as well as deerskins and ray or shark skins (used to make a sort of shagreen for Japanese sword handles and scabbards).


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The Japanese quarters of Ayutthaya were home to about 1,500 Japanese inhabitants (some estimates run as high as 7,000). The community was called "Ban Yipun" in Thai, and was headed by a Japanese chief nominated by Thai authorities. It seems to have been a combination of traders, Christian converts ("Kirishitan") who had fled their home country to various Southeast Asian countries following the persecutions of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, and unemployed former samurai who had been on the losing side at the battle of Sekigahara.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Padre António Francisco Cardim recounted having administered the sacrament to around 400 Japanese Christians in 1627 in the Thai capital of Ayuthaya ("a 400 japoes christaos") There were also Japanese communities in Ligor and Patani.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The history of the Ayutthaya Kingdom overall has been a neglected period of historiography in Thailand, as well as abroad, characterized by well-researched and popular histories of subperiods of Ayutthaya. Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit's ""A History of Ayutthaya: Siam In the Early Modern World"", published in 2017, was the first English-academic book to have analyzed the full four hundred years of the Ayutthaya Kingdom's existence. The historiography of Southeast Asia originated from post-colonial capitals. As Thailand had never been fully colonized, it never had a European patron from which national histories could be written about themselves until the arrival of the Americans in the 1960s.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Early Rattanakosin period documents traced their "national" origins to the founding of Ayutthaya in 1351. In the early 20th-century however, Thai elites, influenced by Western ideas of European nationalism and the nation state, used that framework to create a nationalist history of Thailand, implementing it in ways deemphasized Ayutthaya's importance to Thai history by portraying the Sukhothai Kingdom as the first "Thai" kingdom or golden age of "Thai-ness" (Buddhism, Thai-style democracy, free trade, abolition of slavery), Rattanakosin as the "rebirth", and Ayutthaya as a period of decline between Sukhothai and Rattanakosin. This resulted in Ayutthaya being largely forgotten in the historiography of Thailand for half a century following the works of Prince Damrong in the early 20th century.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The nationalist-themed histories of Ayutthaya, pioneered by Prince Damrong, primarily featured the stories of kings fighting wars and the idea of Eurocentric territorial subjugation of neighboring states. These historical themes remains influential in Thailand and in Thai popular history up until the present, which has only been challenged by a newer generation of historians and academics in Thailand and abroad starting in the 1980s, emphasizing the long-neglected commercial and economic aspects which were important to Ayutthaya. New released sources and translations from a variety of historical records (China, the Netherlands, etc...) have made the researching of Ayutthaya history more accessible in the past two and three decades.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Since the 1970s, newer generations of academics have come up and challenged the old historiography, paying more attention and publishing works about the history of Ayutthaya, prominently beginning with Charnvit Kasetsiri's ""The Rise of Ayudhya"", published in 1977. Kasetsiri, in 1999, argues that, "Ayutthaya was the first major political, cultural, and commercial center of the Thai."


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: The idea that Ayutthaya suffered a decline following the departure of Europeans in the late 17th century was an idea popularized, at first, in the Rattanakosin court, in an attempt to legitimize the new dynasty over the Ayutthaya Ban Phlu Luang Dynasty, and more contemporarily by Anthony Reid's book on the "Age of Commerce". However, more recent studies, such as by Victor Lieberman in "Strange Parallels in Southeast Asia" and by Baker and Phongpaichit in "A History of Ayutthaya", have mostly refuted Reid's hypothesis, in particular Lieberman criticizing Reid's methodology of using the example of Maritime Southeast Asia to explain Mainland Southeast Asia, citing the opening of Qing China's revocation of its maritime ban and the subsequent increase in trade between China and Siam and Ayutthaya's historical importance as a regional Asian trade center rather than one in which Europeans held any power or any significant influence for any extended period of time.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Much of Ayutthaya's documents were burned during the 1767 sack of Ayutthaya. In the early Rattanakosin period, King Rama I compiled all surviving Ayutthaya law records and published the Three Seals Law in 1805. The best surviving accounts of the Ayutthaya Kingdom comes from foreign accounts, such as that of Jeremais Van Vliet, a Dutchman whose writings remain one of the best preserved accounts of Ayutthaya during its existence. Chinese court records also provide a large amount of surviving records about Ayutthaya.


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: There are 18 versions of "Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya" ("Phongsawadan Krung Si Ayutthaya") known to scholars. See: .


title: Ayutthaya Kingdom

text: Some of these are available in Cushman, Richard D. (2000). "The Royal Chronicles of Ayutthaya: A Synoptic Translation", edited by David K. Wyatt. Bangkok: The Siam Society.


title: Tibetan people

text: The Tibetan people (; ) are an East Asian ethnic group native to Tibet. Their current population is estimated to be around 6.7 million. In addition to the majority living in Tibet Autonomous Region of China, significant numbers of Tibetans live in the Chinese provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan, as well as in India, Nepal, and Bhutan.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetan languages belong to the Tibeto-Burman language group. The traditional or mythological explanation of the Tibetan people's origin is that they are the descendants of the human Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo. It is thought that most of the Tibeto-Burman speakers in Southwest China, including Tibetans, are direct descendants from the ancient Qiang people.


title: Tibetan people

text: Most Tibetans practice Tibetan Buddhism, although some observe the indigenous Bon religion and there is a small Muslim minority. Tibetan Buddhism influences Tibetan art, drama and architecture, while the harsh geography of Tibet has produced an adaptive culture of Tibetan medicine and cuisine.


title: Tibetan people

text: As of the 2014 Census, there are about 6 million Tibetans living in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the 10 Tibetan autonomous prefectures in the provinces of Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan. The SIL Ethnologue in 2009 documents an additional 189,000 Tibetic speakers living in India, 5,280 in Nepal and 4,800 in Bhutan. The Central Tibetan Administration's (CTA) Green Book (of the Tibetan Government in Exile) counts 145,150 Tibetans outside Tibet: a little over 100,000 in India; over 16,000 in Nepal; over 1,800 in Bhutan, and over 25,000 in other parts of the world. There are Tibetan communities in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Mexico, Norway, Mongolia, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In the Baltistan region of Northern Pakistan, the Balti people are a Muslim ethnicity of Tibetan descent numbering around 300,000.


title: Tibetan people

text: There is some dispute over the current and historical number of Tibetans. The Central Tibetan Administration claims that the 5.4 million number is a decrease from 6.3 million in 1959 while the Chinese government claims that it is an increase from 2.7 million in 1954. However, the question depends on the definition and extent of "Tibet"; the region claimed by the CTA is more expansive and China more diminutive. Also, the Tibetan administration did not take a formal census of its territory in the 1950s; the numbers provided by the administration at the time were "based on informed guesswork".


title: Tibetan people

text: PRC officials attribute growth of the Tibetan population to the improved quality of health and lifestyle of the average Tibetan since the beginning of Chinese governance in Tibet. According to Chinese sources, the death rate of women in childbirth dropped from 5,000 per 100,000 in 1951 to 174.78 per 100,000 in 2010, the infant mortality rate dropped from 430 infant deaths per 1,000 in 1951 to 20.69 per 1,000 by the year of 2010 (infant mortality in China as a whole was officially rated at 14 per 1,000 in 2010). The average life expectancy for Tibetans rose from 35.5 years in 1951 to over 67 years by the end of 2010.


title: Tibetan people

text: According to the Sixth National Population Census of the People's Republic of China (2010), there are 6,282,187 Tibetans nationwide:


title: Tibetan people

text: There are 2,716,388 people in the Tibet Autonomous Region, 1,496,524 people in Sichuan Province, 1,375,059 people in Qinghai Province, 488,359 people in Gansu Province (mostly in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture and Bairi Tibetan Autonomous County) and 142,257 people in Yunnan Province (mostly in Diqing Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture). Tibetans account for 0.47% of the total population of the country. Tibetans account for 90.48% of the total population in Tibet Region, 24.44% of the total population of Qinghai and 1.86% of the total population in Sichuan.


title: Tibetan people

text: Of all Tibetans in China, 315,622 people live in cities, 923,177 in towns, and 5,043,388 people (80.3%) live in rural areas.


title: Tibetan people

text: In India Tibetic people are found in the regions of Ladakh (Ladakhi and Balti), Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh, Spiti valley, Uttarakhand (Bhotiya), Sikkim (Bhutia), and Arunachal Pradesh (Khamba, Lhoba Delhi-Majnu ka tilla and Monpa people). There are also nearly 100,000 Tibetans living in exile in India since 1959. The majority of them living in Tibetan enclaves such as Dharamshala and Bylakuppe.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetans are known as Bhotiyas in Nepal, where they are majority in regions such as Upper Mustang, Dolpo, Walung region and Limi valley. Nepal is also home to other Tibetic people such as the Sherpa and Thakali. There are also more than 10,000 Tibetan refugees in Nepal.


title: Tibetan people

text: The Tibetic languages () are a cluster of mutually unintelligible Sino-Tibetan languages spoken by approximately 8 million people, primarily Tibetan, living across a wide area of East and South Asia, including the Tibetan Plateau and Baltistan, Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim, and Bhutan. Classical Tibetan is a major regional literary language, particularly for its use in Buddhist literature.


title: Tibetan people

text: The Central Tibetan language (the dialects of Ü-Tsang, including Lhasa), Khams Tibetan, and Amdo Tibetan are generally considered to be dialects of a single language, especially since they all share the same literary language, while Dzongkha, Sikkimese, Sherpa, and Ladakhi are generally considered to be separate languages.


title: Tibetan people

text: Although some of the Qiang peoples of Kham are classified by China as ethnic Tibetans, the Qiangic languages are "not" Tibetic, but rather form their own branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family.


title: Tibetan people

text: Modern Tibetan populations are genetically most similar to other modern East Asian populations. They show relatively more genetic affinity for modern Central Asian than modern Siberian populations. They also share genetic affinity for South Asians.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetan people are genetically most closely related to Han Chinese, Bhutanese. Tibetans predominantly belong to the paternal lineage O-M175. Another study by Yang et al. 2017 found that Tibetans are genetically closely related to other Sino-Tibetan populations.


title: Tibetan people

text: Released in 2010 by University of California, Berkeley, a study identified more than 30 genetic factors that make Tibetans' bodies well-suited for high-altitudes, including EPAS1, referred to as the "super-athlete gene" which regulates the body's production of hemoglobin, allowing for greater efficiency in the use of oxygen. The genetic basis of Tibetan adaptations have been attributed to a mutation in the EPAS1 gene, and has become prevalent in the past 3,000 years. In fact, according to Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, this is "the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans".


title: Tibetan people

text: Genetic studies shows that many of the Sherpa people have allele frequencies which are often found in other Tibeto-Burman regions, in tested genes, the strongest affinity was for Tibetan population sample studies done in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Genetically, the Sherpa cluster closest with the sample Tibetan and Han populations. Additionally, the Sherpa had exhibited affinity for several Nepalese populations, with the strongest for the Rai people, followed by the Magars and the Tamang.


title: Tibetan people

text: Recent research into the ability of Tibetans' metabolism to function normally in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere above shows that, although Tibetans living at high altitudes have no more oxygen in their blood than other people, they have ten times more nitric oxide and double the forearm blood flow of low-altitude dwellers. Tibetans inherited this adaptation due to their Denisovan admixture. Nitric oxide causes dilation of blood vessels, allowing blood to flow more freely to the extremities and aids the release of oxygen to tissues.


title: Tibetan people

text: Modern Tibetans formed from Ancient Tibetan Highlanders (also known as "East Asian Highlanders") native to the Tibetan Plateau and a region up to the southern Altai Mountains, and from East Asian lowland farmers expanding from the Yellow River. Although "East Asian Highlanders" (associated with haplogroup D1) are closely related to East Asian lowland farmers (associated with haplogroup O), they form a divergent sister branch to them. A 2019 study by Wang et al., published in the journal Nature, similarly concluded that modern Tibetans (and closely related Tibeto-Burmese) formed from "East Asian Highlanders" and agriculturalists from the Yellow river. They further found evidence for geneflow from this ancient "East Asian Highlanders" into some populations in Southeast Asia and Japan. By comparing Tibetans to modern worldwide populations it was found that Tibetans are very closely related to other East Asians, especially Chinese and Japanese respectively. Geneflow from Tibetan-like ancestry into West Asia and Northeastern Africa was also found, however this may be caused by relative small sample size from these regions.


title: Tibetan people

text: According to Tibetan mythology, the origins of Tibetans are said to be rooted in the marriage of the monkey Pha Trelgen Changchup Sempa and rock ogress Ma Drag Sinmo.


title: Tibetan people

text: Most Tibetans generally observe Tibetan Buddhism or a collection of native traditions known as Bön (also absorbed into mainstream Tibetan Buddhism). There is a minority Tibetan Muslim population. There is also a small Tibetan Christian population in the eastern Tibet and northwestern Yunnan of China. Also there are some Tibetan Hindus who mainly live in China, India and Nepal.


title: Tibetan people

text: According to legend, the 28th king of Tibet, Thothori Nyantsen, dreamed of a sacred treasure falling from heaven, which contained a Buddhist sutra, mantras, and religious objects. However, because the Tibetan script had not been invented, the text could not be translated in writing and no one initially knew what was written in it. Buddhism did not take root in Tibet until the reign of Songtsän Gampo, who married two Buddhist princesses, Bhrikuti of Nepal and Wencheng of China. It then gained popularity when Padmasambhāva visited Tibet at the invitation of the 38th Tibetan king, Trisong Deutson.


title: Tibetan people

text: Today, one can see Tibetans placing Mani stones prominently in public places. Tibetan lamas, both Buddhist and Bön, play a major role in the lives of the Tibetan people, conducting religious ceremonies and taking care of the monasteries. Pilgrims plant prayer flags over sacred grounds as a symbol of good luck.


title: Tibetan people

text: The prayer wheel is a means of simulating the chant of a mantra by physically revolving the object several times in a clockwise direction. It is widely seen among Tibetan people. In order not to desecrate religious artifacts such as Stupas, mani stones, and Gompas, Tibetan Buddhists walk around them in a clockwise direction, although the reverse direction is true for Bön. Tibetan Buddhists chant the prayer "Om mani padme hum", while the practitioners of Bön chant "Om matri muye sale du".


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibet is rich in culture. Tibetan festivals such as Losar, Shoton, Linka, and the Bathing Festival are deeply rooted in indigenous religion and also contain foreign influences. Each person takes part in the Bathing Festival three times: at birth, at marriage, and at death.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetan art is deeply religious in nature, from the exquisitely detailed statues found in Gonpas to wooden carvings and the intricate designs of the Thangka paintings. Tibetan art can be found in almost every object and every aspect of daily life.


title: Tibetan people

text: Thangka paintings, a syncretism of Indian scroll-painting with Nepalese and Kashmiri painting, appeared in Tibet around the 8th century. Rectangular and painted on cotton or linen, they usually depict traditional motifs including religious, astrological, and theological subjects, and sometimes a mandala. To ensure that the image will not fade, organic and mineral pigments are added, and the painting is framed in colorful silk brocades.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetan folk opera, known as lhamo, is a combination of dances, chants and songs. The repertoire is drawn from Buddhist stories and Tibetan history.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibetan opera was founded in the fourteenth century by Thang Tong Gyalpo, a lama and a bridge-builder. Gyalpo and seven girls he recruited organized the first performance to raise funds for building bridges to facilitate transportation in Tibet. The tradition continued uninterrupted for nearly seven hundred years, and performances are held on various festive occasions such as the Lingka and Shoton festival. The performance is usually a drama, held on a barren stage that combines dances, chants, and songs. Colorful masks are sometimes worn to identify a character, with red symbolizing a king and yellow indicating deities and lamas. The performance starts with a stage purification and blessings. A narrator then sings a summary of the story, and the performance begins. Another ritual blessing is conducted at the end of the play. There are also many historical myths/epics written by high lamas about the reincarnation of a "chosen one" who will do great things.


title: Tibetan people

text: The most unusual feature of Tibetan architecture is that many of the houses and monasteries are built on elevated, sunny sites facing the south. They are commonly made of a mixture of rocks, wood, cement and earth. Little fuel is available for heating or lighting, so flat roofs are built to conserve heat, and multiple windows are constructed to let in sunlight. Walls are usually sloped inwards at 10 degrees as a precaution against frequent earthquakes in the mountainous area. Tibetan homes and buildings are white-washed on the outside, and beautifully decorated inside.


title: Tibetan people

text: Standing at in height and in width, the Potala Palace is considered the most important example of Tibetan architecture. Formerly the residence of the Dalai Lama, it contains over a thousand rooms within thirteen stories and houses portraits of the past Dalai Lamas and statues of the Buddha. It is divided between the outer White Palace, which serves as the administrative quarters, and the inner Red Quarters, which houses the assembly hall of the Lamas, chapels, 10,000 shrines, and a vast library of Buddhist scriptures.


title: Tibetan people

text: Traditional Tibetan medicine utilizes up to two thousand types of plants, forty animal species, and fifty minerals. One of the key figures in its development was the renowned 8th century physician Yuthog Yontan Gonpo, who produced the Four Medical Tantras integrating material from the medical traditions of Persia, India and China. The tantras contained a total of 156 chapters in the form of Thangkas, which tell about the archaic Tibetan medicine and the essences of medicines in other places.


title: Tibetan people

text: Yutok Yonten Gonpo's descendant, Yuthok Sarma Yonten Gonpo, further consolidated the tradition by adding eighteen medical works. One of his books includes paintings depicting the resetting of a broken bone. In addition, he compiled a set of anatomical pictures of internal organs.


title: Tibetan people

text: The Cuisine of Tibet reflects the rich heritage of the country and people's adaptation to high altitude and religious culinary restrictions. The most important crop is barley. Dough made from barley flour, called tsampa, is the staple food of Tibet. This is either rolled into noodles or made into steamed dumplings called momos. Meat dishes are likely to be yak, goat or mutton, often dried or cooked into a spicy stew with potatoes. Mustard seed is cultivated in Tibet and therefore features heavily in its cuisine. Yak yogurt, butter and cheese are frequently eaten and well-prepared yogurt is considered something of a prestige item.


title: Tibetan people

text: Many Tibetans wear their hair long, although in recent times due to Chinese influence, most men do crop their hair short. The women braid their hair into multiple tiny braids called "Rhe-Ba" or just simply put their hair up in a braid or pony-tail in more rural areas. In more urban areas, women wear many different kinds of hairstyles such as pony-tails, braids, buns or just leaving it down.


title: Tibetan people

text: Some men and women wear long thick dresses ("chuba") in more traditional and rural regions. The men wear a shorter version with pants underneath. The style of the clothing varies between regions. Nomads often wear thick sheepskin versions. In more urban places like Lhasa, men and women dress in modern clothing, and many choose to wear chuba during festivals and holidays like Losar.


title: Tibetan people

text: Tibet has national literature that has both religious, semi-spiritual and secular elements. While the religious texts are well-known, Tibet is also home to the semi-spiritual Gesar Epic, which is the longest epic in the world and is popular throughout Mongolia and Central Asia. There are secular texts such as "The Dispute Between Tea and Chang" (Tibetan beer) and "Khache Phalu's Advice".


title: Tibetan people

text: Monogamy is common throughout Tibet. Marriages are sometimes arranged by the parents if the son or daughter has not picked their own partner by a certain age. However, polyandry is practiced in parts of Tibet. This is usually done to avoid division of property and provide financial security.


title: Goldie

text: Clifford Joseph Price MBE (born 19 September 1965), better known as Goldie, is a British music producer and DJ.


title: Goldie

text: Initially gaining exposure for his work as a graffiti artist, Goldie became well known for his pioneering role as a musician in the 1990s UK jungle, drum and bass and breakbeat hardcore scenes. He released a variety of singles under the pseudonym Rufige Kru and co-founded the label Metalheadz. He later released several albums under his own name, including the 1995 album "Timeless", which entered the UK charts at number 7.


title: Goldie

text: Goldie's acting credits include the 1999 James Bond film "The World Is Not Enough", Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" (2000) and the BBC soap opera "EastEnders" (2001–2002). He has also appeared in a number of celebrity reality television shows, including "Celebrity Big Brother 2" (UK), "Strictly Come Dancing", "Come Dine with Me" and "Maestro".


title: Goldie

text: Born in Walsall, but raised in Wolverhampton England, Price is of Jamaican and Scottish heritage. He was put up for adoption at the age of three, and raised in childcare homes and by several foster parents. According to his 2002 autobiography, he was physically and sexually abused during this time. Price was a member of the breakdance crew Westside, based in the Whitmore Reans and Heath Town areas of Wolverhampton, in the 1980s. He later joined a breakdance crew called the Birmingham Bboys, and made his name as a graffiti artist in the West Midlands.


title: Goldie

text: His artwork around Birmingham and Wolverhampton was featured heavily in Dick Fontaine's documentary "Bombin". He is mentioned for his graffiti in the book "Spraycan Art" by Henry Chalfant and James Prigoff, which contains several examples of his art.


title: Goldie

text: He moved to the United States owing to graffiti projects, and also started selling grills (gold teeth jewellery) in New York and Miami; he continued this business after his return to the UK in 1988. His nickname stems from "Goldielocks", an earlier nickname given to him during his Bboys days and subsequently shortened when he no longer wore dreadlocks.


title: Goldie

text: By 1991, Price had become fascinated by the British breakbeat music scene when his girlfriend, DJ Kemistry, introduced him to the pioneering jungle and drum and bass producers Dennis "Dego" McFarlane and Mark "Marc Mac" Clair, known as 4hero. He went on to execute some design and A&R work for 4hero's Reinforced Records label.


title: Goldie

text: In 1992, Price made his first record appearance by contributing to an EP by Icelandic group Ajax Project that included the track "Ruffige". For many years, the track was repeatedly misattributed to Price himself, perhaps because of his subsequent use of "Rufige" as moniker for his own releases.


title: Goldie

text: His releases "Killa Muffin" b/w "Krisp Biscuit" and the "Dark Rider" EP were released under the alias "Rufige Cru" on Reinforced. His track "Terminator", released under the name "Metalheads" in 1992, was a hit in the jungle scene and is noted for pioneering the use of time stretching. In 1993, he released "Angel", another 12" on the Synthetic Hardcore Phonography label. 1994 saw him setting up his own record label, Metalheadz.


title: Goldie

text: His first studio album, "Timeless", followed in 1995. "Timeless" entered the UK Albums Chart at number seven. The album fused the breakbeats and basslines common in jungle with orchestral textures and soul vocals by Diane Charlemagne. The album's title track was a 21-minute symphonic piece. "Inner City Life", a track from the album, reached number 39 in the UK Singles Chart. "Timeless" helped to popularise drum and bass as a form of musical expression. The music critic Simon Reynolds noted that Price's credentials as a musical innovator – and particularly as one of the key driving forces of innovation in the jungle/breakbeat scene – were exceptional. "Goldie revolutionised jungle not once but thrice", he noted in "The Wire" magazine, continuing, "First there was 'Terminator' (pioneering the use of time stretching), then 'Angel' (fusing Diane Charlemagne's live vocal with David Byrne/Brian Eno samples to prove that hardcore could be more 'conventionally' musical), now there's 'Timeless', a 22-minute hardcore symphony."


title: Goldie

text: In 1996, he released the "Toasted Both Sides Please" remix of the Bush song "Swallowed", which topped charts in the US and Canada.


title: Goldie

text: Price released his second album, "Saturnz Return", in 1998. The album's opening track, "Mother", is an hour-long orchestral drum and bass piece. The album featured appearances by David Bowie, Noel Gallagher and KRS-One. The album met with mixed reviews. David Brown of "Entertainment Weekly" called the album "ambitious but monotonous and overlong – Pink Floyd with a gold tooth".


title: Goldie

text: In 2002, Price said that he had been working for three years on a film called "Sine Tempus", described as a coming-of-age story of a young paintbrush artist. In 2006, he announced the soundtrack as his new album. The album was released via the Metalheadz website in 2008, but the film has not been released.


title: Goldie

text: Price is known for his work as the leader of Rufige Kru. The group has no fixed members and has included drum and bass producers such as Technical Itch, Heist, Cujo, Agzilla Da Ice, Danny J, Doc Scott and Rob Playford.


title: Goldie

text: March 2013 saw the release of "The Alchemist: The Best of Goldie 1992–2012", featuring prominent tracks from throughout Price's musical career. A subsequent compilation, the three-CD Masterpiece set released by Ministry of Sound in 2014, brought together tracks that influenced him (Soul II Soul's "Back To Life", Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves The Sunshine") with cuts that soundtracked his entry into the rave scene and key moments from the drum'n'bass scene.


title: Goldie

text: In 2017, the Goldie album "The Journey Man" was released, which Price described as his "magnum opus" and "the most important thing that I've ever made."


title: Goldie

text: Price has appeared in Guy Ritchie's "Snatch" and several other films, most notably the James Bond film, "The World Is Not Enough". He also played gangster Angel Hudson in the British soap opera "EastEnders" (2001–2002). Price starred in "Everybody Loves Sunshine" (1999) (aka "B.U.S.T.E.D." – United States title) with David Bowie.


title: Goldie

text: In the late 1980s, Price appeared on "Central Weekend", a Friday evening topical debate show on Central TV, promoting graffiti as an art form. He had a small documentary made about his own art on Central TV's "Here and Now" programme featuring Pogus Caesar's photographs of New York. He has appeared on various young people's TV shows as part of a breakdance crew, the Bboys from Wolverhampton. In 1995, he appeared on "Passengers", and in a Channel 4 documentary about himself in 1998.


title: Goldie

text: His next TV appearance was hosting "Crime Business" on the digital TV channels Bravo and Ftn. He presented the documentary series "The World's Deadliest Gangs" on Bravo in 2002.


title: Goldie

text: Price appeared on the second series of "Celebrity Big Brother" in 2002. He was the first celebrity to be "evicted". In 2006, he was scheduled to appear in "The Games", a UK reality TV show on Channel 4, but during training for the water-ski jump event he fractured his femur and was unable to take part in the show. He was replaced by Adam Rickitt. In 2009, he was reported to be suing the producers of the show for damages as a result of the injury.


title: Goldie

text: During August and September 2008, the BBC broadcast "Maestro", a reality television show in which eight celebrities, including Price, learned to conduct a concert orchestra. Price was placed second, behind Sue Perkins.


title: Goldie

text: On 31 July 2009, the first of a two-part television programme "Classic Goldie" was broadcast, showing how in the wake of his success in the "Maestro" programme he learns to write a score for a large orchestra and choir. The resulting composition, commissioned by the BBC and entitled "Sine Tempore" ("Timeless"), was performed at two children's Promenade concerts in the Royal Albert Hall on 1 and 2 August 2009, which featured music connected with Charles Darwin and the creation and evolution of the world.


title: Goldie

text: He appeared on "Celebrity Mastermind" on 27 December 2009 and came fourth behind Paul O'Grady, Gail Emms and Loyd Grossman. On 11 September 2010, he was announced as part of the line-up in "Strictly Come Dancing", staying in the competition for two weeks.


title: Goldie

text: On 26 March 2011, he appeared in a three-part reality television series, " " in which he led a group of music experts as they conducted a nationwide search for young talented musicians and then selected and coached 12 of them, who collaborated to create some musical pieces for a performance at Buckingham Palace.


title: Goldie

text: On 24 August 2012, he appeared in the Channel 4 documentary "Idris Elba's How Clubbing Changed the World" (hosted by Idris Elba) to explain how he invented the revolutionary technique of time stretching by misusing an HF ultra-harmoniser, which is usually used for guitars. He then went on to say that when he crossed this with digital breakbeat, the sound evolved from jungle into drum and bass.


title: Goldie

text: In 2007, Price returned to the art world with an art exhibition, "Love Over Gold", which was held at the Leonard Street Gallery, London. In 2008, he teamed up with Pete Tong to provide much of the artwork for Tong's new Wonderland club night at Eden nightclub in San Antonio, Ibiza.


title: Goldie

text: There was an exhibition of Price's art in Berlin from 13 to 26 June 2008. In April 2009, a retrospective exhibition titled "Kids Are All Riot" took place in Shoreditch, London, coinciding with the release of his screenprint "Apocalypse Angel".


title: Goldie

text: In the early 1990s, Price had a relationship with drum and bass artist Kemistry, who died in a car accident in 1999. He was romantically involved with singer Björk in 1996.


title: Goldie

text: In 1998, he bought a country house in Bovingdon, Hertfordshire. In 2002, Hodder & Stoughton published his autobiography, "Nine Lives", which he wrote with Paul Gorman.


title: Goldie

text: Price married model Sonjia Ashby in 2002. They divorced in 2005. As of 2003, he had five children, including social content creator Danny Price, who has appeared on Channel 4 reality show Make Me Prime Minister.


title: Goldie

text: In 2007, Price began a relationship with Mika Wassenaar, a Canadian. The couple appeared in the 20 June 2009 episode of ITV's "All Star Mr and Mrs" with Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton. Mika and Price married in 2010.


title: Goldie

text: In July 2010, Price received an honorary doctorate in Social Sciences from Brunel University, Uxbridge. On 3 September 2010, he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Design from the University of Wolverhampton.


title: Goldie

text: On 7 September 2010, Price's 23-year-old son Jamie Price was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum sentence of 21 years, for murder. He was convicted of stabbing a rival gang member to death in Wolverhampton town centre on 24 August 2008.


title: Goldie

text: Price was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2016 New Year Honours awards, for services to music and young people.


title: Goldie

text: Price was accused of assaulting a security guard at the 2017 Glastonbury festival after the guard had refused to let Price's daughter, Chance, backstage; Price later emailed a response which read, "Yep, guilty as charged", but in March 2018, district judge Lynn Matthews at Bristol Magistrates' Court rejected Price's emailed response and in a video call Price later admitted to assault by beating. On 30 May Bristol Magistrates' Court ordered Goldie to pay almost £2,500 as a fine.


title: Goldie

text: In 2017, Price appeared to reveal the first name of pseudonymous graffiti artist Banksy as "Rob" on Scroobius Pip's weekly "Distraction Pieces podcast". When discussing the rise of commercialism in street art, Price said, "Give me a bubble letter and put it on a T-shirt and write Banksy on it and we're sorted. We can sell it now... No disrespect to Rob, I think he is a brilliant artist. I think he has flipped the world of art over."


title: BMW N63

text: The BMW N63 is a twin-turbocharged V8 petrol engine which has been in production from 2008 to present. The N63 is the world's first production car engine to use a "hot-vee" layout, with the turbochargers located inside the "V" of the engine. It is also BMW's first turbocharged V8 engine.


title: BMW N63

text: The N63 replaced the BMW N62 (a naturally aspirated V8 engine) and was first used in the 2008 X6 xDrive50i.


title: BMW N63

text: Alpina versions of the N63 are used in various F01 7 Series, F10 5 Series, G11 7 Series, G16 8 Series and G30 5 Series models.


title: BMW N63

text: The airflow path through the engine uses a "hot-vee" layout, where the exhaust manifolds and turbochargers are located between the cylinder banks (on the "inside" of the V8) and the intake manifolds are located on the outside of the engine. This is opposite to the traditional layout for a V8, where the intake is inside the "V" and the exhaust manifold is on the outside. The hot-vee layout reduces the width of the engine and decreases the exhaust runner length from the exhaust valves to the turbochargers. The engine uses air-to-water intercoolers, therefore improving throttle response.


title: BMW N63

text: Similar to the N54B30, the initial N63 (including the S63) did not use Valvetronic (variable valve lift) because its benefit of reducing of intake vacuum is not as important in turbocharged engines}. Due to the presence of turbocharging, the N63 does not use a variable-length intake manifold.


title: BMW N63

text: In 2012, a "Technical Update" was applied to the N63, resulting in the "N63TU" variants (also known as "N63B44O1"). The main upgrade was the addition of Valvetronic. Other changes include revised turbochargers, removal of the blowoff valve, lighter pistons, forged connecting rods and crankshaft, addition of a valve cover labyrinth oil catch/return system, new valve stem seals, revised fuel system and addition of a second coolant pump.


title: BMW N63

text: A second Technical Update occurred in 2016, resulting in the "N63TU2" variants (also known as "N63B44O2"). The major changes are the use of twin-scroll turbochargers, a wider powerband and the oil/coolant heat exchanger being moved to within the "V" of the engine.


title: BMW N63

text: A third Technical Update was introduced in 2018. Two variants are offered: N63B44M3 and N63B44T3. N63B44M3 features improved thermal shielding for the crankcase and the cylinder head, and a new ignition system. The N63B44T3 gains higher pressure (5000psi) injectors, larger twin-scroll turbochargers, a redesigned intake manifold, and an upstream cooling radiator.


title: BMW N63

text: This smaller variant was sold in the Chinese market. Due to a shorter stroke length of , the capacity is reduced to .


title: BMW N63

text: The S63 is the BMW M version of the N63, which debuted in the BMW X6 M and was used in the BMW M5 models from 2011 to present. The S63 uses two twin-scroll turbochargers plus a pulse tuned, cross-engine exhaust manifold to keep constant exhaust pulses flowing to the turbos at every 180 degree rotation.


title: BMW N63

text: A technical update to the S63, known as the S63B44T1, debuted on the F10 M5 sedan. This version uses Valvetronic, a 10:1 compression ratio (compared with 9.3:1 for the non-TU version) and 1.5 bar of boost (compared with 1.3). It is the first BMW M engine to use Valvetronic. The rev limit was increased from 6800 rpm to 7200 rpm.


title: BMW N63

text: Alpina uses a variant of the N63 engine, which was hand-assembled at the Alpina plant in Buchloe before being transported to the BMW production line.


title: BMW N63

text: In December 2014, BMW North America released a voluntary recall ("Customer Care Package") relating to issues with timing chain stretch, fuel injectors, mass air flow sensors, crankcase vent lines, battery, engine vacuum pump, low pressure fuel sensor and revising the oil service interval.


title: BMW N63

text: In 2019 NHTSA addressed the multitude of issues with BMW N63 engines, various class action lawsuits in tow, and never officially declared a mass recall in regard to valve seal issues inherent in the N63 line.


BMW N63


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon Chae-won (; born November 13, 1986) is a South Korean actress. Moon first attracted attention in 2008 in her supporting role as a gisaeng in "Painter of the Wind". She was next cast in "Brilliant Legacy", one of the top-rated Korean dramas of 2009. 2011 marked Moon's career breakthrough, with leading roles in the television period drama "The Princess' Man" and the action blockbuster "War of the Arrows"; both were critical and commercial hits. For her performance in the latter, Moon won Best New Actress at the Grand Bell Awards and the Blue Dragon Film Awards. Moon's other notable television series include the revenge melodrama "The Innocent Man" (2012), the medical drama "Good Doctor" (2013), and the thriller melodrama "Flower of Evil" (2020).


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon Chae-won was born in Daegu, South Korea. When she was in sixth grade, her family moved to Seoul. She studied Western Painting at the Chugye University for the Arts, but dropped out in 2006 to pursue acting.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon made her acting debut in 2007 in "Mackerel Run", alongside fellow newcomer Lee Min-ho; they were among 60 actors who auditioned for the teen sitcom. Moon and Lee also appeared in the 2008 comedy film "Our School's E.T.".


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Her breakthrough came in 2008 period drama "Painter of the Wind". In the adaptation of Lee Jung-myung's historical fiction novel, she played a beautiful gisaeng who falls for Shin Yun-bok (played by Moon Geun-young), a female painter passing herself off as a man. Their onscreen chemistry and the homoerotic subtext of their characters' relationship was received positively, and the couple subsequently received the most votes in the Best Couple poll at the 2008 SBS Drama Awards. It was the first time in Korean drama history that two actresses won the Best Couple Award, despite the sexual conservatism of Korean network television.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon's further raised her profile with "Brilliant Legacy", in which she played a privileged girl who alternately antagonizes and pities her stepsister. "Brilliant Legacy" became one of the top-rated Korean dramas of 2009, with a peak viewership rating of 47.1%. The success of the drama boosted Moon's popularity as an actress. Another supporting role followed in "My Fair Lady", where she played an upbeat shoe designer who lives next door to her crush, a butler.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In October 2010, she signed with talent agency Barunson Entertainment (later renamed MSTeam). Afterwards, Moon landed her first leading role in "It's Okay, Daddy's Girl", playing an immature daughter who transforms into a mature professional woman after a family tragedy.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2011, Moon was offered the sole female role in "War of the Arrows", an action blockbuster set during the Second Manchu invasion of Korea. Along with her costars Park Hae-il and Ryu Seung-ryong, Moon underwent serious archery and horse riding lessons. "War of the Arrows" eventually went on to become the highest grossing Korean film of 2011, with 7.48 million admissions. Moon was praised for her portrayal of a feminine yet feisty woman abducted by a foreign army on her wedding day, yet who isn't a typical damsel in distress and instead survives by her wits and sheer will. She later received Best New Actress recognition at the Grand Bell Awards and the Blue Dragon Film Awards for her performance.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon returned to the small screen in the Joseon-era drama "The Princess' Man", about a fictional forbidden romance between the daughter of Grand Prince Suyang and the son of Kim Jongseo (played by Park Si-hoo), whose fathers were real-life political enemies. "The Princess' Man" was well-received critically and commercially, and though initially criticized for her acting, Moon won viewers over as the series went on, eventually winning a Top Excellence Award at the year-end KBS Drama Awards. She also received a Best Dressed nod from the Korea Lifestyle Awards for giving a boost to the hanbok fashion industry via her two period projects, and was named Honorary Prosecutor by the Supreme Prosecutors' Office.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2012, Moon starred in the Lee Kyung-hee-penned melodrama "The Innocent Man" opposite Song Joong-ki. She drew praise for her performance as a cold, cynical woman groomed to take over her father's conglomerate, who later reverts to helpless innocence after losing her memory. Ratings for "The Innocent Man" topped its timeslot during its run, and led to Moon winning a Top Excellence Award at the KBS Drama Awards for the second year in a row.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: This was followed by the 2013 medical drama "Good Doctor" revolving around an autistic savant resident (played by Joo Won). To prepare for her role as pediatric surgeon, Moon met with real-life doctors in a hospital setting, familiarizing herself with medical terms and observing surgeries first-hand.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: She next starred in "Awaiting", a short film directed by Kang Je-gyu. Moon played a woman separated from her husband (played by Go Soo) for sixty years by the division of North and South Korea. "Awaiting" was one of the four short films comprising "Beautiful 2014", an omnibus project that premiered at the 38th Hong Kong International Film Festival.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon returned to the big screen in a 2015 romantic comedy directed by Park Jin-pyo, which reunited her with previous "Brilliant Legacy" costar Lee Seung-gi. In "Love Forecast", she played a weather forecaster whose pretty face belies the glib-talking, hard-drinking personality underneath. The film passed the break-even point with 1.89 million viewers 3 weeks after being released and Moon won the Producer's Choice Award at Bucheon International Film Festival. She then starred opposite Yoo Yeon-seok in "Mood of the Day", in which they play two strangers who meet on the KTX and spend 24 hours together in the unfamiliar city of Busan.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: Moon then took on the leading female role in MBC's thriller "Goodbye Mr. Black" in 2016, her first television series in three years. The same year, Moon left her former agency MS Team Entertainment and signed with Namoo Actors.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2017, Moon was cast in the Korean adaption of the American crime drama "Criminal Minds". The same year, Moon was cast in the period film "Feng Shui", the third installment of the "divining art trilogy" by Han Jae-rim.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2020, Moon was cast in the thriller melodrama "Flower of Evil", reuniting with "Criminal Minds" co-star Lee Joon-gi.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2021, Moon will be joining the cast of the comedy film "No Kids" alongside Kwon Sang-woo. Later in November 2021, Moon signed with YNK Entertainment after the expiration of her contract with the original agency. In December 2021, Moon participated in Korea's first audio drama "Floor" with Lee Je-hoon and Jeong Jun-ha.


title: Moon Chae-won

text: In 2023, Moon made her return to the small screen with the SBS drama "Payback", his return to terrestrial television in seven years since 2016.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: Jasmine Cephas Jones (born July 21, 1989) is an American-British actress, singer, and producer, who originated the dual roles of Peggy Schuyler and Maria Reynolds in the Broadway stage musical "Hamilton". In 2020, Cephas Jones won a Primetime Emmy for portraying Tyisha in "#freerayshawn".


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: Jones is the daughter of actor Ron Cephas Jones and British-born jazz singer Kim Lesley. She attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, and Berklee College of Music, and graduated from Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 2011. Jones was born in London, England but grew up in Midwood, Brooklyn, where she still lived as of 2015.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: Jones has made small appearances in multiple independent films, including "Titus" (2013) and "Fairfield" (2014). She has also appeared in episodes of "Blue Bloods," "Unforgettable", and "Mrs. Fletcher."


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: In 2015, she originated the roles of Maria Reynolds and Margarita "Peggy" Schuyler Van Rensselaer in the original Off-Broadway production of "Hamilton." When the show moved to Broadway, she continued in those roles, and remained with that production until December 8, 2016. In 2016, she won a Grammy Award for her work as one of the principal soloists on the "Hamilton" cast album. Jasmine has solos in 'Schuyler Sisters' and 'Say No To This'.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: At Super Bowl LI, she, along with fellow "Hamilton" stars Renée Elise Goldsberry and Phillipa Soo, sang "America the Beautiful".


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: Jones also appears in the 2015 film "Mistress America", the 2018 film "Dog Days," and the critically acclaimed 2018 film "Blindspotting." In 2020, she appeared as a secondary character in the short series "#Freerayshawn", winning an Emmy for her performance as Tyisha. Jones' 2020 Emmy win made history both alongside her father Ron Cephas Jones for being the first father-daughter duo to win Emmy Awards in the same year, and as the first-ever Black woman to win in the Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy or Drama Series category.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: Following the positive response to the "Blindspotting" film, cable and streaming network STARZ along with Lionsgate Television, Snoot Entertainment, and Dreams With Friends Inc., ordered a "spin-off series" following the events of the film. The series had Jones set to lead the cast, reviving her role as Ashley for the series as it surrounds her character. The series also had Jones set to serve as producer for the season, awarding her a first producing credit. "Blindspotting (TV)" premiered on June 13, 2021 and was renewed for a second season by STARZ on October 14, 2021.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: On July 13, 2021, Jones and her father Ron Cephas Jones announced the 2021 Primetime Emmy nominees on behalf of the Television Academy. On October 25, 2021, it was announced that Jones had signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) Representation.


title: Jasmine Cephas Jones

text: On December 24, 2018, Cephas Jones became engaged to fellow "Hamilton" original Broadway cast member Anthony Ramos, whom she met and began dating in 2014 during rehearsals for the original, Off-Broadway, production of "Hamilton" at The Public Theatre. It was reported that the couple split in November 2021.


title: Locke (film)

text: Locke is a 2013 psychological drama film written and directed by Steven Knight. The film stars Tom Hardy in the title role, the only character seen on screen, as he carries on a number of speakerphone conversations with characters voiced by Olivia Colman, Ruth Wilson, Andrew Scott, Ben Daniels, Tom Holland and Bill Milner.


title: Locke (film)

text: The film premiered at the 70th Venice Film Festival on 2 September 2013. The film had a limited release in the United Kingdom beginning on 18 April 2014, and grossed $5 million worldwide. "Locke" received critical acclaim, particularly for Hardy's performance, which won him the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor.


title: Locke (film)

text: The evening before he must supervise a large concrete pour in Birmingham (the largest non-nuclear facility, non-military concrete pour in European history), construction foreman Ivan Locke learns that Bethan, a colleague from a job in Croydon with whom he had a one-night stand seven months before (which resulted in her becoming pregnant), has gone into premature labour. Despite his job responsibilities and although his wife and sons are eagerly awaiting his arrival home to watch an important football match, Locke decides to drive to London to be with Bethan during childbirth. Locke never forgave his father for abandoning him as a child, and he is determined not to make the same mistake, even though he has no relationship with, nor any particular feelings for, Bethan.


title: Locke (film)

text: Over the course of the one and a half-hour drive from Birmingham to London, Locke holds a total of 36 phone calls with: his boss Gareth; his backup colleague Donal; Katrina, wife of 15 years, to confess his infidelity; his sons, Eddie and Sean, who call him separately with updates on the match and (eventually) the worrisome breakdown of their mother; St Mary's maternity unit medical personnel, Sister Margaret then Halil Gullu, who are working with Bethan through some troubling complications; the council head, Cassidy, and local police authority, PC Davids, required for the road closures needed to allow the 225+ concrete trucks to properly access the site; and with Bethan to reassure her during her labour. During these calls, he is fired from his job, banned from his house by his wife, and asked by his older son to please return home. He coaches his assistant Donal through preparing the pour despite some major setbacks, and has imaginary conversations with his dead father, whom he envisions (unseen onscreen) as a passenger in the car; he berates his father for abandoning Locke's family, and vows he will not repeat that mistake. When he is close to the hospital, Bethan calls to share the cooing of the baby, having had a successful birth.


title: Locke (film)

text: Almost the entire film takes place within a BMW X5, which was pulled down the M6 motorway on a low flatbed trailer for most of the shoot. Shooting took place over six nights, with the crew only taking breaks to change the three cameras' memory cards. Ivan Locke is the only character to appear onscreen; the others are heard on the vehicle's speakerphone, with their parts also recorded in real time (Locke's vehicle and road noise included) as they called from a conference room that served as the multiple "locations" of the various characters.


title: Locke (film)

text: "Locke" was shown out of competition at the 70th Venice International Film Festival as well as the Spotlight program in the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.


title: Locke (film)

text: It was released on 18 April 2014 in the United Kingdom, where it earned $1,434,082. On 25 April 2014 it opened in the United States and earned $1,375,769. The film was released on Blu-ray and DVD on 12 August 2014.


title: Locke (film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes reports that 90% of 217 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 7.7/10. The critical consensus states: "A one-man show set in a confined location, Locke demands a powerful performance – and gets it from a never-more-compelling Tom Hardy." The film has a score of 81 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 37 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Locke (film)

text: Olly Richards of "Empire" awarded the film four out of five stars and said: "There are films to see on huge screens, but this is one that almost cries out for a small cinema, surrounded by total blackness. It's a daring experiment brilliantly executed, with Tom Hardy giving one of the best performances of his career".


title: Locke (film)

text: In his book "How to Watch a Movie" (2015), David Thomson singles out this film and says: "No film I've seen in recent years is more eloquent on where we are now, and on how alone we feel. There is little left but to watch and listen."


title: Data center

text: A data center (American English) or data centre (British English) is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems.


title: Data center

text: Since IT operations are crucial for business continuity, it generally includes redundant or backup components and infrastructure for power supply, data communication connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression), and various security devices. A large data center is an industrial-scale operation using as much electricity as a small town.


title: Data center

text: Data centers have their roots in the huge computer rooms of the 1940s, typified by ENIAC, one of the earliest examples of a data center. Early computer systems, complex to operate and maintain, required a special environment in which to operate. Many cables were necessary to connect all the components, and methods to accommodate and organize these were devised such as standard racks to mount equipment, raised floors, and cable trays (installed overhead or under the elevated floor). A single mainframe required a great deal of power and had to be cooled to avoid overheating. Security became important – computers were expensive, and were often used for military purposes. Basic design-guidelines for controlling access to the computer room were therefore devised.


title: Data center

text: During the boom of the microcomputer industry, and especially during the 1980s, users started to deploy computers everywhere, in many cases with little or no care about operating requirements. However, as information technology (IT) operations started to grow in complexity, organizations grew aware of the need to control IT resources. The availability of inexpensive networking equipment, coupled with new standards for the network structured cabling, made it possible to use a hierarchical design that put the servers in a specific room inside the company. The use of the term "data center", as applied to specially designed computer rooms, started to gain popular recognition about this time.


title: Data center

text: The boom of data centers came during the dot-com bubble of 1997–2000. Companies needed fast Internet connectivity and non-stop operation to deploy systems and to establish a presence on the Internet. Installing such equipment was not viable for many smaller companies. Many companies started building very large facilities, called Internet data centers (IDCs), which provide enhanced capabilities, such as crossover backup: "If a Bell Atlantic line is cut, we can transfer them to ... to minimize the time of outage."


title: Data center

text: The term cloud data centers (CDCs) has been used. Data centers typically cost a lot to build and maintain. Increasingly, the division of these terms has almost disappeared and they are being integrated into the term "data center".


title: Data center

text: Information security is also a concern, and for this reason, a data center has to offer a secure environment that minimizes the chances of a security breach. A data center must, therefore, keep high standards for assuring the integrity and functionality of its hosted computer environment.


title: Data center

text: Industry research company International Data Corporation (IDC) puts the average age of a data center at nine years old. Gartner, another research company, says data centers older than seven years are obsolete. The growth in data (163 zettabytes by 2025) is one factor driving the need for data centers to modernize.


title: Data center

text: Focus on modernization is not new: concern about obsolete equipment was decried in 2007, and in 2011 Uptime Institute was concerned about the age of the equipment therein. By 2018 concern had shifted once again, this time to the age of the staff: "data center staff are aging faster than the equipment."


title: Data center

text: The Telecommunications Industry Association's Telecommunications Infrastructure Standard for Data Centers specifies the minimum requirements for telecommunications infrastructure of data centers and computer rooms including single tenant enterprise data centers and multi-tenant Internet hosting data centers. The topology proposed in this document is intended to be applicable to any size data center.


title: Data center

text: Telcordia GR-3160, "NEBS Requirements for Telecommunications Data Center Equipment and Spaces", provides guidelines for data center spaces within telecommunications networks, and environmental requirements for the equipment intended for installation in those spaces. These criteria were developed jointly by Telcordia and industry representatives. They may be applied to data center spaces housing data processing or Information Technology (IT) equipment. The equipment may be used to:


title: Data center

text: Data center transformation takes a step-by-step approach through integrated projects carried out over time. This differs from a traditional method of data center upgrades that takes a serial and siloed approach. The typical projects within a data center transformation initiative include standardization/consolidation, virtualization, automation and security.


title: Data center

text: A raised floor standards guide named GR-2930 was developed by Telcordia Technologies, a subsidiary of Ericsson.


title: Data center

text: Although the first raised floor computer room was made by IBM in 1956, and they've "been around since the 1960s", it was the 1970s that made it more common for computer centers to thereby allow cool air to circulate more efficiently.


title: Data center

text: The "lights-out" data center, also known as a darkened or a dark data center, is a data center that, ideally, has all but eliminated the need for direct access by personnel, except under extraordinary circumstances. Because of the lack of need for staff to enter the data center, it can be operated without lighting. All of the devices are accessed and managed by remote systems, with automation programs used to perform unattended operations. In addition to the energy savings, reduction in staffing costs and the ability to locate the site further from population centers, implementing a lights-out data center reduces the threat of malicious attacks upon the infrastructure.


title: Data center

text: The two organizations in the United States that publish data center standards are the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) and the Uptime Institute.


title: Data center

text: The Telecommunications Industry Association's TIA-942 standard for data centers, published in 2005 and updated four times since, defined four infrastructure levels.


title: Data center

text: A fifth tier has been Trademarked by Switch (company), who have used this tier to define The Citadel, the largest data center in the world.


title: Data center

text: The field of data center design has been growing for decades in various directions, including new construction big and small along with the creative re-use of existing facilities, like abandoned retail space, old salt mines and war-era bunkers.


title: Data center

text: Local building codes may govern the minimum ceiling heights and other parameters. Some of the considerations in the design of data centers are:


title: Data center

text: Various metrics exist for measuring the data-availability that results from data-center availability beyond 95% uptime, with the top of the scale counting how many "nines" can be placed after "99%".


title: Data center

text: Modularity and flexibility are key elements in allowing for a data center to grow and change over time. Data center modules are pre-engineered, standardized building blocks that can be easily configured and moved as needed.


title: Data center

text: A modular data center may consist of data center equipment contained within shipping containers or similar portable containers. Components of the data center can be prefabricated and standardized which facilitates moving if needed.


title: Data center

text: It is important that computers do not get humid or overheat, as high humidity can lead to dust clogging the fans, which leads to overheat, or can cause components to malfunction, ruining the board and running a fire hazard. Overheat can cause components, usually the silicon or copper of the wires or circuits to melt, causing connections to loosen, causing fire hazards.


title: Data center

text: Backup power consists of one or more uninterruptible power supplies, battery banks, and/or diesel / gas turbine generators.


title: Data center

text: To prevent single points of failure, all elements of the electrical systems, including backup systems, are typically given redundant copies , and critical servers are connected to both the "A-side" and "B-side" power feeds. This arrangement is often made to achieve N+1 redundancy in the systems. Static transfer switches are sometimes used to ensure instantaneous switchover from one supply to the other in the event of a power failure.


title: Data center

text: Air flow management addresses the need to improve data center computer cooling efficiency by preventing the recirculation of hot air exhausted from IT equipment and reducing bypass airflow. There are several methods of separating hot and cold airstreams, such as hot/cold aisle containment and in-row cooling units.


title: Data center

text: Cold aisle containment is done by exposing the rear of equipment racks, while the fronts of the servers are enclosed with doors and covers. This is similar to how large-scale food companies refrigerate and store their products.


title: Data center

text: Computer cabinets/Server farms are often organized for containment of hot/cold aisles. Proper air duct placement prevents the cold and hot air from mixing. Rows of cabinets are paired to face each other so that the cool and hot air intakes and exhausts don't mix air, which would severely reduce cooling efficiency.


title: Data center

text: Alternatively, a range of underfloor panels can create efficient cold air pathways directed to the raised floor vented tiles. Either the cold aisle or the hot aisle can be contained.


title: Data center

text: Another option is fitting cabinets with vertical exhaust ducts Chimney Hot exhaust pipes/vents/ducts can direct the air into a Plenum space above a Dropped ceiling and back to the cooling units or to outside vents. With this configuration, traditional hot/cold aisle configuration is not a requirement.


title: Data center

text: Data centers feature fire protection systems, including passive and Active Design elements, as well as implementation of fire prevention programs in operations. Smoke detectors are usually installed to provide early warning of a fire at its incipient stage.


title: Data center

text: Although the main room usually does not allow Wet Pipe-based Systems due to the fragile nature of Circuit-boards, there still exist systems that can be used in the rest of the facility or in cold/hot aisle air circulation systems that are closed systems, such as:


title: Data center

text: However, there also exist other means to put out fires, especially in Sensitive areas, usually using Gaseous fire suppression, of which Halon gas was the most popular, until the negative effects of producing and using it were discovered.


title: Data center

text: Physical access is usually restricted. Layered security often starts with fencing, bollards and mantraps. Video camera surveillance and permanent security guards are almost always present if the data center is large or contains sensitive information. Fingerprint recognition mantraps is starting to be commonplace.


title: Data center

text: Logging access is required by some data protection regulations; some organizations tightly link this to access control systems. Multiple log entries can occur at the main entrance, entrances to internal rooms, and at equipment cabinets. Access control at cabinets can be integrated with intelligent power distribution units, so that locks are networked through the same appliance.


title: Data center

text: Energy use is a central issue for data centers. Power draw ranges from a few kW for a rack of servers in a closet to several tens of MW for large facilities. Some facilities have power densities more than 100 times that of a typical office building. For higher power density facilities, electricity costs are a dominant operating expense and account for over 10% of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a data center.


title: Data center

text: In 2020 data centers (excluding cryptocurrency mining) and data transmission each used about 1% of world electricity. Although some of this electricity was low carbon, the IEA called for more "government and industry efforts on energy efficiency, renewables procurement and RD&D", as some data centers still use electricity generated by fossil fuels. They also said that lifecycle emissions should be considered, that is including "embodied" emissions, such as in buildings. Data centers are estimated to have been responsible for 0.5% of US greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. Some Chinese companies, such as Tencent, have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2030, while others such as Alibaba have been criticized by Greenpeace for not committing to become carbon neutral.


title: Data center

text: The most commonly used energy efficiency metric of data center energy efficiency is power usage effectiveness (PUE), calculated as the ratio of total power entering the data center divided by the power used by IT equipment.


title: Data center

text: It measures the percentage of power used by overhead (cooling, lighting, etc.). The average USA data center has a PUE of 2.0, meaning two watts of total power (overhead + IT equipment) for every watt delivered to IT equipment. State-of-the-art is estimated to be roughly 1.2. Google publishes quarterly efficiency from data centers in operation.


title: Data center

text: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an Energy Star rating for standalone or large data centers. To qualify for the ecolabel, a data center must be within the top quartile of energy efficiency of all reported facilities. The Energy Efficiency Improvement Act of 2015 (United States) requires federal facilities — including data centers — to operate more efficiently. California's title 24 (2014) of the California Code of Regulations mandates that every newly constructed data center must have some form of airflow containment in place to optimize energy efficiency.


title: Data center

text: The focus of measuring and analyzing energy use goes beyond what's used by IT equipment; facility support hardware such as chillers and fans also use energy.


title: Data center

text: In 2011 server racks in data centers were designed for more than 25 kW and the typical server was estimated to waste about 30% of the electricity it consumed. The energy demand for information storage systems was also rising. A high availability data center was estimated to have a 1 mega watt (MW) demand and consume $20,000,000 in electricity over its lifetime, with cooling representing 35% to 45% of the data center's total cost of ownership. Calculations showed that in two years the cost of powering and cooling a server could be equal to the cost of purchasing the server hardware. Research in 2018 has shown that substantial amount of energy could still be conserved by optimizing IT refresh rates and increasing server utilization.


title: Data center

text: In 2011 Facebook, Rackspace and others founded the Open Compute Project (OCP) to develop and publish open standards for greener data center computing technologies. As part of the project Facebook published the designs of its server, which it had built for its first dedicated data center in Prineville. Making servers taller left space for more effective heat sinks and enabled the use of fans that moved more air with less energy. By not buying commercial off-the-shelf servers, energy consumption due to unnecessary expansion slots on the motherboard and unneeded components, such as a graphics card, was also saved. In 2016 Google joined the project and published the designs of its 48V DC shallow data center rack. This design had long been part of Google data centers. By eliminating the multiple transformers usually deployed in data centers, Google had achieved a 30% increase in energy efficiency. In 2017 sales for data center hardware built to OCP designs topped $1.2 billion and are expected to reach $6 billion by 2021.


title: Data center

text: Power is the largest recurring cost to the user of a data center. Cooling it at or below wastes money and energy. Furthermore, overcooling equipment in environments with a high relative humidity can expose equipment to a high amount of moisture that facilitates the growth of salt deposits on conductive filaments in the circuitry.


title: Data center

text: A power and cooling analysis, also referred to as a thermal assessment, measures the relative temperatures in specific areas as well as the capacity of the cooling systems to handle specific ambient temperatures. A power and cooling analysis can help to identify hot spots, over-cooled areas that can handle greater power use density, the breakpoint of equipment loading, the effectiveness of a raised-floor strategy, and optimal equipment positioning (such as AC units) to balance temperatures across the data center. Power cooling density is a measure of how much square footage the center can cool at maximum capacity. The cooling of data centers is the second largest power consumer after servers. The cooling energy varies from 10% of the total energy consumption in the most efficient data centers and goes up to 45% in standard air-cooled data centers.


title: Data center

text: An energy efficiency analysis measures the energy use of data center IT and facilities equipment. A typical energy efficiency analysis measures factors such as a data center's power use effectiveness (PUE) against industry standards, identifies mechanical and electrical sources of inefficiency, and identifies air-management metrics. However, the limitation of most current metrics and approaches is that they do not include IT in the analysis. Case studies have shown that by addressing energy efficiency holistically in a data center, major efficiencies can be achieved that are not possible otherwise.


title: Data center

text: This type of analysis uses sophisticated tools and techniques to understand the unique thermal conditions present in each data center—predicting the temperature, airflow, and pressure behavior of a data center to assess performance and energy consumption, using numerical modeling. By predicting the effects of these environmental conditions, CFD analysis in the data center can be used to predict the impact of high-density racks mixed with low-density racks and the onward impact on cooling resources, poor infrastructure management practices and AC failure or AC shutdown for scheduled maintenance.


title: Data center

text: Thermal zone mapping uses sensors and computer modeling to create a three-dimensional image of the hot and cool zones in a data center.


title: Data center

text: This information can help to identify optimal positioning of data center equipment. For example, critical servers might be placed in a cool zone that is serviced by redundant AC units.


title: Data center

text: Data centers use a lot of power, consumed by two main usages: the power required to run the actual equipment and then the power required to cool the equipment. Power-efficiency reduces the first category.


title: Data center

text: Cooling cost reduction from natural ways includes location decisions: When the focus is not being near good fiber connectivity, power grid connections and people-concentrations to manage the equipment, a data center can be miles away from the users. 'Mass' data centers like Google or Facebook don't need to be near population centers. Arctic locations can use outside air, which provides cooling, are getting more popular.


title: Data center

text: Renewable electricity sources are another plus. Thus countries with favorable conditions, such as: Canada, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Switzerland, are trying to attract cloud computing data centers.


title: Data center

text: Bitcoin mining is increasingly being seen as a potential way to build data centers at the site of renewable energy production. Curtailed and clipped energy can be used to secure transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain providing another revenue stream to renewable energy producers.


title: Data center

text: It is very difficult to reuse the heat which comes from air cooled data centers. For this reason, data center infrastructures are more often equipped with heat pumps. An alternative to heat pumps is the adoption of liquid cooling throughout a data center. Different liquid cooling techniques are mixed and matched to allow for a fully liquid cooled infrastructure which captures all heat in water. Different liquid technologies are categorized in 3 main groups, Indirect liquid cooling (water cooled racks), Direct liquid cooling (direct-to-chip cooling) and Total liquid cooling (complete immersion in liquid, see Server immersion cooling). This combination of technologies allows the creation of a thermal cascade as part of temperature chaining scenarios to create high temperature water outputs from the data center.


title: Data center

text: Dynamic infrastructure provides the ability to intelligently, automatically and securely move workloads within a data center anytime, anywhere, for migrations, provisioning, to enhance performance, or building co-location facilities. It also facilitates performing routine maintenance on either physical or virtual systems all while minimizing interruption. A related concept is Composable infrastructure, which allows for the dynamic reconfiguration of the available resources to suit needs, only when needed.


title: Data center

text: Communications in data centers today are most often based on networks running the IP protocol suite. Data centers contain a set of routers and switches that transport traffic between the servers and to the outside world which are connected according to the data center network architecture. Redundancy of the Internet connection is often provided by using two or more upstream service providers (see Multihoming).


title: Data center

text: Some of the servers at the data center are used for running the basic Internet and intranet services needed by internal users in the organization, e.g., e-mail servers, proxy servers, and DNS servers.


title: Data center

text: Network security elements are also usually deployed: firewalls, VPN gateways, intrusion detection systems, and so on. Also common are monitoring systems for the network and some of the applications. Additional off site monitoring systems are also typical, in case of a failure of communications inside the data center.


title: Data center

text: Data backup techniques include having an encrypted copy of the data offsite. Methods used for transporting data are:


title: Data center

text: For quick deployment or disaster recovery, several large hardware vendors have developed mobile/modular solutions that can be installed and made operational in very short time.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, and cryptographer known as a "father of information theory".


title: Claude Shannon

text: As a 21-year-old master's degree student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he wrote his thesis demonstrating that electrical applications of Boolean algebra could construct any logical numerical relationship. Shannon contributed to the field of cryptanalysis for national defense of the United States during World War II, including his fundamental work on codebreaking and secure telecommunications.


title: Claude Shannon

text: The Shannon family lived in Gaylord, Michigan, and Claude was born in a hospital in nearby Petoskey. His father, Claude Sr. (1862–1934), was a businessman and for a while, a judge of probate in Gaylord. His mother, Mabel Wolf Shannon (1890–1945), was a language teacher, who also served as the principal of Gaylord High School. Claude Sr. was a descendant of New Jersey settlers, while Mabel was a child of German immigrants.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Most of the first 16 years of Shannon's life were spent in Gaylord, where he attended public school, graduating from Gaylord High School in 1932. Shannon showed an inclination towards mechanical and electrical things. His best subjects were science and mathematics. At home he constructed such devices as models of planes, a radio-controlled model boat and a barbed-wire telegraph system to a friend's house a half-mile away. While growing up, he also worked as a messenger for the Western Union company.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon's childhood hero was Thomas Edison, who he later learned was a distant cousin. Both Shannon and Edison were descendants of John Ogden (1609–1682), a colonial leader and an ancestor of many distinguished people.


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1932, Shannon entered the University of Michigan, where he was introduced to the work of George Boole. He graduated in 1936 with two bachelor's degrees: one in electrical engineering and the other in mathematics.


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1936, Shannon began his graduate studies in electrical engineering at MIT, where he worked on Vannevar Bush's differential analyzer, an early analog computer. While studying the complicated "ad hoc" circuits of this analyzer, Shannon designed switching circuits based on Boole's concepts. In 1937, he wrote his master's degree thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits". A paper from this thesis was published in 1938. In this work, Shannon proved that his switching circuits could be used to simplify the arrangement of the electromechanical relays that were used during that time in telephone call routing switches. Next, he expanded this concept, proving that these circuits could solve all problems that Boolean algebra could solve. In the last chapter, he presented diagrams of several circuits, including a 4-bit full adder.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Using this property of electrical switches to implement logic is the fundamental concept that underlies all electronic digital computers. Shannon's work became the foundation of digital circuit design, as it became widely known in the electrical engineering community during and after World War II. The theoretical rigor of Shannon's work superseded the "ad hoc" methods that had prevailed previously. Howard Gardner called Shannon's thesis "possibly the most important, and also the most noted, master's thesis of the century."


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon received his PhD in mathematics from MIT in 1940. Vannevar Bush had suggested that Shannon should work on his dissertation at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in order to develop a mathematical formulation for Mendelian genetics. This research resulted in Shannon's PhD thesis, called "An Algebra for Theoretical Genetics".


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1940, Shannon became a National Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. In Princeton, Shannon had the opportunity to discuss his ideas with influential scientists and mathematicians such as Hermann Weyl and John von Neumann, and he also had occasional encounters with Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel. Shannon worked freely across disciplines, and this ability may have contributed to his later development of mathematical information theory.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon then joined Bell Labs to work on fire-control systems and cryptography during World War II, under a contract with section D-2 (Control Systems section) of the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC).


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon is credited with the invention of signal-flow graphs, in 1942. He discovered the topological gain formula while investigating the functional operation of an analog computer.


title: Claude Shannon

text: For two months early in 1943, Shannon came into contact with the leading British mathematician Alan Turing. Turing had been posted to Washington to share with the U.S. Navy's cryptanalytic service the methods used by the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park to break the ciphers used by the Kriegsmarine U-boats in the north Atlantic Ocean. He was also interested in the encipherment of speech and to this end spent time at Bell Labs. Shannon and Turing met at teatime in the cafeteria. Turing showed Shannon his 1936 paper that defined what is now known as the "Universal Turing machine". This impressed Shannon, as many of its ideas complemented his own.


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1945, as the war was coming to an end, the NDRC was issuing a summary of technical reports as a last step prior to its eventual closing down. Inside the volume on fire control, a special essay titled "Data Smoothing and Prediction in Fire-Control Systems", coauthored by Shannon, Ralph Beebe Blackman, and Hendrik Wade Bode, formally treated the problem of smoothing the data in fire-control by analogy with "the problem of separating a signal from interfering noise in communications systems." In other words, it modeled the problem in terms of data and signal processing and thus heralded the coming of the Information Age.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon's work on cryptography was even more closely related to his later publications on communication theory. At the close of the war, he prepared a classified memorandum for Bell Telephone Labs entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography", dated September 1945. A declassified version of this paper was published in 1949 as "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems" in the "Bell System Technical Journal". This paper incorporated many of the concepts and mathematical formulations that also appeared in his "A Mathematical Theory of Communication". Shannon said that his wartime insights into communication theory and cryptography developed simultaneously and that "they were so close together you couldn’t separate them". In a footnote near the beginning of the classified report, Shannon announced his intention to "develop these results … in a forthcoming memorandum on the transmission of information."


title: Claude Shannon

text: While he was at Bell Labs, Shannon proved that the cryptographic one-time pad is unbreakable in his classified research that was later published 1949. The same article also proved that any unbreakable system must have essentially the same characteristics as the one-time pad: the key must be truly random, as large as the plaintext, never reused in whole or part, and kept secret.


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1948, the promised memorandum appeared as "A Mathematical Theory of Communication", an article in two parts in the July and October issues of the "Bell System Technical Journal". This work focuses on the problem of how best to encode the message a sender wants to transmit. Shannon developed information entropy as a measure of the information content in a message, which is a measure of uncertainty reduced by the message. In so doing, he essentially invented the field of information theory.


title: Claude Shannon

text: The book "The Mathematical Theory of Communication" reprints Shannon's 1948 article and Warren Weaver's popularization of it, which is accessible to the non-specialist. Weaver pointed out that the word "information" in communication theory is not related to what you do say, but to what you could say. That is, information is a measure of one's freedom of choice when one selects a message. Shannon's concepts were also popularized, subject to his own proofreading, in John Robinson Pierce's "Symbols, Signals, and Noise".


title: Claude Shannon

text: Information theory's fundamental contribution to natural language processing and computational linguistics was further established in 1951, in his article "Prediction and Entropy of Printed English", showing upper and lower bounds of entropy on the statistics of English – giving a statistical foundation to language analysis. In addition, he proved that treating whitespace as the 27th letter of the alphabet actually lowers uncertainty in written language, providing a clear quantifiable link between cultural practice and probabilistic cognition.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Another notable paper published in 1949 is "Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems", a declassified version of his wartime work on the mathematical theory of cryptography, in which he proved that all theoretically unbreakable ciphers must have the same requirements as the one-time pad. He is also credited with the introduction of sampling theory, which is concerned with representing a continuous-time signal from a (uniform) discrete set of samples. This theory was essential in enabling telecommunications to move from analog to digital transmissions systems in the 1960s and later.


title: Claude Shannon

text: In 1956 Shannon joined the MIT faculty to work in the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). He continued to serve on the MIT faculty until 1978.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon developed Alzheimer's disease and spent the last few years of his life in a nursing home; he died in 2001, survived by his wife, a son and daughter, and two granddaughters.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Outside of Shannon's academic pursuits, he was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess. He also invented many devices, including a Roman numeral computer called THROBAC, juggling machines. He built a device that could solve the Rubik's Cube puzzle.


title: Claude Shannon

text: Shannon designed the Minivac 601, a digital computer trainer to teach business people about how computers functioned. It was sold by the Scientific Development Corp starting in 1961.