title: Gravitational wave

text: Although the waves from the Earth–Sun system are minuscule, astronomers can point to other sources for which the radiation should be substantial. One important example is the Hulse–Taylor binary a pair of stars, one of which is a pulsar. The characteristics of their orbit can be deduced from the Doppler shifting of radio signals given off by the pulsar. Each of the stars is about and the size of their orbits is about 1/75 of the Earth–Sun orbit, just a few times larger than the diameter of our own Sun. The combination of greater masses and smaller separation means that the energy given off by the Hulse–Taylor binary will be far greater than the energy given off by the Earth–Sun system roughly 10 times as much.


title: Gravitational wave

text: The information about the orbit can be used to predict how much energy (and angular momentum) would be radiated in the form of gravitational waves. As the binary system loses energy, the stars gradually draw closer to each other, and the orbital period decreases. The resulting trajectory of each star is an inspiral, a spiral with decreasing radius. General relativity precisely describes these trajectories; in particular, the energy radiated in gravitational waves determines the rate of decrease in the period, defined as the time interval between successive periastrons (points of closest approach of the two stars). For the Hulse–Taylor pulsar, the predicted current change in radius is about 3 mm per orbit, and the change in the 7.75 hr period is about 2 seconds per year. Following a preliminary observation showing an orbital energy loss consistent with gravitational waves, careful timing observations by Taylor and Joel Weisberg dramatically confirmed the predicted period decrease to within 10%. With the improved statistics of more than 30 years of timing data since the pulsar's discovery, the observed change in the orbital period currently matches the prediction from gravitational radiation assumed by general relativity to within 0.2 percent. In 1993, spurred in part by this indirect detection of gravitational waves, the Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics to Hulse and Taylor for "the discovery of a new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation." The lifetime of this binary system, from the present to merger is estimated to be a few hundred million years.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Inspirals are very important sources of gravitational waves. Any time two compact objects (white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes) are in close orbits, they send out intense gravitational waves. As they spiral closer to each other, these waves become more intense. At some point they should become so intense that direct detection by their effect on objects on Earth or in space is possible. This direct detection is the goal of several large-scale experiments.


title: Gravitational wave

text: The only difficulty is that most systems like the Hulse–Taylor binary are so far away. The amplitude of waves given off by the Hulse–Taylor binary at Earth would be roughly "h" ≈ 10. There are some sources, however, that astrophysicists expect to find that produce much greater amplitudes of "h" ≈ 10. At least eight other binary pulsars have been discovered.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Gravitational waves are not easily detectable. When they reach the Earth, they have a small amplitude with strain approximately 10, meaning that an extremely sensitive detector is needed, and that other sources of noise can overwhelm the signal. Gravitational waves are expected to have frequencies 10 Hz < "f" < 10 Hz.<ref name="arXiv:gr-qc/9506086"></ref>


title: Gravitational wave

text: One possible explanation for the difficulties with direct observation of gravitational waves was proposed by cosmologists Saoussen Mbarek and Manu Paranjape after they demonstrated the possible existence of negative mass without violating Einsteinian relativity. Earlier research dismissed the concept due to seemingly violating the energy condition, however Mbarek and Paranjape found that negative matter could still exist in our universe if it was assumed to take the form of a perfect fluid rather than a conventional solid, where negative and positive particles combine in de Sitter space into a sort of plasma. One notable property of this plasma is the ability to absorb gravitational waves, suggesting that difficulties in direct detection might stem from the universe being populated by gravitationally "opaque" clouds of positive-negative plasma which effectively screen the Earth from detecting such waves.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Though the Hulse–Taylor observations were very important, they give only "indirect" evidence for gravitational waves. A more conclusive observation would be a "direct" measurement of the effect of a passing gravitational wave, which could also provide more information about the system that generated it. Any such direct detection is complicated by the extraordinarily small effect the waves would produce on a detector. The amplitude of a spherical wave will fall off as the inverse of the distance from the source (the 1/"R" term in the formulas for "h" above). Thus, even waves from extreme systems like merging binary black holes die out to very small amplitudes by the time they reach the Earth. Astrophysicists expect that some gravitational waves passing the Earth may be as large as "h" ≈ 10, but generally no bigger.


title: Gravitational wave

text: A simple device theorised to detect the expected wave motion is called a Weber bar a large, solid bar of metal isolated from outside vibrations. This type of instrument was the first type of gravitational wave detector. Strains in space due to an incident gravitational wave excite the bar's resonant frequency and could thus be amplified to detectable levels. Conceivably, a nearby supernova might be strong enough to be seen without resonant amplification. With this instrument, Joseph Weber claimed to have detected daily signals of gravitational waves. His results, however, were contested in 1974 by physicists Richard Garwin and David Douglass. Modern forms of the Weber bar are still operated, cryogenically cooled, with superconducting quantum interference devices to detect vibration. Weber bars are not sensitive enough to detect anything but extremely powerful gravitational waves.


title: Gravitational wave

text: MiniGRAIL is a spherical gravitational wave antenna using this principle. It is based at Leiden University, consisting of an exactingly machined 1,150 kg sphere cryogenically cooled to 20 millikelvins. The spherical configuration allows for equal sensitivity in all directions, and is somewhat experimentally simpler than larger linear devices requiring high vacuum. Events are detected by measuring deformation of the detector sphere. MiniGRAIL is highly sensitive in the 2–4 kHz range, suitable for detecting gravitational waves from rotating neutron star instabilities or small black hole mergers.


title: Gravitational wave

text: There are currently two detectors focused on the higher end of the gravitational wave spectrum (10 to 10 Hz): one at University of Birmingham, England, and the other at INFN Genoa, Italy. A third is under development at Chongqing University, China. The Birmingham detector measures changes in the polarization state of a microwave beam circulating in a closed loop about one meter across. Both detectors are expected to be sensitive to periodic spacetime strains of "h" ~ , given as an amplitude spectral density. The INFN Genoa detector is a resonant antenna consisting of two coupled spherical superconducting harmonic oscillators a few centimeters in diameter. The oscillators are designed to have (when uncoupled) almost equal resonant frequencies. The system is currently expected to have a sensitivity to periodic spacetime strains of "h" ~ , with an expectation to reach a sensitivity of "h" ~ . The Chongqing University detector is planned to detect relic high-frequency gravitational waves with the predicted typical parameters ≈10 Hz (100 GHz) and "h" ≈10 to 10.


title: Gravitational wave

text: A more sensitive class of detector uses a laser Michelson interferometer to measure gravitational-wave induced motion between separated 'free' masses. This allows the masses to be separated by large distances (increasing the signal size); a further advantage is that it is sensitive to a wide range of frequencies (not just those near a resonance as is the case for Weber bars). After years of development the first ground-based interferometers became operational in 2015. Currently, the most sensitive is LIGO the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. LIGO has three detectors: one in Livingston, Louisiana, one at the Hanford site in Richland, Washington and a third (formerly installed as a second detector at Hanford) that is planned to be moved to India. Each observatory has two light storage arms that are 4 kilometers in length. These are at 90 degree angles to each other, with the light passing through 1 m diameter vacuum tubes running the entire 4 kilometers. A passing gravitational wave will slightly stretch one arm as it shortens the other. This is precisely the motion to which an interferometer is most sensitive.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Even with such long arms, the strongest gravitational waves will only change the distance between the ends of the arms by at most roughly 10 m. LIGO should be able to detect gravitational waves as small as "h" ~ . Upgrades to LIGO and Virgo should increase the sensitivity still further. Another highly sensitive interferometer, KAGRA, which is located in the Kamioka Observatory in Japan, is in operation since February 2020. A key point is that a tenfold increase in sensitivity (radius of 'reach') increases the volume of space accessible to the instrument by one thousand times. This increases the rate at which detectable signals might be seen from one per tens of years of observation, to tens per year.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Interferometric detectors are limited at high frequencies by shot noise, which occurs because the lasers produce photons randomly; one analogy is to rainfall the rate of rainfall, like the laser intensity, is measurable, but the raindrops, like photons, fall at random times, causing fluctuations around the average value. This leads to noise at the output of the detector, much like radio static. In addition, for sufficiently high laser power, the random momentum transferred to the test masses by the laser photons shakes the mirrors, masking signals of low frequencies. Thermal noise (e.g., Brownian motion) is another limit to sensitivity. In addition to these 'stationary' (constant) noise sources, all ground-based detectors are also limited at low frequencies by seismic noise and other forms of environmental vibration, and other 'non-stationary' noise sources; creaks in mechanical structures, lightning or other large electrical disturbances, etc. may also create noise masking an event or may even imitate an event. All of these must be taken into account and excluded by analysis before detection may be considered a true gravitational wave event.


title: Gravitational wave

text: The simplest gravitational waves are those with constant frequency. The waves given off by a spinning, non-axisymmetric neutron star would be approximately monochromatic: a pure tone in acoustics. Unlike signals from supernovae or binary black holes, these signals evolve little in amplitude or frequency over the period it would be observed by ground-based detectors. However, there would be some change in the measured signal, because of Doppler shifting caused by the motion of the Earth. Despite the signals being simple, detection is extremely computationally expensive, because of the long stretches of data that must be analysed.


title: Gravitational wave

text: The Einstein@Home project is a distributed computing project similar to SETI@home intended to detect this type of gravitational wave. By taking data from LIGO and GEO, and sending it out in little pieces to thousands of volunteers for parallel analysis on their home computers, Einstein@Home can sift through the data far more quickly than would be possible otherwise.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Space-based interferometers, such as LISA and DECIGO, are also being developed. LISA's design calls for three test masses forming an equilateral triangle, with lasers from each spacecraft to each other spacecraft forming two independent interferometers. LISA is planned to occupy a solar orbit trailing the Earth, with each arm of the triangle being five million kilometers. This puts the detector in an excellent vacuum far from Earth-based sources of noise, though it will still be susceptible to heat, shot noise, and artifacts caused by cosmic rays and solar wind.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Pulsars are rapidly rotating stars. A pulsar emits beams of radio waves that, like lighthouse beams, sweep through the sky as the pulsar rotates. The signal from a pulsar can be detected by radio telescopes as a series of regularly spaced pulses, essentially like the ticks of a clock. GWs affect the time it takes the pulses to travel from the pulsar to a telescope on Earth. A pulsar timing array uses millisecond pulsars to seek out perturbations due to GWs in measurements of the time of arrival of pulses to a telescope, in other words, to look for deviations in the clock ticks. To detect GWs, pulsar timing arrays search for a distinct pattern of correlation and anti-correlation between the time of arrival of pulses from several pulsars. Although pulsar pulses travel through space for hundreds or thousands of years to reach us, pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to perturbations in their travel time of much less than a millionth of a second.


title: Gravitational wave

text: The principal source of GWs to which pulsar timing arrays are sensitive are super-massive black hole binaries, that form from the collision of galaxies. In addition to individual binary systems, pulsar timing arrays are sensitive to a stochastic background of GWs made from the sum of GWs from many galaxy mergers. Other potential signal sources include cosmic strings and the primordial background of GWs from cosmic inflation.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Globally there are three active pulsar timing array projects. The North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves uses data collected by the Arecibo Radio Telescope and Green Bank Telescope. The Australian Parkes Pulsar Timing Array uses data from the Parkes radio-telescope. The European Pulsar Timing Array uses data from the four largest telescopes in Europe: the Lovell Telescope, the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope, the Effelsberg Telescope and the Nancay Radio Telescope. These three groups also collaborate under the title of the International Pulsar Timing Array project.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Primordial gravitational waves are gravitational waves observed in the cosmic microwave background. They were allegedly detected by the BICEP2 instrument, an announcement made on 17 March 2014, which was withdrawn on 30 January 2015 ("the signal can be entirely attributed to dust in the Milky Way").


title: Gravitational wave

text: On 11 February 2016, the LIGO collaboration announced the first observation of gravitational waves, from a signal detected at 09:50:45 GMT on 14 September 2015 of two black holes with masses of 29 and 36 solar masses merging about 1.3 billion light-years away. During the final fraction of a second of the merger, it released more than 50 times the power of all the stars in the observable universe combined. The signal increased in frequency from 35 to 250 Hz over 10 cycles (5 orbits) as it rose in strength for a period of 0.2 second. The mass of the new merged black hole was 62 solar masses. Energy equivalent to three solar masses was emitted as gravitational waves. The signal was seen by both LIGO detectors in Livingston and Hanford, with a time difference of 7 milliseconds due to the angle between the two detectors and the source. The signal came from the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, in the rough direction of (but much farther away than) the Magellanic Clouds. The gravitational waves were observed in the region more than 5 sigma (in other words, 99.99997% chances of showing/getting the same result), the probability of finding enough to have been assessed/considered as the evidence/proof in a experiment of statistical physics.


title: Gravitational wave

text: Since then LIGO and Virgo have reported more gravitational wave observations from merging black hole binaries.


title: Gravitational wave

text: On 16 October 2017, the LIGO and Virgo collaborations announced the first-ever detection of gravitational waves originating from the coalescence of a binary neutron star system. The observation of the GW170817 transient, which occurred on 17 August 2017, allowed for constraining the masses of the neutron stars involved between 0.86 and 2.26 solar masses. Further analysis allowed a greater restriction of the mass values to the interval 1.17–1.60 solar masses, with the total system mass measured to be 2.73–2.78 solar masses. The inclusion of the Virgo detector in the observation effort allowed for an improvement of the localization of the source by a factor of 10. This in turn facilitated the electromagnetic follow-up of the event. In contrast to the case of binary black hole mergers, binary neutron star mergers were expected to yield an electromagnetic counterpart, that is, a light signal associated with the event. A gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) was detected by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, occurring 1.7 seconds after the gravitational wave transient. The signal, originating near the galaxy NGC 4993, was associated with the neutron star merger. This was corroborated by the electromagnetic follow-up of the event (AT 2017gfo), involving 70 telescopes and observatories and yielding observations over a large region of the electromagnetic spectrum which further confirmed the neutron star nature of the merged objects and the associated kilonova.


title: Gravitational wave

text: In 2021, the detection of the first two neutron star-black hole binaries by the LIGO and VIRGO detectors was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, allowing to first set bounds on the quantity of such systems. No neutron star-black hole binary had ever been observed using conventional means before the gravitational observation.


title: Gravitational wave

text: In 1964 Halpern and Laurent theoretically proved that gravitational spin-2 electron transitions are possible in atoms. Compared to electric and magnetic transitions the emission probability is extremely low. Due to the lack of mirrors or resonators for gravitational waves, they determined that a single pass GASER (a kind of laser emitting gravitational waves) is practically unfeasible.


title: Gravitational wave

text: A possibility of a different implementation of the above theoretical analysis was proposed by Giorgio Fontana. The required coherence for a practical GASER could be obtained by cooper pairs in superconductors that are characterized by a macroscopic collective wave-function. Cuprate high temperature superconductors are characterized by the presence of s-wave and d-wave cooper pairs. Transitions between s-wave and d-wave are gravitational spin-2. The amplification mechanism can be described as the effect of superradiance, and 10 cubic centimeters of cuprate high temperature superconductor seem sufficient for the mechanism to properly work. A detailed description of the approach can be found in "High Temperature Superconductors as Quantum Sources of Gravitational Waves: The HTSC GASER". Chapter 3 of this book.


title: Gravitational wave

text: An episode of the 1962 Russian science-fiction novel "Space Apprentice" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky shows the experiment monitoring the propagation of gravitational waves at the expense of annihilating a chunk of asteroid 15 Eunomia the size of Mount Everest.


title: Gravitational wave

text: In Stanislaw Lem's 1986 novel "Fiasco", a "gravity gun" or "gracer" (gravity amplification by collimated emission of resonance) is used to reshape a collapsar, so that the protagonists can exploit the extreme relativistic effects and make an interstellar journey.


title: Gravitational wave

text: In Greg Egan's 1997 novel "Diaspora", the analysis of a gravitational wave signal from the inspiral of a nearby binary neutron star reveals that its collision and merger is imminent, implying a large gamma-ray burst is going to impact the Earth.


title: Gravitational wave

text: In Liu Cixin's 2006 "Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, gravitational waves are used as an interstellar broadcast signal, which serves as a central plot point in the conflict between civilizations within the galaxy.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Woman in Gold is a 2015 biographical drama film directed by Simon Curtis and written by Alexi Kaye Campbell. The film stars Helen Mirren, Ryan Reynolds, Daniel Brühl, Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: The film is based on the true story of Maria Altmann, an elderly Jewish refugee living in Cheviot Hills, Los Angeles, who, together with her young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg, fought the government of Austria for almost a decade to reclaim Gustav Klimt's iconic painting of her aunt Adele Bloch-Bauer, "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I", which was stolen from her relatives by the Nazis in Vienna just prior to World War II. Altmann took her legal battle all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled on the case "Republic of Austria v. Altmann" (2004).


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: The film was screened in the Berlinale Special Galas section of the 65th Berlin International Film Festival on 9 February 2015, and was released in the United Kingdom on 10 April 2015 and in the United States on 1 April.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: In a series of flashbacks, Maria Altmann recalls the Anschluss, the arrival of Nazi forces in Vienna, the persecution of the Jewish community and the looting and pillaging by the Nazis of Jewish families. Maria Altmann and members of her family attempt to flee to the United States. While Altmann and her husband are successful, she is forced to abandon her parents in Vienna.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: In the present, living in Los Angeles, an elderly and widowed Altmann attends the funeral for her sister. She discovers letters in her sister's possession dating to the late 1940s, which reveal an attempt to recover artwork owned by the Bloch-Bauer family that was left behind during the family's flight for freedom and stolen by the Nazis. Of particular note is a painting of Altmann's aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer, now known in Austria as the "Woman in Gold".


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Altmann enlists the help of E. Randol Schoenberg (the son of her close friend, Barbara), a lawyer with little experience, to make a claim to the art restitution board in Austria. Reluctantly returning to her homeland, Altmann discovers that the country's minister and art director are unwilling to part with the painting, which they feel has become part of the national identity. Altmann is told that the painting was legitimately bequeathed to the gallery by her aunt. Upon further investigation by her lawyer and Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin, this claim proves to be wrong as the alleged will is invalid due to the fact that her aunt did not own the painting, the artist's fee having been paid by Altmann's uncle. Adele Bloch-Bauer wanted the painting to go to the museum at her husband's death but it was taken from him by the Nazis and placed in the museum by a Nazi-collaborating curator, well before his death. Schoenberg files a challenge with the art restitution board, but it is denied and Altmann does not have the money needed to challenge the ruling. Defeated, she and Schoenberg return to the United States.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Months later, happening upon an art book with "Woman in Gold" on the cover, Schoenberg has an epiphany. Using a narrow rule of law and precedents in which an art restitution law was retroactively applied, Schoenberg files a claim in US court against the Austrian government contesting their claim to the painting. An appeal goes to the Supreme Court of the United States, where in the matter of "Republic of Austria v. Altmann", the court rules in Altmann's favor, which results in the Austrian government attempting to persuade Altmann to retain the painting for the gallery, which she refuses. After a falling out over the issue of returning to Austria for a second time to argue the case, Altmann agrees for Schoenberg to go and argue the case in front of a panel of three arbiters in Vienna.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: In Austria, the panel hears the case, during which Schoenberg reminds them of the Nazi regime's crimes. He implores the arbitration panel to think of the meaning of the word "restitution" and to look past the artwork hanging in art galleries to see the injustice to the families who once owned such great paintings and were forcibly separated from them by the Nazis. Unexpectedly, Altmann arrives during the session, indicating to Czernin that she came to support her lawyer. After considering both sides of the dispute, the arbitration panel rules in favour of Altmann, returning her paintings. The Austrian government representative makes a last-minute proposal begging Altmann to keep the paintings in the Belvedere against a generous compensation. Altmann refuses and elects to have the painting moved to the United States with her ("They will now travel to America like I once had to as well") and takes up an offer made earlier by Ronald Lauder to acquire them for his New York gallery to display the painting on condition that it be a permanent exhibit.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: On 15 May 2014 Tatiana Maslany was cast in a principal role as the younger version of Helen Mirren's character, appearing in the Second World War flashbacks. On 29 May Katie Holmes joined the cast of the film. On 30 May Max Irons, Charles Dance, Elizabeth McGovern, Jonathan Pryce, Moritz Bleibtreu and Antje Traue joined the cast of the film. On 9 July Frances Fisher joined the film to play Reynolds' character's mother.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: This marks the second time both Mirren and Holmes have starred in film together, the previous being the Kevin Williamson film Teaching Mrs. Tingle, in 1999.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: The reproduction of the key painting, "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I", was painted by scenic artist Steve Mitchell, who spent five weeks making the re-creation. He also made a partly finished version as well as a partial version for a close-up.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Principal photography began on 23 May 2014 and lasted for eight weeks in the United Kingdom, Austria, and the United States. On 16 June the filming was under way in London. On 9 July the filming was reportedly under way in Los Angeles.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: "Woman in Gold" grossed $33.3 million in North America and $28.3 million in other territories for a total gross of $61.6 million, against a budget of $11 million.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: In the film's limited release weekend, 3–5 April, it grossed $2.1 million from 258 cinemas. In its wide release weekend, expanding to 1,504 cinemas on 10 April it grossed $5.5 million, finishing 7th at the box office.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film had a rating of 57% based on 152 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Woman in Gold" benefits from its talented leads, but strong work from Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds isn't enough to overpower a disappointingly dull treatment of a fascinating true story." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Helen Mirren received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Altmann's efforts actually addressed five Klimt paintings owned by her family, including "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" and "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II", as well as three landscapes. The decisions by the US Supreme Court and the Austrian arbitrators covered all five paintings.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Film critics in Austria and Germany noted various deviations of the film from historical reality. Olga Kronsteiner from the Austrian daily "Der Standard" wrote that it was not Maria Altmann's lawyer, Randol Schönberg, who researched and initiated the restitution case, but Austrian journalist Hubertus Czernin, who had worked on a number of restitution files at the time, who found the decisive documents and subsequently informed Maria Altmann.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Hubertus Czernin, who is depicted in the movie, is suggested to have been motivated by the fact that his father had been a member of the Nazi Party, but Stefan Grissemann from Austrian weekly "Profil" pointed out that his father's party membership was not known to Czernin until 2006, long after he had started to work on this and other restitution cases. In addition, Czernin's father was imprisoned by the Nazis late in the war for high treason.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Thomas Trenkler from the Viennese daily "Kurier" criticized the film's reference to a time limit for restitution claims in Austria, writing that there has never been such a time limit. He also wrote that his least favorite scene in the film was when Maria Altmann leaves her ailing father in Vienna in 1938. Despite the imminent danger, Maria Altmann stayed in Vienna, having said, "I would never have left my father! He died of natural causes in July 1938". Only then did she and her husband escape from Vienna.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: In June 2006, based on an earlier agreement between Altmann and Ronald Lauder (which was shown in the film), Altmann sold "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I" to Lauder's Neue Galerie New York for $135 million ($ million today), setting a new mark for most expensive painting (since surpassed). Five months later, Altmann sold the companion "Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer II" at auction (bought by Oprah Winfrey) for almost $88 million ($ million today), then the third-highest priced painting.


title: Woman in Gold (film)

text: Gustav Bloch-Bauer had been loaned the famous "Gore Booth Baron Rothschild" Stradivarius cello (see List of Stradivarius instruments) by the Rothschild family, which was looted by the Nazis in 1938 and retained by the German authorities until 1956.


title: Torso

text: The torso or trunk is an anatomical term for the central part, or the core, of the body of many animals (including humans), from which the head, neck, limbs, tail and other appendages extend. The tetrapod torso — including that of a human — is usually divided into the "thoracic" segment (also known as the upper torso, where the forelimbs extend), the "abdominal" segment (also known as the "mid-section" or "midriff"), and the "pelvic" and "perineal" segments (sometimes known together with the abdomen as the lower torso, where the hindlimbs extend).


title: Torso

text: In humans, most critical organs, with the notable exception of the brain, are housed within the torso. In the upper chest, the heart and lungs are protected by the rib cage, and the abdomen contains most of the organs responsible for digestion: the stomach, which breaks down partially digested food via gastric acid; the liver, which respectively produces bile necessary for digestion; the large and small intestines, which extract nutrients from food; the anus, from which fecal wastes are egested; the rectum, which stores feces; the gallbladder, which stores and concentrates bile; the kidneys, which produce urine, the ureters, which pass it to the bladder for storage; and the urethra, which excretes urine and in a male passes sperm through the seminal vesicles. Finally, the pelvic region houses both the male and female reproductive organs.


title: Torso

text: The torso also harbours many of the main groups of muscles in the tetrapod body, including the pectoral, abdominal, lateral and epaxial muscles.


title: Torso

text: The organs, muscles, and other contents of the torso are supplied by nerves, which mainly originate as nerve roots from the thoracic and lumbar parts of the spinal cord. Some organs also receive a nerve supply from the vagus nerve. The sensation to the skin is provided by the lateral and dorsal cutaneous branches.


title: Electromagnet

text: An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire wound into a coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic field which is concentrated in the hole in the center of the coil. The magnetic field disappears when the current is turned off. The wire turns are often wound around a magnetic core made from a ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic material such as iron; the magnetic core concentrates the magnetic flux and makes a more powerful magnet.


title: Electromagnet

text: The main advantage of an electromagnet over a permanent magnet is that the magnetic field can be quickly changed by controlling the amount of electric current in the winding. However, unlike a permanent magnet that needs no power, an electromagnet requires a continuous supply of current to maintain the magnetic field.


title: Electromagnet

text: Electromagnets are widely used as components of other electrical devices, such as motors, generators, electromechanical solenoids, relays, loudspeakers, hard disks, MRI machines, scientific instruments, and magnetic separation equipment. Electromagnets are also employed in industry for picking up and moving heavy iron objects such as scrap iron and steel.


title: Electromagnet

text: Danish scientist Hans Christian Ørsted discovered in 1820 that electric currents create magnetic fields. British scientist William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet in 1824.


title: Electromagnet

text: Beginning in 1830, US scientist Joseph Henry systematically improved and popularised the electromagnet. By using wire insulated by silk thread, and inspired by Schweigger's use of multiple turns of wire to make a galvanometer, he was able to wind multiple layers of wire on cores, creating powerful magnets with thousands of turns of wire, including one that could support . The first major use for electromagnets was in telegraph sounders.


title: Electromagnet

text: The magnetic domain theory of how ferromagnetic cores work was first proposed in 1906 by French physicist Pierre-Ernest Weiss, and the detailed modern quantum mechanical theory of ferromagnetism was worked out in the 1920s by Werner Heisenberg, Lev Landau, Felix Bloch and others.


title: Electromagnet

text: A "portative electromagnet" is one designed to just hold material in place; an example is a lifting magnet. A "tractive electromagnet" applies a force and moves something.


title: Electromagnet

text: A common tractive electromagnet is a uniformly-wound solenoid and plunger. The solenoid is a coil of wire, and the plunger is made of a material such as soft iron. Applying a current to the solenoid applies a force to the plunger and may make it move. The plunger stops moving when the forces upon it are balanced. For example, the forces are balanced when the plunger is centered in the solenoid.


title: Electromagnet

text: The maximum uniform pull happens when one end of the plunger is at the middle of the solenoid. An approximation for the force is


title: Electromagnet

text: where is a proportionality constant, is the cross-sectional area of the plunger, is the number of turns in the solenoid, is the current through the solenoid wire, and is the length of the solenoid. For units using inches, pounds force, and amperes with long, slender, solenoids, the value of is around 0.009 to 0.010 psi (maximum pull pounds per square inch of plunger cross-sectional area). For example, a 12-inch long coil () with a long plunger of 1-square inch cross section () and 11,200 ampere-turns () had a maximum pull of 8.75 pounds (corresponding to ).


title: Electromagnet

text: The maximum pull is increased when a magnetic stop is inserted into the solenoid. The stop becomes a magnet that will attract the plunger; it adds little to the solenoid pull when the plunger is far away but dramatically increases the pull when they are close. An approximation for the pull is


title: Electromagnet

text: Here is the distance between the end of the stop and the end of the plunger. The additional constant for units of inches, pounds, and amperes with slender solenoids is about 2660. The second term within the bracket represents the same force as the stop-less solenoid above; the first term represents the attraction between the stop and the plunger.


title: Electromagnet

text: Some improvements can be made on the basic design. The ends of the stop and plunger are often conical. For example, the plunger may have a pointed end that fits into a matching recess in the stop. The shape makes the solenoid's pull more uniform as a function of separation. Another improvement is to add a magnetic return path around the outside of the solenoid (an "iron-clad solenoid"). The magnetic return path, just as the stop, has little impact until the air gap is small.


title: Electromagnet

text: An electric current flowing in a wire creates a magnetic field around the wire, due to Ampere's law (see drawing below). To concentrate the magnetic field, in an electromagnet the wire is wound into a coil with many turns of wire lying side by side. The magnetic field of all the turns of wire passes through the center of the coil, creating a strong magnetic field there. A coil forming the shape of a straight tube (a helix) is called a solenoid.


title: Electromagnet

text: The direction of the magnetic field through a coil of wire can be found from a form of the right-hand rule. If the fingers of the right hand are curled around the coil in the direction of current flow (conventional current, flow of positive charge) through the windings, the thumb points in the direction of the field inside the coil. The side of the magnet that the field lines emerge from is defined to be the "north pole".


title: Electromagnet

text: Much stronger magnetic fields can be produced if a "magnetic core" of a soft ferromagnetic (or ferrimagnetic) material, such as iron, is placed inside the coil. A core can increase the magnetic field to thousands of times the strength of the field of the coil alone, due to the high magnetic permeability μ of the material. This is called a ferromagnetic-core or iron-core electromagnet. However, not all electromagnets use cores, and the very strongest electromagnets, such as superconducting and the very high current electromagnets, cannot use them due to saturation.


title: Electromagnet

text: which says that the integral of the magnetizing field formula_4 around any closed loop is equal to the sum of the current flowing through the loop. Another equation used, that gives the magnetic field due to each small segment of current, is the Biot–Savart law. Computing the magnetic field and force exerted by ferromagnetic materials is difficult for two reasons. First, because the strength of the field varies from point to point in a complicated way, particularly outside the core and in air gaps, where "fringing fields" and "leakage flux" must be considered. Second, because the magnetic field B and force are nonlinear functions of the current, depending on the nonlinear relation between B and H for the particular core material used. For precise calculations, computer programs that can produce a model of the magnetic field using the finite element method are employed.


title: Electromagnet

text: The material of a magnetic core (often made of iron or steel) is composed of small regions called magnetic domains that act like tiny magnets (see ferromagnetism). Before the current in the electromagnet is turned on, the domains in the iron core point in random directions, so their tiny magnetic fields cancel each other out, and the iron has no large-scale magnetic field. When a current is passed through the wire wrapped around the iron, its magnetic field penetrates the iron, and causes the domains to turn, aligning parallel to the magnetic field, so their tiny magnetic fields add to the wire's field, creating a large magnetic field that extends into the space around the magnet. The effect of the core is to concentrate the field, and the magnetic field passes through the core more easily than it would pass through air.


title: Electromagnet

text: The larger the current passed through the wire coil, the more the domains align, and the stronger the magnetic field is. Finally, all the domains are lined up, and further increases in current only cause slight increases in the magnetic field: this phenomenon is called saturation.


title: Electromagnet

text: When the current in the coil is turned off, in the magnetically soft materials that are nearly always used as cores, most of the domains lose alignment and return to a random state and the field disappears. However, some of the alignment persists, because the domains have difficulty turning their direction of magnetization, leaving the core a weak permanent magnet. This phenomenon is called hysteresis and the remaining magnetic field is called remanent magnetism. The residual magnetization of the core can be removed by degaussing. In alternating current electromagnets, such as are used in motors, the core's magnetization is constantly reversed, and the remanence contributes to the motor's losses.


title: Electromagnet

text: In many practical applications of electromagnets, such as motors, generators, transformers, lifting magnets, and loudspeakers, the iron core is in the form of a loop or magnetic circuit, possibly broken by a few narrow air gaps. This is because the magnetic field lines are in the form of closed loops. Iron presents much less "resistance" (reluctance) to the magnetic field than air, so a stronger field can be obtained if most of the magnetic field's path is within the core.


title: Electromagnet

text: Since most of the magnetic field is confined within the outlines of the core loop, this allows a simplification of the mathematical analysis. See the drawing at right. A common simplifying assumption satisfied by many electromagnets, which will be used in this section, is that the magnetic field strength "B" is constant around the magnetic circuit (within the core and air gaps) and zero outside it. Most of the magnetic field will be concentrated in the core material ("C"). Within the core the magnetic field ("B") will be approximately uniform across any cross section, so if in addition the core has roughly constant area throughout its length, the field in the core will be constant. This just leaves the air gaps ("G"), if any, between core sections. In the gaps the magnetic field lines are no longer confined by the core, so they 'bulge' out beyond the outlines of the core before curving back to enter the next piece of core material, reducing the field strength in the gap. The bulges ("B") are called "fringing fields". However, as long as the length of the gap is smaller than the cross section dimensions of the core, the field in the gap will be approximately the same as in the core. In addition, some of the magnetic field lines ("B") will take 'short cuts' and not pass through the entire core circuit, and thus will not contribute to the force exerted by the magnet. This also includes field lines that encircle the wire windings but do not enter the core. This is called "leakage flux". Therefore, the equations in this section are valid for electromagnets for which:


title: Electromagnet

text: The main nonlinear feature of ferromagnetic materials is that the B field saturates at a certain value, which is around 1.6 to 2 teslas (T) for most high permeability core steels. The B field increases quickly with increasing current up to that value, but above that value the field levels off and becomes almost constant, regardless of how much current is sent through the windings. So the maximum strength of the magnetic field possible from an iron core electromagnet is limited to around 1.6 to 2 T.


title: Electromagnet

text: The magnetic field created by an electromagnet is proportional to both the number of turns in the winding, "N", and the current in the wire, "I", hence this product, "NI", in ampere-turns, is given the name magnetomotive force. For an electromagnet with a single magnetic circuit, of which length "L" of the magnetic field path is in the core material and length "L" is in air gaps, Ampere's Law reduces to:


title: Electromagnet

text: This is a nonlinear equation, because the permeability of the core, "μ", varies with the magnetic field "B". For an exact solution, the value of "μ" at the "B" value used must be obtained from the core material hysteresis curve. If "B" is unknown, the equation must be solved by numerical methods. However, if the magnetomotive force is well above saturation, so the core material is in saturation, the magnetic field will be approximately the saturation value "B" for the material, and won't vary much with changes in "NI". For a closed magnetic circuit (no air gap) most core materials saturate at a magnetomotive force of roughly 800 ampere-turns per meter of flux path.


title: Electromagnet

text: For most core materials, formula_9. So in equation (1) above, the second term dominates. Therefore, in magnetic circuits with an air gap, the strength of the magnetic field "B" depends strongly on the length of the air gap, and the length of the flux path in the core doesn't matter much. Given an air gap of 1mm, a magnetomotive force of about 796 Ampere-turns is required to produce a magnetic field of 1T.


title: Electromagnet

text: where formula_10 is the cross-sectional area of the core. The force equation can be derived from the energy stored in a magnetic field. Energy is force times distance. Rearranging terms yields the equation above.


title: Electromagnet

text: The 1.6 T limit on the field mentioned above sets a limit on the maximum force per unit core area, or magnetic pressure, an iron-core electromagnet can exert; roughly:


title: Electromagnet

text: In more intuitive units it's useful to remember that at 1 T the magnetic pressure is approximately 4 atmospheres, or kg/cm.


title: Electromagnet

text: Given a core geometry, the B field needed for a given force can be calculated from (2); if it comes out to much more than 1.6 T, a larger core must be used.


title: Electromagnet

text: For a closed magnetic circuit (no air gap), such as would be found in an electromagnet lifting a piece of iron bridged across its poles, equation () becomes:


title: Electromagnet

text: It can be seen that to maximize the force, a core with a short flux path "L" and a wide cross-sectional area "A" is preferred (this also applies to magnets with an air gap). To achieve this, in applications like lifting magnets (see photo above) and loudspeakers a flat cylindrical design is often used. The winding is wrapped around a short wide cylindrical core that forms one pole, and a thick metal housing that wraps around the outside of the windings forms the other part of the magnetic circuit, bringing the magnetic field to the front to form the other pole.


title: Electromagnet

text: The above methods are applicable to electromagnets with a magnetic circuit and do not apply when a large part of the magnetic field path is outside the core. An example would be a magnet with a straight cylindrical core like the one shown at the top of this article. For electromagnets (or permanent magnets) with well defined 'poles' where the field lines emerge from the core, the force between two electromagnets can be found using the a magnetic-charge model which assumes the magnetic field is produced by fictitious 'magnetic charges' on the surface of the poles, with pole strength "m" and units of Ampere-turn meter. Magnetic pole strength of electromagnets can be found from:


title: Electromagnet

text: Each electromagnet has two poles, so the total force on a given magnet due to another magnet is equal to the vector sum of the forces of the other magnet's poles acting on each pole of the given magnet. This model assumes point-like poles instead of the finite surfaces, and thus it only yields a good approximation when the distance between the magnets is much larger than their diameter.


title: Electromagnet

text: There are several side effects which occur in electromagnets which must be provided for in their design. These generally become more significant in larger electromagnets.


title: Electromagnet

text: The only power consumed in a DC electromagnet under steady state conditions is due to the resistance of the windings, and is dissipated as heat. Some large electromagnets require water cooling systems in the windings to carry off the waste heat.


title: Electromagnet

text: Since the magnetic field is proportional to the product "NI", the number of turns in the windings "N" and the current "I" can be chosen to minimize heat losses, as long as their product is constant. Since the power dissipation, "P" = "I""R", increases with the square of the current but only increases approximately linearly with the number of windings, the power lost in the windings can be minimized by reducing "I" and increasing the number of turns "N" proportionally, or using thicker wire to reduce the resistance. For example, halving "I" and doubling "N" halves the power loss, as does doubling the area of the wire. In either case, increasing the amount of wire reduces the ohmic losses. For this reason, electromagnets often have a significant thickness of windings.


title: Electromagnet

text: However, the limit to increasing "N" or lowering the resistance is that the windings take up more room between the magnet's core pieces. If the area available for the windings is filled up, more turns require going to a smaller diameter of wire, which has higher resistance, which cancels the advantage of using more turns. So in large magnets there is a minimum amount of heat loss that can't be reduced. This increases with the square of the magnetic flux "B".


title: Electromagnet

text: An electromagnet has significant inductance, and resists changes in the current through its windings. Any sudden changes in the winding current cause large voltage spikes across the windings. This is because when the current through the magnet is increased, such as when it is turned on, energy from the circuit must be stored in the magnetic field. When it is turned off the energy in the field is returned to the circuit.


title: Electromagnet

text: If an ordinary switch is used to control the winding current, this can cause sparks at the terminals of the switch. This does not occur when the magnet is switched on, because the limited supply voltage causes the current through the magnet and the field energy to increase slowly, but when it is switched off, the energy in the magnetic field is suddenly returned to the circuit, causing a large voltage spike and an arc across the switch contacts, which can damage them. With small electromagnets a capacitor is sometimes used across the contacts, which reduces arcing by temporarily storing the current. More often a diode is used to prevent voltage spikes by providing a path for the current to recirculate through the winding until the energy is dissipated as heat. The diode is connected across the winding, oriented so it is reverse-biased during steady state operation and does not conduct. When the supply voltage is removed, the voltage spike forward-biases the diode and the reactive current continues to flow through the winding, through the diode and back into the winding. A diode used in this way is called a freewheeling diode or flyback diode.


title: Electromagnet

text: Large electromagnets are usually powered by variable current electronic power supplies, controlled by a microprocessor, which prevent voltage spikes by accomplishing current changes slowly, in gentle ramps. It may take several minutes to energize or deenergize a large magnet.


title: Electromagnet

text: In powerful electromagnets, the magnetic field exerts a force on each turn of the windings, due to the Lorentz force formula_14 acting on the moving charges within the wire. The Lorentz force is perpendicular to both the axis of the wire and the magnetic field. It can be visualized as a pressure between the magnetic field lines, pushing them apart. It has two effects on an electromagnet's windings:


title: Electromagnet

text: The Lorentz forces increase with "B". In large electromagnets the windings must be firmly clamped in place, to prevent motion on power-up and power-down from causing metal fatigue in the windings. In the Bitter design, below, used in very high-field research magnets, the windings are constructed as flat disks to resist the radial forces, and clamped in an axial direction to resist the axial ones which inturns allows it to travel at high speeds across the wire


title: Electromagnet

text: In alternating current (AC) electromagnets, used in transformers, inductors, and AC motors and generators, the magnetic field is constantly changing. This causes energy losses in their magnetic cores that is dissipated as heat in the core. The losses stem from two processes:


title: Electromagnet

text: When a magnetic field higher than the ferromagnetic limit of 1.6 T is needed, superconducting electromagnets can be used. Instead of using ferromagnetic materials, these use superconducting windings cooled with liquid helium, which conduct current without electrical resistance. These allow enormous currents to flow, which generate intense magnetic fields. Superconducting magnets are limited by the field strength at which the winding material ceases to be superconducting. Current designs are limited to 10–20 T, with the current (2017) record of 32 T. The necessary refrigeration equipment and cryostat make them much more expensive than ordinary electromagnets. However, in high power applications this can be offset by lower operating costs, since after startup no power is required for the windings, since no energy is lost to ohmic heating. They are used in particle accelerators and MRI machines.


title: Electromagnet

text: Both iron-core and superconducting electromagnets have limits to the field they can produce. Therefore, the most powerful man-made magnetic fields have been generated by "air-core" nonsuperconducting electromagnets of a design invented by Francis Bitter in 1933, called Bitter electromagnets. Instead of wire windings, a Bitter magnet consists of a solenoid made of a stack of conducting disks, arranged so that the current moves in a helical path through them, with a hole through the center where the maximum field is created. This design has the mechanical strength to withstand the extreme Lorentz forces of the field, which increase with "B". The disks are pierced with holes through which cooling water passes to carry away the heat caused by the high current. The strongest continuous field achieved solely with a resistive magnet is 37.5 T , produced by a Bitter electromagnet at the Radboud University High Field Magnet Laboratory in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. The previous record was 35 T. The strongest continuous magnetic field overall, 45 T, was achieved in June 2000 with a hybrid device consisting of a Bitter magnet inside a superconducting magnet.


title: Electromagnet

text: The factor limiting the strength of electromagnets is the inability to dissipate the enormous waste heat, so more powerful fields, up to 100 T, have been obtained from resistive magnets by sending brief pulses of high current through them; the inactive period after each pulse allows the heat produced during the pulse to be removed, before the next pulse.


title: Electromagnet

text: The most powerful manmade magnetic fields have been created by using explosives to compress the magnetic field inside an electromagnet as it is pulsed; these are called explosively pumped flux compression generators. The implosion compresses the magnetic field to values of around 1000 T for a few microseconds. While this method may seem very destructive, it is possible to redirect the brunt of the blast radially outwards so that neither the experiment nor the magnetic structure are harmed. These devices are known as destructive pulsed electromagnets. They are used in physics and materials science research to study the properties of materials at high magnetic fields.


title: James Gray (director)

text: James Gray (born April 14, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter. Since his feature debut "Little Odessa" in 1994, he has made seven other features, five of which competed for the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.


title: James Gray (director)

text: Gray was born in New York City and grew up in the neighborhood of Flushing. He is of Russian Jewish descent, with grandparents from Ostropol, Western Ukraine, which at that time was a part of the USSR. The original family name was "Grayevsky" or "Greyzerstein." His father was once an electronics contractor. Gray attended the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts, where his student film, "Cowboys and Angels", helped him get an agent and the attention of producer Paul Webster, who encouraged him to write a script which he could produce.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In 1994, at age 25, Gray made his first feature film "Little Odessa", a film starring Tim Roth about a hit man confronted by his younger brother upon returning to his hometown, "Little Odessa," a section of Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. The film won the Silver Lion at the 51st Venice International Film Festival.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In 2000, Miramax released his second film, "The Yards", a crime drama shot in 1998. His third film, "We Own the Night", starring Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, played in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival in May, receiving widely divergent reviews from international critics. "We Own the Night" was released theatrically in the US on October 12, 2007.


title: James Gray (director)

text: His 2013 film "The Immigrant" was nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Earlier that year, Gray co-wrote the screenplay for Guillaume Canet's 2013 film "Blood Ties" with Canet.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In 2015, Gray directed a television commercial for Chanel men's fragrance, "Bleu de Chanel", starring Gaspard Ulliel. It was filmed in Los Angeles and released on February 5, 2015.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In October 2016, Gray's film "The Lost City of Z" premiered at the New York Film Festival. The film, based on the book by David Grann, depicts the life of explorer Percy Fawcett, played by Charlie Hunnam.


title: James Gray (director)

text: At the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, Gray announced plans to direct the sci-fi space epic "Ad Astra". Brad Pitt signed on to star in April 2017 and the rest of the cast joined later that year. "Ad Astra" premiered at the Venice Film Festival on August 29, 2019 and was theatrically released in the United States on September 20, 2019 by 20th Century Fox.


title: James Gray (director)

text: On June 17, 2020, it was officially confirmed that his next film, titled "Armageddon Time", would be a coming-of-age drama story of loyalty and friendship against the historical backdrop of Ronald Reagan's presidential election loosely based on Gray's childhood memories, with Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins and Jeremy Strong cast in the film. The film had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on May 19, 2022 and was released in the United States on October 28, 2022 by Focus Features.


title: James Gray (director)

text: After "Little Odessa", Gray was handed the script for "The Devil's Own" by Brad Pitt, a friend of his. Gray turned it down but the film was ultimately directed by Alan J. Pakula.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In 2003, it was rumored that Gray had written an adaptation of Philip K. Dick's novelette "Paycheck". Prior to John Woo being selected to direct, Brett Ratner was in talks to direct. A film was released later that year, but Gray had no involvement.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In January 2011, it was reported that Gray would be directing a film adaptation of Mark Greaney's novel "The Gray Man" written by Adam Cozad. The project was first set up at New Regency. Brad Pitt was initially cast to star, but by October 2015 he and Gray were no longer involved with the film.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In August 2013, it was announced that Warner Bros tapped Gray to write and direct "White Devil", a film based on the life of John Willis.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In April 2018, MGM closed a deal for Gray to direct "I Am Pilgrim", an adaptation of the espionage novel trilogy by Terry Hayes.


title: James Gray (director)

text: In April 2022, Gray announced plans to develop a series about Norman Mailer based on J. Michael Lennon's biography "Norman Mailer: A Double Life".


title: James Gray (director)

text: In 2022, Gray participated in the "Sight and Sound" film polls. Held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, contemporary directors were asked to select ten films of their choice. Gray chose the following, in no order:


title: James Gray (director)

text: In an interview for Rotten Tomatoes a few years prior, Gray was asked to name five of his favorite films. He listed:


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the legal and political process whereby a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation withdraws from the North Atlantic Treaty, and thus the country in question ceases to be a member of NATO. The formal process is stated in article 13 of the Treaty. This says that any country that wants to leave must send the United States (as the depositary) a "notice of denunciation", which the U.S. would then pass on to the other countries in the alliance. After a one-year waiting period, the country that wants to leave would be out.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: , no member state has rescinded their membership, although it has been considered by several countries. Notwithstanding, a number of former dependencies of NATO members have never applied for membership subsequent to their becoming independent states.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Article 13 of the North Atlantic Treaty, is the article that member states use for informing other members or parties that it wishes to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. It states the following:"After the Treaty has been in force for twenty years, any Party may cease to be a Party one year after its notice of denunciation has been given to the Government of the United States of America, which will inform the Governments of the other Parties of the deposit of each notice of denunciation."This means that after 20 years since the signing of the treaty which was in 1949, thus 1969, any member state that wishes to leave just has to inform the United States that it wants to leave, and then after a year it formally leaves.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 2019 the Green Party advocated a review of Canadian membership of the alliance. The position of the social-democratic New Democratic Party is complicated; while there is general support for NATO membership within the party, including from former party leaders Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair, the NDP Socialist Caucus advocates revoking Canada's membership. Some of the reasons for opposition to membership of the alliance include membership being incompatible to the Canadian tradition of peacekeeping and concerns of Canadian sovereignty over its defence forces.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: , the general consensus of the Canadian government is to support NATO membership as part of national defense policy. Parties that exist in the Canadian Parliament that support NATO membership include the governing left-of-centre Liberal Party, the opposition right-of-centre Conservative Party, and the Quebec sovereigntist Bloc Québécois.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 1966, due to souring relations between Washington and Paris because of the refusal to integrate France's nuclear deterrent with other North Atlantic powers, or to accept any collective form of control over its armed forces, French president Charles de Gaulle downgraded France's membership in NATO and withdrew France from the NATO Military Command Structure to pursue more independent defence options. However, he also stated that France would remain in the alliance even after the end of the 20-year commitment period in 1969, unless the “fundamental elements of the relations between East and West” changed.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 2009, France rejoined the NATO Military Command Structure. The reversal was announced by President Nicolas Sarkozy and backed by the Parliament of France.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Currently, of the noted political parties in France; those advocating withdrawal from NATO include the souverainist Popular Republican Union, together with the left wing La France Insoumise and the far left French Communist Party. The right-wing Gaullist Debout la France and the nationalist National Rally advocate reversing the 2009 decision for France returning to NATO command. In a 2017 poll, 60% of French people viewed NATO favorably, and 34% unfavorably.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: During the conversations leading to the German reunification, the Soviet Union sought to move the union of West Germany (in NATO) and East Germany (in the Warsaw Pact) into neutrality and de-nuclearization.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: However, West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and American president George H. W. Bush wanted the united Germany to remain in NATO in spite of less than 20% of West Germans wanting to remain in NATO after the reunification.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Mikhail Gorbachev finally removed the Soviet objection and the new eastern territories of Germany became covered by NATO on the condition that no foreign forces or weapons of mass destruction were to be located on them.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 1964, due to the Cyprus crisis, Greece withdrew military units from NATO forces in the Southern Mediterranean, over threats of invasion of Cyprus by fellow NATO member Turkey. Later in 1974 due to the invasion of Cyprus by Turkish forces, Greece withdrew from NATO military command. Notwithstanding, the country did not withdraw entirely from the organisation, but became significantly less active.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 1980, the Greek foreign minister Konstantinos Mitsotakis made remarks about the situation where he could see Greece fully withdrawing from the organisation. However, later diplomatic pressure from the United States led to Greece fully re-integrating with the alliance.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: According to a poll conducted in 2022 NATO remains popular among the Greek public with 78% wanting to remain in the alliance and only 18% wanting to leave.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Iceland is unique amongst NATO members in that it does not have a standing army, and its defence forces consist of a militarised coastguard and a paramilitary peacekeeping force. Iceland's strong pacifist history has led to considerable opposition to NATO membership in Iceland. Nevertheless, the country was a host to the notable United States Navy base at Keflavík airport, near the country's capital Reykjavík. Plus, its location in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean makes it a strategic point for intelligence and signals information.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: The country's main nonpartisan pressure group for Iceland leaving NATO is , which is a branch of War Resisters' International.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 2019, during a visit by the Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to Iceland, the Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir spoke of her support for withdrawing Iceland from NATO. Her party, the Left-Green Movement, is the senior partner of the Icelandic government which also supports withdrawing, but there is not a majority in the Icelandic parliament for withdrawing. In February 2022 (before the Russian invasion of Ukraine), she said that she still opposed NATO, but admitted that there was still public support for membership. As of May 2022, she continued to oppose Icelandic membership in NATO.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: A 2022 Gallup poll showed that 75% of Icelanders supported the country's NATO membership, 9% were opposed to it, and 16% were unsure.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Several political parties in Montenegro, including New Serb Democracy and the Democratic People's Party, oppose NATO membership. The 2020 Montenegrin parliamentary election resulted in a victory for these parties for the first time in thirty years. However, these parties did not formally pursue withdrawal upon taking office.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: The general consensus about the foreign and defence policy of the Netherlands is being a member of the alliance. Its membership is supported by all five main establishment parties in the Staten-General; the conservative-liberal VVD, the social-democratic PvdA, the christian-democrat CDA, right-wing populist PVV, and social-liberal D66. Other parties are supportive but would like to reform the alliance such as the green-socialist GroenLinks. While the far-right populist Forum voor Democratie supports NATO membership, it was reported by the investigative show Zembla that privately the party's leader Thierry Baudet would like the Netherlands to leave NATO and align the country's foreign policy with Russia.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Some minor political parties in Romania oppose Romanian membership in NATO. One of them is Noua Dreaptă, which is also against the European Union.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Since the 2016 attempted coup d'état, the 2019 Turkish Offensive into North–Eastern Syria, the deterioration of relations between Turkey and the United States, the deterioration of relations between Greece and Turkey, warming relations between Turkey and Russia, and opposition towards Finland and Sweden in regards to possible membership in 2022, there have been calls for Turkey to leave or be thrown out of NATO. Inside Turkey, politicians like the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli suggested that Turkey leaving NATO should be considered an option. In May 2022, opposition leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu said that if the Justice and Development Party and the Nationalist Movement Party decided to close the Incirlik Air Base to NATO, the Republican People's Party would also support it.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: The established consensus of the United Kingdom's defence and foreign policy framework includes full membership and participation of NATO. Membership is supported by all three major parties in the UK, including the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Of the nationwide parties in the House of Commons, only the Green Party is against NATO membership and advocates eventually leaving the alliance. However, there are individual Members of Parliament who support the UK withdrawing from NATO, such as Jeremy Corbyn.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In October 2017, the youth wing of Labour, Young Labour, passed a motion at their annual conference which called for Britain to withdraw from NATO, stating it was a tool of American imperialism. They reconfirmed their withdrawment position during the Russo-Ukrainian crisis on Twitter. Support for NATO is high in the United Kingdom with a poll in 2017 indicating that 62% of British people have a favourable view of NATO, compared with only 19% having unfavourable view of the Alliance.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: The situation with whether an independent Scotland should join NATO if it ever achieves independence, has been fraught within supporters of an independent Scotland. Originally the Scottish National Party was against NATO membership, much of this was due to the party's non-nuclear stance with Scotland hosting the Trident nuclear programme at the Clyde Naval Base. This changed in 2012, when the SNP under the leadership of Alex Salmond changed its manifesto saying that it would support NATO membership and would join NATO if Scotland ever becomes independent, provided the alliance respect Scotland's non-nuclear stance. This led to some senior members of the SNP to leave the party, including John Finnie and Jean Urquhart. During the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, the SNP's defence spokesmen Stewart McDonald reconfirmed the SNP's support for NATO.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Other independence parties including the Scottish Socialist Party and the Scottish Greens as well as some in the SNP (mainly on the left) do not support Scotland's membership and would not want to join if Scotland becomes independent.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Compared to the Scottish nationalists, the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru is completely opposed to NATO membership and supports withdrawal from the alliance if Welsh independence is achieved. Instead the party advocates a defence position of non-alignment similar that of Ireland. The leader of Plaid Cymru at the time, Leanne Wood went even as far as criticizing her Scottish counterparts in an interview.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Among the parties in Northern Ireland, NATO policy tends to follow along the unionist-nationalist axis using the basis of the UK's membership and Ireland's non-alignment. All the main parties that support Northern Ireland being part of the United Kingdom including the Ulster Unionists and the Democratic Unionist parties, support NATO membership. Meanwhile, the parties that advocate unification of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland, including SDLP and Sinn Féin, support Irish neutrality. Among the non-sectarian parties which are parties are neither unionist nor nationalist; the Alliance Party supports NATO membership, while the Green Party is ambiguous in its viewpoint.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Among British non-governmental organisations, both the pacifist Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition advocates British withdraw from the alliance.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Donald Trump expressed interest in withdrawing from the organization during his 2016 presidential campaign. However, after he was inaugurated in 2017, he stated that the United States would protect allies in the event that Article V is invoked. Nevertheless, the "New York Times" reported in 2019 that a year earlier, he had already mentioned several times privately that he wanted the United States to leave NATO. Such concerns led the House of Representatives in January 2019, to pass the "NATO Support Act (H.R. 676)," confirming Congress' support for NATO and prohibiting Trump from potentially withdrawing from NATO. On December 11, 2019, the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee passed a bill to be put in front of Congress which would require congressional approval for American withdrawal from NATO.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Polling conducted by Pew Research Center in 2017, said that 62% of Americans are favorable to NATO compared to 23% who are not favorable. In terms of voters, over three-quarters of Democrats are favorable with just 48% of Republicans favorable. Also they said that a plurality of those surveyed, 47% said NATO does too little globally. In further polling in 2019 on the eve of the 70th anniversary of NATO's founding, 77% of Americans say being a member of NATO is good for the United States.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: While both major parties support NATO membership, all the major third parties including the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, and the Constitution Party support withdrawing the United States from NATO.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: At the time of the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, many parts of the world were either overseas or dependent territories of countries such as France and the United Kingdom. As such, these regions, which are today independent states such as Algeria and Malta, were then part of NATO. However, the treaty limits involvement to no lower than the Atlantic region of Tropic of Cancer, and thus defacto limits membership to those in North America and Europe as stated in Articles V & VI. This means that once those overseas territories gained independence, those outside that area couldn't rejoin as full members.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: When France joined NATO in 1949, the northern African territory of Algeria was part of Metropolitan France. By virtue of this, Algeria was part of NATO since its inception. In fact, Article VI clearly states that an armed attack on Algeria would be considered an attack on NATO.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: When Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962, its membership was ceased and the Article VI clause was removed. Like many Maghreb and Arab countries, it aligned itself with the Soviet Union which it ended for Algeria with the end of the Cold War. However, since 2000, Algeria has participated in NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue forum and various training with NATO member countries and military cooperation in the defense industry, especially with Germany.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: At the time of the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949, the Mediterranean island of Malta was a dependent territory in a form of a self-governing crown colony of the United Kingdom. Dependent territories like Malta had the international memberships of their mother country, so the island was part of NATO. In fact, the headquarters of the Allied Forces Mediterranean was based in the town of Floriana between 1952 and 1965.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: When Malta gained independence in 1964, the country did not apply to join NATO, due to the relations between NATO and the prime minister George Borg Olivier at the time, but nevertheless supported the alliance. This changed in 1971, when the Labour's Dom Mintoff was elected as prime minister and stated that Malta is neutral in its foreign policy, a position which was later enacted into the country's constitution in 1974. Later the country joined the Non-Aligned Movement in 1979, at the same time when the British Royal Navy left its base in Malta Dockyard.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: In 1995, Malta joined the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council multilateral defence forum and NATO's Partnership for Peace defence program. However, it withdrew its membership from both organisations a year later in 1996 by the newly elected Labour government. Maltese foreign policy changed notably in 2004, with the country joining the European Union and it re-joined the EAPC and PfP programs in 2008, pointing to a change in the island's foreign relations. Over time, Malta has been building its relations with NATO and getting involved in wider projects including the PfP Planning and Review Process and the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Membership of NATO is not supported by any of the country's political parties including the current governing Labour and the opposition Nationalists. Polling done by the island-nation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs found in February 2022 (before the Russian invasion of Ukraine) that nearly two-thirds support the island's neutral position, and only 6% are against it. NATO's secretary-general Stoltenberg says the alliance fully respects Malta's position of neutrality, and put no pressure for the country to join the alliance.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: Like Malta, Cyprus was a crown colony at the time of the United Kingdom until it gained independence in 1960. As such, Cyprus was also a member of the NATO under the British crown. However, the reason for Cyprus' non-membership is due to the 1974 Cyprus conflict and relations between Greece and Turkey. This reason even extends to Cyprus' non-participation in the Partnership for Peace program and the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council multilateral defence forum. In May 2022, Cyprus Defence Minister, Charalambos Petrides, confirmed that the country would not apply to NATO despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Withdrawal from NATO

text: However, the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia remain under British control as a British Overseas Territory.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: Home Movie: The Princess Bride is an American comedy miniseries directed by Jason Reitman, a "fan made" recreation of the 1987 film "The Princess Bride". Produced while the participating actors were isolating themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, it is filmed in a deliberately DIY fashion, with an ensemble cast recording their scenes on their own smartphones, and multiple actors playing the most prominent roles. It features the final screen performance of Carl Reiner, the father of the original film's director Rob Reiner. It premiered in short installments in June and July 2020, on Quibi.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: The "Home Movie" version of the film follows the same fundamental plot. In contemporary times, a grandfather reads the story of "The Princess Bride" to his dismissive sick grandson. In the story, set in medieval times in the fictional country of Florin, Buttercup and her farmhand Westley fall in love. Westley goes off to seek his fortune to marry Buttercup but she soon learns of his death at the hands of the Dread Pirate Roberts, and comes to accept the marriage proposal of Prince Humperdinck. Near her wedding day, three scoundrels, Vizzini, Inigo Montoya, and Fezzik, abduct Buttercup at the request of Humperdinck to make it appear as an act from a neighboring kingdom and pretense to start a war. They are chased by the Man in Black, later revealed to be the Dread Pirate Roberts. Roberts beats and spares Inigo and Fezzik, and survives a poison challenge from Vizzini to free Buttercup. He reveals that he is actually Westley, that the "Dread Pirate Roberts" is a title passed along from one holder to the next, and that he had come after hearing that Buttercup's life is in danger. The two are soon caught by Humperdinck and Count Tyrone Rugen.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: Humperdinck returns Buttercup to the castle to prepare for the wedding, claiming that Westley returned to the sea, when in reality, Rugen has taken Westley to be tortured in a secret chamber. When Buttercup refused to show any love for Humperdinck, Humperdinck uses Rugen's torture device to apparently kill Westley. Inigo and Fezzik, having reunited near the castle, hear Westley's final screams, discover his body, and take him to Miracle Max. Max finds Westley clings to life due to his true love for Buttercup and helps resuscitate him. Westley, still half-prone from being nearly dead, devises a plan with Inigo and Fezzik to interrupt the wedding to rescue Buttercup. Inigo, learning that Rugen is his father's killer, gets revenge by killing Rugen after a long fight. Fezzik helps Westley to Buttercup's room. Westley wounds Humperdinck to shame him before he, Buttercup, and Fezzik flee with Inigo. The grandson, who had told the grandfather to skip all the kissing parts in the book before, allows him to read the final kissing scene in the book.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: Reitman came up with the idea in March 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine, of remaking the 1987 film "The Princess Bride" with actors performing in their own homes. He saw it as a way to raise money for World Central Kitchen to support restaurants that were also struggling under the pandemic, allowing them to operate and provide meals to poor families. Reitman talked to Jeffrey Katzenberg about it, who made a million-dollar donation to the charity, and arranged to stream the final product on the upcoming Quibi streaming service. Reitman created a proof of concept scene with himself and his daughter recreating the initial scene with the grandfather and the boy that leads off the film, and used that to gain approval from Norman Lear, who owned the rights to the film, and the estate of William Goldman, which controlled the rights to the original story. Reitman was also able to get the rights to the film's score from Mark Knopfler.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: The series was filmed by the actors at their homes during quarantine. Actors provided their own props and costumes, and swapped roles between scenes. Each actor filmed their own side of a scene in isolation, due to social distancing guidelines, with the exception of cohabitating couples such as Chris Pine and Annabelle Wallis, Common and Tiffany Haddish, Sam Rockwell and Leslie Bibb, Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka, Brandon Routh and Courtney Ford, and Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas, who filmed their scenes together. Special effects were created in a humorously homemade manner; sets were recreated in miniature form with LEGO and an R.O.U.S. ("rodent of unusual size") is represented by Sophie Turner's corgi. Reitman provided minimal direction to the actors outside of answering a few questions.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: Fred Savage plays the grandson in the opening scene, making him the only actor from the original film to reprise his original role. Cary Elwes, who starred as Westley in the original film, appears in the final confrontation between Westley and Humperdinck, but instead plays Humperdinck (opposite Paul Rudd). Rob Reiner, director of the original film, appears in the production in two roles. He is one of the actors playing the grandfather in the opening bookend scene, reading the film's fairy-tale story to his grandson (played in this segment by Josh Gad). He also appears in the closing bookend scene as the grandson, with his father Carl Reiner now playing the loving grandfather and speaking the film's catchphrase "as you wish" (which means "I love you"). Carl Reiner died three days after recording his scene, and the work as a whole is dedicated to him.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: Mark Knopfler's score is performed by Ethan Gruska, Blake Mills, Bad Suns, Mateo Messina, Phoebe Bridgers, Bahamas, Sylvan Esso, Alex Ebert, Beulahbelle, and Perfume Genius.


title: Home Movie: The Princess Bride

text: The series was announced on June 26, 2020. The film was released in short segments – the Quibi service's usual format – with the first installment appearing on June 29.


title: Stucco

text: Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture. Stucco can be applied on construction materials such as metal, expanded metal lath, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe for decorative and structural purposes.


title: Stucco

text: In English, "stucco" sometimes refers to a coating for the outside of a building and "plaster" to a coating for interiors; as described below, however, the materials themselves often have little to no differences. Other European languages, notably Italian, do not have the same distinction; "stucco" means "plaster" in Italian and serves for both.


title: Stucco

text: The difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Until the latter part of the nineteenth century, it was common that plaster, which was used inside a building, and stucco, which was used outside, would consist of the same primary materials: lime and sand (which are also used in mortar). Animal or plant fibers were often added for additional strength. In the latter nineteenth century, Portland cement was added with increasing frequency in an attempt to improve the durability of stucco. At the same time, traditional lime plasters were being replaced by gypsum plaster.


title: Stucco

text: Traditional stucco is made of lime, sand, and water. Modern stucco is made of Portland cement, sand, and water. Lime is added to increase the permeability and workability of modern stucco. Sometimes additives such as acrylics and glass fibers are added to improve the structural properties of the stucco. This is usually done with what is considered a one-coat stucco system, as opposed to the traditional three-coat method.


title: Stucco

text: Lime stucco is a relatively hard material that can be broken or chipped by hand without too much difficulty. The lime itself is usually white; color comes from the aggregate or any added pigments. Lime stucco has the property of being self-healing to a limited degree because of the slight water solubility of lime (which in solution can be deposited in cracks, where it solidifies). Portland cement stucco is very hard and brittle and can easily crack if the base on which it is applied is not stable. Typically its color was gray, from the innate color of most Portland cement, but white Portland cement is also used. Today's stucco manufacturers offer a very wide range of colors that can be mixed integrally in the finish coat. Other materials such as stone and glass chips are sometimes "dashed" onto the finish coat before drying, with the finished product commonly known as "rock dash", "pebble dash", or also as roughcast if the stones are incorporated directly into the stucco, used mainly from the early 20th through the early 21st centuries.


title: Stucco

text: As a building material, stucco is a durable, attractive, and weather-resistant wall covering. It was traditionally used as both an interior and exterior finish applied in one or two thin layers directly over a solid masonry, brick, or stone surface. The finish coat usually contained an integral color and was typically textured for appearance.


title: Stucco

text: Then with the introduction and development of heavy timber and light wood-framed construction methods, stucco was adapted for this new use by adding a reinforcement lattice, or lath, attached to and spanning between the structural supports and by increasing the thickness and number of layers of the total system. The lath added support for the wet plaster and tensile strength to the brittle, cured stucco; while the increased thickness and number of layers helped control cracking.


title: Stucco

text: The traditional application of stucco and lath occurs in three coats—the scratch coat, the brown coat and the finish coat. The two base coats of plaster are either hand-applied or machine sprayed. The finish coat can be troweled smooth, hand-textured, floated to a sand finish or sprayed.


title: Stucco

text: Originally, the lath material was strips of wood installed horizontally on the wall, with spaces between, that would support the wet plaster until it cured. This lath and plaster technique became widely used.


title: Stucco

text: In exterior wall applications, the lath is installed over a weather-resistant asphalt-impregnated felt or paper sheet that protects the framing from the moisture that can pass through the porous stucco.


title: Stucco

text: Following World War II, the introduction of metal wire mesh, or netting, replaced the use of wood lath. Galvanizing the wire made it corrosion resistant and suitable for exterior wall applications. At the beginning of the 21st century, this "traditional" method of wire mesh lath and three coats of exterior plaster was still widely used.


title: Stucco

text: In some parts of the United States with a warmer climate (like California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida), stucco is the predominant exterior for both residential and commercial construction. Stucco exterior (with wood frame interior) became a popular alternative in the southwestern United States during the 1970s, as the masonry labor costs for adobe rose.


title: Stucco

text: Stucco has also been used as a sculptural and artistic material. Stucco relief was used in the architectural decoration schemes of many ancient cultures. Examples of Egyptian, Minoan, and Etruscan stucco reliefs remain extant. In the art of Mesopotamia and ancient Persian art there was a widespread tradition of figurative and ornamental internal stucco reliefs, which continued into Islamic art, for example in Abbasid Samarra, now using geometrical and plant-based ornament. As the arabesque reached its full maturity, carved stucco remained a very common medium for decoration and calligraphic inscriptions. Indian architecture used stucco as a material for sculpture in an architectural context. It is rare in the countryside.


title: Stucco

text: In Roman art of the late Republic and early Empire, stucco was used extensively for the decoration of vaults. Though marble was the preferred sculptural medium in most regards, stucco was better for use in vaults because it was lighter and better suited to adapt to the curvature of the ceiling. Baroque and Rococo architecture makes heavy use of stucco. Examples can be found in churches and palaces, where stucco is mostly used to provide a smooth, decorative transition from walls to ceiling, decorating and giving measure to ceiling surfaces. Stucco is an integral part of the art of belcomposto, the Baroque concept that integrates the three classic arts, architecture, sculpture, and painting.


title: Stucco

text: The Greco-Buddhist art of modern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan made extensive use in monasteries and temples of stucco for three-dimensional monumental sculpture as well as reliefs. These were usually carved from a rough modelling over a framework and then painted. Similar techniques are used for the life-size statues decorating the gopurams of Hindu temples in modern South Asia.


title: Stucco

text: Since stucco can be used for decoration as well as for figurative representation, it provides an ideal transitive link from architectural details to wall paintings such as the typically Baroque "trompe-l'œil" ceilings, as in the work of the Wessobrunner School. Here, the real architecture of the church is visually extended into a heavenly architecture with a depiction of Christ, the Virgin Mary or the Last Judgment at the center. Stucco is used to form a semi-plastic extension of the real architecture that merges into the painted architecture.


title: Stucco

text: Because of its "aristocratic" appearance, Baroque-looking stucco decoration was used frequently in upper-class apartments of the 19th and early 20th century.


title: Stucco

text: Beginning in the 1920s, stucco, especially in its Neo-Renaissance and Neo-Baroque materialization, became increasingly unpopular with modern architects in some countries, resulting not only in new buildings without stucco but also in a widespread to remove the stucco from existing tenements.


title: Stucco

text: Stucco was still employed in the 1950s in molded forms for decorating the joints between walls and ceilings inside houses. It was generally painted the same colour as the ceiling and used in designs where a picture rail or rat rail was in use.


title: Stucco

text: Modern stucco is used as an exterior cement plaster wall covering. It is usually a mix of sand, Portland cement, lime and water, but may also consist of a proprietary mix of additives including fibers and synthetic acrylics that add strength and flexibility. Modern synthetic stucco can be applied as one base layer and a finish layer, which is thinner and faster to apply, compared to the traditional application of three-coat stucco. Imitation stone stucco can also be produced using the traditional application, but with marble dust being added to the mixture.


title: Stucco

text: As with any cement-based material, stucco must be reinforced to resist movement cracking. Plastic or wire mesh lath, attached with nails or screws to the structural framing, is embedded into the base coat to provide stiffening for the stucco. One method often used to help conceal the smaller surface cracks that may appear is the application of one of a variety of pre-mixed acrylic finishes. Flexible acrylic finishes have the ability to stretch and bridge over cracks, improving appearance and limiting the passage of moisture behind the stucco.


title: Stucco

text: Where stucco is to be applied to a structure of wood-framing or light-gauge steel framing, the framing is protected from moisture damage by applying a cement based primer, or a vapor-permeable, water-resistant weather barrier; typically an asphalt-saturated paper or one of a variety of manufactured plastic-based sheets, known as "building wraps" or "stucco wraps". The properties of the weather barrier must not only protect the framing from rain and moisture, but at the same time allow the free passage of any water vapor generated inside the building to escape through the wall.


title: Stucco

text: A wide variety of stucco accessories, such as weep screeds, control and expansion joints, corner-aids and architectural reveals are sometimes also incorporated into the lath. Wire lath is used to give the plaster something to attach to and to add strength. Types include expanded-metal lath, woven-wire lath, and welded-wire lath.


title: Stucco

text: The first layer of plaster is called a "scratch coat", consisting of plastic cement and sand. A trowel is used to scratch the surface horizontally or in a crisscross pattern to provide a key for the second layer. A brush is not used because it will cause delamination. The first coat is allowed to dry (cure) before the second layer is applied.


title: Stucco

text: The next layer is called the "brown coat" or leveling coat. It also consists of sand, cement, and lime. It is leveled with tools called "darbies", "rods", and "feathereges", scraped smooth, and floated to provide a smooth, even surface onto which the finish coat is applied. It is then allowed to dry (cure) for 7–10 days minimum to allow "checking" (shrinkage) and cracking to take place.