title: Charlotte Le Bon

text: Le Bon's first role in an English-language film was in "The Hundred-Foot Journey" (2014), a romantic comedy directed by Lasse Hallström in which she plays a chef-in-training at an upscale French restaurant alongside Helen Mirren. Le Bon was cast with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in "The Walk", a film directed by Robert Zemeckis and based on Philippe Petit's famous tightrope walk in 1974, released in 2015. In 2015, she dubbed the voice of Joy in both the French and Quebec French dubs of the Pixar film "Inside Out".


title: Charlotte Le Bon

text: In 2016, she appeared in six films. "The Promise" matched her with Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac in a story based on events that occurred during the Armenian Genocide. She also played in the science fiction film" Realive", the World War II film "Anthropoid", and the action movie "Bastille Day" with Idris Elba. She also maintained her profile in France by starring in two French films, "Arctic Heart" and "Iris" (where she reunited with director Jalil Lespert).


title: Charlotte Le Bon

text: Le Bon made her directorial debut with the short film "Judith Hotel", which premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Her feature film directorial debut "Falcon Lake", adapted from the graphic novel "Une sœur" by Bastien Vivès, premiered in the Director's Fortnight program at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. It also screened at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival. For her work on "Falcon Lake", LeBon won the award for Emerging Canadian Director at the 2022 Vancouver International Film Festival.


title: Charlotte Le Bon

text: Trained in the field of visual arts, Le Bon has actively pursued a parallel career as an illustrator and street artist. She began as an artist for Spank, an online magazine founded by her on-air colleague at Canal+ Raphaël Cioffi, who hired her to do drawings to accompany certain articles. As part of the 2011 commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the March for Equality and Against Racism, she collaborated with French artist JR in organizing the Inside Out Project, in which 2500 black & white portraits were posted in Lyon on 2 December 2013. She subsequently maintained a sporadic involvement in street art by creating works that allow audience interaction, such as moons on strings that can be unhooked by passers-by (on the streets of Paris and in New York City's Rikers Island prison). In September 2016, she confirmed her return to illustrating with an exhibit called "One Bedroom Hotel on the Moon" at Anne-Dominique Toussaint's Galerie Cinéma in Paris. In an interview with "The New York Times", she explained that this exhibit symbolizes the merging of melancholy and hope: "the expression of a poetic isolation".


title: Suzanna Son

text: Suzanna Son (born October 31, 1995) is an American film actress, adult actress, model and musician known for the role of Strawberry in "Red Rocket." She has been nominated for a Gotham Award and an Independent Spirit Award.


title: Suzanna Son

text: Son was born in Hamilton, Montana but grew up in Washington state. She attended Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle where she majored in classical music before changing her major to musical theatre. She ultimately dropped out during her second year.


title: Suzanna Son

text: Son then pursued a career in the porn industry by starting an OnlyFans account in 2016, before signing a contract with IncestFlix in 2017. She has done a small number of videos, and has been on hiatus ever since.


title: Suzanna Son

text: In 2018, Son was approached by director Sean Baker outside a screening of Gus Van Sant’s "Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot" at the Arclight Hollywood Cinema. Baker asked her to audition for his upcoming film but did not call her back for two years. When Baker discovered that she taught piano, he wrote a scene for her to sing a slow ballad cover version of the NSYNC song "Bye Bye Bye". Son also performed an original song in case they were unable to secure the rights to the song, but all five members of NSYNC approved of the cover. Son's version was released on various music streaming services to promote the film.


title: Suzanna Son

text: Son has been nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Breakthrough Performer and an Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Actress.


title: Suzanna Son

text: In November 2021 Son joined the cast of the HBO music-industry drama series "The Idol" opposite The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp. On April 27, 2022, Deadline reported that she was one of the cast members not expected to return after a forced hiatus, due to a change in the show's creative directions. On August 21, Son appeared in the official teaser trailer.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Armando Joseph Catalano (January 14, 1924 – April 30, 1989), better known as Guy Williams, was an American actor. He played swashbuckling action heroes in the 1950s and 1960s.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Among his most notable achievements were two TV series: "Zorro" in the title role, and as the father of the Robinson family on the popular sci-fi series "Lost in Space".


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: During most of the 1970s, Guy Williams frequently visited and worked in television shows in Argentina, where he was most revered. He retired in the early 1980s in Buenos Aires, where he died of a brain aneurysm in 1989.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Guy Williams was born of Sicilian parentage on January 14, 1924, as Armando Joseph Catalano in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His parents, insurance broker Attilio Catalano and Clara Arcara, were from the island of Sicily, and were by then living in poverty. Attilio was the son of a wealthy timber grower in Messina, who purchased land in New Jersey. Williams grew up in the Little Italy neighborhood of The Bronx.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In Public School 189, Williams stood out in mathematics. Later, he attended George Washington High School, while he occasionally worked at a soda fountain. He then left to attend the Peekskill Military Academy, where he was an enthusiastic student. His interests included American football and chess.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Williams wanted to be an actor, spurred by his good looks and 6'3" height. When he decided not to continue studying, his mother, who later became an executive of a foreign film company, was disappointed because it was expected that he would follow in his father's footsteps as an insurance broker.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: After working as a welder, cost accountant and aircraft-parts inspector during World War II, Williams became a salesman in the luggage department at Wanamaker's. While there, he decided to send his photos to a modeling agency. He quickly found great success with assignments resulting in photographs in newspapers and magazines, including "Harper's Bazaar" as well as on billboards and book covers. He then adopted the name Guy Williams (1940s) on the advice of his agent Henry Wilson after a director refused to cast him because of his on-screen moniker, Guido Armando, that sounded "too foreign".


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1946, he signed a single-year contract offered by MGM and moved to Hollywood. Williams had a featured role as a pilot in the film "The Beginning or the End" (1947), about the first U.S. deployed atom bomb. He appeared in only a few films and soon moved back to New York.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1948, to advertise cigarettes while skiing, Williams did an extensive filming trip accompanied by Janice Cooper, a John Robert Powers model. During the long photographic sessions, they fell in love, marrying on December 8, just after they returned to New York City. They had two children, Guy Steven Catalano (aka Guy Williams Jr.) and Antoinette Catalano (aka Toni Williams); both became actors.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: By 1950, Williams was filming some of the pioneering television commercials in the U.S. His father died in 1951, never to witness his son's rise to fame. In 1952, Williams obtained a new one-year contract with Universal-International and moved to Hollywood. He also appeared in an episode of the Lone Ranger, playing town sheriff.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1953, he suffered a serious accident when he fell from a horse and was dragged over 200 yards, resulting in a long scar on his left shoulder. Because of this he returned to New York to continue acting and modeling there and temporarily abandoned his film career. In 1953, he left Universal and became a freelancer for movies produced by Allied Artists and Warner Brothers.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Early in 1957, Williams appeared twice in the role of Steve Clay in the television series "Men of Annapolis", a military drama set at the United States Naval Academy. He also appeared in the Rod Cameron drama "State Trooper" in the episode "No Fancy Cowboys" about the defrauding of guests at a dude ranch.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: About this time, the Walt Disney Company was casting for "Zorro", a television series based on the character created in 1919 by Johnston McCulley: the young nobleman Don Diego de la Vega and his masked alter ego Zorro. To play the main character, the chosen actor would have to be handsome and have some experience with fencing. Walt Disney interviewed Guy Williams, telling him to start growing a mustache "neither very long or thick." The exclusive contract paid Williams the then very high wage of $2,500 per week, equal to $ today. Williams resumed his professional training in fencing with the Belgian champion Fred Cavens (who also trained Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power), since the show required sword fights in most episodes. He also took guitar lessons with the famous Vicente Gomez. Williams's first appearance as Zorro was on the Disney anthology television series "The Fourth Anniversary Show", wherein he challenged the notion that Zorro was a "fictional" character.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: The series of half-hour episodes debuted on ABC on October 10, 1957. It was an instant hit in the U.S. Seventy-eight episodes were produced over two seasons (1957–1959), and two movies were edited from TV episodes: "The Sign of Zorro" (1958) and "Zorro the Avenger" (1959). The theme song was composed by Norman Foster and George Bruns and performed by The Mellomen; it reached #17 on the Hit Parade. In 1959, a legal dispute arose between Disney and ABC, causing a hiatus and the eventual cancellation of "Zorro". However, four hour-long episodes were produced with the original primary cast, including Williams. These episodes were released as part of the "Walt Disney Presents" series between October 30, 1960, and April 12, 1961.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: On March 5, 1959, as "Zorro" was ending its original run, Williams was a guest star, along with Sally Brophy and Tom Nolan on "The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford."


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1962, Williams played Sir Miles Hendon in the Walt Disney's "The Prince and the Pauper", shot in England.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1964, Guy Williams returned to Hollywood to resume his career, being added to the cast of the hit TV series "Bonanza" as Ben's nephew Will Cartwright. Williams found himself written out of the series after five episodes despite being slated to become one of the four permanent leads. His character had been created as a replacement for Adam Cartwright, since actor Pernell Roberts planned to leave the show at the end of that season, thus allowing the format with four regular leads to continue. Fans wrote in to keep the original Cartwrights and producers held Roberts to his contract and kept him on for another season.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1965, Guy Williams returned to weekly television in the popular science-fiction series "Lost in Space".


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: Guy Williams played Professor John Robinson, an expert in astrophysics and geology, who commanded the mission of the "Jupiter 2" spaceship, taking his family in a voyage to colonize the Alpha Centauri star system.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: After "Lost in Space", Guy Williams decided to retire in order to better enjoy his wealth which had been generated by investments in several businesses, buying and selling on the stock market.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: When Williams had first visited Argentina in 1973, he was taken by the admiration and fascination the Argentine people expressed for him and his character of El Zorro. In return, Williams fell in love with the culture and people of Argentina. In the late 1970s, he retired, except for personal appearances, to Recoleta, an upscale neighborhood of Buenos Aires.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In subsequent years, Williams also brought to Argentina some of the original cast members of the "Zorro" series, including Henry Calvin who performed as Sergeant Garcia. Williams even formed a circus (Circo Real Madrid) with the local fencing champion -and later actor- Fernando Lupiz, traveling all over South America (1977).


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1983, Williams returned to Los Angeles for two final television appearances. He joined "Lost in Space" cast members June Lockhart, Angela Cartwright, Bob May and Marta Kristen for two celebrity episodes of "Family Feud" against the casts of "Batman" and "Gilligan's Island" respectively. He later appeared as a guest on "Good Morning America".


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: In 1989, after spending solitary months in Argentina, it was reported that Williams had disappeared. The local police searched his apartment in Recoleta on May 6, 1989, finding his body. He had died of a brain aneurysm. Owing to his great popularity in Argentina, his ashes lay for two years at the Argentine Actors' Society cemetery at La Chacarita Cemetery, Actor Pantheon & Crypt 278. In 1991, in accordance with his wishes, Williams's ashes were spread over the Pacific Ocean in Malibu, California.


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: A number of books have been written which feature Williams, particularly in his role as Zorro. This includes the "Zorro Television Companion", detailing the making of the Disney series, as well as a biography by Antoinette Girgenti Lane, "Guy Williams: The Man Behind the Mask" (2005).


title: Guy Williams (actor)

text: A collection of original Zorro short stories, some inspired specifically by Guy Williams, was edited by Richard Dean Starr and released in 2008. It includes an introduction by Guy Williams Jr. (with Matthew Baugh) and an afterword by Isabel Allende. The cover art on the trade paperback edition by Douglas Klauba was a homage to Guy Williams.


title: Crop circle

text: A crop circle, crop formation, or corn circle is a pattern created by flattening a crop, usually a cereal. The term was first coined in the early 1980s by Colin Andrews. Crop circles have been described as all falling "within the range of the sort of thing done in hoaxes" by Taner Edis, professor of physics at Truman State University. Although obscure natural causes or alien origins of crop circles are suggested by fringe theorists, there is no scientific evidence for such explanations, and all crop circles are consistent with human causation.


title: Crop circle

text: The number of reports of crop circles has substantially increased since the 1970s. There has been scant scientific study of them. Circles in the United Kingdom are not distributed randomly across the landscape but appear near roads, areas of medium to dense population and cultural heritage monuments, such as Stonehenge or Avebury. In 1991, two hoaxers, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, took credit for having created many circles throughout England after one of their circles was described by an investigator as impossible for human beings to make.


title: Crop circle

text: Formations are usually created overnight, although some are reported to have appeared during the day. In contrast to crop circles or crop formations, archaeological remains can cause cropmarks in the fields in the shapes of circles and squares, but they do not appear overnight, and they are always in the same places every year. Nearly half of all crop circles found in the UK in 2003 were located within a radius of the Avebury stone circles.


title: Crop circle

text: A 1678 news pamphlet "The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News Out of Hartfordshire" is claimed by some crop circle devotees to be the first depiction of a crop circle. Crop circle researcher Jim Schnabel does not consider it to be a historical precedent because it describes the stalks as being cut rather than bent (see folklore section).


title: Crop circle

text: In 1686, an English naturalist, Robert Plot, reported on rings or arcs of mushrooms (see fairy rings) in "The Natural History of Stafford-Shire" and proposed air flows from the sky as a cause. In 1991 meteorologist Terence Meaden linked this report with modern crop circles, a claim that has been compared with those made by Erich von Däniken.


title: Crop circle

text: An 1880 letter to the editor of "Nature" by amateur scientist John Rand Capron describes how several circles of flattened crops in a field were formed under suspicious circumstances and possibly caused by "cyclonic wind action", stating "as viewed from a distance, circular spots (...) they all presented much the same character, viz, a few standing stalks as a centre, some prostrate stalks with their heads arranged pretty evenly in a direction forming a circle round the centre, and outside there a circular wall of stalks which had not suffered".


title: Crop circle

text: In 1932, the archaeologist E. C. Curwen observed four dark rings in a field at Stoughton Down near Chichester, but could examine only one: "a circle in which the barley was 'lodged' or beaten down, while the interior area was very slightly mounded up."


title: Crop circle

text: In 1963, Patrick Moore described a crater in a potato field in Wiltshire that he considered was probably caused by an unknown meteoric body. In nearby wheat fields, there were several circular and elliptical areas where the wheat had been flattened. There was evidence of "spiral flattening". He thought they could be caused by air currents from the impact, since they led towards the crater. Astronomer Hugh Ernest Butler observed similar craters and said they were likely caused by lightning strikes.


title: Crop circle

text: During the 1960s, there were many reports of UFO sightings and circular formations in swamp reeds and sugarcane fields in Tully, Queensland, Australia, and in Canada. For example, on 8 August 1967, three circles were found in a field in Duhamel, Alberta, Canada; Department of National Defence investigators concluded that it was artificial but couldn't say who made them or how. The most famous case is the 1966 Tully "saucer nest", when a farmer said he witnessed a saucer-shaped craft rise 30 or from a swamp and then fly away. On investigating he found a nearly circular area 32 feet long by 25 feet wide where the grass was flattened in clockwise curves to water level within the circle, and the reeds had been uprooted from the mud. The local police officer, the Royal Australian Air Force, and the University of Queensland concluded that it was most probably caused by natural causes, like a down draught, a willy-willy (dust devil), or a waterspout. In 1973, G.J. Odgers, Director of Public Relations, Department of Defence (Air Office), wrote to a journalist that the "saucer" was probably debris lifted by the causing willy-willy.


title: Crop circle

text: British pranksters Doug Bower and Dave Chorley claim to have started creating crop circles in British cornfields in 1978, inspired by the Tully "saucer nest" case..


title: Crop circle

text: The first film to depict a geometric crop circle, in this case created by super-intelligent ants, is the 1974 science-fiction film "Phase IV". The film has been cited as a possible inspiration or influence on the pranksters who started this phenomenon.


title: Crop circle

text: Since the 1960s, there has been a surge of UFOlogists in Wiltshire, and there were rumours of "saucer nests" appearing in the area, but they were never photographed. There are other pre-1970s reports of circular formations, especially in Australia and Canada, but they were always simple circles, which could have been caused by whirlwinds. In "Fortean Times" David Wood reported that in 1940 he had already made crop circles near Gloucestershire using ropes. In 1997, the "Oxford English Dictionary" recorded the earliest usage of the term "crop circles" in a 1988 issue of "Journal of Meteorology", referring to a BBC film. The coining of the term "crop circle" is attributed to Colin Andrews in the late 1970s or early 1980s.


title: Crop circle

text: The majority of reports of crop circles have appeared and spread since the late 1970s as many circles began appearing throughout the English countryside. This phenomenon became widely known in the late 1980s, after the media started to report crop circles in Hampshire and Wiltshire. After Bower's and Chorley's 1991 statement that they were responsible for many of them, circles started appearing all over the world. To date, approximately 10,000 crop circles have been reported internationally, from locations such as the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Japan, the U.S., and Canada. Sceptics note a correlation between crop circles, recent media coverage, and the absence of fencing and/or anti-trespassing legislation.


title: Crop circle

text: Although farmers expressed concern at the damage caused to their crops, local response to the appearance of crop circles was often enthusiastic, with locals taking advantage of the increase of tourism and visits from scientists, crop circle researchers, and individuals seeking spiritual experiences. The market for crop-circle interest consequently generated bus or helicopter tours of circle sites, walking tours, T-shirts, and book sales.


title: Crop circle

text: Since the start of the 21st century, crop formations have increased in size and complexity, with some featuring as many as 2,000 different shapes and some incorporating complex mathematical and scientific characteristics.


title: Crop circle

text: The researcher Jeremy Northcote found that crop circles in the UK in 2002, were not spread randomly across the landscape. They tended to appear near roads, areas of medium-to-dense population, and cultural heritage monuments such as Stonehenge or Avebury. He found that they always appeared in areas that were easy to access. This suggests strongly that these crop circles were more likely to be caused by intentional human action than by paranormal activity. Another strong indication of that theory was that inhabitants of the zone with the most circles had a historical tendency for making large-scale formations, including stone circles such as Stonehenge, burial mounds such as Silbury Hill, long barrows such as West Kennet Long Barrow, and .


title: Crop circle

text: In 1991, two self-professed pranksters, Doug Bower and Dave Chorley, made headlines by claiming that it was they who started the phenomenon in 1978 with the use of simple tools consisting of a plank of wood, rope, and a baseball cap fitted with a loop of wire to help them walk in straight lines. To prove their case they made a circle in front of journalists; a "cereologist" (advocate of paranormal explanations of crop circles), Pat Delgado, examined the circle and declared it authentic before it was revealed that it was a hoax. Inspired by Australian crop circle accounts from 1966, Bower and Chorley claimed to be responsible for all circles made prior to 1987, and for more than 200 crop circles in 1978–1991 (with 1,000 other circles not being made by them). Writing in "Physics World", Richard Taylor of the University of Oregon said that "the pictographs they created inspired a second wave of crop artists. Far from fizzling out, crop circles have evolved into an international phenomenon, with hundreds of sophisticated pictographs now appearing annually around the globe."


title: Crop circle

text: After reports of simple circles in the 1970s, increasingly complex geometric designs have been created by anonymous artists, in some cases to attract tourists to an area.


title: Crop circle

text: Since the early 1990s, the UK arts collective Circlemakers, founded by Rod Dickinson and John Lundberg, and subsequently including Wil Russell and Rob Irving, has been creating crop circles in the UK and around the world as part of its art practice and also for commercial clients.


title: Crop circle

text: The Led Zeppelin Boxed Set that was released on 7 September 1990, along with the remasters of the first boxed set, as well as the second boxed set, all feature an image of a crop circle that appeared in East Field in Alton Barnes, Wiltshire.


title: Crop circle

text: On the night of 11–12 July 1992, a crop-circle-making competition with a prize of £3,000 (funded in part by the Arthur Koestler Foundation) was held in Berkshire. The winning entry was produced by three Westland Helicopters engineers, using rope, PVC pipe, a plank, string, a telescopic device and two stepladders. According to Rupert Sheldrake, the competition was organised by him and John Michell and "co-sponsored by The Guardian and The Cerealogist". The prize money came from "PM", a German magazine. Sheldrake wrote that "The experiment was conclusive. Humans could indeed make all the features of state-of-the-art crop formations at that time. Eleven of the twelve teams made more or less impressive formations that followed the set design."


title: Crop circle

text: In 2002, Discovery Channel commissioned five aeronautics and astronautics graduate students from MIT to create crop circles of their own, aiming to duplicate some of the features claimed to distinguish "real" crop circles from the known fakes such as those created by Bower and Chorley. The creation of the circle was recorded and used in the Discovery Channel documentary "Crop Circles: Mysteries in the Fields".


title: Crop circle

text: In 2009, "The Guardian" reported that crop circle activity had been waning around Wiltshire, in part because makers preferred creating promotional crop circles for companies that paid well for their efforts.


title: Crop circle

text: A video sequence used in connection with the opening of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London showed two crop circles in the shape of the Olympic rings. Another Olympic crop circle was visible to passengers landing at nearby Heathrow Airport before and during the Games.


title: Crop circle

text: A crop circle depicting the emblem of the "Star Wars" Rebel Alliance was created in California in December 2017 by a father and his 11-year-old son as a spaceport for X-wing fighters.


title: Crop circle

text: In 1992, Gábor Takács and Róbert Dallos, both then aged 17, were the first people to face legal action after creating a crop circle. Takács and Dallos, of the St. Stephen Agricultural Technicum, a high school in Hungary specializing in agriculture, created a diameter crop circle in a wheat field near Székesfehérvár, southwest of Budapest, on June 8, 1992. On September 3 the pair appeared on Hungarian TV and exposed the circle as a hoax, showing photos of the field before and after the circle was made. As a result, Aranykalász Co., the owners of the land, sued the teens for 630,000 Ft (~$3,000 USD) in damages. The presiding judge ruled that the students were only responsible for the damage caused in the circle itself, amounting to about 6,000 Ft (~$30 USD), and that 99% of the damage to the crops was caused by the thousands of visitors who flocked to Székesfehérvár following the media's promotion of the circle. The fine was eventually paid by the TV show, as were the students' legal fees.


title: Crop circle

text: In 2000, Matthew Williams became the first man in the UK to be arrested for causing criminal damage after making a crop circle near Devizes. In November 2000, he was fined £100 and £40 in costs. , no one else has been successfully prosecuted in the UK for criminal damage caused by creating crop circles.


title: Crop circle

text: The scientific consensus on crop circles is that they are constructed by human beings as hoaxes, advertising, or art. The most widely known method for a person or group to construct a crop formation is to tie one end of a rope to an anchor point and the other end to a board which is used to crush the plants. Skeptics of the paranormal point out that all characteristics of crop circles are fully compatible with their being made by hoaxers.


title: Crop circle

text: Bower and Chorley confessed in 1991 to making the first crop circles in southern England. When some people refused to believe them, they deliberately added straight lines and squares to show that they could not have natural causes. In a copycat effect, increasingly complex circles started appearing in many countries around the world, including fractal figures. Physicists have suggested that the most complex formations might be made with the help of GPS and lasers. In 2009, a circle formation was made over the course of three consecutive nights and was apparently left unfinished, with some half-made circles.


title: Crop circle

text: The main criticism of alleged non-human creation of crop circles is that while evidence of these origins, besides eyewitness testimonies, is essentially absent, some are definitely known to be the work of human pranksters, and others can be adequately explained as such. There have been cases in which researchers declared crop circles to be "the real thing", only to be confronted with the people who created the circle and documented the fraud, like Bower and Chorley and tabloid "Today" hoaxing Pat Delgado, the Wessex Sceptics and Channel 4's "Equinox" hoaxing Terence Meaden, or a friend of a Canadian farmer hoaxing a field researcher of the Canadian Crop Circle Research Network. In his 1997 book "The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark", Carl Sagan concludes that crop circles were created by Bower and Chorley and their copycats, and speculates that UFOlogists willingly ignore the evidence for hoaxing so they can keep believing in an extraterrestrial origin of the circles. Many others have demonstrated how complex crop circles can be created. "Scientific American" published an article by Matt Ridley, who started making crop circles in northern England in 1991. He wrote about how easy it is to develop techniques using simple tools that can easily fool later observers. He reported on "expert" sources such as "The Wall Street Journal", who had been easily fooled and mused about why people want to believe supernatural explanations for phenomena that are not yet explained. Methods of creating a crop circle are now well documented on the Internet.


title: Crop circle

text: Some crop formations are paid for by companies who use them as advertising. Many crop circles show human symbols, like the heart and arrow symbol of love, and stereotyped alien faces.


title: Crop circle

text: Hoaxers have been caught in the process of making new circles, such as in 2004 in the Netherlands for example (see more cases in "legal implications" section above).


title: Crop circle

text: Advocates of non-human causes discount on-site evidence of human involvement as attempts to discredit the phenomena. Some even argue a conspiracy theory, with governments planting evidence of hoaxing to muddle the origins of the circles. When Ridley wrote negative articles in newspapers, he was accused of spreading "government disinformation" and of working for the UK military intelligence service MI5. Ridley responded by noting that many cereologists make good livings from selling books and providing high-priced personal tours through crop fields, and he claimed that they have vested interests in rejecting what is by far the most likely explanation for the circles.


title: Crop circle

text: In science magazines from the 1980s and 1990s, for example "Science Illustrated", one could read reports suggesting that the plants were bent by something that could be microwave radiation, rather than broken by physical impact. The magazines also contained serious reports of the absence of human influence and measurement of unusual radiation. Today, this is considered to be pseudoscience, while at the time it was subject of serious research. At that time, it was also more likely that an unknown factor was behind the incidents, not least seen in light of the fact that GPS was not available to the public.


title: Crop circle

text: Patterns similar to crop circles can also be made in snow, by using skis, snow shoes or just walking with ordinary shoes.


title: Crop circle

text: Images can be made in forests by cutting trees, especially in areas with snow. Celebrating the Olympic Games in Lillehammer, Norway in 1994, a 360 meter tall stylized image of an Olympic torch runner was made in a forest close to one of the arenas.


title: Crop circle

text: It has been suggested that crop circles may be the result of extraordinary meteorological phenomena ranging from freak tornadoes to ball lightning, but there is no evidence of any crop circle being created by any of these causes.


title: Crop circle

text: In 1880, an amateur scientist, John Rand Capron, wrote a letter to the editor of journal "Nature" about some circles in crops and blamed them on a recent storm, saying their shape was "suggestive of some cyclonic wind action".


title: Crop circle

text: In 1980, Terence Meaden, a meteorologist and physicist, proposed that the circles were caused by whirlwinds whose course was affected by southern England hills. As circles became more complex, Terence had to create increasingly complex theories, blaming an electromagneto-hydrodynamic "plasma vortex". The meteorological theory became popular, and it was even referenced in 1991 by physicist Stephen Hawking who said that, "Corn circles are either hoaxes or formed by vortex movement of air". The weather theory suffered a serious blow in 1991, but Hawking's point about hoaxes was supported when Bower and Chorley stated that they had been responsible for making all those circles. By the end of 1991 Meaden conceded that those circles that had complex designs were made by hoaxers.


title: Crop circle

text: Since becoming the focus of widespread media attention in the 1980s, crop circles have become the subject of speculation by various paranormal, ufological, and anomalistic investigators ranging from proposals that they were created by bizarre meteorological phenomena to messages from extraterrestrial beings. There has also been speculation that crop circles have a relation to ley lines. Many New Age groups incorporate crop circles into their belief systems.


title: Crop circle

text: Some paranormal advocates think that crop circles are caused by ball lighting and that the patterns are so complex that they have to be controlled by some entity. Some proposed entities are: Gaia asking to stop global warming and human pollution, God, supernatural beings (for example Indian devas), the collective minds of humanity through a proposed "quantum field", or extraterrestrial beings.


title: Crop circle

text: Responding to local beliefs that "extraterrestrial beings" in UFOs were responsible for crop circles appearing, the Indonesian National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (LAPAN) described crop circles as "man-made". Thomas Djamaluddin, research professor of astronomy and astrophysics at LAPAN stated, "We have come to agree that this 'thing' cannot be scientifically proven." Among others, paranormal enthusiasts, ufologists, and anomalistic investigators have offered hypothetical explanations that have been criticized as pseudoscientific by sceptical groups and scientists, including the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. No credible evidence of extraterrestrial origin has been presented.


title: Crop circle

text: In 2009, the attorney general for the island state of Tasmania stated that Australian wallabies had been found creating crop circles in fields of opium poppies, which are grown legally for medicinal use, after consuming some of the opiate-laden poppies and running in circles.


title: Crop circle

text: A small number of scientists (physicist Eltjo Haselhoff, the late biophysicist William Levengood) have found differences between the crops inside the circles and outside them, citing this as evidence they were not man-made.


title: Crop circle

text: Levengood published papers in journal "Physiologia Plantarum" in 1994 and 1999. In his 1994 paper he found that certain deformities in the grain inside the circles were correlated to the position of the grain inside the circle. In 1996 sceptic Joe Nickell objected that correlation is not causation, raised several objections to Levengood's methods and assumptions, and said "Until his work is independently replicated by qualified scientists doing 'double-blind' studies and otherwise following stringent scientific protocols, there seems no need to take seriously the many dubious claims that Levengood makes, including his similar ones involving plants at alleged 'cattle mutilation' sites." (in reference to cattle mutilation).


title: Crop circle

text: In 2000, Colin Andrews, who had researched crop circles for 17 years, stated that while he believed 80% were man-made, he thought the remaining circles, with less elaborate designs, could be explained by a three-degree shift in the Earth's magnetic field, that creates a current that "electrocutes" the crops, causing them to flatten and form the circle.


title: Crop circle

text: Researchers of crop circles have linked modern crop circles to old folkloric tales to support the claim that they are not artificially produced. Crop circles are culture-dependent: they appear mostly in developed and secularized Western countries where people are receptive to New Age beliefs, including Japan, but they don't appear at all in other zones, such as Muslim countries.


title: Crop circle

text: Fungi can cause circular areas of crop to die, probably the origin of tales of "fairie rings". Tales also mention balls of light many times but never in relation to crop circles.


title: Crop circle

text: A 17th-century English woodcut called the "Mowing-Devil" depicts the devil with a scythe mowing (cutting) a circular design in a field of oats. The pamphlet containing the image states that the farmer, disgusted at the wage his mower was demanding for his work, insisted that he would rather have "the devil himself" perform the task. Crop circle researcher Jim Schnabel does not consider this to be a historical precedent for crop circles because the stalks were cut down, not bent. The circular form indicated to the farmer that it had been caused by the devil.


title: Crop circle

text: In the 1948 German story "Die zwölf Schwäne" ("The Twelve Swans"), a farmer every morning found a circular ring of flattened grain on his field. After several attempts, his son saw twelve princesses disguised as swans, who took off their disguises and danced in the field. Crop rings produced by fungi may have inspired such tales since folklore holds these rings are created by dancing wolves or fairies.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DNA is only a small portion of the DNA in a eukaryotic cell; most of the DNA can be found in the cell nucleus and, in plants and algae, also in plastids such as chloroplasts.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Human mitochondrial DNA was the first significant part of the human genome to be sequenced. This sequencing revealed that the human mtDNA includes 16,569 base pairs and encodes 13 proteins.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Since animal mtDNA evolves faster than nuclear genetic markers, it represents a mainstay of phylogenetics and evolutionary biology. It also permits an examination of the relatedness of populations, and so has become important in anthropology and biogeography.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA are thought to be of separate evolutionary origin, with the mtDNA being derived from the circular genomes of bacteria engulfed by the early ancestors of today's eukaryotic cells. This theory is called the endosymbiotic theory. In the cells of extant organisms, the vast majority of the proteins present in the mitochondria (numbering approximately 1500 different types in mammals) are coded for by nuclear DNA, but the genes for some, if not most, of them are thought to have originally been of bacterial origin, having since been transferred to the eukaryotic nucleus during evolution.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The reasons mitochondria have retained some genes are debated. The existence in some species of mitochondrion-derived organelles lacking a genome suggests that complete gene loss is possible, and transferring mitochondrial genes to the nucleus has several advantages. The difficulty of targeting remotely-produced hydrophobic protein products to the mitochondrion is one hypothesis for why some genes are retained in mtDNA; colocalisation for redox regulation is another, citing the desirability of localised control over mitochondrial machinery. Recent analysis of a wide range of mtDNA genomes suggests that both these features may dictate mitochondrial gene retention.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Across all organisms, there are six main genome types found in mitochondrial genomes, classified by their structure (i.e. circular versus linear), size, presence of introns or plasmid like structures, and whether the genetic material is a singular molecule or collection of homogeneous or heterogeneous molecules.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In many unicellular organisms (e.g., the ciliate "Tetrahymena" and the green alga "Chlamydomonas reinhardtii"), and in rare cases also in multicellular organisms (e.g. in some species of Cnidaria), the mtDNA is found as linearly organized DNA. Most of these linear mtDNAs possess telomerase-independent telomeres (i.e., the ends of the linear DNA) with different modes of replication, which have made them interesting objects of research because many of these unicellular organisms with linear mtDNA are known pathogens.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Most animals, specifically bilaterian animals, have a circular mitochondrial genome. Medusozoa and calcarea clades however have species with linear mitochondrial chromosomes.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In terms of base pairs, the anemone "Isarachnanthus nocturnus" has the largest mitochondrial genome of any animal at 80,923 bp.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In February 2020, a jellyfish-related parasite – "Henneguya salminicola" – was discovered that lacks mitochondrial genome but retains structures deemed mitochondrion-related organelles. Moreover, nuclear DNA genes involved in aerobic respiration and in mitochondrial DNA replication and transcription were either absent or present only as pseudogenes. This is the first multicellular organism known to have this absence of aerobic respiration and lives completely free of oxygen dependency.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: There are three different mitochondrial genome types found in plants and fungi. The first type is a circular genome that has introns (type 2) and may range from 19 to 1000 kbp in length. The second genome type is a circular genome (about 20–1000 kbp) that also has a plasmid-like structure (1 kb) (type 3). The final genome type that can be found in plants and fungi is a linear genome made up of homogeneous DNA molecules (type 5).


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Great variation in mtDNA gene content and size exists among fungi and plants, although there appears to be a core subset of genes that are present in all eukaryotes (except for the few that have no mitochondria at all). In Fungi, however, there is no single gene shared among all mitogenomes.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Some plant species have enormous mitochondrial genomes, with "Silene conica" mtDNA containing as many as 11,300,000 base pairs. Surprisingly, even those huge mtDNAs contain the same number and kinds of genes as related plants with much smaller mtDNAs.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The genome of the mitochondrion of the cucumber ("Cucumis sativus") consists of three circular chromosomes (lengths 1556, 84 and 45 kilobases), which are entirely or largely autonomous with regard to their replication.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Protists contain the most diverse mitochondrial genomes, with five different types found in this kingdom. Type 2, type 3 and type 5 mentioned in the plant and fungal genomes also exist in some protists, as do two unique genome types. One of these unique types is a heterogeneous collection of circular DNA molecules (type 4) while the other is a heterogeneous collection of linear molecules (type 6). Genome types 4 and 6 each range from 1–200 kbp in size.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The smallest mitochondrial genome sequenced to date is the 5,967 bp mtDNA of the parasite "Plasmodium falciparum".


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Endosymbiotic gene transfer, the process by which genes that were coded in the mitochondrial genome are transferred to the cell's main genome, likely explains why more complex organisms such as humans have smaller mitochondrial genomes than simpler organisms such as protists.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mitochondrial DNA is replicated by the DNA polymerase gamma complex which is composed of a 140 kDa catalytic DNA polymerase encoded by the "POLG" gene and two 55 kDa accessory subunits encoded by the "POLG2" gene. The replisome machinery is formed by DNA polymerase, TWINKLE and mitochondrial SSB proteins. TWINKLE is a helicase, which unwinds short stretches of dsDNA in the 5' to 3' direction. All these polypeptides are encoded in the nuclear genome.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: During embryogenesis, replication of mtDNA is strictly down-regulated from the fertilized oocyte through the preimplantation embryo. The resulting reduction in per-cell copy number of mtDNA plays a role in the mitochondrial bottleneck, exploiting cell-to-cell variability to ameliorate the inheritance of damaging mutations. According to Justin St. John and colleagues, "At the blastocyst stage, the onset of mtDNA replication is specific to the cells of the trophectoderm. In contrast, the cells of the inner cell mass restrict mtDNA replication until they receive the signals to differentiate to specific cell types."


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The two strands of the human mitochondrial DNA are distinguished as the heavy strand and the light strand. The heavy strand is rich in guanine and encodes 12 subunits of the oxidative phosphorylation system, two ribosomal RNAs (12S and 16S), and 14 transfer RNAs (tRNAs). The light strand encodes one subunit, and 8 tRNAs. So, altogether mtDNA encodes for two rRNAs, 22 tRNAs, and 13 protein subunits, all of which are involved in the oxidative phosphorylation process.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Between most (but not all) protein-coding regions, tRNAs are present (see the human mitochondrial genome map). During transcription, the tRNAs acquire their characteristic L-shape that gets recognized and cleaved by specific enzymes. With the mitochondrial RNA processing, individual mRNA, rRNA, and tRNA sequences are released from the primary transcript. Folded tRNAs therefore act as secondary structure punctuations.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The promoters for the initiation of the transcription of the heavy and light strands are located in the main non-coding region of the mtDNA called the displacement loop, the D-loop. There is evidence that the transcription of the mitochondrial rRNAs is regulated by the heavy-strand promoter 1 (HSP1), and the transcription of the polycistronic transcripts coding for the protein subunits are regulated by HSP2.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Measurement of the levels of the mtDNA-encoded RNAs in bovine tissues has shown that there are major differences in the expression of the mitochondrial RNAs relative to total tissue RNA. Among the 12 tissues examined the highest level of expression was observed in heart, followed by brain and steroidogenic tissue samples.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: As demonstrated by the effect of the trophic hormone ACTH on adrenal cortex cells, the expression of the mitochondrial genes may be strongly regulated by external factors, apparently to enhance the synthesis of mitochondrial proteins necessary for energy production. Interestingly, while the expression of protein-encoding genes was stimulated by ACTH, the levels of the mitochondrial 16S rRNA showed no significant change.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In most multicellular organisms, mtDNA is inherited from the mother (maternally inherited). Mechanisms for this include simple dilution (an egg contains on average 200,000 mtDNA molecules, whereas a healthy human sperm has been reported to contain on average 5 molecules), degradation of sperm mtDNA in the male genital tract and in the fertilized egg; and, at least in a few organisms, failure of sperm mtDNA to enter the egg. Whatever the mechanism, this single parent (uniparental inheritance) pattern of mtDNA inheritance is found in most animals, most plants and also in fungi.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In a study published in 2018, human babies were reported to inherit mtDNA from both their fathers and their mothers resulting in mtDNA heteroplasmy.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In sexual reproduction, mitochondria are normally inherited exclusively from the mother; the mitochondria in mammalian sperm are usually destroyed by the egg cell after fertilization. Also, mitochondria are only in the sperm tail, which is used for propelling the sperm cells and sometimes the tail is lost during fertilization. In 1999 it was reported that paternal sperm mitochondria (containing mtDNA) are marked with ubiquitin to select them for later destruction inside the embryo. Some "in vitro" fertilization techniques, particularly injecting a sperm into an oocyte, may interfere with this.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The fact that mitochondrial DNA is mostly maternally inherited enables genealogical researchers to trace maternal lineage far back in time. (Y-chromosomal DNA, paternally inherited, is used in an analogous way to determine the patrilineal history.) This is usually accomplished on human mitochondrial DNA by sequencing the hypervariable control regions (HVR1 or HVR2), and sometimes the complete molecule of the mitochondrial DNA, as a genealogical DNA test. HVR1, for example, consists of about 440 base pairs. These 440 base pairs are compared to the same regions of other individuals (either specific people or subjects in a database) to determine maternal lineage. Most often, the comparison is made with the revised Cambridge Reference Sequence. Vilà "et al." have published studies tracing the matrilineal descent of domestic dogs from wolves.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The concept of the Mitochondrial Eve is based on the same type of analysis, attempting to discover the origin of humanity by tracking the lineage back in time.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Entities subject to uniparental inheritance and with little to no recombination may be expected to be subject to Muller's ratchet, the accumulation of deleterious mutations until functionality is lost. Animal populations of mitochondria avoid this through a developmental process known as the mtDNA bottleneck. The bottleneck exploits random processes in the cell to increase the cell-to-cell variability in mutant load as an organism develops: a single egg cell with some proportion of mutant mtDNA thus produces an embryo in which different cells have different mutant loads. Cell-level selection may then act to remove those cells with more mutant mtDNA, leading to a stabilisation or reduction in mutant load between generations. The mechanism underlying the bottleneck is debated, with a recent mathematical and experimental metastudy providing evidence for a combination of the random partitioning of mtDNAs at cell divisions and the random turnover of mtDNA molecules within the cell.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Male mitochondrial DNA inheritance has been discovered in Plymouth Rock chickens. Evidence supports rare instances of male mitochondrial inheritance in some mammals as well. Specifically, documented occurrences exist for mice, where the male-inherited mitochondria were subsequently rejected. It has also been found in sheep, and in cloned cattle. Rare cases of male mitochondrial inheritance have been documented in humans. Although many of these cases involve cloned embryos or subsequent rejection of the paternal mitochondria, others document "in vivo" inheritance and persistence under lab conditions.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Doubly uniparental inheritance of mtDNA is observed in bivalve mollusks. In those species, females have only one type of mtDNA (F), whereas males have F type mtDNA in their somatic cells, but M type of mtDNA (which can be as much as 30% divergent) in germline cells. Paternally inherited mitochondria have additionally been reported in some insects such as fruit flies, honeybees, and periodical cicadas.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: An IVF technique known as mitochondrial donation or mitochondrial replacement therapy (MRT) results in offspring containing mtDNA from a donor female, and nuclear DNA from the mother and father. In the spindle transfer procedure, the nucleus of an egg is inserted into the cytoplasm of an egg from a donor female which has had its nucleus removed, but still contains the donor female's mtDNA. The composite egg is then fertilized with the male's sperm. The procedure is used when a woman with genetically defective mitochondria wishes to procreate and produce offspring with healthy mitochondria. The first known child to be born as a result of mitochondrial donation was a boy born to a Jordanian couple in Mexico on 6 April 2016.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The concept that mtDNA is particularly susceptible to reactive oxygen species generated by the respiratory chain due to its proximity remains controversial. mtDNA does not accumulate any more oxidative base damage than nuclear DNA. It has been reported that at least some types of oxidative DNA damage are repaired more efficiently in mitochondria than they are in the nucleus. mtDNA is packaged with proteins which appear to be as protective as proteins of the nuclear chromatin. Moreover, mitochondria evolved a unique mechanism which maintains mtDNA integrity through degradation of excessively damaged genomes followed by replication of intact/repaired mtDNA. This mechanism is not present in the nucleus and is enabled by multiple copies of mtDNA present in mitochondria. The outcome of mutation in mtDNA may be an alteration in the coding instructions for some proteins, which may have an effect on organism metabolism and/or fitness.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mutations of mitochondrial DNA can lead to a number of illnesses including exercise intolerance and Kearns–Sayre syndrome (KSS), which causes a person to lose full function of heart, eye, and muscle movements. Some evidence suggests that they might be major contributors to the aging process and age-associated pathologies. Particularly in the context of disease, the proportion of mutant mtDNA molecules in a cell is termed heteroplasmy. The within-cell and between-cell distributions of heteroplasmy dictate the onset and severity of disease and are influenced by complicated stochastic processes within the cell and during development.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mutations in mitochondrial tRNAs can be responsible for severe diseases like the MELAS and MERRF syndromes.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mutations in nuclear genes that encode proteins that mitochondria use can also contribute to mitochondrial diseases. These diseases do not follow mitochondrial inheritance patterns, but instead follow Mendelian inheritance patterns.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Recently a mutation in mtDNA has been used to help diagnose prostate cancer in patients with negative prostate biopsy.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: mtDNA alterations can be detected in the bio-fluids of patients with cancer. mtDNA is characterized by the high rate of polymorphisms and mutations. Some of which are increasingly recognized as an important cause of human pathology such as oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) disorders, maternally inherited diabetes and deafness (MIDD), Type 2 diabetes mellitus, Neurodegenerative disease, heart failure and cancer.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Though the idea is controversial, some evidence suggests a link between aging and mitochondrial genome dysfunction. In essence, mutations in mtDNA upset a careful balance of reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and enzymatic ROS scavenging (by enzymes like superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase and others). However, some mutations that increase ROS production (e.g., by reducing antioxidant defenses) in worms increase, rather than decrease, their longevity. Also, naked mole rats, rodents about the size of mice, live about eight times longer than mice despite having reduced, compared to mice, antioxidant defenses and increased oxidative damage to biomolecules. Once, there was thought to be a positive feedback loop at work (a 'Vicious Cycle'); as mitochondrial DNA accumulates genetic damage caused by free radicals, the mitochondria lose function and leak free radicals into the cytosol. A decrease in mitochondrial function reduces overall metabolic efficiency. However, this concept was conclusively disproved when it was demonstrated that mice, which were genetically altered to accumulate mtDNA mutations at accelerated rate do age prematurely, but their tissues do not produce more ROS as predicted by the 'Vicious Cycle' hypothesis. Supporting a link between longevity and mitochondrial DNA, some studies have found correlations between biochemical properties of the mitochondrial DNA and the longevity of species. Extensive research is being conducted to further investigate this link and methods to combat aging. Presently, gene therapy and nutraceutical supplementation are popular areas of ongoing research. Bjelakovic et al. analyzed the results of 78 studies between 1977 and 2012, involving a total of 296,707 participants, and concluded that antioxidant supplements do not reduce all-cause mortality nor extend lifespan, while some of them, such as beta carotene, vitamin E, and higher doses of vitamin A, may actually increase mortality.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In a recent study, it was showed that dietary restriction can reverse aging alterations by affecting the accumulation of mtDNA damage in several organs of rats. For example, dietary restriction prevented age-related accumulation of mtDNA damage in the cortex and decreased it in the lung and testis.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The brains of individuals with Alzheimer’s disease have elevated levels of oxidative DNA damage in both nuclear DNA and mtDNA, but the mtDNA has approximately 10-fold higher levels than nuclear DNA. It has been proposed that aged mitochondria is the critical factor in the origin of neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In Huntington’s disease, mutant huntingtin protein causes mitochondrial dysfunction involving inhibition of mitochondrial electron transport, higher levels of reactive oxygen species and increased oxidative stress. Mutant huntingtin protein promotes oxidative damage to mtDNA, as well as nuclear DNA, that may contribute to Huntington’s disease pathology.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The DNA oxidation product 8-oxoguanine (8-oxoG) is a well-established marker of oxidative DNA damage. In persons with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), the enzymes that normally repair 8-oxoG DNA damages in the mtDNA of spinal motor neurons are impaired. Thus oxidative damage to mtDNA of motor neurons may be a significant factor in the etiology of ALS.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Over the past decade, an Israeli research group led by Professor Vadim Fraifeld has shown that strong and significant correlations exist between the mtDNA base composition and animal species-specific maximum life spans. As demonstrated in their work, higher mtDNA guanine + cytosine content (GC%) strongly associates with longer maximum life spans across animal species. An additional observation is that the mtDNA GC% correlation with the maximum life spans is independent of the well-known correlation between animal species metabolic rate and maximum life spans. The mtDNA GC% and resting metabolic rate explain the differences in animal species maximum life spans in a multiplicative manner (i.e., species maximum life span = their mtDNA GC% * metabolic rate). To support the scientific community in carrying out comparative analyses between mtDNA features and longevity across animals, a dedicated database was built named MitoAge.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Deletion breakpoints frequently occur within or near regions showing non-canonical (non-B) conformations, namely hairpins, cruciforms and cloverleaf-like elements. Moreover, there is data supporting the involvement of helix-distorting intrinsically curved regions and long G-tetrads in eliciting instability events. In addition, higher breakpoint densities were consistently observed within GC-skewed regions and in the close vicinity of the degenerate sequence motif YMMYMNNMMHM.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Unlike nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents and in which genes are rearranged in the process of recombination, there is usually no change in mtDNA from parent to offspring. Although mtDNA also recombines, it does so with copies of itself within the same mitochondrion. Because of this and because the mutation rate of animal mtDNA is higher than that of nuclear DNA, mtDNA is a powerful tool for tracking ancestry through females (matrilineage) and has been used in this role to track the ancestry of many species back hundreds of generations.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: mtDNA testing can be used by forensic scientists in cases where nuclear DNA is severely degraded. Autosomal cells only have two copies of nuclear DNA, but can have hundreds of copies of mtDNA due to the multiple mitochondria present in each cell. This means highly degraded evidence that would not be beneficial for STR analysis could be used in mtDNA analysis. mtDNA may be present in bones, teeth, or hair, which could be the only remains left in the case of severe degradation. In contrast to STR analysis, mtDNA sequencing uses Sanger sequencing. The known sequence and questioned sequence are both compared to the Revised Cambridge Reference Sequence to generate their respective haplotypes. If the known sample sequence and questioned sequence originated from the same matriline, one would expect to see identical sequences and identical differences from the rCRS. Cases arise where there are no known samples to collect and the unknown sequence can be searched in a database such as EMPOP. The Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods recommends three conclusions for describing the differences between a known mtDNA sequence and a questioned mtDNA sequence: exclusion for two or more differences between the sequences, inconclusive if there is one nucleotide difference, or cannot exclude if there are no nucleotide differences between the two sequences.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The rapid mutation rate (in animals) makes mtDNA useful for assessing genetic relationships of individuals or groups within a species and also for identifying and quantifying the phylogeny (evolutionary relationships; see phylogenetics) among different species. To do this, biologists determine and then compare the mtDNA sequences from different individuals or species. Data from the comparisons is used to construct a network of relationships among the sequences, which provides an estimate of the relationships among the individuals or species from which the mtDNAs were taken. mtDNA can be used to estimate the relationship between both closely related and distantly related species. Due to the high mutation rate of mtDNA in animals, the 3rd positions of the codons change relatively rapidly, and thus provide information about the genetic distances among closely related individuals or species. On the other hand, the substitution rate of mt-proteins is very low, thus amino acid changes accumulate slowly (with corresponding slow changes at 1st and 2nd codon positions) and thus they provide information about the genetic distances of distantly related species. Statistical models that treat substitution rates among codon positions separately, can thus be used to simultaneously estimate phylogenies that contain both closely and distantly related species


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mitochondrial DNA was admitted into evidence for the first time ever in a United States courtroom in 1996 during "State of Tennessee v. Paul Ware".


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: In the 1998 United States court case of Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Patricia Lynne Rorrer, mitochondrial DNA was admitted into evidence in the State of Pennsylvania for the first time. The case was featured in episode 55 of season 5 of the true crime drama series Forensic Files (season 5).


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mitochondrial DNA was first admitted into evidence in California, United States, in the successful prosecution of David Westerfield for the 2002 kidnapping and murder of 7-year-old Danielle van Dam in San Diego: it was used for both human and dog identification. This was the first trial in the U.S. to admit canine DNA.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: The remains of King Richard III, who died in 1485, were identified by comparing his mtDNA with that of two matrilineal descendants of his sister who were alive in 2013, 527 years after he died.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: mtDNA is conserved across eukaryotic organism given the critical role of mitochondria in cellular respiration. However, due to less efficient DNA repair (compared to nuclear DNA) it has a relatively high mutation rate (but slow compared to other DNA regions such as microsatellites) which makes it useful for studying the evolutionary relationships—phylogeny—of organisms. Biologists can determine and then compare mtDNA sequences among different species and use the comparisons to build an evolutionary tree for the species examined.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: For instance, while most nuclear genes are nearly identical between humans and chimpanzees, their mitochondrial genomes are 9.8% different. Human and gorilla mitochondrial genomes are 11.8% different, suggesting that we may be more similar to chimps than gorillas.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Whole genome sequences of more than 66,000 people revealed that most of them had some mitochondrial DNA inserted into their nuclear genomes. More than 90% of these nuclear-mitochondrial segments (NUMTs) were inserted into the nuclear genome within the last 5 or 6 million years, that is, after humans diverged from apes. Results indicate such transfers currently occur as frequent as once in every ~4,000 human births.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: It appears that organellar DNA is much more often transferred to nuclear DNA than previously thought. This observation also supports the idea of the endosymbiont theory that eukaryotes have evolved from endosymbionts which turned into organelles while transferring most of their DNA to the nucleus so that the organellar genome shrunk in the process.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Mitochondrial DNA was discovered in the 1960s by Margit M. K. Nass and Sylvan Nass by electron microscopy as DNase-sensitive threads inside mitochondria, and by Ellen Haslbrunner, Hans Tuppy and Gottfried Schatz by biochemical assays on highly purified mitochondrial fractions.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Several specialized databases have been founded to collect mitochondrial genome sequences and other information. Although most of them focus on sequence data, some of them include phylogenetic or functional information.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Genome-wide association studies can reveal associations of mtDNA genes and their mutations with phenotypes including lifespan and disease risks. In 2021, the largest, UK Biobank-based, genome-wide association study of mitochondrial DNA unveiled 260 new associations with phenotypes including lifespan and disease risks for e.g. type 2 diabetes.


title: Mitochondrial DNA

text: Several specialized databases exist that report polymorphisms and mutations in the human mitochondrial DNA, together with the assessment of their pathogenicity.


title: Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles of 2021

text: The "Billboard" Hot 100 is a chart that ranks the best-performing singles of the United States. Its data, published by "Billboard" magazine and compiled by Nielsen SoundScan, is based collectively on each single's weekly physical and digital sales, as well as airplay and streaming. At the end of a year, "Billboard" will publish an annual list of the 100 most successful songs throughout that year on the Hot 100 chart based on the information. For 2021, the list was published on December 2, calculated with data from November 21, 2020 to November 13, 2021.


text: "Billboard" named Olivia Rodrigo the top Hot 100 artist of 2021, the youngest female artist to achieve this honor, and the first female artist since Katy Perry in 2014. Rodrigo placed four songs on the list, all in the top 40; the highest ranked of them, "Good 4 U", placed at number five.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Brette Harrington (born 1992) is an American professional rock climber and alpinist based in Lake Tahoe, California and British Columbia, Canada. She was featured in the 2021 film "The Alpinist" alongside her late partner, Marc-André Leclerc. She is best known for the first free solo of the 760 meter (2,500-foot) "Chiaro di Luna" (5.11a) in Patagonia, for her development of new alpine climbing routes, and as the star of "Brette," a Reel Rock Film Tour short film.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington, the daughter of two skiers, grew up in Lake Tahoe. At two years old, she began learning to ski, and competed at slalom skiing from the age of five. As a teenager, she attended the Holderness School, a boarding school adjacent to the White Mountains of New Hampshire. While training in slopestyle skiing in high school, Harrington grew curious about rock climbing and joined the school's club.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington's rock climbing activities were centered around moderate outdoor climbing routes at New Hampshire locales like Rumney, Cathedral Ledges and White Horse. The club did not compete in climbing competitions. Harrington notes that club members found climbing "intrinsically special," engaging in its challenge for personal reasons.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington moved to Vancouver, Canada to attend the University of British Columbia. Initially, she continued slopestyle skiing, however serious injuries, including a broken neck at the age of 20, sidelined her. As a result, Harrington began to focus more on backcountry ski touring and climbing around Squamish, British Columbia.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington is an accomplished trad climber, with completed routes including Grand Illusion (5.13c) on Sugarloaf in Lake Tahoe, and The Free Muir (5.13c) on El Capitan in Yosemite, California. She is known for her multi-pitch technique and ability to develop new lines.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Starting around 2013, Harrington and partner Marc-André Leclerc began exploring and putting up first ascents in the mountains of western Canada. “Climbing around our home [in British Columbia], a lot of things haven’t been done yet,” Harrington noted. In 2014, she and Leclerc made the first ascent of "Straight No Chaser," a 1500m route (5.11/A1) in the Waddington Range of Canada. In 2016, Harrington, Leclerc and Ryan Johnson made the first ascent of the Northwest Turret (5.13a, A2) on Great Sail Peak of Baffin Island, Canada.


title: Brette Harrington

text: With fellow mountaineer Rose Pearson, Harrington established a new long alpine route, dubbed "Life Compass," up the west face of Mount Blane in Canada's Rocky Mountains in May of 2018. The new route was hailed as "one of the few climbs of this size and grade ever established in the Canadian Rockies by an all-women team."


title: Brette Harrington

text: In early April, 2019, Harrington, Ines Papert and Luka Lindič made the first ascent of a new route, "The Sound of Silence" on the East Face of Mt. Fay in the Rockies of Alberta, Canada. The 1100 m route was completed in a fast and light style with one night spent 75 m (250 ft) below the summit.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington gained recognition when, in February 2015, she free-soloed "Chiaro di Luna" (5.11a) on Aguja Saint Exupery, Patagonia. Although the route had been climbed before by Alex Huber in 2011, she was the first climber, male or female, to do so without the aid of any equipment or protection. The climb was ranked as one of the ten most legendary free solos to date. Fellow free soloist, Austin Howell wrote of the climb, "This is hands down one of the coolest free solos ever, and is notable because it's one of the few free solos that have been done on big mountains in Patagonia."


title: Brette Harrington

text: In 2017, Harrington made a failed attempt at "Riders on the Storm," on Torre Central del Paine, Patagonia. She and her climbing partner Mayan Smith-Gobat were able to work on some of the critical crux pitches, but were turned back from the summit by bad weather. "We were forced to use every technique we knew to get through the ice-covered and often run out climbing. Our goal then changed to just making it through the first half of “Riders on the Storm” in any style possible."


title: Brette Harrington

text: According to "Gripped Magazine" in 2016, Harrington was "one of the world’s leading crack and alpine climbers." She was noted for her ability to maintain physical and emotional control while undertaking challenging routes, and has gained fans for being a "bright firecracker who carries her joy on her face" and someone whose climbing soul "burns bright."


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington was the subject of a Reel Rock Film Tour short film, "Brette" in 2016"." Film-maker Nick Rosen of Reel Rock noted that he found the subject compelling as a story of a huge talent just emerging, "What's special here is that we captured the first year of full-time climbing of a woman who is probably going to be a legend. She's on the trajectory of being the Steph Davis of her generation."


title: Brette Harrington

text: Two of Harrington's 2018 routes were included as significant ascents that year by representatives for the "Piolets d'Or" prize, indicating possible contention for the prestigious award. These were "Devil's Paw," completed with Gabe Hayden, in Alaska, and Mount Blane, in the Canadian Rockies, completed with Rose Pearson.


title: Brette Harrington

text: In 2021, Harrington was featured in the film "The Alpinist", a documentary following the climbing career of Leclerc prior to his death. Filming was completed prior to the accident, but Harrington agreed to participate in some additional filming to talk about Leclerc over a year after his death that was included in the final cut.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Harrington's long-time partner, fellow alpinist Marc-André Leclerc, was confirmed dead after going missing during a climbing expedition near Juneau, Alaska in March 2018. Following Leclerc's death, Harrington devoted two years to working on alpine routes. She spent the first year processing Leclerc's death while she "was deep in the mountains". Harrington dedicated her May 2018 Mount Blane route to Leclerc, writing: "We have named it Life Compass for a number of reasons. Primarily because my life has taken such a sudden 180-degree turn since the loss of Marc in March and alpine climbing has been my guide. I dedicate this climb to my climbing mentor, partner, and love Marc-Andre who would probably solo it the following day ;) if he was here." Harrington's 2019 first ascent of "The Sound of Silence," completed with Luka Lindič, a former climbing partner of Leclerc and Ines Papert, was named in memory of Leclerc, who had previously been working on the route.


title: Brette Harrington

text: Brette Harrington is not related to climber Emily Harrington. She is a graduate of the University of British Columbia.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2016, "Coconut Connection" (5.12), Great Sail Peak, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada—First free ascent.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2016, "Northwest Turret" (5.13a, 22 pitches), Great Sail Peak, Baffin Island, Nunavut, Canada—Established route with Joshua Lavigne and Marc-André Leclerc.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2016, "Hidden Dragon" (5.12b/c), Chinese Puzzle Wall, Nesakwatch River Valley, British Columbia, Canada—Established route with Marc-André Leclerc. First free ascent.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2017, "Aurorophobia" (5.13+), Wiaparous River Valley, Alberta, Canada—Established route with Marc-André Leclerc, First Ascent.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2018, "Life Compass," Mount Blane, British Columbia—Established route with Rose Pearson. First ascent.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2019, "The Sound of Silence," Mt Fay, Alberta, Canada —First ascent, with Ines Papert and Luka Lindic.


title: Brette Harrington

text: 2021, "Mt. Niblock, northeast face", Banff National Park – Established route with Dylan Cunningham. First ascent.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Assassination Nation is a 2018 American satirical black comedy thriller film written and directed by Sam Levinson. It stars an ensemble cast led by Odessa Young, Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, and Abra. The film takes place in the fictional town of Salem, which devolves into chaos and violence after a computer hacker discovers and leaks personal secrets about many of its residents.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Development of the film began in October 2016, when it was announced as the independent label Foxtail Entertainment's first project. Casting announcements were made throughout 2017 and principal photography commenced in March 2017 and took place in New Orleans. Months later, Neon acquired the film rights with the Russo Brothers's AGBO.


title: Assassination Nation

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018 and was theatrically released in the United States on September 21, 2018, by Neon and AGBO in association with Refinery29. It has grossed $2.8 million worldwide and received mixed reviews from critics, who praised its "frenetic and visually stylish" action but criticized the thinly-written characters.


title: Assassination Nation

text: The film opens with a montage of trigger warnings that show brief scenes depicting topics including bullying, blood, abuse, classism, death, drinking, drug use, sexual content, toxic masculinity, the male gaze, homophobia, transphobia, guns, nationalism, racism, kidnapping, murder, attempted murder, swearing, torture, violence, gore, weapons, and fragile male egos.


title: Assassination Nation

text: In the town of Salem, Lily Colson is a high school senior who regularly hangs out with her three best friends, Bex Warren and sisters Em and Sarah Lacey. The friends go to a party where Bex hooks up with her crush Diamond, while Lily hangs out with her boyfriend Mark, simultaneously texting a man only known as Daddy behind his back. After having sex, Diamond tells Bex to keep their hookup a secret, as Bex is transgender.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Marty, a casual hacker, receives a message from an unknown hacker about Mayor Bartlett, a known anti-gay candidate. He reveals pictures of Bartlett engaging with male escorts and dressing up in women's clothing, which Marty forwards to the entire town. During the press conference in which he's supposed to address the facts, Bartlett publicly commits suicide. Salem High's kindhearted Principal Turrell is the next to be hacked, with pictures of his 6-year-old daughter in the bath making people view him as a pedophile. During the meeting with angry parents, he refuses to resign, intending to set things right for the students and do what is best for the school itself.


title: Assassination Nation

text: As the police question Marty about the hacks, a massive data dump of half the people in Salem is posted. Lily's classmate Grace discovers that her best friend Reagan has sent Grace's nude pictures to her boyfriends and they are now public; Grace strikes Reagan with a baseball bat during her cheerleading practice, rendering her comatose. Daddy is revealed to be Em and Sarah's neighbor Nick Mathers, who Lily used to babysit for. The lewd pictures and videos that Lily sent to Nick are made public when his information is leaked. As a result, she is exposed and humiliated by Mark, then disowned by her family. As she walks down her street, shunned, homeless, and miserable, she is harassed by a man in a truck who films and harasses her before chasing her with a knife. She subdues him with a shovel, before escaping to Em and Sarah's house.


title: Assassination Nation

text: A week later, most of the town has donned masks and taken up arms to get revenge on those they feel have wronged them. Nick, now leading a mob of vigilantes in masks, capture Marty, whom they torture into admitting that Lily's IP address seemed to be the source of the hacks. Before executing Marty, they upload a video of his forced confession. The masked assailants track Lily to Em and Sarah's house, where all four girls are staying, and break in. Their mother, Nance, shoots two of the marauders, but she is shot and killed. Led by Officer Richter, the mob drags Em and Sarah outside and puts them into a police car. Bex kills one of the attackers with a nail gun and escapes, while Lily hides in Nick's house.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Nick at first pretends to help Lily before brandishing a knife, intending to rape and kill her for exposing the townspeople’s secrets and causing the disintegration of his marriage and family. She manages to incapacitate him and hides in the bathroom, where she discovers Marty’s corpse. Nick manages to get inside, but after a brief struggle, Lily kills him with a razor blade. She discovers his large cache of weapons, which she uses to shoot and kill Richter and rescue Sarah and Em. Meanwhile, Bex is captured by Diamond's best friend, Johnny, who tries to force Diamond to hang her as retribution for his humiliation. Bex convinces him to spare her, so Johnny has him tied up. Lily, Em, and Sarah rescue Bex, dispatching Johnny’s friends. Johnny surrenders and begs for his life; Bex spares him and frees Diamond. Lily makes a video proclaiming her innocence and urging everyone in Salem to stand up and fight back against their tormentors; she is joined by a crowd of girls and young women.


title: Assassination Nation

text: After the battle for Salem, Lily's younger brother Donny, the mastermind behind the hacks, is charged for cyberterrorism, murder, and invasion of privacy. When he asked why he did it by his parents, Donny says it was "for the lulz." The Salem High marching band performs Miley Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" down a street littered with dead bodies and destroyed vehicles.


title: Assassination Nation

text: In October 2016, Matthew Malek and Anita Gou launched the independent label Foxtail Entertainment. The duo announced the film as their first project. David S. Goyer and Kevin Turen joined them to produce the film. It is also produced by Bron Studios and Phantom Four, in association with Creative Wealth Media.


title: Assassination Nation

text: After the premiere at Sundance Film Festival, Neon acquired the film rights. AGBO signed a deal with 30West, a company who acquired a majority stake in Neon, to co-distribute the film with Neon. In July 2018, Refinery29 also signed with Neon to co-distribute the film with them and AGBO.


title: Assassination Nation

text: In March 2017, Bella Thorne, Maude Apatow, Bill Skarsgård, Joel McHale, Colman Domingo and Noah Galvin joined the cast. In April 2017, Anika Noni Rose joined the cast for the role of Nance, an attractive woman with terrible taste in men, who has an unfortunate reputation in the conservative town of Salem.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Principal photography began in March 2017 in New Orleans. The sequence where the girls are attacked in Nance's home was shot in a single take using a crane.


title: Assassination Nation

text: The film's score was written by Ian Hultquist, who stated that Levinson gave him "a completely blank slate" to work with, doing experimentations in "slowing down, and degrading audio but still somehow keeping it musical" and at a certain point composing an entire soundtrack written in the style of Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western work. Along with Morricone, Hultquist singled out influence from Marco Beltrami's soundtrack for "Scream" and Cliff Martinez’s "dark synth stuff", as well as taking inspiration from pop songs by AIR, Kanye West, Lana Del Rey and Migos. A particular turning point for composition was when Levinson received from his friend Isabella Summers, who Hultquist also met as their bands Florence and the Machine and Passion Pit toured together, the song "Rage", which ended up in the soundtrack.


title: Assassination Nation

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2018. It was released in the United States on September 21, 2018 by Neon and AGBO in association with Refinery29.


title: Assassination Nation

text: "Assassination Nation" was released digitally and on Blu-ray and DVD on December 18, 2018 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.


title: Assassination Nation

text: , "Assassination Nation" has grossed $2 million in the United States and $847,617 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $2.9 million.


title: Assassination Nation

text: In the United States, "Assassination Nation" was released alongside "The House with a Clock in Its Walls", "Life Itself" and "Fahrenheit 11/9" and did poorly in theaters. The film was projected to gross around $4 million in its opening weekend from 1,403 theaters. However it ended up debuting to just $1 million, finishing 15th at the box office. Internationally, the film was released in only five countries as a limited theatrical release.


title: Assassination Nation

text: Neon's chief Tom Quinn acknowledged the film's unsatisfactory box office performance, saying "Sam Levinson has created a bold, visionary and ultimately cathartic response to the dumpster fire that is 2018. We're admittedly disappointed more people didn't come out this weekend, but those that did were loud and overwhelmingly positive. It's going to take more time for "Assassination Nation" to find its audience". Prior to the film release, analyst Jeff Bock compared the film to "Heathers", saying "There's people out there who like these "Heathers"-type of films, but they tend to be more popular on home entertainment platforms" and "They're more likely to be cult favorites than big box office hits".


title: Assassination Nation

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average of . The website's critical consensus reads, ""Assassination Nation" juggles exploitation and socially aware elements with mixed results, but genre fans may find it too stylish and viscerally energetic to ignore."


title: Assassination Nation

text: On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 56 out of 100, based on 28 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by PostTrak gave the film a 60% positive score and a 39% "definite recommend".


title: Christopher Lloyd (TV producer)

text: Christopher Lloyd (born June 18, 1960) is an American television producer and screenwriter. Lloyd is the co-creator and executive producer of the ABC mockumentary family sitcom "Modern Family", which he co-created and produced with Steven Levitan. Lloyd has had an extensive career on many series, primarily "Frasier".


title: Christopher Lloyd (TV producer)

text: Lloyd has won 12 Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on "Modern Family" and "Frasier". He holds the record for Primetime Emmy awards as either a comedy or drama series producer.


title: Christopher Lloyd (TV producer)

text: Lloyd began screenwriting with the first four seasons of "The Golden Girls". He then wrote for the comedy "Wings"; then "Frasier", where he became its showrunner. While he was executive producer, "Frasier" won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for five consecutive years, the first time any series had done so. Lloyd left "Frasier" after its seventh season, then returned to helm its final (eleventh) season. He then produced the series "Out of Practice" (where he first worked with "Modern Family" Ty Burrell); "Back To You"; and "Modern Family", which also won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series for five consecutive years. As a screenwriter, Lloyd's work includes the animated feature film "Flushed Away" (2006), for which he received an Annie Award. In 2000, he received an overall deal at Paramount. He quit in 2006 to join Fox in partnership with Steven Levitan.


title: Christopher Lloyd (TV producer)

text: Lloyd is the son of Arline and sitcom writer David Lloyd (1934–2009). Since 1995, he has been married to actress, writer, and voiceover performer Arleen Sorkin, with whom he has two sons, Eli and Owen.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The Abyssinian is a breed of domestic short-haired cat with a distinctive "ticked" tabby coat, in which individual hairs are banded with different colors. They are also known simply as Abys.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The source of the name is not because Ethiopia, formerly Abyssinia, is thought to be the original home of these cats, but because the first "Abyssinians" exhibited in shows in England were reported to have been imported to England from there. Its true origin — according to genetic studies — is likely to have been the coast of the Indian Ocean in parts of Southeast Asia, and its introduction to Abyssinia (and others) was through colonialists and merchants stopping through Calcutta.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: Although regarded as comparatively obscure in the past as a breed compared to others, the Abyssinian ranked in 2016 among the top five most popular breeds by The Cat Fancier Association and The International Cat Association.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The breed's distinctive appearance, seeming long, lean and finely colored compared to other cats, has been analogized to that of human fashion models. Personality-wise, the cats traditionally display active, curious attitudes in which they frequently follow owners around and encourage play. Their dog-like characteristics also involve a particular sense of affection and desire for interaction. Abys have a distinctive wildcat look with their ticked coat and large erect ears. They are a highly social breed and can be demanding of attention. They do well in multi-cat households due to their social nature. Not a snuggly lap cat, Abyssinians are in constant motion, either exploring or playing.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The earliest known Aby is in an exhibit still residing in the Leiden Zoological Museum in Holland. It was purchased around 1834-1836 from a supplier of small wild cat exhibits and was labeled by the museum founder as "Patrie, domestica India."


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The Abyssinian is a slender, fine-boned, medium-sized cat. The head is moderately wedge-shaped, with a slight break at the muzzle, and nose and chin ideally forming a straight vertical line when viewed in profile. They have alert, relatively large pointed ears. The eyes are almond-shaped and are gold, green, hazel or copper depending on coat color. The legs tend to be long in proportion to a graceful body, with small oval paws; the tail is likewise long and tapering.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: Abyssinian kittens are born with dark coats that gradually lighten as they mature, usually over several months. The adult coat should not be excessively short, and is ideally fine, dense, close-lying and silky to the touch. The ticked or agouti effect that is the trademark of the breed—genetically a variant of the tabby pattern—should be uniform over the body, although the ridge of the spine and tail, back of the hind legs and the pads of the paws are always noticeably darker. Each hair has a light base with three or four bands of additional color growing darker towards the tip. The base color should be as clear as possible; any extensive intermingling with grey is considered a serious fault. A tendency to white on the chin is common but likewise must be minimal. The typical tabby M-shaped marking is often found on the forehead.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The breed's original color standard is a warm deep reddish-brown base with black ticking, known as "usual" in the United Kingdom, "tawny" in Australia, and "ruddy" elsewhere. Sorrel (also called cinnamon or red), a lighter coppery base with chocolate brown ticking, is a unique mutation of this original pattern. Other variants have been introduced by outcrossing to the Burmese and other shorthaired breeds, notably blue (on a warm beige base) and fawn (on a softer creamy peach base). The less common chocolate and lilac are not recognized in the Cat Fancier's Association (CFA) breed standard but have been granted full champion status in The International Cat Association (TICA) and in the UK. The UK also recognizes the Silver Abyssinian, in which the base coat is a pure silvery white with black (called "usual silver"), blue, cream or sorrel ticking. Various other color combinations are in development, including the "torbie", in which a patched tortoiseshell pattern in any of these colors is visible under the tabby banding.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The breed owes their distinctive coat to a dominant mutant gene known as Ta. The first cat to have its entire genome published was an Abyssinian named Cinnamon.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: Abyssinians are a popular breed thanks in large part to their unusual intelligence and generally extroverted, playful, willful personalities. They are said to become depressed without constant activity and the attention of their owners. Veterinarian Joan O. Joshua has written that the "dog-like attachment to the owners" of Abyssinian and Burmese cats causes "greater dependence on human contacts". This stands in contrast to the mere "tolerant acceptance of human company" based around "comforts" that multiple other breeds display.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: With their interest in playing with their owners combined with their curious intelligence, Abyssinians are known as the "Clowns of the Cat Kingdom". They have an active, outgoing nature, yet tend to be quiet cats. They have soft chirrup-like vocalizations which do not sound like the expected "meow". They are affectionate and friendly toward people.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The breed can be prone to gingivitis, which can lead to more serious periodontitis. Familial renal amyloidosis or AA amyloidosis, a kidney disorder due to a mutation in the AA amyloid protein gene, has been seen in Abyssinians. The Abyssinian has had severe problems with blindness caused by a hereditary retinal degeneration due to mutations in the rdAc gene. However, the prevalence has been reduced from 45% to less than 4% in 2008 in the country of Sweden. With the widespread availability of rdAc mutation detection tests and services, such as those provided by the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory, it is possible to reduce the disease frequency in all populations of Abyssinian.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: The 2008 study "The Ascent of Cat Breeds: Genetic Evaluations of Breeds and Worldwide Random-bred Populations" by Lipinski et al. conducted at UC Davis by the team led by leading feline geneticist Dr Leslie Lyons found that the Abyssinian has a low level of genetic diversity, a heterozygosity value of 0.45 within a range of 0.34–0.69 for all breeds studied, and has genetic markers common to both Southeast Asian and Western breeds indicating that cats from both Asia and Europe were used to create the breed.


title: Abyssinian cat

text: Somali cats are the same genetic stock as Abyssinians but are recessive for a gene responsible for long-hair.


title: Hitman (2016 video game)

text: Hitman is a 2016 stealth video game that was developed by IO Interactive and was released episodically for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One from March to October 2016. The game, which has six episodes, is the sixth mainline entry in the "Hitman" franchise, the first installment of the "World of Assassination" trilogy, and the successor to "" (2012). The single-player story follows genetically-engineered assassin Agent 47 as he goes on a worldwide adventure and solves a mysterious series of seemingly unconnected assassinations. "Hitman" features a number of large, open-ended sandboxes that Agent 47 can freely explore. The game presents the player with various assassination opportunities, many of which are unconventional. IO Interactive introduced a "live component" to the game with new content being regularly delivered in downloadable form.


title: Hitman (2016 video game)

text: Square Enix Europe set up a Montréal studio to work on the next "Hitman" game, but IO Interactive returned to lead the game's development following the under-performance of "Absolution". The title was conceived as a re-imagining of the franchise as the team attempted to integrate the gameplay of "Absolution" with the open-endedness of earlier installments of the series. According to the team, "Hitman" is a puzzle game with action and stealth elements; the developers refined the simulation and artificial intelligence of each level. The game adopted an episodic model and the team envisioned the game as a service. It was marketed as a "World of Assassination" and provided a platform that would expand and evolve over time, and inspire a trilogy of games.