title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion was selected with the 48th overall pick by the Golden State Warriors in the 2020 NBA draft hosted on November 18, 2020.


title: Nico Mannion

text: On August 10, 2021, Mannion signed a two-year contract with Italian club Virtus Bologna of the Lega Basket Serie A, a team with the ambition of winning the EuroCup and qualify to the EuroLeague. The deal was closed in 24 hours after the end of the free agency. After having ousted Lietkabelis, Ulm and Valencia in the first three rounds of the playoffs, on 11 May 2022, Virtus defeated Frutti Extra Bursaspor by 80–67 at the Segafredo Arena, winning its first EuroCup and qualifying for the EuroLeague after 14 years. However, despite having ended the regular season at the first place and having ousted 3–0 both Pesaro and Tortona in the first two rounds of playoffs, Virtus was defeated 4–2 in the national finals by Olimpia Milano.


title: Nico Mannion

text: On 29 September 2022, after having ousted Milano in the semifinals, Virtus won its third Supercup, defeating 72–69 Banco di Sardegna Sassari and achieving a back-to-back, following the 2021 trophy.


title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion holds dual citizenship to the United States and Italy; his father is American from Salt Lake City, while his mother is Italian from Guidonia Montecelio. In 2017, he joined training camp with the United States national under-16 team and was a finalist for its 2017 FIBA Under-16 Americas Championship roster. After not making the team, he was contacted by the Italian Basketball Federation and joined the Italian national under-16 team at the 2017 FIBA Europe Under-16 Championship in Podgorica, Montenegro. Mannion made his debut on August 11, 2017, recording 15 points and seven assists in a 64–59 loss to France. Two days later, he posted 42 points, five rebounds, and six steals in 29 minutes in an 86–57 victory over Russia. Through seven games, Mannion averaged a tournament-high 19.9 points, 5.7 rebounds, 4.0 assists, and 3.0 steals per game, leading Italy to a ninth-place finish.


title: Nico Mannion

text: He debuted for the senior Italian national team at European qualifiers for the 2019 FIBA World Cup. In his sole appearance on July 1, 2018, Mannion scored nine points in 29 minutes in an 81–66 loss to the Netherlands, becoming the fourth-youngest player in team history at age 17.


title: Nico Mannion

text: Mannion is the son of an American father and an Italian mother. His father, Pace Mannion, is a former National Basketball Association (NBA) player who played for six NBA teams through the 1980s. He played professionally for various teams in Italy until his retirement in 2002. Most notably, he helped Italian club Pallacanestro Cantù win the 1991 FIBA Korać Cup. Mannion's mother, Gaia Bianchi, is a former volleyball player who played for the Italian national volleyball team. In high school, one of Mannion's teammates was current South Carolina Gamecocks quarterback Spencer Rattler. They helped lead Pinnacle High School to a state championship in 2017-18.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: The Stepfather is a 2009 American psychological thriller film and a remake of the 1987 film of the same name. The film was directed by Nelson McCormick and stars Dylan Walsh, Sela Ward, Penn Badgley, Amber Heard and Jon Tenney. The original was directed by Joseph Ruben and shot from a script by Donald Westlake. The films are loosely based on the crimes of mass murderer John List. It was released on October 16, 2009, receiving negative reviews from critics and grossing $31 million against its $20 million budget.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: In a suburban Utah house, Grady Edwards transforms himself in a bathroom. He shaves off his beard, dyes his hair, and removes his brown contact lenses. As he leaves the house, the camera reveals the bodies of his wife and her three children. As the police investigate, it is said that another family was murdered in a similar manner in New Jersey not long ago, which causes them to believe there is a serial killer on the loose.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Susan Harding, a recently divorced Oregon housewife, is shopping in a grocery store with her youngest children where she meets Grady, who introduces himself as David Harris, and claims that his wife and daughter were killed in a car accident. He charms her, and six months later, they are engaged to be married.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Susan's eldest son, Michael returns home from military school and is immediately suspicious of his mother's fiancé. David invites him down to the basement, where he has installed locked cabinets, and tries to befriend him over tequila shots. Michael's suspicions start when David uses the wrong name when mentioning his deceased daughter. After Susan says that Mrs. Cutters warned her that "America's Most Wanted" ran a profile on a serial killer who looks like David, David sneaks into Mrs. Cutters' house and throws her down her basement stairs, then suffocates her.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Susan's ex-husband Jay confronts David angrily about laying hands on his younger son, Sean. He warns Susan that she knows nothing about David. Doubts about David mount further when he quits his job working as a real estate agent for Susan's sister, Jackie, to avoid displaying a photo ID and other forms of identification. Later, Jay confronts David about an apparent lie regarding his college history. David clubs him with a vase and suffocates him with a plastic bag. He sends Michael a text with Jay's phone saying that David checked out okay.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: When the neighbor's body is discovered two weeks later, David tells the family. Michael is alarmed because he overheard David being told by the mailman, who gave less detail than David. While Michael's girlfriend, Kelly, tries to get him to focus on college applications, he grows more obsessed with the contradictions in David's stories. The situation comes to a head when David intercepts an email from Jackie about hiring an investigator. He then goes to Jackie's house and drowns her in her pool. Determined to discover what was in the locked cabinets, Michael breaks into the basement as Kelly keeps a lookout. In the basement, Michael eventually discovers his dad's body in a freezer. David knocks out Kelly and traps Michael in the basement. The commotion awakens Susan, and he berates her parenting skills and says that he thought she could be "Mrs. Grady Edwards". On Susan's stunned reaction, David grimaces and asks, "Who am I here?" Susan tries to snap him out of it by saying his name, causing him to say, "David! I'm David Harris!"


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Susan, realizing the situation after noticing the unconscious Kelly, flees to the bathroom, locking herself in. David kicks the door in, shattering the mirror behind it. Susan picks up a shard of the mirror, holding it behind her. David grabs her, they struggle, and she manages to stab him in the neck with the shard. He falls to the floor, apparently dead. Michael escapes from the basement and finds Kelly. They find Susan in the hallway across from the bathroom, thinking David is dead. Then David approaches from behind and blocks the stairs, chasing all of them into the attic, where he and Michael fight. Both fall onto the roof and then off the edge of the roof to the ground, where they lie unconscious.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: When Michael wakes up, he finds out he had been in a coma for just over a month. He learns that David is still alive and fled the scene before the police arrived. The end scene shows David, who has again changed his appearance and his name to Chris Ames. He is working at a hardware store when he meets a woman who is shopping with her two sons.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Terry O'Quinn who portrayed the stepfather in the first two installments of the series, was approached by director Nelson McCormick to appear in the remake in a cameo role, but according to producer Mark Morgan, O'Quinn turned down the offer. Filming was completed on April 15, 2008.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the film to DVD and Blu-ray on a special Unrated Directors Cut containing a few more special features and depicting each death in the film in a more graphic tone.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: It grossed $29.1 million in North America and $2.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $31.2 million, against its budget of $20 million. The film opened #5 at the box office, grossing $11.6 million in 2,734 theaters, with an average of $4,236 per theater.


title: The Stepfather (2009 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 11% based on 63 reviews and an average rating of 3.4/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "This tepid remake of the 1987 cult classic lacks the tension and satirical undercurrents of the original." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 33 out of 100 based on 11 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale. Kirk Honeycutt of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "This remake turns a fondly remembered horror/thriller into a mild and tedious suspense film." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote of the film being "a handsome, thoughtfully crafted production that generates a mounting terror securely anchored by assured performances, consistent psychological persuasiveness and believable dialogue."


title: Piano key frequencies

text: This is a list of the fundamental frequencies in hertz (cycles per second) of the keys of a modern 88-key standard or 108-key extended piano in twelve-tone equal temperament, with the 49th key, the fifth A (called A), tuned to 440 Hz (referred to as A440). Since every octave is made of twelve steps and since a jump of one octave doubles the frequency (for example, the fifth A is 440 Hz and the sixth A is 880 Hz), each successive pitch is derived by multiplying (ascending) or dividing (descending) the frequency of the previous pitch by the twelfth root of two (approximately 1.059463). For example, to get the frequency one semitone up from A (A), multiply 440 by the twelfth root of two. To go from A to B (up one whole tone, or two semitones), multiply 440 twice by the twelfth root of two (or once by the sixth root of two, approximately 1.122462). To go from A to C (which is a minor third), multiply 440 three times by the twelfth root of two (or once by the fourth root of two, approximately 1.189207). For other tuning schemes refer to musical tuning.


title: Piano key frequencies

text: This list of frequencies is for a theoretically ideal piano. On an actual piano the ratio between semitones is slightly larger, especially at the high and low ends, where string stiffness causes inharmonicity, i.e., the tendency for the harmonic makeup of each note to run sharp. To compensate for this, octaves are tuned slightly wide, stretched according to the inharmonic characteristics of each instrument. This deviation from equal temperament is called the Railsback curve.


title: Piano key frequencies

text: Conversely, starting from a frequency on the idealized standard piano tuned to A440, one obtains the key number by:


title: Piano key frequencies

text: Values in bold are exact on an ideal piano. Keys shaded gray are rare and only appear on extended pianos. The normally included 88 keys have been numbered 1–88, with the extra low keys numbered 89–97 and the extra high keys numbered 98–108. (A 108-key piano that extends from C to B was first built in 2018 by Stuart & Sons.)


title: Derek Jarman

text: Michael Derek Elworthy Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, gardener and gay rights activist.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman was born at the Royal Victoria Nursing Home in Northwood, Middlesex, England, the son of Elizabeth Evelyn ("née" Puttock) and Lancelot Elworthy Jarman. His father was a Royal Air Force officer, born in New Zealand.


title: Derek Jarman

text: After a prep school education at Hordle House School, Jarman went on to board at Canford School in Dorset and from 1960 studied at King's College London. This was followed by four years at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (UCL), starting in 1963. He had a studio at Butler's Wharf, London, in the 1970s. Jarman was outspoken about homosexuality, his public fight for gay rights, and his personal struggle with AIDS.


title: Derek Jarman

text: On 22 December 1986, Jarman was diagnosed as HIV positive and discussed his condition in public. His illness prompted him to move to Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, in Kent, near the nuclear power station. In 1994, he died of an AIDS-related illness in London, aged 52. He was an atheist. He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement's Church, Old Romney, Kent.


title: Derek Jarman

text: In his last years, Jarman was emotionally and practically supported by the companionship of Keith Collins, a young man he had met in 1987. While not lovers (Collins had his own partner), the friendship became essential for both of them. Jarman left Prospect Cottage to him.


title: Derek Jarman

text: A blue plaque commemorating Jarman was unveiled at Butler's Wharf in London on 19 February 2019, the 25th anniversary of his death.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman's first films were experimental Super 8mm shorts, a form he never entirely abandoned, and later developed further in his films "Imagining October" (1984), "The Angelic Conversation" (1985), "The Last of England" (1987) and "The Garden" (1990) as a parallel to his narrative work. "The Garden" was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film Festival. "The Angelic Conversation" featured Toby Mott and other members of the Grey Organisation, a radical artist collective.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman first became known as a stage designer. His break in the film industry came as production designer for Ken Russell's "The Devils" (1971). He made his mainstream narrative filmmaking debut with "Sebastiane" (1976), about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian. This was one of the first British films to feature positive images of gay sexuality; its dialogue was entirely in Latin.


title: Derek Jarman

text: He followed this with "Jubilee" (shot 1977, released 1978), in which Queen Elizabeth I of England is seen to be transported forward in time to a desolate and brutal wasteland ruled by her twentieth-century namesake. "Jubilee" has been described as "Britain's only decent punk film", and featured punk groups and figures such as Jayne County of Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Jordan, Toyah Willcox, Adam and the Ants and The Slits.


title: Derek Jarman

text: During the 1980s, Jarman was a leading campaigner against Clause 28, which sought to ban the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools. He also worked to raise awareness of AIDS. His artistic practice in the early 1980s reflected these commitments, especially in "The Angelic Conversation" (1985), a film in which the imagery is accompanied by Judi Dench's voice reciting Shakespeare's sonnets.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman spent seven years making experimental Super 8mm films and attempting to raise money for "Caravaggio" (he later claimed to have rewritten the script seventeen times during this period). Released in 1986, "Caravaggio" attracted a comparatively wide audience; it is still, barring the cult hit "Jubilee", probably Jarman's most widely known work. This is partly due to the involvement, for the first time with a Jarman film, of the British television company Channel 4 in funding and distribution. Funded by the British Film Institute and produced by film theorist Colin MacCabe, "Caravaggio" became Jarman's most famous film to date, and marked the beginning of a new phase in his filmmaking career: from then onwards, all his films would be partly funded by television companies, often receiving their most prominent exhibition in TV screenings. "Caravaggio" also saw Jarman work with actress Tilda Swinton for the first time. Overt depictions of homosexual love, narrative ambiguity, and the live representations of Caravaggio's most famous paintings are all prominent features in the film.


title: Derek Jarman

text: The conclusion of "Caravaggio" also marked the beginning of a temporary abandonment of traditional narrative in Jarman's films. Frustrated by the formality of 35mm film production, and by the dependence on institutions and the resultant prolonged inactivity associated with it (which had already cost him seven years with "Caravaggio", as well as derailing several long-term projects), Jarman returned to and expanded the super 8mm-based form he had previously worked in on "Imagining October" and "The Angelic Conversation". "Caravaggio" was entered into the 36th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement.


title: Derek Jarman

text: The first film to result from this new semi-narrative phase, "The Last of England" told the death of a country, ravaged by its own internal decay and the economic restructuring of Thatcher's government. "Wrenchingly beautiful … the film is one of the few commanding works of personal cinema in the late 80's – a call to open our eyes to a world violated by greed and repression, to see what irrevocable damage has been wrought on city, countryside and soul, how our skies, our bodies, have turned poisonous", wrote a "Village Voice" critic.


title: Derek Jarman

text: In 1989, Jarman's film "War Requiem" produced by Don Boyd brought Laurence Olivier out of retirement for what would be Olivier's last screen performance. The film uses Benjamin Britten's eponymous anti-war requiem as its soundtrack and juxtaposes violent footage of war with the mass for the dead and the passionate humanist poetry of Wilfred Owen.


title: Derek Jarman

text: During the making of his film "The Garden", Jarman became seriously ill. Although he recovered sufficiently to complete the work, he never attempted anything on a comparable scale afterwards, returning to a more pared-down form for his concluding narrative films, "Edward II" (perhaps his most politically outspoken work, informed by his gay activism) and the Brechtian "Wittgenstein", a delicate tragicomedy based on the life of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Jarman made a side income by directing music videos for various artists, including Marianne Faithfull, The Smiths and the Pet Shop Boys.


title: Derek Jarman

text: By the time of his 1993 film "Blue", Jarman was losing his sight and dying of AIDS-related complications. "Blue" consists of a single shot of saturated blue colour filling the screen, as background to a soundtrack composed by Simon Fisher Turner, and featuring original music by Coil and other artists, in which Jarman describes his life and vision. When it was shown on British television, Channel 4 carried the image whilst the soundtrack was broadcast simultaneously on BBC Radio 3. "Blue" was unveiled at the 1993 Venice Biennale with Jarman in attendance and subsequently entered the collections of the Walker Art Institute; Centre Georges Pompidou, MoMA and Tate. His final work as a film-maker was the film "Glitterbug", made for the "Arena" slot on BBC Two, and broadcast shortly after Jarman's death.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman's work broke new ground in creating and expanding the fledgling form of 'the pop video' in England (eg. using his father's WWII archival footage (one of the first people to use a color home movie camera which included the director as a toddler) on the early version of Wang Chung's "Dance Hall Days"), and in gay rights activism. Several volumes of his diaries have been published.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman also directed the 1989 tour by the UK duo Pet Shop Boys.> By pop concert standards this was a highly theatrical event with costume and specially shot films accompanying the individual songs. Jarman was the stage director of Sylvano Bussotti's opera "L'Ispirazione", first staged in Florence in 1988.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman is also remembered for his famous shingle cottage-garden at Prospect Cottage, created in the latter years of his life, in the shadow of Dungeness nuclear power station. The cottage is built in vernacular style in timber, with tar-based weatherproofing, like others nearby. Raised wooden text on the side of the cottage is the first stanza and the last five lines of the last stanza of John Donne's poem, "The Sun Rising". The cottage garden was made by arranging flotsam washed up nearby, interspersed with endemic salt-loving beach plants, both set against the bright shingle. The garden has been the subject of several books. At this time, Jarman also began painting again.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Jarman was the author of several books including his autobiography "Dancing Ledge" (1984), which details his life until the age 40. He provides his own insight on the history of gay life in London (60's-80's), discusses his own acceptance of his homosexuality at age 16 and accounts of the financial and emotional hardships of a life devoted to filmmaking. A collection of poetry "A Finger in the Fishes Mouth", two volumes of diaries "Modern Nature" and "Smiling In Slow Motion" and two treatises on his work in film and art "The Last of England" (also published as "Kicking the Pricks") and "Chroma".


title: Derek Jarman

text: Other notable published works include film scripts ("Up in the Air", "Blue", "War Requiem", "Caravaggio", "Queer Edward II" and "Wittgenstein: The Terry Eagleton Script/The Derek Jarman Film"), a study of his garden at Dungeness "Derek Jarman's Garden", and "At Your Own Risk", a defiant celebration of gay sexuality.


title: Derek Jarman

text: After his death, the band Chumbawamba released "Song for Derek Jarman" in his honour. Andi Sexgang released the CD "Last of England" as a Jarman tribute. The ambient experimental album "The Garden Is Full of Metal" by Robin Rimbaud included Jarman speech samples.


title: Derek Jarman

text: Manic Street Preachers' bassist Nicky Wire recorded a track titled "Derek Jarman's Garden" as a b-side to his single "Break My Heart Slowly" (2006). On his album "In the Mist", released in 2011, ambient composer Harold Budd features a song titled "The Art of Mirrors (after Derek Jarman)".


title: Derek Jarman

text: Coil, which in 1985 contributed a soundtrack for Jarman's "The Angelic Conversation" released the 7" single "Themes for Derek Jarman's Blue" in 1993. In 2004, Coil's Peter Christopherson performed his score for the Jarman short "The Art of Mirrors" as a tribute to Jarman live at L'étrange Festival in Paris. In 2015, record label Black Mass Rising released a recording of the performance. In 2018, composer Gregory Spears created a work for chorus and string quartet, titled "The Tower and the Garden", commissioned by conductors Donald Nally, Mark Shapiro, Robert Geary and Carmen-Helena Téllez, setting a poem by Keith Garebian from his collection "Blue: The Derek Jarman Poems" (2008).


title: Derek Jarman

text: The French musician and composer Romain Frequency released his first album "Research on a nameless colour" in 2020 as a tribute to Jarman's final collection of Essays “Chroma” released in 1994, the year he died and written while struggling with illness (facing the irony of an artist going blind).


title: Derek Jarman

text: The songs are devoted to an unexisting colour and their attendant emotion as a transposition of a certain contemplative state into sound.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running BBC Television science fiction series "Doctor Who" and two of its spin-offs. Sarah Jane is a dogged investigative journalist who first encounters alien time traveller The Doctor while trying to break a story on a top secret research facility, and subsequently becomes his travelling companion on a series of adventures spanning the breadth of space and time. After travelling with The Doctor in four seasons of the show they suddenly part ways, and after this she continues to investigate strange goings-on back on Earth. Over time, Sarah Jane establishes herself as a committed defender of Earth from alien invasions and other threats, occasionally reuniting with The Doctor in the course of her own adventures, all the while continuing to work as a freelance investigative journalist.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane is one of the Doctor's longest-serving companions, co-starring in 18 stories with the third and fourth incarnations of the Doctor, on the programme from 1973 to 1976 (seasons 11 – 14). She and robotic dog K9 appear in the 1981 television pilot "K-9 and Company". She returned in the 20th-anniversary Fifth Doctor story "The Five Doctors" (1983) and the 30th-anniversary story "Dimensions in Time" (1993), then co-starred in two BBC radio serials with the Third Doctor ("The Paradise of Death" and "The Ghosts of N-Space"), and starred in a series of spin-off audio dramas entitled "Sarah Jane Smith" for independent production company Big Finish. After the television revival of "Doctor Who" in 2005, she appears in several episodes with the Tenth Doctor, and as the central character of her own series "The Sarah Jane Adventures" from 2007 to 2011, which included appearances by both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: In April 2020, former "Doctor Who" showrunner Russell T Davies released an epilogue to Sarah Jane's story on the anniversary of Sladen's death, detailing various characters attending Sarah's funeral.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: "Doctor Who" producer Barry Letts offered the part of Sarah Jane to actress April Walker, who accepted the role and was duly contracted by the BBC. During rehearsals for "The Time Warrior", it became clear to Jon Pertwee and Letts that the two leads had little rapport and were physically mis-matched (it has been claimed that Pertwee demanded the part be recast, because he said he would not play opposite an actress who was taller than him). Letts therefore released Walker from her contract (though she was still paid in full for season 11). Although committed to not talking about the issue in her release agreement, Walker began to discuss the circumstances surrounding her casting decades later. After giving some written interviews to fanzines, in May 2020 Walker gave an on screen interview to 'Time Space Visualiser' giving much further detail about the circumstances, including revealing later work alongside Pertwee. Walker admitted that although she understood Pertwee's thinking, she told him she would never forgive him for what he had done. Letts began a second batch of auditions and saw Elisabeth Sladen after a recommendation from fellow BBC producer Bill Slater, who had twice cast the actress recently in separate episodes of "Z-Cars". Sladen performed her audition alongside actor Stephen Thorne and after impressing Letts, he arranged for her to meet Pertwee before any decisions were made. Pertwee stood behind Sladen and gave a 'thumbs-up' to Letts who then offered her the role.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane first appears in the Third Doctor serial "The Time Warrior" (1973–74), where she has managed to infiltrate a top secret research facility by posing as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist. Introduced as an ardent feminist, Sarah Jane sneaks aboard the TARDIS and becomes embroiled in a battle against a militaristic alien Sontaran in the Middle Ages who is kidnapping scientists from the present day. Subsequently, she accompanies The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) on several journeys in the TARDIS, and she also assists the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) on a number of occasions. After Pertwee's departure, Sladen remains following Season 11 finale "Planet of the Spiders" (1974), in which The Doctor regenerates for the third time. In season 12's consecutive 1975 serials "The Sontaran Experiment", "Genesis of the Daleks" and "Revenge of the Cybermen", Sarah and male companion Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) face the series' three iconic recurring creatures, the Sontarans, the Daleks and the Cybermen. In "Genesis" Sarah is present at the creation of the Daleks and meets their creator, Davros (Michael Wisher). Sarah Jane departs in the Season 14 serial "The Hand of Fear" (1976) after The Doctor receives a summons to his home planet, Gallifrey. Sladen has described Sarah as "a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, 'Yes Doctor, no Doctor'..."


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Following her tenure as a companion, Sladen reprised the role of Sarah Jane in a pilot episode for an Earth-based spin-off series, "K-9 and Company", in 1981. In the pilot episode, titled "A Girl's Best Friend", Sarah Jane receives the robot dog K9 Mark III (John Leeson) as a Christmas present from The Doctor. The pilot did not lead to a series, but the character reappeared in "Doctor Who" for the 1983 twentieth anniversary story "The Five Doctors", in which she is transported to Gallifrey by Lord President Borusa (Philip Latham) to take part in the Game of Rassilon in The Death Zone devised by Time Lord founder Rassilon (Richard Mathews). Here, Sarah is reunited with the Third Doctor, and also meets the First, Second and Fifth. "The Five Doctors" shows that Sarah Jane still owns and is working with K9. The character made an appearance in the 1993 "Children in Need" special (a crossover with long-running British soap "EastEnders"), "Dimensions in Time", wherein various Doctors and companions are teleported to Albert Square as part of a plot by the Rani (Kate O'Mara). Though Sladen would not make any more official "Doctor Who" television appearances until 2006, in the interval the actress reprised her role as Sarah Jane twice on BBC radio with Jon Pertwee, and in a series of "Big Finish" audio dramas, and in the unofficial direct-to-video spin-off film "Downtime" (1995) alongside the Brigadier, Second Doctor companion Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) and Leeson in a rare on-screen role.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Following Russell T Davies' 2005 "Doctor Who" revival, Sladen returned to the show in the Series 2 episode "School Reunion" (2006). "School Reunion" revisits Sarah Jane, still working alongside K9 since "The Five Doctors", when she encounters the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) while they both investigate mysterious goings on at a school run by Headmaster Finch (Anthony Head). Exposition in the episode reveals that, having waited years for The Doctor to return to her, Sarah Jane assumed he had died, though later came to suspect his involvement when witnessing the alien spaceship above London in "Doctor Who" Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion". On meeting Sarah Jane, current companion Rose (Billie Piper) reflects on her future after The Doctor. Though K9 Mark III still assists Sarah Jane, he has fallen into disrepair; after K9 Mark III sacrifices himself to save Sarah Jane and The Doctor, The Doctor leaves Sarah Jane a new K9 model, K9 Mark IV, and takes her advice by inviting Rose's boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) aboard the TARDIS as his second companion. The success of "School Reunion" led to the development of "The Sarah Jane Adventures", starring Sladen as Sarah Jane, produced by BBC Wales for CBBC.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: In "The Sarah Jane Adventures", Sarah Jane investigates alien activity covertly from her manor house in Bannerman Road in Ealing, driving an emerald green Nissan Figaro and with the help of her sentient supercomputer Mr Smith (voice of comedian Alexander Armstrong), as well as an alien activity scanner and sonic lipstick device. In the special premiere episode "Invasion of the Bane" (2007), Sarah Jane adopts a son: Bane creation, genetic archetype and boy genius Luke Smith (Tommy Knight), and befriends her neighbour Maria Jackson (Yasmin Paige) during her investigation of Bane leader Mrs Wormwood (Samantha Bond). Sarah Jane remarks that since meeting them she is no longer content to live alone; she discloses she never married after parting from the Fourth Doctor, to whom no one could ever compare. Sometime between "School Reunion" and "Invasion of the Bane", K9 has left Sarah Jane to close off a black hole, occasionally passing close enough to contact her; due to the concurrent development of the "K-9" television series, to which creator Bob Baker owns the rights, K9 only appears in two episodes of the first series. In the first series, Sarah Jane learns how to be a mother to Luke, the while strengthening her friendship with teenage neighbour Maria, the person Sarah Jane "trusts the most". Along with Luke and his friend Clyde Langer (Daniel Anthony) they defeat and repel various threats to the contemporary Earth. Amongst these threats, series one introduces The Trickster (Paul Marc Davis), a cosmic being who makes alterations to the timeline to cause chaos and destruction; he becomes a recurring adversary for Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane finds a new enemy in the Slitheen, a family of criminal aliens originally seen in "Doctor Who", and an ally in alien research scientist Professor Rivers (Floella Benjamin). Time travel scenes also depict 13-year-old Sarah Jane (Jessica Ashworth), for whom the death of her best friend Andrea Yates (Jane Asher) gave Sarah Jane her resolve to fight against loss of life.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane then reappears in "Doctor Who" in the two-part fourth series finale episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" (2008), which crosses over from "Torchwood" and "The Sarah Jane Adventures". When Daleks invade Earth, Sarah Jane is summoned along with UNIT officer Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Torchwood leader Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) by former PM Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) to help The Doctor save the universe. On the Dalek ship Davros (Julian Bleach) recognises Sarah Jane from their encounter in the classic series' episode "Genesis of the Daleks". In "The Sarah Jane Adventures" second series (2008), Maria moves away to America in "The Last Sontaran", and Sarah Jane befriends new neighbour Rani Chandra (Anjli Mohindra) in "The Day of the Clown"; the same episode features flashbacks to Sarah Jane's (Jessica Mogridge) childhood in her Aunt Lavinia's home. In "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith", Sarah Jane saves the lives of her parents, Eddie (Christopher Pizzey) and Barbara (Rosanna Lavelle) in 1951; by doing so she plays into The Trickster's hands, creating a post-apocalyptic alternative universe in the present day. Learning of this however, her parents choose to die, becoming heroes to restore the timeline. In series two finale "Enemy of the Bane", Sarah Jane's old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) from UNIT assists her against united adversaries Mrs Wormwood and Sontaran Commander Kaagh (Anthony O'Donnell). Sarah Jane feels threatened on a personal level by Mrs Wormwood's claim to be Luke's mother as his creator. Sladen has relatively scarce screen-time in 'Sarah-lite' serial "The Mark of the Berserker" due to back-to-back filming. Though K9 makes no appearances in series two, he appears to assist Sarah Jane against Ambassador Ranius (Ronnie Corbett) in a mini-episode for "Comic Relief" (2009).


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: In series three (2009), Sarah Jane makes a new enemy in the body-stealing alien Androvax (Mark Goldthorp) as well as a lukewarm ally in the form of the interplanetary police force, the Judoon (from "Doctor Who"). In the second two-parter, Sarah Jane is able to recover K9 full-time (reflecting a real-world deal struck with the creators of the children's series "K-9"). In a crossover with the parent show, Sarah Jane reveals her intention to marry her secret fiancé, barrister Peter Dalton, in "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith". However, Dalton's involvement in Sarah Jane's life proves to be a scheme of The Trickster. The Doctor gatecrashes the wedding to foil The Trickster's plot to make Sarah Jane give up on alien hunting, and explains to Sarah Jane that The Trickster is a powerful member of the extra-dimensional so-called Pantheon of Discord. The serial clarifies that Sarah Jane owes her independent wealth to her Aunt Lavina's will. In 'Sarah-lite' two-parter "Mona Lisa's Revenge", Sarah Jane and Luke have their first argument as he progresses into his teenage years; they argue about the cleanliness of Luke's room. In series finale "The Gift", though she is reluctant to use weapons or cause harm, when Luke falls deathly ill for the first time ever due to the machinations of the Blathereen-Slitheen, Sarah Jane takes up arms to confront them. In the episode's conclusion, regretfully she is forced to kill them using Mr Smith.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane next appears in the Tenth Doctor two-part "Doctor Who" finale, "The End of Time", in 2010. When The Doctor is slowly dying from radiation poisoning, he makes timely visits to his close friends and companions; The Doctor saves Luke's life from an oncoming car on Bannerman Road (an inside joke by Russell T Davies commenting on actors' failure to look for cars before crossing the street because traffic is always stopped for them, something that he believes is especially important in a children’s show) and bids a silent farewell to Luke and to Sarah Jane.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: In the fourth season (2010) of "The Sarah Jane Adventures", Sarah Jane sees Luke off to university in the first two-parter of the series, but continues her adventures alongside Rani and Clyde. The trio encounter the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith), as well as Sarah Jane's immediate predecessor as The Doctor's companion, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), in "Death of the Doctor"; aliens known as the Shansheeth fake The Doctor's death as part of a plot to gain access to the TARDIS using Jo and Sarah Jane's memories. "The Empty Planet" is this series' 'Sarah-lite' serial; with the rest of the population, Sarah Jane mysteriously vanishes, leaving Rani and Clyde to investigate without her. In "Lost in Time", Sarah Jane is sent back in time on a mission from the mysterious Shopkeeper (Cyril Nri). Sarah Jane is convinced to retire by an alien plot in the series finale, earning a new nemesis and doppelgänger in Ruby White (Julie Graham); she is saved from Ruby when Luke drives down from university to her rescue.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sladen's death ended the show in the middle of its fifth series, which aired in 2011. In its premiere story, Sarah Jane adopts a new child in the form of Sky Smith (Sinead Michael), a genetically-engineered alien girl with abilities relating to electromagnetism; the Shopkeeper arranged for their encounter, but declines to explain his motives to Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane's final broadcast appearance comes in series five finale "The Man Who Never Was". The final story ends with a short montage of archive footage and audio recordings celebrating Sarah Jane's journey from lone investigator to mother of two surrounded by friends. The series ends with the final caption: "And the story goes on... forever."


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: The cast and writers of "The Sarah Jane Adventures" produced a special 2020 webcast epilogue for the show with a mix of narrated and acted elements entitled "Farewell, Sarah Jane". In the story, Sarah Jane's friends and many past companions of the Doctor return to London to attend her funeral.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane appears in several "Doctor Who" novels and short stories, notably in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels "" and "" by Lawrence Miles; and the Past Doctor Adventures novel "Bullet Time" by David A. McIntee, all taking place after she stops travelling with The Doctor. She appears in Ian Marter's "Harry Sullivan's War" published by Target Books; Marter played companion Harry Sullivan in seven television serials. Different accounts of Sarah Jane's life have been given in the "Doctor Who" literature. "Interference" and the Virgin New Adventures novel "Christmas on a Rational Planet", also by Miles, suggest that Sarah Jane married someone named Paul Morley sometime between 1996 and 1998 and took his name. In the short story "Lily" by Jackie Marshall, in Big Finish's "", the Fifth Doctor pays a visit to an older Sarah Jane, who has a daughter, Lauren, and an autistic granddaughter, Lily; Lauren's father is named Will. In the Past Doctor Adventure "Bullet Time", Sarah Jane is apparently killed—although the story is ambiguous about whether she actually dies—in 1997 when she sacrifices herself so that she cannot be used as a hostage to stop the Seventh Doctor from taking action to aid an escaping alien ship, contradicting her other spin-off appearances. However, the novel takes place during a story arc where enemies of The Doctor were attempting to eliminate his companions from the Timeline (revealed in the later novel "Sometime Never..."), and Sarah Jane's death may have been reversed when those enemies are defeated. In any case, other stories have shown her alive after 1997. Sarah Jane was mentioned in the prologue of the Virgin Publishing novelisation of "The Power of the Daleks" by John Peel. It revealed that Sarah Jane was working as UNIT's official chronicler and that in "1996" she covered the aftermath of the Cybermen's failed attempt to drain Earth of its energy and the technology left behind in their wake ("The Tenth Planet", which was actually set in 1986).


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Stories written as in-universe articles in "Doctor Who Magazine Winter Special" 1991 (subtitled "UNIT Exposed"), made statements about Sarah Jane's life after leaving the Fourth Doctor. She wrote a history of UNIT, "Fighting for Humankind" ("heavily vetted and evidently subjected to considerable censorship"), as well as a series of science fiction novels. These featured an extraterrestrial called The Doctor and his companion Nicola Jones, who frequently encountered WIN (World Investigative Network), commanded by General Lutwidge-Douglas. Titles included "Day of the Dinosaurs", "Sutekh the Destroyer" and "The North Sea Monster".


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Another in-universe article was written by Kevin W. Parker, Roving Reporter, which was a biography of Sarah Jane from her childhood to the early 1990s. She grew up with her aunt Lavinia after her parents died in a car crash. She went to Caterham School For Girls and the University of Nottingham. She was engaged to Andrew Lofts, an aspiring television journalist; it didn't last. She ended up working with UNIT; her exact duties were never described. In the spring of 1981, she left UNIT after being hospitalized from an accident in a quarry. Afterwards she developed a romantic relationship with Harry Sullivan; they parted amicably and were still very fond of each other, and were still close friends, even to the time of the article. She wrote science fiction novels "World War Skaro" and "The Monster at the End of Space" which made it onto the "Times" and "New York Times" bestseller lists.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Though there are as yet no original "Sarah Jane Adventures" novels, many of the television episodes have been novelised.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Between seasons 13 and 14, Sladen appeared as Sarah Jane, with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, in the audio play "The Pescatons", released on LP by The Decca Record Company Limited in 1976. She also appeared with Baker in "The Time Machine", episode three of the BBC Radio 4 series "" broadcast on 4 October 1976. Also in 1976 she appeared as Sarah Jane alongside Tom Baker's Doctor in the first ever BBC Enterprises audio spin-off from "Doctor Who": a cassette and LP release of an abridged version of "Genesis of the Daleks", narrated by Baker. Sarah Jane (played by Sladen) appeared in two BBC Radio plays starring Jon Pertwee as The Doctor in the 1990s: "The Paradise of Death" and "The Ghosts of N-Space".


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: She also appears, voiced by Sladen, in her own range of Big Finish audio dramas, consisting of nine stories released between 2002 and 2006. This series came to an unexpected end when the character was given her own television series, "The Sarah Jane Adventures", detailed above. There are loose allusions to the audio series in the television series, including Sarah Jane's ownership of a Volkswagen.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane appears in two audio stories based on "The Sarah Jane Adventures", released in November 2007 on CD: "The Glittering Storm" by Stephen Cole and "The Thirteenth Stone" by Justin Richards, with both stories read by series star Elisabeth Sladen. This is the first time that BBC Audiobooks have commissioned new content for exclusive release on audio. Further pairs of audio stories were released every year until 2010, again all read by Sladen. In 2011, two audio stories were read by Daniel Anthony and Anjii Mohindra.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller took over the role of Sarah Jane Smith for Big Finish audio dramas in 2021, first in "Return of the Cybermen" in March, a reworking of Gerry Davis' 1974 original script which was eventually filmed as "Revenge of the Cybermen", with Tom Baker as the fourth Doctor; and then in "The Third Doctor Adventures" in May, with Tim Treloar as the third Doctor.


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: The canonicity of Sarah Jane's appearances in the audio dramas is, like all "Doctor Who" spin-off media, unclear, and they may not even take place in the same continuity as one another. For example, the novels' mention of Sarah Jane as having been married is contradicted by the later "Sarah Jane Smith" audio play "Dreamland", and the "Sarah Jane Adventures" episode "Invasion of the Bane".


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: Sarah Jane Smith was consistently voted the most popular "Doctor Who" companion until the advent of the new series in 2005. Even in more recent times the character has continued to vie in popularity with Rose Tyler, Donna Noble, and Ace. Sladen felt that part of her popularity was working alongside Pertwee and Baker, who were popular Doctors. Daniel Martin of "The Guardian" named her the best companion in 2007, writing that her "jolly-hockey-sticks good nature" made her so beloved. "The Daily Telegraph" Gavin Fuller also ranked Sarah Jane number one, praising Sladen's portrayal and saying that she displayed "great determination and bravery".


title: Sarah Jane Smith

text: In 2012, Toby Whithouse, who wrote Sarah Jane's return to the series in "School Reunion", said she was his favourite companion from the classic series. Concerning the impact of the character, he said:


title: Common sunflower

text: The common sunflower ("Helianthus annuus") is a large annual forb of the genus "Helianthus" grown as a crop for its edible oily seeds. Apart from cooking oil production, it is also used as livestock forage (as a meal or a silage plant), as bird food, in some industrial applications, and as an ornamental in domestic gardens. Wild "H. annuus" is a widely branched annual plant with many flower heads. The domestic sunflower, however, often possesses only a single large inflorescence (flower head) atop an unbranched stem.


title: Common sunflower

text: The binomial name "Helianthus annuus" is derived from the Greek "Helios" 'sun' and "anthos" 'flower', while the epithet "annuus" means 'annual' in Latin.


title: Common sunflower

text: The plant was first domesticated in the Americas. Sunflower seeds were brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, where, along with sunflower oil, they became a widespread cooking ingredient. With time, bulk of industrial-scale production has shifted to Eastern Europe, and () Russia and Ukraine together produce over half of worldwide seed production.


title: Common sunflower

text: The plant has an erect rough-hairy stem, reaching typical heights of . The tallest sunflower on record achieved . Sunflower leaves are broad, coarsely toothed, rough and mostly alternate; those near the bottom are largest and commonly heart-shaped.


title: Common sunflower

text: The plant flowers in summer. What is often called the "flower" of the sunflower is actually a "flower head" (pseudanthium), wide, of numerous small individual five-petaled flowers ("florets"). The outer flowers, which resemble petals, are called ray flowers. Each "petal" consists of a ligule composed of fused petals of an asymmetrical ray flower. They are sexually sterile and may be yellow, red, orange, or other colors. The spirally arranged flowers in the center of the head are called disk flowers. These mature into fruit (sunflower "seeds").


title: Common sunflower

text: Prairie sunflower ("H. petiolaris") is similar in appearance to the wild common sunflower; the scales in its central disk are tipped by white hairs.


title: Common sunflower

text: A common misconception is that flowering sunflower heads track the Sun across the sky. Although immature flower buds exhibit this behaviour, the mature flowering heads point in a fixed (and typically easterly) direction throughout the day. This old misconception was disputed in 1597 by the English botanist John Gerard, who grew sunflowers in his famous herbal garden: "[some] have reported it to turn with the Sun, the which I could never observe, although I have endeavored to find out the truth of it." The uniform alignment of sunflower heads in a field might give some people the false impression that the flowers are tracking the Sun.


title: Common sunflower

text: This alignment results from heliotropism in an earlier development stage, the young flower stage, before full maturity of flower heads (anthesis). Young sunflowers orient themselves in the direction of the sun. At dawn the head of the flower faces east and moves west throughout the day. When sunflowers reach full maturity they no longer follow the sun, and continuously face east. Young flowers reorient overnight to face east in anticipation of the morning. Their heliotropic motion is a circadian rhythm, synchronized by the sun, which continues if the sun disappears on cloudy days or if plants are moved to constant light. They are able to regulate their circadian rhythm in response to the blue-light emitted by a light source. If a sunflower plant in the bud stage is rotated 180°, the bud will be turning away from the sun for a few days, as resynchronization with the sun takes time.


title: Common sunflower

text: When growth of the flower stalk stops and the flower is mature, the heliotropism also stops and the flower faces east from that moment onward. This eastward orientation allows rapid warming in the morning and, as a result, an increase in pollinator visits. Sunflowers do not have a pulvinus below their inflorescence. A pulvinus is a flexible segment in the leaf stalks (petiole) of some plant species and functions as a 'joint'. It effectuates leaf motion due to reversible changes in turgor pressure, which occurs without growth. The sensitive plant's closing leaves are a good example of reversible leaf movement via pulvinuli.


title: Common sunflower

text: Generally, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5°, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; however, in a very large sunflower head there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. This pattern produces the most efficient packing of seeds mathematically possible within the flower head.


title: Common sunflower

text: A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H. Vogel in 1979. This is expressed in polar coordinates


title: Common sunflower

text: where θ is the angle, "r" is the radius or distance from the center, and "n" is the index number of the floret and "c" is a constant scaling factor. It is a form of Fermat's spiral. The angle 137.5° is related to the golden ratio (55/144 of a circular angle, where 55 and 144 are Fibonacci numbers) and gives a close packing of florets. This model has been used to produce computer generated representations of sunflowers.


title: Common sunflower

text: The sunflower genome is diploid with a base chromosome number of 17 and an estimated genome size of 2,871–3,189 million base pairs. Some sources claim its true size is around 3.5 billion base pairs (slightly larger than the human genome).


title: Common sunflower

text: The plant was first domesticated in the Americas. Sunflowers grow best in fertile, moist, well-drained soil with heavy mulch. They often appear on dry open areas and foothills.


title: Common sunflower

text: One of the major threats that sunflowers face today is "Fusarium", a filamentous fungus that is found largely in soil and plants. It is a pathogen that over the years has caused an increasing amount of damage and loss of sunflower crops, some as extensive as 80% of damaged crops.


title: Common sunflower

text: Downy mildew is another disease to which sunflowers are susceptible. Its susceptibility to downy mildew is particular high due to the sunflower's way of growth and development. Sunflower seeds are generally planted only an inch deep in the ground. When such shallow planting is done in moist and soaked earth or soil, it increases the chances of diseases such as downy mildew.


title: Common sunflower

text: Another major threat to sunflower crops is broomrape, a parasite that attacks the root of the sunflower and causes extensive damage to sunflower crops, as high as 100%.


title: Common sunflower

text: Common sunflower was one of several plants cultivated by Native Americans in prehistoric North America as part of the Eastern Agricultural Complex. Although it was commonly accepted that the sunflower was first domesticated in what is now the southeastern US, roughly 5,000 years ago, there is evidence that it was first domesticated in Mexico around 2600 BCE. These crops were found in Tabasco, Mexico, at the San Andres dig site. The earliest known examples in the US of a fully domesticated sunflower have been found in Tennessee, and date to around 2300 BCE. Other very early examples come from rockshelter sites in Eastern Kentucky. Many indigenous American peoples used the sunflower as the symbol of their solar deity, including the Aztecs and the Otomi of Mexico and the Incas in South America. In 1510, early Spanish explorers encountered the sunflower in the Americas and carried its seeds back to Europe. Of the four plants known to have been domesticated in eastern North America and to have become important agricultural commodities, the sunflower is currently the most economically important.


title: Common sunflower

text: Research of phylogeographic relations and population demographic patterns across sunflowers has demonstrated that earlier cultivated sunflowers form a clade from wild populations from the Great Plains, which indicates that there was a single domestication event in central North America. Following the cultivated sunflower's origin, it may have gone through significant bottlenecks dating back to ~5,000 years ago.


title: Common sunflower

text: In the 16th century the first crop breeds were brought from America to Europe by explorers. Domestic sunflower seeds have been found in Mexico, dating to 2100 BCE. Native American people grew sunflowers as a crop from Mexico to Southern Canada. They then were introduced to the Russian Empire, where oilseed cultivators were located, and the flowers were developed and grown on an industrial scale. The Russian Empire reintroduced this oilseed cultivation process to North America in the mid-20th century; North America began their commercial era of sunflower production and breeding. New breeds of the "Helianthus spp." began to become more prominent in new geographical areas. During the 18th century, the use of sunflower oil became very popular in Russia, particularly with members of the Russian Orthodox Church, because only plant-based fats were allowed during Lent, according to fasting traditions. In the early 19th century, it was first commercialized in the village of Alexeyevka in Voronezh Governorate by the merchant named Daniil Bokaryov, who developed a technology suitable for its large-scale extraction, and quickly spread around. The town's coat of arms has included an image of a sunflower ever since.


title: Common sunflower

text: In 2020, world production of sunflower seeds was 50 million tonnes, led by Russia and Ukraine with 53% combined of the total (table).


title: Common sunflower

text: Researchers have analyzed the impact of various nitrogen-based fertilizers on the growth of sunflowers. Ammonium nitrate was found to produce better nitrogen absorption than urea, which performed better in low-temperature areas.


title: Common sunflower

text: In Brazil, a unique system of production called the soybean-sunflower system is used: sunflowers are planted first, and then soybean crops follow, reducing idle periods and increasing total sunflower production and profitability. Sunflowers are usually planted in the extreme southern or northern regions of the country. Frequently, in the southern regions, sunflowers are grown in the beginning of rainy seasons, and soybeans can then be planted in the summer. Researchers have concluded that the soybean-sunflower method of plantation could be further improved through changes in fertilizer use. The current method has been shown to have positive environmental impacts.


title: Common sunflower

text: In today's market, most of the sunflower seeds provided or grown by farmers are hybrids. Hybrids or hybridized sunflowers are produced by cross-breeding different types and species, for example cultivated sunflowers with wild species. By doing so, new genetic recombinations are obtained ultimately leading to the production of new hybrid species. These hybrid species generally have a higher fitness and carry properties or characteristics that farmers look for, such as resistance to pathogens.


title: Common sunflower

text: Hybrid, "Helianthus annuus dwarf2" does not contain the hormone gibberellin and does not display heliotropic behavior. Plants treated with an external application of the hormone display a temporary restoration of elongation growth patterns. This growth pattern diminished by 35% 7–14 days after final treatment.


title: Common sunflower

text: Hybrid male sterile and male fertile flowers that display heterogeneity have a low crossover of honeybee visitation. Sensory cues such as pollen odor, diameter of seed head, and height may influence pollinator visitation of pollinators that display constancy behavior patterns.


title: Common sunflower

text: Sunflowers are grown as ornamentals in a domestic setting. Being easy to grow and producing spectacular results in any good, moist soil in full sun, they are a favourite subject for children. A large number of cultivars, of varying size and colour, are now available to grow from seed. The following are cultivars of sunflowers (those marked have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit):-


title: Common sunflower

text: Sunflower "whole seed" (fruit) are sold as a snack food, raw or after roasting in ovens, with or without salt and/or seasonings added. Sunflowers can be processed into a peanut butter alternative, sunflower butter. It is also sold as food for birds and can be used directly in cooking and salads. Native Americans had multiple uses for sunflowers in the past, such as in bread, medical ointments, dyes and body paints.


title: Common sunflower

text: Sunflower oil, extracted from the seeds, is used for cooking, as a carrier oil and to produce margarine and biodiesel, as it is cheaper than olive oil. A range of sunflower varieties exist with differing fatty acid compositions; some "high-oleic" types contain a higher level of monounsaturated fats in their oil than even olive oil. The oil is also sometimes used in soap. After World War I, during the Russian Civil War, people in Ukraine used sunflower seed oil in lamps as a substitute for kerosene due to shortages. The light from such a lamp has been described as "miserable" and "smoky."


title: Common sunflower

text: The cake remaining after the seeds have been processed for oil is used as a livestock feed. The hulls resulting from the dehulling of the seeds before oil extraction can also be fed to domestic animals. Some recently developed cultivars have drooping heads. These cultivars are less attractive to gardeners growing the flowers as ornamental plants, but appeal to farmers, because they reduce bird damage and losses from some plant diseases. Sunflowers also produce latex, and are the subject of experiments to improve their suitability as an alternative crop for producing hypoallergenic rubber.


title: Common sunflower

text: Traditionally, several Native American groups planted sunflowers on the north edges of their gardens as a "fourth sister" to the better-known three sisters combination of corn, beans, and squash. Annual species are often planted for their allelopathic properties. It was also used by Native Americans to dress hair. Among the Zuni people, the fresh or dried root is chewed by the medicine man before sucking venom from a snakebite and applying a poultice to the wound. This compound poultice of the root is applied with much ceremony to rattlesnake bites.


title: Common sunflower

text: However, for commercial farmers growing other commodity crops, the wild sunflower is often considered a weed. Especially in the Midwestern US, wild (perennial) species are often found in corn and soybean fields and can decrease yields. The decrease in yield can be attributed to the production of phenolic compounds which are used to reduce competition for nutrients in nutrient-poor growing areas of the common sunflower.


title: Common sunflower

text: Sunflowers can be used in phytoremediation to extract toxic ingredients from soil, such as lead, arsenic and uranium, and used in rhizofiltration to neutralize radionuclides and other toxic ingredients and harmful bacteria from water. They were used to remove caesium-137 and strontium-90 from a nearby pond after the Chernobyl disaster, and a similar campaign was mounted in response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.


title: Common sunflower

text: During the 19th century, it was believed that nearby plants of the species would protect a home from malaria.


title: Common sunflower

text: The Zuni people use the blossoms ceremonially for anthropic worship. Sunflowers were also worshipped by the Incas because they viewed it as a symbol for the Sun.


title: Common sunflower

text: The sunflower is the national flower of Ukraine. During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, a video widely shared on social media showed a Ukrainian woman confronting a Russian soldier, telling the latter to "take these seeds and put them in your pockets so at least sunflowers will grow when you all lie down here". The sunflower has since become a global symbol of resistance, unity, and hope.


title: Common sunflower

text: The sunflower is also the state flower of the US state of Kansas, and one of the city flowers of Kitakyūshū, Japan.


title: Common sunflower

text: The sunflower is often used as a symbol of green ideology. The sunflower is also the symbol of the Vegan Society.


title: Common sunflower

text: The sunflower was chosen as the symbol of the Spiritualist Church for many reasons, but mostly because it turns toward the sun as "Spiritualism turns toward the light of truth". As stated earlier in the article, this is in fact, not true. Modern Spiritualists often have art or jewelry with sunflower designs.


title: Common sunflower

text: In July 2015, viable seeds were acquired from the field where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed on a year earlier and were grown in tribute to the 15 Dutch residents of Hilversum who were killed. Earlier that year, Fairfax chief correspondent Paul McGeough and photographer Kate Geraghty had collected 1.5 kg of sunflower seeds from the wreck site for family and friends of the 38 Australian victims, who aimed to give them a poignant symbol of hope.


title: Common sunflower

text: On May 13, 2021, during the National Costume competition of the Miss Universe 2020 beauty pageant, Miss Dominican Republic Kimberly Jiménez wore a "Goddess of Sunflowers" costume covered in gold and yellow rhinestones that included several real sunflowers sewn onto the fabric, although one of them fell off and was lying behind her on the stage during her performance.


title: Common sunflower

text: Modern stories often claim that in Greek mythology, the nymph Clytie transformed into a sunflower when she pined after her former lover Helios, the god of the sun, who spurned her and left her for another. However, sunflowers are not native to Greece or Italy, but to North America. The original story is about another flower, the heliotropium.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The Marlin Model 336 is a lever-action rifle and carbine made by Marlin Firearms. Since its introduction in 1948, it has been offered in a number of different calibers and barrel lengths, but is commonly chambered in .30-30 Winchester or .35 Remington, using a 20- or 24-inch barrel. Currently, the model with a 24-inch barrel is only available in .30-30 Winchester. The Model 336 is currently not in production.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The Model 336 is a direct development of the Marlin Model 1893 rifle which was produced from 1893 to 1936. Based on the patents of L.L. Hepburn, the Model 1893 incorporated a new locking bolt system and a two-piece firing pin. In 1936, with only minor changes to the stock, forearm, and sights, the Model 1893 was redesignated the Model 1936 (soon renamed the Model 36). All of these firearms featured a solid-top receiver made of forged steel and incorporated side ejection of fired cartridges. Compared to the Winchester 94, then the predominant lever-action hunting rifle, the Model 36 was somewhat heavier with a simpler internal mechanism and a full pistol grip-type buttstock in contrast to the Winchester 94's straight grip stock.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: In 1948, the Model 36 was replaced by the Model 336, which incorporated the patents of Thomas R. Robinson, Jr., a Marlin employee. Sold under both the Marlin and Glenfield brands, the Model 336 has been in continuous production from 1948 to the present day, and is currently produced by Ruger Firearms under the Marlin brand. Ruger is expected to start production of Marlin rifles sometime 2021.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: While most current variants of the Model 336 feature a full pistol-grip walnut stock, 20 inch barrel and full length tube magazine, other versions of the 336 have been frequently offered by Marlin over the years, including barrel lengths of 16.25-inch, 18-inch, 22-inch and 24-inch barrels, half-length magazines, and models with straight grips and/or hardwood (birch) stocks.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: An evolution of the Model 36 rifle, the Model 336 is easily distinguished from its predecessors by its open ejection port machined into the side of the receiver. Design improvements include a stronger and simpler round-profile chrome-plated breech bolt, a redesigned cartridge carrier, an improved extractor, and coil-type main and trigger springs in place of the flat springs used in earlier Marlin rifles. Like its predecessors, the receiver and all major working parts of the Model 336 are constructed of steel forgings.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: With its solid, flat top receiver and side ejection of fired cartridges, the Marlin 336 is prime candidate for use with a rifle scope. In 1956, Marlin also incorporated its proprietary Micro-Groove rifling system into the Model 336 and other centerfire Marlin rifles. This rifling system, which used an increased number of relatively shallow rifling grooves, cut down production time and significantly extended the service life of machine tooling. According to Marlin, the Micro-Groove system provides very uniform bore dimensions and a very smooth bore finish designed to improve accuracy, prevent gas leakage, and reduce bore fouling.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The Model 336 is designed to be easily disassembled for cleaning. Removal of the lever pivot screw with a flathead screwdriver, allows field stripping of the lever arm, bolt, and ejector for maintenance. Unlike many lever action designs, the Model 336 can be cleaned from the breech, much like a bolt-action rifle. This in turn avoids damage to the muzzle caused by cleaning rods and tools.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: As of 1983, the Model 336 was ranked the #2 all-time leader in U.S. high-powered sporting rifle sales, after the Winchester Model 1894, with over 3.5 million sold.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Marlin has made short carbine versions of the Model 336 over the years, including the Model 336 "Marauder", "Trapper" and the Model 336Y (Y standing for "Youth Model"). Usually featuring a short 16- or 18-inch barrel, these carbines are considerably shorter and lighter than the standard 20" carbine. The Model 336Y also featured a short buttstock to enable use by younger shooters.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: For many years, Marlin produced a less-expensive "Glenfield" line of Model 336 rifles for retail at mass merchandise and department stores including: J.C. Penney, Sears Roebuck & Company, Western Auto, K-Mart and Wal-Mart. Marlin sold these rifles as the Glenfield Models 30, 30A, 30AS or 30AW. Other Model 336 production rifles were stamped with names chosen by the retailer, such as the "J.C. Higgins" (Sears) Model 45 and Model 50, the Montgomery Ward "Western Field" Model 740-A EMN, the J.C. Penney "Foremost" Model 3040, the K-Mart Model 30TK and the Model 3000 for Big 5 Sporting Goods. Mechanically identical to the Model 336, these mass market rifles were typically fitted with lower-cost hardwood (birch) stocks and forearms, and some metal finishing operations were eliminated in the interest of lowering unit cost. By marketing a less-expensive version of the same rifle under a different name to mass merchandising stores, Marlin protected its customer base of small specialty gun dealers.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: By 1983, most of Marlin's mass merchandise retailers were in a position to insist on name-brand firearms, and the "Glenfield" line was dropped. However, Marlin continued to offer a less expensive version of the Model 336, variously called the Model 336W or Model 30AW, originally sold only to the Wal-Mart chain. Fitted with a hardwood stock and lower-cost sights, these rifles were frequently offered as part of a special package with an inexpensive rifle scope, sling, or other options. The Marlin Model 30AW package included a 3-9x32 factory-mounted scope and padded sling, but was otherwise identical to the Marlin Model 336W.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Marlin also offers an XLR line of rifles in several calibers, all based on the Model 336 lever action design. The Model 336XLR features stainless construction, a 24-inch barrel, and a grey/black wood laminate stock.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The Model 336M, a Model 336 carbine made largely of stainless steel, was introduced in 2000. It was replaced a year later by the Model 336SS, a 20" carbine offered only in .30-30 caliber. The Model 336SS features a forged stainless steel receiver, barrel, lever, and trigger. The magazine tube, springs, and loading gate are also fabricated from stainless, while other metal parts are nickel-plated steel.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Introduced in 1980, the Model 375 uses the Model 336 lever action mechanism but was chambered in the then new 375 Winchester cartridge. This model was discontinued in 1984 after around 16,000 were produced.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Introduced in 1984 this model was very similar in appearance to the Model 375 with the addition of the cross bolt safety. This model was originally to be chambered in both the 307 Winchester and 356 Winchester. The 307 Winchester was never manufactured with only a few prototypes being made. The 356 Winchester was manufactured but only until 1986. Only 2,441 of these rifles were ever produced and are considered a highly sought after collectors piece.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Introduced in 1965, the Model 444 Marlin uses the Model 336 lever action mechanism, including the signature open ejection port machined into the side of the receiver, but is chambered for the .444 Marlin cartridge. At its introduction, the Model 444 was the most powerful lever action rifle on the market. With a muzzle energy of more than 3000 ft-lb, the Model 444 was intended for the largest North American game animals. The Model 444 holds 4 cartridges in the magazine and one in the chamber, and was originally fitted with a 24-inch barrel and a straight grip buttstock.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Early Model 444 rifles utilized a 1 in 38" rifling twist and were handicapped by a lack of suitable bullet weights. In addition, nearly all existing bullets for the .444 had been originally designed solely for use in handguns; used in the Model 444, the bullets tended to break up at higher rifle velocities. A new 265-grain bullet greatly improved the utility of the Model 444 as a hunting rifle, and other bullet weights have since been introduced. In 1971, Model 444's barrel length was reduced to 22 inches, and the rifle's buttstock was changed to a full pistol-grip design. Later production rifles received a change in barrel twist to 1 in 20 inches to stabilize longer and heavier bullets.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: In 1963, Marlin added the .44 Magnum cartridge as an optional chambering in the Model 336T carbine, which featured a straight grip, a 20-inch round tapered barrel, and a full-length magazine. However, the rifle experienced continuing problems in loading and chambering the short .44 Magnum cartridge, and in 1964 Marlin abruptly dropped the .44 Magnum option.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Marlin was well aware of continued demand for a lever-action carbine in .44 Magnum caliber, and began searching for a replacement. In 1969, Marlin introduced the New Model 1894 in .44 Magnum/.44 Special caliber. The New Model 1894 is not based on the Model 336 mechanism, instead, it uses the old short-receiver Model 1894 action incorporating the flat-profile bolt, which received minor improvements before being reintroduced in .44 Magnum caliber. The decision to use the original Model 1894 action, a design originally designed to accommodate pistol-length cartridges such as the .38-40 and .44-40, proved a complete success. In keeping with its predecessor, the New Model 1894 was given a straight grip buttstock instead of the pistol-grip style version fitted to the Model 336. Since 1979, other calibers have been introduced for the Model 1894, including .38 Special/.357 Magnum, .41 Magnum, and the .45 Colt under the Models 1894C, 1894S, and 1894CS. A cross-bolt safety was added in 1984. The Model 1894 is particularly popular with cowboy action shooting enthusiasts, as well as shooters who desire to carry a shoulder arm and a revolver in the same caliber.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Introduced in 1972 and named in honor of the Marlin Model of 1895 (produced from 1895–1917), the current (New) Model 1895 rifle offered in .45-70 caliber utilizes the same Model 336 receiver design and lever action mechanism used in the Marlin Model 444. A variant of the New Model 1895, called the 338MX and 338MXLR, has also become available in more recent times .338 Marlin Express.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The .45-70 was originally a black powder cartridge and most factory ammo is loaded moderately for safety in older rifles, including the original Model of 1895. With increasing numbers of modern .45-70 rifles built with high strength actions (including the current Model 1895, the Ruger No. 1 single shot, the Browning BLR or the Siamese Mauser conversions), handloaders and specialty ammunition makers like Hornady, Buffalo Bore and Garrett produce high intensity .45-70 loadings that may equal or exceed the power of the .444 Marlin. Some approach the power of the .458 Winchester Magnum (although with smaller bullets with a much lower sectional density) and are effective against dangerous game. Use of such loadings in older .45-70 firearms is dangerous and should not be attempted; for that reason, Marlin introduced the .450 Marlin, a belted version of the .45-70 cartridge that will not chamber in older .45-70 rifles. However, many .45-70 Model 1895 owners chose to use the traditional .45-70 loads for deer-sized game with the option of using the high intensity .45-70 loads for more dangerous game.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The 1895M lever-action rifle chambered in .450 Marlin was offered from 2000 until 2009 and is no longer in production.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: One recent innovation growing in popularity is the "Guide Gun" concept. The name most probably originates from the types of longarms favored by Alaskan hunting and wilderness guides as a defense against attacks by bears. The Guide Gun concept consists of a handy, short-barreled (usually 16-19") lever action in a large caliber such as .45-70 or .450 Marlin with a 3/4 length magazine tube. Usually custom-made by a skilled gunsmith, these guns are usually fitted with either open sights (such as ghost rings or express sights), a reflex sight, holographic sight or a long eye-relief scope mounted on a scout rail. Marlin New Model 1895 actions are frequently used to build this type of firearm. In an attempt to capitalize on this trend, Marlin began offering custom versions of their New Model 1895 action beginning with the now-discontinued Models 1895SDT and 336SDT. Current "Guide Gun" models include the Models 1895G, 1895GS, 1895GBL, 1895SBL, and 1895m


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Aside from existing Marlin models, the basic Model 336/Model 1895 receiver and lever action mechanism has enjoyed some popularity as a parent for various wildcat caliber conversions. These custom rifles are increasingly popular in the western United States, Canada, and Alaska where encounters with grizzly bears and other potentially dangerous animals can be expected. Some of these wildcat cartridge conversions include the .450 Alaskan, .457 Wild West Magnum, .50 Alaskan, and the .510 Kodiak Express.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Of the conversions mentioned both the .450 Alaskan and the .457 Wild West Magnum do not require new barrels, but simply a chamber reaming and the required action modifications (referred to as "action lengthening"); the .457 magnum also allows continued ability to use .45-70. The .510 Kodiak Express is the most powerful wildcat conversion available for the Marlin at 5,000+ ft-lbs. Both the .50 Alaskan and .510 Kodiak Express require a new barrel to be installed on the rifle.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The .45-90 Sharps (also called .45-90 WCF or simply .45-90) has occasionally been used in converted Marlin 1895 rifles. The .45-90 conversion involves modifications to the action that increase the bolt travel and action timing (to adjust when a round is ejected, and when a new round lifts to enter the chamber), and the chamber in the barrel is reamed to .45-90 specifications. The case of a .45-90 is more than a quarter inch longer than the .45-70. The limitations on bolt travel of a converted Model 336 rifles are generally limit its case overall length (COL) to 2.85 inches. The 2.85 COL allows all bullets that work with the .45-70 action to be used in the converted .45-90. The .45-90 converted 1895 actions have the same pressure limitations as the .45-70 actions.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: The following table can be used to date the year of manufacture of a Marlin 336. It is also valid for determining most other Marlin firearm build dates from 1946 to the present.


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Marlin year of manufacture maybe determined from the following table of letter/numeral prefixes to the serial number:


title: Marlin Model 336

text: Starting in 1973, the year of manufacture can be determined by subtracting the first two digits of the serial number from 100:


title: Flask (web framework)

text: Flask is a micro web framework written in Python. It is classified as a microframework because it does not require particular tools or libraries. It has no database abstraction layer, form validation, or any other components where pre-existing third-party libraries provide common functions. However, Flask supports extensions that can add application features as if they were implemented in Flask itself. Extensions exist for object-relational mappers, form validation, upload handling, various open authentication technologies and several common framework related tools.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: Flask was created by Armin Ronacher of Pocoo, an international group of Python enthusiasts formed in 2004. According to Ronacher, the idea was originally an April Fool's joke that was popular enough to make into a serious application. The name is a play on the earlier Bottle framework.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: When Ronacher and Georg Brandl created a bulletin board system written in Python in 2004, the Pocoo projects Werkzeug and Jinja were developed.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: In April 2016, the Pocoo team was disbanded and development of Flask and related libraries passed to the newly formed Pallets project. Since 2018, Flask-related data and objects can be rendered with Bootstrap.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: Flask has become popular among Python enthusiasts. , it has second most stars on GitHub among Python web-development frameworks, only slightly behind Django, and was voted the most popular web framework in the Python Developers Survey 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: The microframework Flask is part of the "Pallets Projects" (formerly "Pocoo"), and based on several others of them, all under a BSD license.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: Werkzeug (German for "tool") is a utility library for the Python programming language for Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) applications. Werkzeug can instantiate objects for request, response, and utility functions. It can be used as the basis for a custom software framework and supports Python 2.7 and 3.5 and later.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: Jinja, also by Ronacher, is a template engine for the Python programming language. Similar to the Django web framework, it handles templates in a sandbox.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: MarkupSafe is a string handling library for the Python programming language. The eponymous MarkupSafe type extends the Python string type and marks its contents as "safe"; combining MarkupSafe with regular strings automatically escapes the unmarked strings, while avoiding double escaping of already marked strings.


title: Flask (web framework)

text: ItsDangerous is a safe data serialization library for the Python programming language. It is used to store the session of a Flask application in a cookie without allowing users to tamper with the session contents.


title: Confounding

text: In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Confounding is a causal concept, and as such, cannot be described in terms of correlations or associations. The existence of confounders is an important quantitative explanation why correlation does not imply causation.


title: Confounding

text: Confounding is defined in terms of the data generating model. Let "X" be some independent variable, and "Y" some dependent variable. To estimate the effect of "X" on "Y", the statistician must suppress the effects of extraneous variables that influence both "X" and "Y". We say that "X" and "Y" are confounded by some other variable "Z" whenever "Z" causally influences both "X" and "Y".


title: Confounding

text: Let formula_1 be the probability of event "Y" = "y" under the hypothetical intervention "X" = "x". "X" and "Y" are not confounded if and only if the following holds:


title: Confounding

text: for all values "X" = "x" and "Y" = "y", where formula_2 is the conditional probability upon seeing "X" = "x". Intuitively, this equality states that "X" and "Y" are not confounded whenever the observationally witnessed association between them is the same as the association that would be measured in a controlled experiment, with "x" randomized.


title: Confounding

text: In principle, the defining equality formula_3 can be verified from the data generating model, assuming we have all the equations and probabilities associated with the model. This is done by simulating an intervention formula_4 (see Bayesian network) and checking whether the resulting probability of "Y" equals the conditional probability formula_2. It turns out, however, that graph structure alone is sufficient for verifying the equality formula_3.


title: Confounding

text: Consider a researcher attempting to assess the effectiveness of drug "X", from population data in which drug usage was a patient's choice. The data shows that gender ("Z") influences a patient's choice of drug as well as their chances of recovery ("Y"). In this scenario, gender "Z" confounds the relation between "X" and Y since "Z" is a cause of both "X" and "Y":


title: Confounding

text: because the observational quantity contains information about the correlation between "X" and "Z", and the interventional quantity does not (since "X" is not correlated with "Z" in a randomized experiment). It can be shown that, in cases where only observational data are available, an unbiased estimate of the desired quantity formula_1, can


title: Confounding

text: be obtained by "adjusting" for all confounding factors, namely, conditioning on their various values and averaging the result. In the case of a single confounder "Z", this leads to the "adjustment formula":


title: Confounding

text: which gives an unbiased estimate for the causal effect of "X" on "Y". The same adjustment formula works when there are multiple confounders except, in this case, the choice of a set "Z" of variables that would guarantee unbiased estimates must be done with caution. The criterion for a proper choice of variables is called the Back-Door and requires that the chosen set "Z" "blocks" (or intercepts) every path between "X" and "Y" that contains an arrow into X. Such sets are called "Back-Door admissible" and may include variables which are not common causes of "X" and "Y", but merely proxies thereof.


title: Confounding

text: Returning to the drug use example, since "Z" complies with the Back-Door requirement (i.e., it intercepts the one Back-Door path formula_8), the Back-Door adjustment formula is valid:


title: Confounding

text: In this way the physician can predict the likely effect of administering the drug from observational studies in which the conditional probabilities appearing on the right-hand side of the equation can be estimated by regression.


title: Confounding

text: Contrary to common beliefs, adding covariates to the adjustment set "Z" can introduce bias. A typical counterexample occurs when "Z" is a common effect of "X" and "Y", a case in which "Z" is not a confounder (i.e., the null set is Back-door admissible) and adjusting for "Z" would create bias known as "collider bias" or "Berkson's paradox."


title: Confounding

text: In general, confounding can be controlled by adjustment if and only if there is a set of observed covariates that satisfies the Back-Door condition. Moreover, if "Z" is such a set, then the adjustment formula of Eq. (3) is valid. Pearl's do-calculus provides all possible conditions under which formula_1 can be estimated, not necessarily by adjustment.


title: Confounding

text: According to Morabia (2011), the word derives from the Medieval Latin verb "confudere", which meant "mixing", and was probably chosen to represent the confusion (from Latin: con=with + fusus=mix or fuse together) between the cause one wishes to assess and other causes that may affect the outcome and thus confuse, or stand in the way of the desired assessment. Fisher used the word "confounding" in his 1935 book "The Design of Experiments" to denote any source of error in his ideal of randomized experiment. According to Vandenbroucke (2004) it was Kish who used the word "confounding" in the modern sense of the word, to mean "incomparability" of two or more groups (e.g., exposed and unexposed) in an observational study.


title: Confounding

text: Formal conditions defining what makes certain groups "comparable" and others "incomparable" were later developed in epidemiology by Greenland and Robins (1986) using the counterfactual language of Neyman (1935) and Rubin (1974). These were later supplemented by graphical criteria such as the Back-Door condition (Pearl 1993; Greenland, Pearl and Robins, 1999).


title: Confounding

text: Graphical criteria were shown to be formally equivalent to the counterfactual definition but more transparent to researchers relying on process models.


title: Confounding

text: In the case of risk assessments evaluating the magnitude and nature of risk to human health, it is important to control for confounding to isolate the effect of a particular hazard such as a food additive, pesticide, or new drug. For prospective studies, it is difficult to recruit and screen for volunteers with the same background (age, diet, education, geography, etc.), and in historical studies, there can be similar variability. Due to the inability to control for variability of volunteers and human studies, confounding is a particular challenge. For these reasons, experiments offer a way to avoid most forms of confounding.


title: Confounding

text: In some disciplines, confounding is categorized into different types. In epidemiology, one type is "confounding by indication", which relates to confounding from observational studies. Because prognostic factors may influence treatment decisions (and bias estimates of treatment effects), controlling for known prognostic factors may reduce this problem, but it is always possible that a forgotten or unknown factor was not included or that factors interact complexly. Confounding by indication has been described as the most important limitation of observational studies. Randomized trials are not affected by confounding by indication due to random assignment.


title: Confounding

text: Confounding variables may also be categorised according to their source. The choice of measurement instrument (operational confound), situational characteristics (procedural confound), or inter-individual differences (person confound).


title: Confounding

text: Say one is studying the relation between birth order (1st child, 2nd child, etc.) and the presence of Down Syndrome in the child. In this scenario, maternal age would be a confounding variable:


title: Confounding

text: In risk assessments, factors such as age, gender, and educational levels often affect health status and so should be controlled. Beyond these factors, researchers may not consider or have access to data on other causal factors. An example is on the study of smoking tobacco on human health. Smoking, drinking alcohol, and diet are lifestyle activities that are related. A risk assessment that looks at the effects of smoking but does not control for alcohol consumption or diet may overestimate the risk of smoking. Smoking and confounding are reviewed in occupational risk assessments such as the safety of coal mining. When there is not a large sample population of non-smokers or non-drinkers in a particular occupation, the risk assessment may be biased towards finding a negative effect on health.


title: Confounding

text: A reduction in the potential for the occurrence and effect of confounding factors can be obtained by increasing the types and numbers of comparisons performed in an analysis. If measures or manipulations of core constructs are confounded (i.e. operational or procedural confounds exist), subgroup analysis may not reveal problems in the analysis. Additionally, increasing the number of comparisons can create other problems (see multiple comparisons).


title: Confounding

text: Peer review is a process that can assist in reducing instances of confounding, either before study implementation or after analysis has occurred. Peer review relies on collective expertise within a discipline to identify potential weaknesses in study design and analysis, including ways in which results may depend on confounding. Similarly, replication can test for the robustness of findings from one study under alternative study conditions or alternative analyses (e.g., controlling for potential confounds not identified in the initial study).


title: Confounding

text: Confounding effects may be less likely to occur and act similarly at multiple times and locations. In selecting study sites, the environment can be characterized in detail at the study sites to ensure sites are ecologically similar and therefore less likely to have confounding variables. Lastly, the relationship between the environmental variables that possibly confound the analysis and the measured parameters can be studied. The information pertaining to environmental variables can then be used in site-specific models to identify residual variance that may be due to real effects.


title: Confounding

text: Depending on the type of study design in place, there are various ways to modify that design to actively exclude or control confounding variables:


title: Confounding

text: Artifacts are variables that should have been systematically varied, either within or across studies, but that was accidentally held constant. Artifacts are thus threats to external validity. Artifacts are factors that covary with the treatment and the outcome. Campbell and Stanley identify several artifacts. The major threats to internal validity are history, maturation, testing, instrumentation, statistical regression, selection, experimental mortality, and selection-history interactions.


title: Confounding

text: One way to minimize the influence of artifacts is to use a pretest-posttest control group design. Within this design, "groups of people who are initially equivalent (at the pretest phase) are randomly assigned to receive the experimental treatment or a control condition and then assessed again after this differential experience (posttest phase)". Thus, any effects of artifacts are (ideally) equally distributed in participants in both the treatment and control conditions.


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: The Cerne Abbas Giant is a hill figure near the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, England. high, it depicts a standing nude male with a prominent erection and wielding a large club in its right hand. Like many other hill figures it is outlined by shallow trenches cut in the turf and backfilled with chalk rubble. It is listed as a scheduled monument of England; the site is now owned by the National Trust.


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: The origin and age of the figure are unclear and there is archaeological evidence that parts of it have been lost, altered or added over time; the earliest written record dates to the late 17th century. Early antiquarians associated it, on little evidence, with a Saxon deity, while other scholars sought to identify it with a Romano-British figure of Hercules or some syncretisation of the two. The lack of earlier descriptions, along with information given to the 18th-century antiquarian John Hutchins, has led some scholars to conclude it dates from the 17th century, but recent optically stimulated luminescence testing has suggested an origin between the years and , possibly close to the 10th century date of the founding of nearby Cerne Abbey.


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: Regardless of its age, the Cerne Abbas Giant has become an important part of local culture and folklore, which often associates it with fertility. It is one of England's best-known hill figures and is a visitor attraction in the region.


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: The Cerne Giant is one of two major extant human hill figures in England; the other is the Long Man of Wilmington, near Wilmington, East Sussex. Both are scheduled monuments.


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: The Giant is located just outside the small village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, about west of Bournemouth and north of Weymouth. The figure depicts a naked man and is of colossal dimensions, being about high and wide. It is cut into the steep west-facing side of a hill known as Giant Hill or Trendle Hill. Atop the hill is another landmark, the Iron Age earthwork known as the "Trendle" or "Frying Pan". The figure's outline is formed by trenches cut into the turf about deep, and filled with crushed chalk. In his right hand the giant holds a knotted club in length, and adding to the total height of the figure. A line across the waist has been suggested to represent a belt. Writing in 1901 in the "Proceedings" of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, Henry Colley March noted that: "The Cerne Giant presents five characteristics: (1) It is petrographic... It is, therefore, a rock carving... (2) It is colossal... (3) It is nude... (4) It is ithyphallic... (5) The Giant is clavigerous. It bears a weapon in its right hand."


title: Cerne Abbas Giant

text: A 1996 study found that some features have changed over time, concluding that the figure originally held a cloak over its left arm and an object, possibly a severed head, beneath its left hand. The former presence of a cloak was corroborated in 2008 when a team of archaeologists using special equipment determined that part of the figure had been lost; the cloak might have been a depiction of an animal skin. In 1993, the National Trust gave the Giant a "nose job" after years of erosion had worn it away.