title: Melvyn Douglas

text: As he aged, Douglas took on older-man and fatherly roles, in such movies as "Hud" (1963), for which he won his first Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, "The Americanization of Emily" (1964), an episode of "The Fugitive" (1966), "I Never Sang for My Father" (1970), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and "The Candidate" (1972). He won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the comedy-drama "Being There" (1979). However, Douglas confirmed in one of his final interviews that he refused to attend the 52nd Academy Awards because he could not bear competing against child actor Justin Henry for "Kramer vs. Kramer".


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: In addition to his Academy Awards, Douglas won a Tony Award for his Broadway lead role in the 1960 "The Best Man" by Gore Vidal, and an Emmy for his 1967 role in "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night".


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Douglas' final completed screen appearance was in "Ghost Story" (1981). He did not finish shooting all of his scenes for the film "The Hot Touch" (1982) before his death; the film had to be edited to compensate for Douglas' incomplete role.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Douglas has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for movies at 6423 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 6601 Hollywood Blvd.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Douglas was married briefly to artist Rosalind Hightower, and they had one child, (Melvyn) Gregory Hesselberg, in 1926. Hesselberg, an artist, is the father of actress Illeana Douglas.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: In 1931, Douglas married actress-turned-politician Helen Gahagan. They traveled to Europe that same year, and "were horrified by French and German anti-Semitism". As a result, they became outspoken anti-fascists.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Gahagan, as a three-term Congresswoman, was later Richard Nixon's opponent for the United States Senate seat from California in 1950. Nixon accused Gahagan of being soft on Communism because of her opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee. Nixon went so far as to infamously call her "pink right down to her underwear". It was Gahagan who popularized Nixon's epithet "Tricky Dick".


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: The couple hired architect Roland Coate to design a home for them in 1938 on a three-acre lot they owned in Outpost Estates, Los Angeles. The result was a one-story, 6,748-square-foot home.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Douglas and Gahagan had two children: Peter Gahagan Douglas (1933) and Mary Helen Douglas (1938). The couple remained married until Helen Gahagan Douglas' death in 1980 from cancer. Melvyn Douglas died a year later, in 1981, aged 80, from pneumonia and cardiac complications in New York City.


title: Melvyn Douglas

text: Douglas also staged "Moor Born" (1934), "Mother Lode" (1934) and "Within the Gates" (1934-1935) and produced "Call Me Mister" (1946-1948).


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla (Gorilla beringei beringei) is one of the two subspecies of the eastern gorilla. It is listed as endangered by the IUCN as of 2018.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: There are two populations: One is found in the Virunga volcanic mountains of Central/East Africa, within three National Parks: Mgahinga, in southwest Uganda; Volcanoes, in northwest Rwanda; and Virunga, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The other population is found in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. Some primatologists speculate the Bwindi population is a separate subspecies, though no description has been finalized. As of June 2018, there were more than 1,000 individuals.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Mountain gorillas are descendants of ancestral monkeys and apes found in Africa and Arabia during the start of the Oligocene epoch (34–24 million years ago). The fossil record provides evidence of the hominoid primates (apes) found in east Africa approximately 22–32 million years ago. The fossil record of the area where mountain gorillas live is particularly poor and so its evolutionary history is not clear.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: It was about 8.8 to 12 million years ago that the group of primates who were to evolve into gorillas split from their common ancestor with humans and chimps; this is when the genus "Gorilla" emerged. Mountain gorillas have been isolated from eastern lowland gorillas for approximately 10,000 years and these two taxa separated from their western counterparts approximately 1.2 to 3 million years ago. The genus was first referenced as "Troglodytes" in 1847, but renamed to "Gorilla" in 1852. It was not until 1967 that the taxonomist Colin Groves proposed that all gorillas be regarded as one species ("Gorilla gorilla") with three subspecies "Gorilla gorilla gorilla" (western lowland gorilla), "Gorilla gorilla graueri" (lowland gorillas found west of the Virungas) and "Gorilla gorilla beringei" (mountain gorillas, including "Gorilla beringei", found in the Virungas and Bwindi). In 2003, after a review, they were divided into two species ("Gorilla gorilla" and "Gorilla beringei") by The World Conservation Union (IUCN). There is now agreement that there are two species, each with two subspecies.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The fur of the mountain gorilla, often thicker and longer than that of other gorilla species, enables them to live in colder temperatures. Gorillas can be identified by nose prints unique to each individual


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Males reach a standing height of , a girth of , an arm span of and a weight of . Females are smaller with a weight of .


title: Mountain gorilla

text: This subspecies is smaller than the eastern lowland gorilla, the other subspecies of eastern gorilla. Adult males have more pronounced bony crests on the top and back of their skulls, giving their heads a more conical shape. These crests anchor the powerful temporalis muscles, which attach to the lower jaw (mandible). Adult females also have these crests, but they are less pronounced. Like all gorillas, they feature dark brown eyes framed by a black ring around the iris. Adult males are called silverbacks because a saddle of gray or silver-colored hair develops on their backs with age. The hair on their backs is shorter than on most other body parts, and their arm hair is especially long. Fully erect males can reach in height, with an arm span of and weigh . The tallest silverback recorded was tall with an arm span of , a chest of , and a weight of , shot in Alimbongo, northern Kivu in May 1938. There is an unconfirmed record of another individual, shot in 1932, that was and weighed . The heaviest silverback recorded was a tall specimen shot in Ambam, Cameroon.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla is primarily terrestrial and quadrupedal. However, it will climb into fruiting trees if the branches can carry its weight. Like all great apes other than humans, its arms are longer than its legs. It moves by knuckle-walking, supporting its weight on the backs of its curved fingers rather than its palms.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla is diurnal, spending most of the day eating, as large quantities of food are needed to sustain its massive bulk. It forages in the early morning, rests during the late morning and around midday, and in the afternoon it forages again before resting at night. Each gorilla builds a nest from surrounding vegetation to sleep in, constructing a new one every evening. Only infants sleep in the same nest as their mothers. They leave their sleeping sites when the sun rises at around 6 am, except when it is cold and overcast; then they often stay longer in their nests.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla inhabits the Albertine Rift montane cloud forest, including the Virunga Mountains, ranging in elevation from . Most groups live on the slopes of three of the dormant volcanoes: Karisimbi, Mikeno, and Visoke. The vegetation is very dense at the bottom of the mountains, becoming more sparse at higher elevations, and the forests are often cloudy, misty and cold.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The home range used by one group of gorillas during one year is influenced by availability of food sources and usually includes several vegetation zones. George Schaller identified ten distinct zones, including: bamboo forest at ; "Hagenia" forest at ; and the giant senecio zone at . The mountain gorilla spends most of its time in "Hagenia" forest, where galium vines are found year-round. All parts of this vine are consumed: leaves, stems, flowers, and berries. It travels to the bamboo forest during the few months of the year when fresh shoots are available, and it climbs into subalpine regions to eat the soft centers of giant senecio trees.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla is primarily a herbivore; the majority of its diet is composed of the leaves, shoots, and stems (85.8%) of 142 plant species. It also feeds on bark (6.9%), roots (3.3%), flowers (2.3%), and fruit (1.7%), as well as small invertebrates. (0.1%). In a year long study in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest adult males ate an average of of food a day, while a females ate .


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The mountain gorilla is highly social, and lives in relatively stable, cohesive groups held together by long-term bonds between adult males and females. Relationships among females are relatively weak. These groups are nonterritorial; the silverback generally defends his group rather than his territory. In the Virunga mountain gorillas, the average length of tenure for a dominant silverback is 4.7 years.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: 61% of groups are composed of one adult male and a number of females and 36% contain more than one adult male. The remaining gorillas are either lone males or exclusively male groups, usually made up of one mature male and a few younger males. Group sizes vary from five to thirty, with an average of ten individuals. A typical group contains: one dominant silverback, who is the group's undisputed leader; another subordinate silverback (usually a younger brother, half-brother, or even an adult son of the dominant silverback); one or two blackbacks, who act as sentries; three to four sexually mature females, who have bonded for life to the dominant silverback; and from three to six juveniles and infants.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Most males and approximately 60% of females leave their natal group. Males leave when they are about eleven years old, and often the separation process is slow: they spend more and more time on the edge of the group until they leave altogether. They may travel alone or with an all-male group for two–five years before they can attract females to join them and form a new group. Females typically emigrate when they are about eight years old, either transferring directly to an established group or beginning a new one with a lone male. Females often transfer to a new group several times before they choose to settle down with a certain silverback male.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The dominant silverback generally determines the movements of the group, leading it to appropriate feeding sites throughout the year. He also mediates conflicts within the group and protects it from external threats. When the group is attacked by humans, leopards, or other gorillas, the silverback will protect them, even at the cost of his own life. He is the center of attention during rest sessions, and young gorillas frequently stay close to him and include him in their games. If a mother dies or leaves the group, the silverback is usually the one who looks after her abandoned offspring, even allowing them to sleep in his nest. Young mountain gorillas have been observed searching for and dismantling poachers' snares.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: When the silverback dies or is killed by disease, accident, or poachers, the family group may be disrupted. Unless there is an accepted male descendant capable of taking over his position, the group will either split up or adopt an unrelated male. When a new silverback joins the family group, he may kill all of the infants of the dead silverback. Infanticide has not been observed in stable groups.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Analysis of mountain gorilla genomes by whole genome sequencing indicates that a recent decline in their population size has led to extensive inbreeding. As an apparent result, individuals are typically homozygous for 34% of their genome sequence. Furthermore, homozygosity and the expression of deleterious recessive mutations as consequences of inbreeding have likely resulted in the purging of severely deleterious mutations from the population.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Although strong and powerful, mountain gorillas are generally gentle and very shy. Severe aggression is rare in stable groups, but when two mountain gorilla groups meet, sometimes the two silverbacks can engage in a fight to the death, using their canines to cause deep, gaping injuries. Conflicts are most often resolved by displays and other threat behaviors that are intended to intimidate without becoming physical.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: A ritualized charge display is unique to gorillas. The entire sequence has nine steps: (1) progressively quickening hooting, (2) symbolic feeding, (3) rising bipedally, (4) throwing vegetation, (5) chest-beating with cupped hands, (6) one leg kick, (7) sideways running four-legged, (8) slapping and tearing vegetation, and (9) thumping the ground with palms. Jill Donisthorpe has stated that a male charged at her twice. In both cases, the gorilla turned away when she stood her ground.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The midday rest period is an important time for establishing and reinforcing relationships within the group. Mutual grooming reinforces social bonds, and helps keep hair free from dirt and parasites. It is not so common among gorillas as in other primates, although females groom their offspring regularly.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Young gorillas play often and are more arboreal than the large adults. Playing helps them learn how to communicate and behave within the group. Activities include wrestling, chasing, and somersaults. The silverback and his females tolerate and, if encouraged, even participate.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Twenty-five distinct vocalizations are recognized, many of which are used primarily for group communication within dense vegetation. Sounds classified as grunts and barks are heard most frequently while traveling, and indicate the whereabouts of individual group members. They also may be used during social interactions when discipline is required. Screams and roars signal alarm or warning, and are produced most often by silverbacks. Deep, rumbling belches suggest contentment and are heard frequently during feeding and resting periods. They are the most common form of intragroup communication.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Mountain gorillas generally demonstrate aversion to certain reptiles and insects. Infants, whose typical behavior is to chase anything that moves, will go out of their way to avoid chameleons and caterpillars. The gorillas also demonstrate an aversion to water bodies in the environment and will cross streams only if they can do so without getting wet, such as by using fallen logs to cross the stream. They also dislike rain.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: In October 1902, Captain Robert von Beringe (1865–1940) shot two large apes during an expedition to establish the boundaries of German East Africa. One of the apes was recovered and sent to the Berlin Zoological Museum, where Professor Paul Matschie (1861–1926) classified the animal as a new form of gorilla and named it "Gorilla beringei" after the man who shot it. In 1925, Carl Akeley, a hunter from the American Museum of Natural History who wished to study the gorillas, convinced Albert I of Belgium to establish the Albert National Park to protect the animals of the Virunga mountains.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: George Schaller began his 20-month observation of the mountain gorillas in 1959, subsequently publishing two books: "The Mountain Gorilla" and "The Year of the Gorilla". Little was known about the life of the mountain gorilla before his research, which described its social organization, life history, and ecology.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Dian Fossey began what would become an 18-year study in 1967. Fossey made new observations, completed the first accurate census, and established active conservation practices, such as anti-poaching patrols. The Digit Fund, which Fossey started, continued her work and was later renamed the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International. The Fund's Karisoke Research Center monitors and protects the mountain gorillas of the Virungas. Close monitoring and research of the Bwindi mountain gorillas began in the 1990s.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: As of 2018, the mountain gorilla was listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List. Conservation efforts have led to an increase in the overall population of the mountain gorilla ("Gorilla beringei beringei") in the Virungas and at Bwindi. The overall population is now believed to be at more than 1,000 individuals.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: In December 2010, the official website of Virunga National Park announced that "the number of mountain gorillas living in the tri-national forested area of which Virunga forms a part, has increased by 26.3% during the last seven years - an average growth rate of 3.7% per annum." The 2010 census estimated that 480 mountain gorillas inhabited the region. The 2003 census had estimated the Virunga gorilla population to be 380 individuals, which represented a 17% increase in the total population since 1989, when there were 320 individuals. The population has almost doubled since its lowest point in 1981, when a census estimated that only 254 gorillas remained.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The 2006 census at Bwindi indicated a population of 340 gorillas, representing a 6% increase in total population size since 2002 and a 12% increase from 320 individuals in 1997. All of those estimates were based on traditional census methods using dung samples collected at night nests. Conversely, genetic analyses of the entire population during the 2006 census indicated there only were approximately 300 individuals in Bwindi. The discrepancy highlights the difficulty in using imprecise census data to estimate population growth.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: According to computer modeling of their population dynamics in both Bwindi and the Virungas, groups of gorillas who were habituated for research and ecotourism have higher growth rates than unhabituated gorillas. Habituation means that through repeated, neutral contact with humans, gorillas exhibit normal behavior when people are in proximity. Habituated gorillas are more closely guarded by field staff and they receive veterinary treatment for snares, respiratory disease, and other life-threatening conditions. Nonetheless, researchers recommended that some gorillas remain unhabituated as a bet-hedging strategy against the risk of human pathogens being transmitted throughout the population.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The main international non-governmental organization involved in conservation of mountain gorillas is the International Gorilla Conservation Programme, which was established in 1991 as a joint effort of the African Wildlife Foundation, Fauna & Flora International, and the World Wide Fund for Nature. Conservation requires work at many levels, from local to international, and involves protection and law enforcement as well as research and education.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: A collaborative management process has had some success in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park. The forest was designated a national park in 1991; this occurred with little community consultation and the new status prohibited local people from accessing resources within the park as well as reducing economic opportunities. Subsequently, a number of forest fires were deliberately lit and threats were made to the gorillas. To counteract this, three schemes to provide benefits from the existence of forest communities and involving the local community in park management were developed. They included agreements allowing the controlled harvesting of resources in the park, receipt of some revenue from tourism, and establishment of a trust fund partly for community development. Tension between people and the park has thus been reduced and now there is more willingness to take part in gorilla protection. Surveys of community attitudes conducted by CARE show a steadily increasing proportion of people in favour of the park. Moreover, there have been no cases of deliberate burning and the problem of snares in these areas has been reduced.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: While community-based conservation bears out individual analysis, there are significant overlaps between active and theoretical conservation and a discussion of the two as halves of a whole seems more constructive. For example, in 2002, Rwanda's national parks went through a restructuring process. The director of the IGCP, Eugène Rutagarama, stated that "They got more rangers on better salaries, more radios, more patrol cars and better training in wildlife conservation. They also built more shelters in the park, from which rangers could protect the gorillas". The funding for these types of improvements usually comes from tourism - in 2008, approximately 20,000 tourists visited gorilla populations in Rwanda, generating around $8 million in revenue for the parks. In Uganda too, tourism is seen as a "high value activity that generates enough revenue to cover park management costs and contribute to the national budget of the Uganda Wildlife Authority." Furthermore, tourist visits which are conducted by park rangers also allow censuses of gorilla sub-populations to be undertaken concurrently.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: In addition to tourism, other measures for conservation of the sub-population can be taken such as ensuring connecting corridors between isolated areas to make movement between them easier and safer.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Loss of habitat is one of the most severe threats to gorilla populations. The forests where mountain gorillas live are surrounded by rapidly increasing human settlement. Through shifting (slash-and-burn) agriculture, pastoral expansion, and logging, villages in forest zones cause fragmentation and degradation of habitat. The late 1960s saw the Virunga Conservation Area (VCA) of Rwanda's national park reduced by more than half of its original size to support the cultivation of Pyrethrum. This led to a massive reduction in mountain gorilla population numbers by the mid-1970s. The resulting deforestation confines the gorillas to isolated deserts. Some groups may raid crops for food, creating further animosity and retaliation.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The impact of habitat loss extends beyond the reduction of suitable living space for gorillas. As gorilla groups are increasingly isolated from one another geographically due to human settlements, the genetic diversity of each group is reduced. Some signs of inbreeding are already appearing in younger gorillas, including webbed hands and feet.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Mountain gorillas are not usually hunted for bushmeat, but frequently, they are maimed or killed by traps and snares intended for other animals. They have been killed for their heads, hands, and feet, which are sold to collectors. Infants are sold to zoos, researchers, and people who want them as pets. The abduction of infants generally involves the loss of at least one adult, as members of a group will fight to the death to protect their young. The Virunga gorillas are particularly susceptible to animal trafficking for the illegal pet trade. With young gorillas worth from $1,000 to $5,000 on the black market, poachers seeking infant and juvenile specimens will kill and wound other members of the group in the process. Those of the group that survive often disband. One well-documented case is known as the "Taiping 4". In this situation, a Malaysian Zoo received four wild-born infant gorillas from Nigeria at a cost of US$1.6 million using falsified export documents.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Poaching for meat also is particularly threatening in regions of political unrest. Most of the African great apes survive in areas of chronic insecurity, where there is a breakdown of law and order. The killing of mountain gorillas at Bikenge in Virunga National Park in January 2007 was a well-documented case.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Despite the protection garnered from being located in national parks, the mountain gorilla is also at risk from people of a more well-meaning nature. Groups subjected to regular visits from tourists and locals are at a continued risk of disease cross-transmission (Lilly et al., 2002) – this is in spite of attempts to enforce a rule that humans and gorillas be separated by a distance of seven metres at all times to prevent this.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: With a similar genetic makeup to humans and an immune system that has not evolved to cope with human disease, this poses a serious conservation threat. Indeed, according to some researchers, infectious diseases (predominantly respiratory) are responsible for approximately 20% of sudden deaths in mountain gorilla populations.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: With the implementation of a successful ecotourism program in which human-gorilla interaction was minimised, during the period of 1989–2000 four sub-populations in Rwanda experienced an increase of 76%. By contrast, seven of the commonly visited sub-populations in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) saw a decline of almost 20% over only four years (1996–2000).


title: Mountain gorilla

text: The risk of disease transmission is not limited to those of a human origin; pathogens from domestic animals and livestock through contaminated water are also a concern. Studies have found that waterborne, gastrointestinal parasites such as "Cryptosporidium" sp., "Microsporidia" sp., and "Giardia" sp. are genetically identical when found in livestock, humans, and gorillas, particularly along the border of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo have been politically unstable and beleaguered by war and civil unrest during the last decades. Using simulation modeling, Byers et al. (2003) have suggested that times of war and unrest have negative impacts on the habitat and populations of mountain gorillas. Due to the increase in human encounters, both aggressive and passive, this has resulted in a rise in mortality rates and a decrease in reproductive success.


title: Mountain gorilla

text: More direct impacts from conflict can also be seen. Kanyamibwa notes that there were reports that mines were placed along trails in the Volcanoes National Park, and that many gorillas were killed as a result. Pressure from habitat destruction in the form of logging also increased as refugees fled the cities and cut down trees for wood. During the Rwandan genocide, some poaching activity also was linked to the general breakdown of law and order and lack of any ramifications.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad (; "Rim" or "Edge" City) is a roughly crescent-shaped conurbation in the central-western Netherlands, consisting primarily of the four largest Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht); their suburbs, and many towns in between, that all grew and merged into each other, containing almost half the country's population. Among other things, it includes the Port of Rotterdam (the busiest seaport outside of Asia), the Port of Amsterdam (Europe's fourth-busiest seaport), and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol (the busiest airport in Europe by aircraft movements). With a population of approximately 8.4 million people it is one of the largest metropolitan regions in Europe, comparable in population size to the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region or the San Francisco Bay Area, and covers an area of approximately . The Randstad had a gross regional product of €397 billion in 2017, making it the third most productive region in the European Union, behind the Paris Region and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. It encompasses both the Amsterdam metropolitan area and Rotterdam–The Hague metropolitan area. It is part of the larger Blue Banana megalopolis.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad's main cities are Almere, Amsterdam, Delft, Dordrecht, Haarlem, The Hague, Leiden, Rotterdam, Utrecht, and Zoetermeer. Other towns include Alkmaar, Alphen aan den Rijn, Amstelveen, Capelle aan den IJssel, Gouda, Heerhugowaard, Hilversum, Hoofddorp, Hoorn, Lelystad, Nieuwegein, Purmerend, Rijswijk, Schiedam, Spijkenisse, Veenendaal, Vlaardingen, Zaandam and Zeist.


title: Randstad

text: Although the name Randstad is often translated into English as "edge city" or "border city", a more accurate translation would be "rim city". The Dutch name was coined in 1938 by KLM founder Albert Plesman who, while flying over the region, used it to describe a strip of cities at the rim of a large green agricultural area (the Green Heart). While technically more of a crescent (the southeastern edge of the rim is significantly less populated), the ring shape formed by connecting the four major cities of the region led to the use of the name "Ring City".


title: Randstad

text: Recently, Dutch planners have started to refer to the Randstad as "Deltametropool". This actually consists of two large metropolitan areas:


title: Randstad

text: The Noordvleugel ("North Wing"), with a population of around 3.6 million people, consists of the Haarlem and IJmuiden conurbations in the west, Amsterdam at the centre and Almere, the Gooi area and Utrecht in the east. The conurbation of Utrecht (population around 1 million) can be considered to be part of this wing, but can also be excluded. The cultural centre of the Noordvleugel, however, is notably centered on Amsterdam, which could as such be considered a classical centralistic metropolis. Amsterdam recently started to present itself as the Amsterdam metropolitan area ("Metropoolregio Amsterdam"). The expectation is that the use of the Noordvleugel and the Randstad will become less as a result.


title: Randstad

text: While Utrecht is not the center of the Noordvleugel, it is in fact the center of the whole of the Netherlands itself. While being categorised as part of the Randstad, the Utrecht agglomeration lies relatively further apart, owing to its long history of rivalry with Holland and Amsterdam in particular. Utrecht is much more monocentric than Amsterdam, which has booming satellite cities such as Haarlem and Almere. While Utrecht functions as the gateway to the Randstad for both car and rail transport, it is disconnected from the virtually continuous urbanised zone in western Holland by the protected polder landscape of the Groene Hart. The North Wing of the Randstad is expected to grow more in population than the Zuidvleugel and the Groene Hart areas, with the growth of population also being in effect for a longer period of time, compared to the other two areas.


title: Randstad

text: The Zuidvleugel ("South Wing"), with a population of around 3.5 million people, stretches some 60 kilometers from Dordrecht in the southeast to Leiden in the north. The main conurbations are the Rotterdam and The Hague areas. The virtual centre of the Zuidvleugel lies in between these two major cities, near Delft. The first steps toward this development were taken with the construction of a new fast light-rail connection between Rotterdam and The Hague: RandstadRail. A long-delayed extension of the western A4 motorway from the south of Delft to Rotterdam has also been constructed, creating a second connection from Rotterdam, via The Hague, to Amsterdam.


title: Randstad

text: A possible new area would be the Zuidoostflank; parallel to the A2 motorway (from Amsterdam to Eindhoven) and parallel to the A12 motorway (Utrecht to WERV (Wageningen, Ede, Rhenen and Veenendaal)), as this region has much potential to strengthen the knowledge economy of the Randstad.


title: Randstad

text: Over the last few decades, a major topic in the Randstad is the conflict between the cities and the towns in between. These towns and the surrounding countryside, known as the "Groene Hart" (Green Heart), are usually much greener than the cities, they house many commuters that work in the cities and the former strongly depend on the latter for facilities such as hospitals and large scale entertainment. Cities need more space to expand, yet the towns fear losing their identity and autonomy.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad's borders have never been officially specified. Some consider only the four most populous cities of the Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) part of it, others would say that areas such as Alkmaar (which represents itself as being part of it), Hoorn and Lelystad are also part of this conurbation.


title: Randstad

text: The publication "Randstad 2040", released by the Government of the Netherlands, reveals that the Noordvleugel (Amsterdam and Utrecht region) is already growing parallel to the A1, A2, and A4 motorways, as well as into the northern part of North Holland (Alkmaar and Hoorn region) and Flevoland (Almere and Lelystad region). There is also a trend shown that the Noordvleugel is expanding parallel to the A2 (Amsterdam towards Eindhoven) and A12 (Utrecht towards the WERV region, encompassing the cities of Wageningen, Ede, Rhenen and Veenendaal) motorways. This region is called the Zuidoostflank (English: Southeastside).


title: Randstad

text: It is sometimes argued that a cultural divide exists between the Randstad and the rest of the country. This distinction is usually made in relation to Dutch politics and media, who according to critics are mostly interested in the affairs of the Randstad. Both branches (government and media) have their center in the Randstad; respectively in The Hague and in Hilversum. The Randstad itself, however, does not represent a unified cultural zone. It is not a 'place' of residence or a carrier of cultural identity. According to the late influential urbanist Niek de Boer, the Randstad simply 'does not exist'. While the cities and landscapes in the Randstad share some commonalities, there are also large differences originating in centuries of divergent development. There are strong local identities within the region, especially in rural environments.


title: Randstad

text: Politically, the Randstad is broadly center-right and conservative-leaning, with student cities, including Amsterdam, Utrecht, Leiden and Delft, being more progressive. There is an exception to this dichotomy, however. The Bible Belt overlaps with the Randstad, and municipalities lying in this overlap like Hardinxveld-Giessendam, Bunschoten and especially Urk tend to vote for Christian political parties, like the Reformed Political Party and the Christian Union.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad is home to some of the most reputable universities in Europe, including the University of Amsterdam, the VU Amsterdam, Leiden University, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Utrecht University and the Delft University of Technology.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad possesses a large infrastructure system, with many railways, motorways, trams and subways in various cities. It is possible to cycle on reasonably safe and pleasant routes almost everywhere and cycling is a major mode of transport. The Port of Rotterdam, and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, are both major international gateways. There are various smaller ports and airports in the Randstad, like the ports of IJmuiden, Amsterdam and Dordrecht, as well as Rotterdam The Hague Airport.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad has various motorways, most of them starting around Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Many (inter)national corridors start in the Randstad, including the A1, A2, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A12, A13, A15, A16, A20, A27 and A28 "autosnelwegen", as well as various commuter routes.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad network of motorways carry some of the highest traffic volumes in Europe. Until 2005 most motorways used to be no wider than four or six lanes, but from 2005 on capacity of most major highways expanded to six or eight and on some parts even ten lanes. A 14-lane highway is projected near Utrecht. Some hard shoulders are in use as peak hour lanes – traffic is allowed to use the hard shoulder as a third or fourth lane during periods of congestion, when traffic management signs indicate. Since these expansions traffic jams (which used to be quite intense) have been reduced by up to 25%. Traffic on the highway still is quite heavy, though.


title: Randstad

text: Because of the many obstructions in minor roads, such as one-way or circular routes (often created to make living neighbourhoods safer), a lot of local traffic also uses the motorways.


title: Randstad

text: Another growing issue is the number of trucks on the radiating motorways from the Randstad; truck volumes can be as high as 20,000 trucks per day, occupying the entire right lane on some motorways.


title: Randstad

text: The Randstad is the keystone of the Dutch railway network; most intercity connections terminate in one of the key cities in the Randstad. The railway network in the area is dense and heavily used. Together with the Swiss Federal Railways (1st), and the Belgian railways (3rd), the Dutch Railways are in the top 3 of Europe in punctuality. Larger cities in the Randstad have many railway stations, as well as light rail, subway and/or tram networks.


title: Randstad

text: Much effort is being expended in increasing the cycling rate of the Randstad. The campaign Fietsfilevrij exists to encourage cycling as an alternative to waiting in traffic jams on the motorway. Bicycle "superhighways" have been built on which cyclists have priority for long distance, high speed cycle commuting. For instance, one of these stretches the 50 km distance between Amsterdam and Utrecht.


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: The Udaloy" class, Soviet designation Project 1155 "Fregat and Russian designation Project 11551 "Fregat-M" (, 'Fregat' meaning Frigate), are series of anti-submarine guided-missile destroyers built for the Soviet Navy, seven of which are currently in service with the Russian Navy. Twelve ships were built between 1980 and 1991, while the thirteenth ship built to a modified design, known as "Udaloy II" class, followed in 1999. They complement the Sovremenny-class destroyers in anti-aircraft and anti-surface warfare operations. The codename Udaloy comes from an archaic Russian adjective "удалой", meaning "daring" or "bold".


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: The Project 1155 dates to the 1970s when it was concluded that it was too costly to build large-displacement, multi-role combatants. The concept of a specialized surface ship was developed by Soviet designers. Two different types of warships were laid down, which were designed by the Severnoye Design Bureau: Project 956 destroyer and Project 1155 large anti-submarine ship. The "Udaloy" class are generally considered the Soviet equivalent of the American s. There are variations in SAM and air search radar among units of the class. Based on the , the emphasis on anti-submarine warfare (ASW) left these ships with limited anti-surface and anti-air capabilities.


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: In 2015, the Russian Navy initially announced that five out of the eight Project 1155 ships will be refurbished and upgraded as part of the Navy modernization program by 2022. In 2020 it was suggested that a total of eight Project 1155/1155.1 vessels would be upgraded to the same standard, though work on the remaining three units would extend beyond 2022. In addition to overhauling their radio-electronic warfare and life support systems, they will receive modern missile complexes to fire P-800 Oniks and Kalibr cruise missiles. The ships are to have their service life extended by 30 years until sufficient numbers of s are commissioned. Upgrades will include replacing the Rastrub-B missiles with 3S24 angling launchers fitted with four containers using the 3M24 anti-ship missile, and two 3S14-1155 universal VLS with 16 cells for Kalibr land attack, anti-ship, and anti-submarine cruise missiles in place of one of the AK-100 guns.


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: Following "Udaloy"s commissioning, designers began developing an upgrade package in 1982 to provide more balanced capabilities with a greater emphasis on anti-shipping. The Project 1155.1 Fregat II Class Large ASW Ship (NATO Codename Udaloy II) is roughly the counterpart of the Improved "Spruance" class; only one was originally completed.


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: Similar to "Udaloy" externally, it was a new configuration replacing the SS-N-14 with P-270 Moskit (NATO reporting designation SS-N-22 "Sunburn") anti-ship missiles, a twin 130 mm gun, UDAV-1 anti-torpedo rockets, and gun/SAM CIWS systems. A standoff ASW capability is retained by firing RPK-2 Vyuga (NATO reporting designation 'SS-N-15 Starfish') missiles from the torpedo tubes.


title: Udaloy-class destroyer

text: Powered by a modern gas turbine engine, the Udaloy II is equipped with more capable sonars, an integrated air defense fire control system, and a number of digital electronic systems based on state-of-the-art circuitry. The original MGK-355 Polinom integrated sonar system (with NATO reporting names 'Horse Jaw' and 'Horse Tail' respectively for the hull-mounted and towed portions) on "Udaloy"-I ships is replaced by its successor, a newly designed Zvezda M-2 sonar system that has a range in excess of in the 2nd convergence zone. The Zvezda sonar system is considered by its designers to be the equivalent in terms of overall performance of the AN/SQS-53 on US destroyers, though much bulkier and heavier than its American counterpart: the length of the hull-mounted portion is nearly . The torpedo approaching warning function of the Polinom sonar system is retained and further improved by its successor.


title: Histology

text: also known as microscopic anatomy or microanatomy, is the branch of biology which studies the microscopic anatomy of biological tissues. Histology is the microscopic counterpart to gross anatomy, which looks at larger structures visible without a microscope. Although one may divide microscopic anatomy into "organology", the study of organs, "histology", the study of tissues, and "cytology", the study of cells, modern usage places all of these topics under the field of histology. In medicine, histopathology is the branch of histology that includes the microscopic identification and study of diseased tissue. In the field of paleontology, the term paleohistology refers to the histology of fossil organisms.


title: Histology

text: There are four basic types of animal tissues: muscle tissue, nervous tissue, connective tissue, and epithelial tissue. All animal tissues are considered to be subtypes of these four principal tissue types (for example, blood is classified as connective tissue, since the blood cells are suspended in an extracellular matrix, the plasma).


title: Histology

text: For plants, the study of their tissues falls under the field of plant anatomy, with the following four main types:


title: Histology

text: Histopathology is the branch of histology that includes the microscopic identification and study of diseased tissue. It is an important part of anatomical pathology and surgical pathology, as accurate diagnosis of cancer and other diseases often requires histopathological examination of tissue samples. Trained physicians, frequently licensed pathologists, perform histopathological examination and provide diagnostic information based on their observations.


title: Histology

text: The field of histology that includes the preparation of tissues for microscopic examination is known as histotechnology. Job titles for the trained personnel who prepare histological specimens for examination are numerous and include histotechnicians, histotechnologists, histology technicians and technologists, medical laboratory technicians, and biomedical scientists.


title: Histology

text: Most histological samples need preparation before microscopic observation; these methods depend on the specimen and method of observation.


title: Histology

text: Chemical fixatives are used to preserve and maintain the structure of tissues and cells; fixation also hardens tissues which aids in cutting the thin sections of tissue needed for observation under the microscope. Fixatives generally preserve tissues (and cells) by irreversibly cross-linking proteins. The most widely used fixative for light microscopy is 10% neutral buffered formalin, or NBF (4% formaldehyde in phosphate buffered saline).


title: Histology

text: For electron microscopy, the most commonly used fixative is glutaraldehyde, usually as a 2.5% solution in phosphate buffered saline. Other fixatives used for electron microscopy are osmium tetroxide or uranyl acetate.


title: Histology

text: The main action of these aldehyde fixatives is to cross-link amino groups in proteins through the formation of methylene bridges (-CH-), in the case of formaldehyde, or by CH cross-links in the case of glutaraldehyde. This process, while preserving the structural integrity of the cells and tissue can damage the biological functionality of proteins, particularly enzymes.


title: Histology

text: Formalin fixation leads to degradation of mRNA, miRNA, and DNA as well as denaturation and modification of proteins in tissues. However, extraction and analysis of nucleic acids and proteins from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues is possible using appropriate protocols.


title: Histology

text: "Selection" is the choice of relevant tissue in cases where it is not necessary to put the entire original tissue mass through further processing. The remainder may remain fixated in case it needs to be examined at a later time.


title: Histology

text: "Trimming" is the cutting of tissue samples in order to expose the relevant surfaces for later sectioning. It also creates tissue samples of appropriate size to fit into cassettes.


title: Histology

text: Tissues are embedded in a harder medium both as a support and to allow the cutting of thin tissue slices. In general, water must first be removed from tissues (dehydration) and replaced with a medium that either solidifies directly, or with an intermediary fluid (clearing) that is miscible with the embedding media.


title: Histology

text: For light microscopy, paraffin wax is the most frequently used embedding material. Paraffin is immiscible with water, the main constituent of biological tissue, so it must first be removed in a series of dehydration steps. Samples are transferred through a series of progressively more concentrated ethanol baths, up to 100% ethanol to remove remaining traces of water. Dehydration is followed by a "clearing agent" (typically xylene although other environmental safe substitutes are in use) which removes the alcohol and is miscible with the wax, finally melted paraffin wax is added to replace the xylene and infiltrate the tissue. In most histology, or histopathology laboratories the dehydration, clearing, and wax infiltration are carried out in "tissue processors" which automate this process. Once infiltrated in paraffin, tissues are oriented in molds which are filled with wax; once positioned, the wax is cooled, solidifying the block and tissue.


title: Histology

text: Paraffin wax does not always provide a sufficiently hard matrix for cutting very thin sections (which are especially important for electron microscopy). Paraffin wax may also be too soft in relation to the tissue, the heat of the melted wax may alter the tissue in undesirable ways, or the dehydrating or clearing chemicals may harm the tissue. Alternatives to paraffin wax include, epoxy, acrylic, agar, gelatin, celloidin, and other types of waxes.


title: Histology

text: In electron microscopy epoxy resins are the most commonly employed embedding media, but acrylic resins are also used, particularly where immunohistochemistry is required.


title: Histology

text: For tissues to be cut in a frozen state, tissues are placed in a water-based embedding medium. Pre-frozen tissues are placed into molds with the liquid embedding material, usually a water-based glycol, OCT, TBS, Cryogen, or resin, which is then frozen to form hardened blocks.


title: Histology

text: For light microscopy, a knife mounted in a microtome is used to cut tissue sections (typically between 5-15 micrometers thick) which are mounted on a glass microscope slide. For transmission electron microscopy (TEM), a diamond or glass knife mounted in an ultramicrotome is used to cut between 50 and 150 nanometer thick tissue sections.


title: Histology

text: Biological tissue has little inherent contrast in either the light or electron microscope. Staining is employed to give both contrast to the tissue as well as highlighting particular features of interest. When the stain is used to target a specific chemical component of the tissue (and not the general structure), the term histochemistry is used.


title: Histology

text: Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E stain) is one of the most commonly used stains in histology to show the general structure of the tissue. Hematoxylin stains cell nuclei blue; eosin, an acidic dye, stains the cytoplasm and other tissues in different stains of pink.


title: Histology

text: In contrast to H&E, which is used as a general stain, there are many techniques that more selectively stain cells, cellular components, and specific substances. A commonly performed histochemical technique that targets a specific chemical is the Perls' Prussian blue reaction, used to demonstrate iron deposits in diseases like hemochromatosis. The Nissl method for Nissl substance and Golgi's method (and related silver stains) are useful in identifying neurons are other examples of more specific stains.


title: Histology

text: In historadiography, a slide (sometimes stained histochemically) is X-rayed. More commonly, autoradiography is used in visualizing the locations to which a radioactive substance has been transported within the body, such as cells in S phase (undergoing DNA replication) which incorporate tritiated thymidine, or sites to which radiolabeled nucleic acid probes bind in in situ hybridization. For autoradiography on a microscopic level, the slide is typically dipped into liquid nuclear tract emulsion, which dries to form the exposure film. Individual silver grains in the film are visualized with dark field microscopy.


title: Histology

text: Recently, antibodies have been used to specifically visualize proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids. This process is called immunohistochemistry, or when the stain is a fluorescent molecule, immunofluorescence. This technique has greatly increased the ability to identify categories of cells under a microscope. Other advanced techniques, such as nonradioactive "in situ" hybridization, can be combined with immunochemistry to identify specific DNA or RNA molecules with fluorescent probes or tags that can be used for immunofluorescence and enzyme-linked fluorescence amplification (especially alkaline phosphatase and tyramide signal amplification). Fluorescence microscopy and confocal microscopy are used to detect fluorescent signals with good intracellular detail.


title: Histology

text: For electron microscopy heavy metals are typically used to stain tissue sections. Uranyl acetate and lead citrate are commonly used to impart contrast to tissue in the electron microscope.


title: Histology

text: Similar to the frozen section procedure employed in medicine, cryosectioning is a method to rapidly freeze, cut, and mount sections of tissue for histology. The tissue is usually sectioned on a cryostat or freezing microtome. The frozen sections are mounted on a glass slide and may be stained to enhance the contrast between different tissues. Unfixed frozen sections can be used for studies requiring enzyme localization in tissues and cells. Tissue fixation is required for certain procedures such as antibody-linked immunofluorescence staining. Frozen sections are often prepared during surgical removal of tumors to allow rapid identification of tumor margins, as in Mohs surgery, or determination of tumor malignancy, when a tumor is discovered incidentally during surgery.


title: Histology

text: Ultramicrotomy is a method of preparing extremely thin sections for transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis. Tissues are commonly embedded in epoxy or other plastic resin. Very thin sections (less than 0.1 micrometer in thickness) are cut using diamond or glass knives on an ultramicrotome.


title: Histology

text: Artifacts are structures or features in tissue that interfere with normal histological examination. Artifacts interfere with histology by changing the tissues appearance and hiding structures. Tissue processing artifacts can include pigments formed by fixatives, shrinkage, washing out of cellular components, color changes in different tissues types and alterations of the structures in the tissue. An example is mercury pigment left behind after using Zenker's fixative to fix a section. Formalin fixation can also leave a brown to black pigment under acidic conditions.


title: Histology

text: In the 17th century the Italian Marcello Malpighi used microscopes to study tiny biological entities; some regard him as the founder of the fields of histology and microscopic pathology. Malpighi analyzed several parts of the organs of bats, frogs and other animals under the microscope. While studying the structure of the lung, Malpighi noticed its membranous alveoli and the hair-like connections between veins and arteries, which he named capillaries. His discovery established how the oxygen breathed in enters the blood stream and serves the body.


title: Histology

text: In the 19th century histology was an academic discipline in its own right. The French anatomist Xavier Bichat introduced the concept of tissue in anatomy in 1801, and the term "histology" (), coined to denote the "study of tissues", first appeared in a book by Karl Meyer in 1819. Bichat described twenty-one human tissues, which can be subsumed under the four categories currently accepted by histologists. The usage of illustrations in histology, deemed as useless by Bichat, was promoted by Jean Cruveilhier.


title: Histology

text: During the 19th century many fixation techniques were developed by Adolph Hannover (solutions of chromates and chromic acid), Franz Schulze and Max Schultze (osmic acid), Alexander Butlerov (formaldehyde) and Benedikt Stilling (freezing).


title: Histology

text: Mounting techniques were developed by Rudolf Heidenhain (1824-1898), who introduced gum Arabic; Salomon Stricker (1834-1898), who advocated a mixture of wax and oil; and Andrew Pritchard (1804-1884) who, in 1832, used a gum/isinglass mixture. In the same year, Canada balsam appeared on the scene, and in 1869 Edwin Klebs (1834-1913) reported that he had for some years embedded his specimens in paraffin.


title: Histology

text: The 1906 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to histologists Camillo Golgi and Santiago Ramon y Cajal. They had conflicting interpretations of the neural structure of the brain based on differing interpretations of the same images. Ramón y Cajal won the prize for his correct theory, and Golgi for the silver-staining technique that he invented to make it possible.


title: Histology

text: Currently there is intense interest in developing techniques for "in vivo" histology (predominantly using MRI), which would enable doctors to non-invasively gather information about healthy and diseased tissues in living patients, rather than from fixed tissue samples.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: A struct in the C programming language (and many derivatives) is a composite data type (or record) declaration that defines a physically grouped list of variables under one name in a block of memory, allowing the different variables to be accessed via a single pointer or by the struct declared name which returns the same address. The struct data type can contain other data types so is used for mixed-data-type records such as a hard-drive directory entry (file length, name, extension, physical address, etc.), or other mixed-type records (name, address, telephone, balance, etc.).


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: The C struct directly references a "contiguous block" of physical memory, usually delimited (sized) by word-length boundaries. It corresponds to the similarly named feature available in some assemblers for Intel processors. Being a block of contiguous memory, each field within a struct is located at a certain fixed offset from the start.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: Because the contents of a struct are stored in contiguous memory, the sizeof operator must be used to get the number of bytes needed to store a particular type of struct, just as it can be used for primitives. The alignment of particular fields in the struct (with respect to word boundaries) is implementation-specific and may include padding, although modern compilers typically support the codice_1 directive, which changes the size in bytes used for alignment.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: In the C++ language, a struct is identical to a C++ class but has a different default visibility: class members are private by default, whereas struct members are public by default.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: Like its C counterpart, the struct data type in C# ("Structure" in Visual Basic .NET) is similar to a class. The biggest difference between a struct and a class in these languages is that when a struct is passed as an argument to a function, any modifications to the struct in that function will not be reflected in the original variable (unless pass-by-reference is used).


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: This differs from C++, where classes or structs can be statically allocated or dynamically allocated either on the stack (similar to C#) or on the heap, with an explicit pointer. In C++, the only difference between a struct and a class is that the members and base classes of a struct are public by default. (A class defined with the codice_2 keyword has private members and base classes by default.)


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: Such a codice_4 declaration may also appear in the context of a typedef declaration of a type alias or the declaration or definition of a variable:


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: If an initializer is given or if the object is statically allocated, omitted elements are initialized to 0.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: A struct may be assigned to another struct. A compiler might use codice_6 to perform such an assignment.


title: Struct (C programming language)

text: Pointers can be used to refer to a codice_4 by its address. This is useful for passing structs to a function. The pointer can be dereferenced using the codice_8 operator. The codice_9 operator dereferences the pointer to struct (left operand) and then accesses the value of a member of the struct (right operand).


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: Sym-Bionic Titan is an American animated television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky (in his fourth collaboration with the channel), Bryan Andrews and Paul Rudish for Cartoon Network. The series focuses on a trio consisting of the alien princess Ilana, the strict but rebellious alien soldier Lance, and the robot Octus, who arrive on Earth and combine themselves to create the titular Sym-Bionic Titan.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: A preview of the series was first shown at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International, and further details were revealed at Cartoon Network's 2010 upfront. The series premiered on September 17, 2010 and ended on April 9, 2011 with a total of 20 episodes as ordered by the channel; Tartakovsky had hoped to expand on that, but the series was not renewed for a second season, as it "did not have any toys connected to it".


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: While "Sym-Bionic Titan" has never been released to DVD in the United States, all 20 episodes were available for purchase on iTunes and the Microsoft Store. On October 7, 2012, reruns of the series began airing on Adult Swim's Toonami block along with the 2011 television series of "ThunderCats" until Cartoon Network wrote-off "Sym-Bionic Titan" for financial reasons in September 2014. The series was later released on Netflix in 2019, but was removed from the service in December 2020.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: Billed as "an exciting hybrid of high school drama and giant robot battles", "Sym-Bionic Titan" features "the adventures of three beings from the planet Galaluna who crash-land on Earth while attempting to escape their war-torn world". The series follows the lives of Lance (voiced by Kevin Thoms), Ilana (voiced by Tara Strong) and Octus (voiced by Brian Posehn), two alien teenagers and a robot respectively in the form of humanoids living on Earth, an "identical" planet to Galaluna, while fleeing an evil general who has taken over their home planet with the help of monstrous creatures called Mutraddi. Ilana is the princess of the Galalunan royal family, Lance is a dark-hearted but capable soldier and Octus is a bio-cybernetic robot: all three having to now pose as normal high school students to blend into everyday life in Sherman, Illinois so Lance and Octus can conceal Ilana from General Modula (Don Leslie) and his hideous space mutants sent to kill the sole heir of Galaluna.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: When called into battle, the Galalunans are outfitted with individual armor that provides more than ample protection. It is when the gravest of danger appears that Octus activates the sym-bionic defense program and he, Ilana, and Lance unite "Heart, Body and Mind" and come together to form the spectacular cyber-giant, Sym-Bionic Titan.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: Series co-creator Genndy Tartakovsky, best known for creating "Dexter's Laboratory", "" and "Samurai Jack" for Cartoon Network, drew inspiration for the show from many sources. He grew up with various mecha anime series from the 1980s such as "Robotech" and "Voltron": "For whatever reason, I have always loved the idea of kids driving giant robots". His biggest influence for the show were John Hughes films (such as "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club") and 1980s pop culture, while the relationship between the two teenage leads, Ilana and Lance, was inspired by that of Sheeta and Pazu, the two leads in Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky".


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: An episode of "Samurai Jack" with a similar plot, "Jack and the Flying Prince and Princess" (which had two aliens and a robot fleeing to seek help for their planet), may have also provided inspiration for the show. Tara Strong also voiced the princess in said episode.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: Tartakovsky came up with Octus and the high-school setting first and later, together with co-creators Paul Rudish and Bryan Andrews, added Ilana and Lance as the protagonists. The creators of the show took a long time to develop the female lead: "A positive strong female character is something I've always wanted to create".


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: Tartakovsky had called "Sym-Bionic Titan" "the most challenging project I have ever done". Despite airing on Cartoon Network, Tartakovsky stated that he "doesn't consider "Sym-Bionic Titan" a kids show".


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: In March 2011, it was announced that Cartoon Network has cancelled "Sym-Bionic Titan" due to the show being unable to acquire a toy license. Adult Swim's Tumblr later revealed that both "Beware the Batman" and "Sym-Bionic Titan" were both written off by the network in September 2014.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: In a 2018 interview with Syfy, Tartakovsky revealed that he and his crew had written 10 more episodes before the show was cancelled.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: In February 2017, Tartakovsky mentioned that, during an interview about the revival of "Samurai Jack" on Adult Swim, he could also return to Cartoon Network someday and bring "Sym-Bionic Titan" back in order to end the story of season one and resolve its cliffhanger in the style of Guillermo del Toro's "Pacific Rim". Ilana and Octus later made cameo appearances in the "OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes" episode "Crossover Nexus", with Tara Strong reprising her role as Ilana. In the "Craig of the Creek" episode "Kelsey the Elder", this show was mentioned by Mark and Barry.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: "Sym-Bionic Titan" received two nominations at the 38th Annie Awards in 2011: Stephen DeStefano for Best Character Design in a Television Production; and Scott Wills for Best Production Design in an Animated Television Production.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: The entire series was released on DVD in Australia from Madman Entertainment on April 6, 2016, five years after the show's cancellation. The show was made available for streaming on Netflix in December 2019, but was later removed from the service the following year. Although "Sym-Bionic Titan" has never been released to DVD or Blu-ray in the United States, all 20 episodes were also available on iTunes and the Microsoft Store in SD.


title: Sym-Bionic Titan

text: The series was positively received. Emily Ashby of Common Sense Media said that the series had "action, adventure, and positive messages for tweens." She argued that while there is cartoon violence, the show has positive like Ilana, describing her a "role model-worthy main female character." She also noted that there is a "gentle side to the show" which makes it different from "many action-adventure cartoons for kids."


title: Catamite

text: In ancient Greece and Rome, a catamite (Latin: "catamitus") was a pubescent boy who was the intimate companion of an older male, usually in a pederastic relationship. It was generally a term of affection and literally means "Ganymede" in Latin, but it was also used as a term of insult when directed toward a grown man. The word derives from the proper noun "Catamitus", the Latinized form of Ganymede, the name of the beautiful Trojan youth abducted by Zeus to be his companion and cupbearer, according to Greek mythology. The Etruscan form of the name was "Catmite", from an alternative Greek form of the name, "Gadymedes".


title: Catamite

text: In its modern usage, the term catamite refers to a boy as the passive or receiving partner in anal intercourse with a man.


title: Plasma display

text: A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display that uses small cells containing plasma: ionized gas that responds to electric fields. Plasma televisions were the first large (over 32 inches diagonal) flat panel displays to be released to the public.


title: Plasma display

text: Until about 2007, plasma displays were commonly used in large televisions ( and larger). By 2013, they had lost nearly all market share due to competition from low-cost LCDs and more expensive but high-contrast OLED flat-panel displays. Manufacturing of plasma displays for the United States retail market ended in 2014, and manufacturing for the Chinese market ended in 2016. Plasma displays are obsolete, having been superseded in most if not all aspects by OLED displays.


title: Plasma display

text: Plasma displays are bright (1,000 lux or higher for the display module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes—up to diagonally. They had a very low luminance "dark-room" black level compared with the lighter grey of the unilluminated parts of an LCD screen. (As plasma panels are locally lit and do not require a back light, blacks are blacker on plasma and grayer on LCD's.) LED-backlit LCD televisions have been developed to reduce this distinction. The display panel itself is about thick, generally allowing the device's total thickness (including electronics) to be less than . Power consumption varies greatly with picture content, with bright scenes drawing significantly more power than darker ones – this is also true for CRTs as well as modern LCDs where LED backlight brightness is adjusted dynamically. The plasma that illuminates the screen can reach a temperature of at least 1200 °C (2200 °F). Typical power consumption is 400 watts for a screen. Most screens are set to "vivid" mode by default in the factory (which maximizes the brightness and raises the contrast so the image on the screen looks good under the extremely bright lights that are common in big box stores), which draws at least twice the power (around 500–700 watts) of a "home" setting of less extreme brightness. The lifetime of the latest generation of plasma displays is estimated at 100,000 hours (11 years) of actual display time, or 27 years at 10 hours per day. This is the estimated time over which maximum picture brightness degrades to half the original value.


title: Plasma display

text: Plasma screens are made out of glass, which may result in glare on the screen from nearby light sources. Plasma display panels cannot be economically manufactured in screen sizes smaller than . Although a few companies have been able to make plasma enhanced-definition televisions (EDTV) this small, even fewer have made 32 inch plasma HDTVs. With the trend toward large-screen television technology, the 32 inch screen size is rapidly disappearing. Though considered bulky and thick compared with their LCD counterparts, some sets such as Panasonic's Z1 and Samsung's B860 series are as slim as thick making them comparable to LCDs in this respect.


title: Plasma display

text: Competing display technologies include cathode-ray tube (CRT), organic light-emitting diode (OLED), CRT projectors, AMLCD, Digital Light Processing DLP, SED-tv, LED display, field emission display (FED), and quantum dot display (QLED).


title: Plasma display

text: Fixed-pixel displays such as plasma TVs scale the video image of each incoming signal to the native resolution of the display panel. The most common native resolutions for plasma display panels are 852×480 (EDTV), 1,366×768 and 1920×1080 (HDTV). As a result, picture quality varies depending on the performance of the video scaling processor and the upscaling and downscaling algorithms used by each display manufacturer.


title: Plasma display

text: Early plasma televisions were enhanced-definition (ED) with a native resolution of 840×480 (discontinued) or 852×480 and down-scaled their incoming high-definition video signals to match their native display resolutions.


title: Plasma display

text: The following ED resolutions were common prior to the introduction of HD displays, but have long been phased out in favor of HD displays, as well as because the overall pixel count in ED displays is lower than the pixel count on SD PAL displays (852×480 vs 720×576, respectively).


title: Plasma display

text: Early high-definition (HD) plasma displays had a resolution of 1024x1024 and were alternate lighting of surfaces (ALiS) panels made by Fujitsu and Hitachi. These were interlaced displays, with non-square pixels.


title: Plasma display

text: Later HDTV plasma televisions usually have a resolution of 1,024×768 found on many 42 inch plasma screens, 1280×768 and 1,366×768 found on 50 in, 60 in, and 65 in plasma screens, or 1920×1080 found on plasma screen sizes from 42 inch to 103 inch. These displays are usually progressive displays, with non-square pixels, and will up-scale and de-interlace their incoming standard-definition signals to match their native display resolutions. 1024×768 resolution requires that 720p content be downscaled in one direction and upscaled in the other.


title: Plasma display

text: A panel of a plasma display typically comprises millions of tiny compartments in between two panels of glass. These compartments, or "bulbs" or "cells", hold a mixture of noble gases and a minuscule amount of another gas (e.g., mercury vapor). Just as in the fluorescent lamps over an office desk, when a high voltage is applied across the cell, the gas in the cells forms a plasma. With flow of electricity (electrons), some of the electrons strike mercury particles as the electrons move through the plasma, momentarily increasing the energy level of the atom until the excess energy is shed. Mercury sheds the energy as ultraviolet (UV) photons. The UV photons then strike phosphor that is painted on the inside of the cell. When the UV photon strikes a phosphor molecule, it momentarily raises the energy level of an outer orbit electron in the phosphor molecule, moving the electron from a stable to an unstable state; the electron then sheds the excess energy as a photon at a lower energy level than UV light; the lower energy photons are mostly in the infrared range but about 40% are in the visible light range. Thus the input energy is converted to mostly infrared but also as visible light. The screen heats up to between during operation. Depending on the phosphors used, different colors of visible light can be achieved. Each pixel in a plasma display is made up of three cells comprising the primary colors of visible light. Varying the voltage of the signals to the cells thus allows different perceived colors.


title: Plasma display

text: The long electrodes are stripes of electrically conducting material that also lies between the glass plates in front of and behind the cells. The "address electrodes" sit behind the cells, along the rear glass plate, and can be opaque. The transparent display electrodes are mounted in front of the cell, along the front glass plate. As can be seen in the illustration, the electrodes are covered by an insulating protective layer. A magnesium oxide layer may be present to protect the dielectric layer and to emit secondary electrons.


title: Plasma display

text: Control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, creating a voltage difference between front and back. Some of the atoms in the gas of a cell then lose electrons and become ionized, which creates an electrically conducting plasma of atoms, free electrons, and ions. The collisions of the flowing electrons in the plasma with the inert gas atoms leads to light emission; such light-emitting plasmas are known as glow discharges.


title: Plasma display

text: In a monochrome plasma panel, the gas is mostly neon, and the color is the characteristic orange of a neon-filled lamp (or sign). Once a glow discharge has been initiated in a cell, it can be maintained by applying a low-level voltage between all the horizontal and vertical electrodes–even after the ionizing voltage is removed. To erase a cell all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes. This type of panel has inherent memory. A small amount of nitrogen is added to the neon to increase hysteresis. In color panels, the back of each cell is coated with a phosphor. The ultraviolet photons emitted by the plasma excite these phosphors, which give off visible light with colors determined by the phosphor materials. This aspect is comparable to fluorescent lamps and to the neon signs that use colored phosphors.


title: Plasma display

text: Every pixel is made up of three separate subpixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. One subpixel has a red light phosphor, one subpixel has a green light phosphor and one subpixel has a blue light phosphor. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel, the same as a triad of a shadow mask CRT or color LCD. Plasma panels use pulse-width modulation (PWM) to control brightness: by varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells thousands of times per second, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each subpixel color to create billions of different combinations of red, green and blue. In this way, the control system can produce most of the visible colors. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, which accounts for the extremely accurate color reproduction when viewing television or computer video images (which use an RGB color system designed for CRT displays).


title: Plasma display

text: Plasma displays are different from liquid crystal displays (LCDs), another lightweight flat-screen display using very different technology. LCDs may use one or two large fluorescent lamps as a backlight source, but the different colors are controlled by LCD units, which in effect behave as gates that allow or block light through red, green, or blue filters on the front of the LCD panel.


title: Plasma display

text: To produce light, the cells need to be driven at a relatively high voltage (~300 volts) and the pressure of the gases inside the cell needs to be low (~500 torr).


title: Plasma display

text: Contrast ratio is the difference between the brightest and darkest parts of an image, measured in discrete steps, at any given moment. Generally, the higher the contrast ratio, the more realistic the image is (though the "realism" of an image depends on many factors including color accuracy, luminance linearity, and spatial linearity). Contrast ratios for plasma displays are often advertised as high as 5,000,000:1. On the surface, this is a significant advantage of plasma over most other current display technologies, a notable exception being organic light-emitting diode. Although there are no industry-wide guidelines for reporting contrast ratio, most manufacturers follow either the ANSI standard or perform a full-on-full-off test. The ANSI standard uses a checkered test pattern whereby the darkest blacks and the lightest whites are simultaneously measured, yielding the most accurate "real-world" ratings. In contrast, a full-on-full-off test measures the ratio using a pure black screen and a pure white screen, which gives higher values but does not represent a typical viewing scenario. Some displays, using many different technologies, have some "leakage" of light, through either optical or electronic means, from lit pixels to adjacent pixels so that dark pixels that are near bright ones appear less dark than they do during a full-off display. Manufacturers can further artificially improve the reported contrast ratio by increasing the contrast and brightness settings to achieve the highest test values. However, a contrast ratio generated by this method is misleading, as content would be essentially unwatchable at such settings.


title: Plasma display

text: Each cell on a plasma display must be precharged before it is lit, otherwise the cell would not respond quickly enough. Precharging normally increases power consumption, so energy recovery mechanisms may be in place to avoid an increase in power consumption. This precharging means the cells cannot achieve a true black, whereas an LED backlit LCD panel can actually turn off parts of the backlight, in "spots" or "patches" (this technique, however, does not prevent the large accumulated passive light of adjacent lamps, and the reflection media, from returning values from within the panel). Some manufacturers have reduced the precharge and the associated background glow, to the point where black levels on modern plasmas are starting to become close to some high-end CRTs Sony and Mitsubishi produced ten years before the comparable plasma displays. With an LCD, black pixels are generated by a light polarization method; many panels are unable to completely block the underlying backlight. More recent LCD panels using LED illumination can automatically reduce the backlighting on darker scenes, though this method cannot be used in high-contrast scenes, leaving some light showing from black parts of an image with bright parts, such as (at the extreme) a solid black screen with one fine intense bright line. This is called a "halo" effect which has been minimized on newer LED-backlit LCDs with local dimming. Edgelit models cannot compete with this as the light is reflected via a light guide to distribute the light behind the panel.


title: Plasma display

text: Image burn-in occurs on CRTs and plasma panels when the same picture is displayed for long periods. This causes the phosphors to overheat, losing some of their luminosity and producing a "shadow" image that is visible with the power off. Burn-in is especially a problem on plasma panels because they run hotter than CRTs. Early plasma televisions were plagued by burn-in, making it impossible to use video games or anything else that displayed static images.


title: Plasma display

text: Plasma displays also exhibit another image retention issue which is sometimes confused with screen burn-in damage. In this mode, when a group of pixels are run at high brightness (when displaying white, for example) for an extended period, a charge build-up in the pixel structure occurs and a ghost image can be seen. However, unlike burn-in, this charge build-up is transient and self-corrects after the image condition that caused the effect has been removed and a long enough period has passed (with the display either off or on).


title: Plasma display

text: Plasma manufacturers have tried various ways of reducing burn-in such as using gray pillarboxes, pixel orbiters and image washing routines, but none to date have eliminated the problem and all plasma manufacturers continue to exclude burn-in from their warranties.


title: Plasma display

text: Kálmán Tihanyi, a Hungarian engineer, described a proposed flat-panel plasma display system in a 1936 paper.


title: Plasma display

text: The first practical plasma video display was co-invented in 1964 at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign by Donald Bitzer, H. Gene Slottow, and graduate student Robert Willson for the PLATO computer system. The original neon orange monochrome Digivue display panels built by glass producer Owens-Illinois were very popular in the early 1970s because they were rugged and needed neither memory nor circuitry to refresh the images. A long period of sales decline occurred in the late 1970s because semiconductor memory made CRT displays cheaper than the $2500 USD PLATO plasma displays. Nonetheless, the plasma displays' relatively large screen size and 1 inch thickness made them suitable for high-profile placement in lobbies and stock exchanges.


title: Plasma display

text: Burroughs Corporation, a maker of adding machines and computers, developed the Panaplex display in the early 1970s. The Panaplex display, generically referred to as a gas-discharge or gas-plasma display, uses the same technology as later plasma video displays, but began life as a seven-segment display for use in adding machines. They became popular for their bright orange luminous look and found nearly ubiquitous use throughout the late 1970s and into the 1990s in cash registers, calculators, pinball machines, aircraft avionics such as radios, navigational instruments, and stormscopes; test equipment such as frequency counters and multimeters; and generally anything that previously used nixie tube or numitron displays with a high digit-count. These displays were eventually replaced by LEDs because of their low current-draw and module-flexibility, but are still found in some applications where their high brightness is desired, such as pinball machines and avionics.


title: Plasma display

text: In 1983, IBM introduced a orange-on-black monochrome display (Model 3290 Information Panel) which was able to show up to four simultaneous IBM 3270 terminal sessions. By the end of the decade, orange monochrome plasma displays were used in a number of high-end AC-powered portable computers, such as the Compaq Portable 386 (1987) and the IBM P75 (1990). Plasma displays had a better contrast ratio, viewability angle, and less motion blur than the LCDs that were available at the time, and were used until the introduction of active-matrix color LCD displays in 1992.


title: Plasma display

text: Due to heavy competition from monochrome LCDs used in laptops and the high costs of plasma display technology, in 1987 IBM planned to shut down its factory in Kingston, New York, the largest plasma plant in the world, in favor of manufacturing mainframe computers, which would have left development to Japanese companies. Dr. Larry F. Weber, a University of Illinois ECE PhD (in plasma display research) and staff scientist working at CERL (home of the PLATO System), co-founded Plasmaco with Stephen Globus and IBM plant manager James Kehoe, and bought the plant from IBM for US$50,000. Weber stayed in Urbana as CTO until 1990, then moved to upstate New York to work at Plasmaco.


title: Plasma display

text: In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch (53 cm) full-color display. It was based on technology created at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories.


title: Plasma display

text: In 1994, Weber demonstrated a color plasma display at an industry convention in San Jose. Panasonic Corporation began a joint development project with Plasmaco, which led in 1996 to the purchase of Plasmaco, its color AC technology, and its American factory for US$26 million.


title: Plasma display

text: In 1995, Fujitsu introduced the first plasma display panel; it had 852×480 resolution and was progressively scanned. Two years later, Philips introduced the first large commercially available flat-panel TV, using the Fujitsu panels. It was available at four Sears locations in the US for $14,999, including in-home installation. Pioneer also began selling plasma televisions that year, and other manufacturers followed. By the year 2000 prices had dropped to $10,000.


title: Plasma display

text: In the year 2000, the first 60-inch plasma display was developed by Plasmaco. Panasonic was also reported to have developed a process to make plasma displays using ordinary window glass instead of the much more expensive "high strain point" glass. High strain point glass is made similarly to conventional float glass, but it is more heat resistant, deforming at higher temperatures. High strain point glass is normally necessary because plasma displays have to be baked during manufacture to dry the rare-earth phosphors after they are applied to the display. However, high strain point glass may be less scratch resistant.


title: Plasma display

text: In late 2006, analysts noted that LCDs had overtaken plasmas, particularly in the 40-inch (100 cm) and above segment where plasma had previously gained market share. Another industry trend was the consolidation of plasma display manufacturers, with around 50 brands available but only five manufacturers. In the first quarter of 2008, a comparison of worldwide TV sales broke down to 22.1 million for direct-view CRT, 21.1 million for LCD, 2.8 million for plasma, and 0.1 million for rear projection.


title: Plasma display

text: Until the early 2000s, plasma displays were the most popular choice for HDTV flat panel display as they had many benefits over LCDs. Beyond plasma's deeper blacks, increased contrast, faster response time, greater color spectrum, and wider viewing angle; they were also much bigger than LCDs, and it was believed that LCDs were suited only to smaller sized televisions. However, improvements in VLSI fabrication narrowed the technological gap. The increased size, lower weight, falling prices, and often lower electrical power consumption of LCDs made them competitive with plasma television sets.


title: Plasma display

text: Screen sizes have increased since the introduction of plasma displays. The largest plasma video display in the world at the 2008 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, was a unit manufactured by Matsushita Electric Industrial (Panasonic) standing 6 ft (180 cm) tall by 11 ft (330 cm) wide.


title: Plasma display

text: At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Panasonic introduced their 152" 2160p 3D plasma. In 2010, Panasonic shipped 19.1 million plasma TV panels.


title: Plasma display

text: In 2010, the shipments of plasma TVs reached 18.2 million units globally. Since that time, shipments of plasma TVs have declined substantially. This decline has been attributed to the competition from liquid crystal (LCD) televisions, whose prices have fallen more rapidly than those of the plasma TVs. In late 2013, Panasonic announced that they would stop producing plasma TVs from March 2014 onwards. In 2014, LG and Samsung discontinued plasma TV production as well, effectively killing the technology, probably because of lowering demand.


title: Plasma display

text: Most have discontinued doing so, but at one time or another all of these companies have produced products containing plasma displays:


title: Plasma display

text: Panasonic was the biggest plasma display manufacturer until 2013, when it decided to discontinue plasma production. In the following months, Samsung and LG also ceased production of plasma sets. Panasonic, Samsung and LG were the last plasma manufacturers for the U.S. retail market.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Stuart Henry McPhail Hall (3 February 1932 – 10 February 2014) was a Jamaican-born British Marxist sociologist, cultural theorist, and political activist. Hall, along with Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams, was one of the founding figures of the school of thought that is now known as British Cultural Studies or the Birmingham School of Cultural Studies.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: In the 1950s Hall was a founder of the influential "New Left Review". At Hoggart's invitation, he joined the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University in 1964. Hall took over from Hoggart as acting director of the CCCS in 1968, became its director in 1972, and remained there until 1979. While at the centre, Hall is credited with playing a role in expanding the scope of cultural studies to deal with race and gender, and with helping to incorporate new ideas derived from the work of French theorists such as Michel Foucault.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall left the centre in 1979 to become a professor of sociology at the Open University. He was President of the British Sociological Association from 1995 to 1997. He retired from the Open University in 1997 and was a professor emeritus. British newspaper "The Observer" called him "one of the country's leading cultural theorists". Hall was also involved in the Black Arts Movement. Movie directors such as John Akomfrah and Isaac Julien also see him as one of their heroes.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall was married to Catherine Hall, a feminist professor of modern British history at University College London, with whom he had two children. After his death, Stuart Hall was described as "one of the most influential intellectuals of the last sixty years".


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Stuart Hall was born on 3 February 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica, into a middle-class Jamaican family of African, English, Portuguese Jewish, and likely Indian descent. As a teen he had been baptized in an Evangelical Youth Group. He attended Jamaica College, receiving an education modelled after the British school system. In an interview Hall describes himself as a "bright, promising scholar" in these years and his formal education as "a very 'classical' education; very good but in very formal academic terms." With the help of sympathetic teachers, he expanded his education to include "T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, Freud, Marx, Lenin and some of the surrounding literature and modern poetry", as well as "Caribbean literature". Hall's later works reveal that growing up in the pigmentocracy of the colonial West Indies, where he was of darker skin than much of his family, had a profound effect on his views.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: In 1951 Hall won a Rhodes Scholarship to Merton College at the University of Oxford, where he studied English and obtained a Master of Arts degree, becoming part of the Windrush generation, the first large-scale emigration of West Indians, as that community was then known. He originally intended to do graduate work on the medieval poem "Piers Plowman", reading it through the lens of contemporary literary criticism, but was dissuaded by his language professor, J. R. R. Tolkien, who told him "in a pained tone that this was not the point of the exercise." He began a PhD on Henry James at Oxford but, galvanised particularly by the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary (which saw many thousands of members leave the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and look for alternatives to previous orthodoxies) and the Suez Crisis, abandoned this in 1957 or 1958 to focus on his political work. In 1957, he joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and it was on a CND march that he met his future wife. From 1958 to 1960, Hall worked as a teacher in a London secondary modern school and in adult education, and in 1964 married Catherine Hall, concluding around this time that he was unlikely to return permanently to the Caribbean.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: After working on the "Universities and Left Review" during his time at Oxford, Hall joined E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams and others to merge it with "The New Reasoner", launching the "New Left Review" in 1960 with Hall as the founding editor. In 1958, the same group, with Raphael Samuel, launched the Partisan Coffee House in Soho as a meeting place for left-wingers. Hall left the board of the "New Left Review" in 1961 or 1962.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall's academic career took off in 1964 after he co-wrote with Paddy Whannel of the British Film Institute "one of the first books to make the case for the serious study of film as entertainment", "The Popular Arts". As a direct result, Richard Hoggart invited Hall to join the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, initially as a research fellow at Hoggart's own expense. In 1968 Hall became director of the centre. He wrote a number of influential articles in the years that followed, including "Situating Marx: Evaluations and Departures" (1972) and "Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse" (1973). He also contributed to the book "Policing the Crisis" (1978) and coedited the influential "Resistance Through Rituals" (1975).


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Shortly before Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979, Hall and Maggie Steed presented "It Ain't Half Racist Mum", an Open Door programme made by the Campaign Against Racism in the Media (CARM) which tackled racial stereotypes and contemporary British attitudes to immigration. After his appointment as a professor of sociology at the Open University (OU) that year, Hall published further influential books, including "The Hard Road to Renewal" (1988), "Formations of Modernity" (1992), "Questions of Cultural Identity" (1996) and "Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices" (1997). Through the 1970s and 1980s, Hall was closely associated with the journal "Marxism Today"; in 1995, he was a founding editor of "Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture".


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: He spoke internationally on Cultural Studies, including a series of lectures in 1983 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign that were recorded and would decades later form the basis of the 2016 book "Cultural Studies 1983: A Theoretical History" (edited by Jennifer Slack and Lawrence Grossberg).


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall was the founding chair of Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts) and the photography organization Autograph ABP (the Association of Black Photographers).


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall retired from the Open University in 1997. He was elected fellow of the British Academy in 2005 and received the European Cultural Foundation's Princess Margriet Award in 2008. He died on 10 February 2014, from complications following kidney failure, a week after his 82nd birthday. By the time of his death, he was widely known as the "godfather of multiculturalism". His memoir, "Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands" (co-authored with Bill Schwarz), was posthumously published in 2017.


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall's work covers issues of hegemony and cultural studies, taking a post-Gramscian stance. He regards language-use as operating within a framework of power, institutions and politics/economics. This view presents people as "producers" and "consumers" of culture at the same time. (Hegemony, in Gramscian theory, refers to the socio-cultural production of "consent" and "coercion".) For Hall, culture was not something to simply appreciate or study, but a "critical site of social action and intervention, where power relations are both established and potentially unsettled".


title: Stuart Hall (cultural theorist)

text: Hall became one of the main proponents of reception theory, and developed Hall's Theory of encoding and decoding. This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on the part of the audience. This means that the audience does not simply passively accept a text—social control. Crime statistics, in Hall's view, are often manipulated for political and economic purposes. Moral panics (e.g. over mugging) could thereby be ignited in order to create public support for the need to "police the crisis". The media play a central role in the "social production of news" in order to reap the rewards of lurid crime stories.