title: Michael Johnson (sprinter)

text: As part of the build-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, Johnson made a documentary, "Survival of the Fastest", for Channel 4 which investigated the dominance of Afro-American and Afro-Caribbean sprinters. The program made the controversial suggestion that a side effect of the slave trade may have been to accelerate natural selection as only the very fittest could survive the brutal process, resulting in a population predisposed to superior athletic performance.


title: Michael Johnson (sprinter)

text: Johnson currently lives in Marin County, California, with his second wife Armine Shamiryan, a chef, and his son Sebastian, born in 2000 during his first marriage to entertainment reporter Kerry D'Oyen.


title: Michael Johnson (sprinter)

text: Johnson was one of the Olympic torch bearers in the relay in the run up to the London 2012 Olympics, carrying it to Stonehenge and Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire.


title: Michael Johnson (sprinter)

text: In the summer of 2018, Johnson was co-captain and a coach for Godspeed, a flag football team made of former professional American football players that participated in the American Flag Football League (AFFL). The team were crowned the champions of participating pro teams but lost in the final match to the amateur champion team.


title: Michael Johnson (sprinter)

text: In September 2018, Johnson suffered a stroke that affected his left side. By November, he stated he was almost "back to normal", and attributed his successful recovery to the "Olympic mindset". In connection with his 54th birthday in 2021, he states that he has fully recovered.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: Sleeve gastrectomy is a surgical weight-loss procedure in which the stomach is reduced to about 15% of its original size, by surgical removal of a large portion of the stomach along the greater curvature. The result is a sleeve or tube like structure. The procedure permanently reduces the size of the stomach, although there could be some dilation of the stomach later on in life. The procedure is generally performed laparoscopically and is irreversible.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: A meta-analysis of 174,772 participants published in The Lancet in 2021 found that bariatric surgery was associated with 59% and 30% reduction in all-cause mortality among obese adults with or without type 2 diabetes respectively. This meta-analysis also found that median life-expectancy was 9.3 years longer for obese adults with diabetes who received bariatric surgery as compared to routine (non-surgical) care, whereas the life expectancy gain was 5.1 years longer for obese adults without diabetes.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: Sleeve gastrectomy was originally performed as a modification to another bariatric procedure, the duodenal switch, and then later as the first part of a two-stage gastric bypass operation on extremely obese patients for whom the risk of performing gastric bypass surgery was deemed too large. The initial weight loss in these patients was so successful it began to be investigated as a stand-alone procedure.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: Sleeve gastrectomy is the most commonly performed bariatric surgery worldwide. In many cases, sleeve gastrectomy is as effective as gastric bypass surgery, including improvements in glucose homeostasis before substantial weight loss has occurred. This weight-loss independent benefit is related to the decrease in gastric volume, changes in gut peptides, and expression of genes involved in glucose absorption.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: The procedure involves a longitudinal resection of the stomach starting from the antrum at the point 5–6 cm from the pylorus and finishing at the fundus close to the cardia. The remaining gastric sleeve is calibrated with a bougie. Most surgeons prefer to use a bougie between 36 and 40 Fr with the procedure and the ideal approximate remaining size of the stomach after the procedure is about 150 mL.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: Sleeve gastrectomy is not for everyone. The following requirements should be fulfilled in order to qualify as a candidate for sleeve gastrectomy.


title: Sleeve gastrectomy

text: Endorsed by the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disorders and the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery, sleeve gastrectomy is gaining popularity in children and adolescents. Studies by Alqahtani and colleagues have found that sleeve gastrectomy causes large weight loss in children and adolescents aged 5 to 21 years. Moreover, they compared weight loss with adults and found comparable weight loss. Recent reports from the group show that growth progresses unaffected after sleeve gastrectomy in children younger than 14 years of age. Depression following the procedure has been noted in some individuals. Another side effect is insomnia. After this surgery many people can only sleep when they take melatonin or sleeping medications.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: The Book of Jubilees, sometimes called Lesser Genesis (Leptogenesis), is an ancient Jewish religious work of 50 chapters (1,341 verses), considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church as well as Beta Israel (Ethiopian Jews), where it is known as the "Book of Division" (Ge'ez: መጽሐፈ ኩፋሌ "Mets'hafe Kufale"). "Jubilees" is considered one of the pseudepigrapha by Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant Churches. It is also not considered canonical within Judaism outside of Beta Israel.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: It was well known to Early Christians, as evidenced by the writings of Epiphanius, Justin Martyr, Origen, Diodorus of Tarsus, Isidore of Alexandria, Isidore of Seville, Eutychius of Alexandria, John Malalas, George Syncellus, and George Kedrenos. The text was also utilized by the community that originally collected the Dead Sea Scrolls. No complete Greek or Latin version is known to have survived, but the Ge'ez version has been shown to be an accurate translation of the versions found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: The Book of Jubilees claims to present "the history of the division of the days of the Law, of the events of the years, the year-weeks, and the jubilees of the world" as revealed to Moses (in addition to the Torah or "Instruction") by angels while he was on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights. The chronology given in Jubilees is based on multiples of seven; the jubilees are periods of 49 years (seven "year-weeks"), into which all of time has been divided.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Until the discovery of extensive fragments among the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest surviving manuscripts of "Jubilees" were four complete Ge'ez texts dating to the 15th and 16th centuries, and several quotations by the Church fathers such as Epiphanius, Justin Martyr, Origen as well as Diodorus of Tarsus, Isidore of Alexandria, Isidore of Seville, Eutychius of Alexandria, John Malalas, George Syncellus, and George Kedrenos. There is also a preserved fragment of a Latin translation of the Greek that contains about a quarter of the whole work. The Ethiopic texts, now numbering twenty-seven, are the primary basis for translations into English. Passages in the texts of "Jubilees" that are directly parallel to verses in "Genesis" do not directly reproduce either of the two surviving manuscript traditions. Consequently, even before the Qumran discoveries, R.H. Charles had deduced that the Hebrew original had used an otherwise unrecorded text for "Genesis" and for the early chapters of "Exodus", one independent either of the Masoretic text or of the Hebrew text that was the basis for the Septuagint. According to one historian, the variation among parallel manuscript traditions that are exhibited by the Septuagint compared with the Masoretic text, and which are embodied in the further variants among the Dead Sea Scrolls, demonstrates that even canonical Hebrew texts did not possess any single "authorized" manuscript tradition in the first centuries BC. Others write about the existence of three main textual manuscript traditions (namely the Babylonian, Samarian and Pre-Masoretic "proto" textual traditions). Although the Pre-Masoretic text may have indeed been authoritative back then, arguments can be made for and against this concept.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Between 1947 and 1956, approximately 15 "Jubilees" scrolls were found in five caves at Qumran, all written in Hebrew. The large number of manuscripts (more than for any biblical books except for Psalms, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Exodus, and Genesis, in descending order) indicates that "Jubilees" was widely used at Qumran. A comparison of the Qumran texts with the Ethiopic version, performed by James VanderKam, found that the Ethiopic was in most respects an accurate and literalistic translation.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Robert Henry Charles (1855–1931) became the first biblical scholar to propose an origin for "Jubilees." Charles suggested that the author of "Jubilees" may have been a Pharisee and that "Jubilees" was the product of the "midrash" which had already been worked on in the Tanakh/Old Testament "Books of Chronicles". With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran in 1947, Charles' Pharisaic hypothesis of the origin of "Jubilees" has been almost completely abandoned.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: The dating of "Jubilees" has been problematic for biblical scholars. While the oldest extant copies of "Jubilees" can be assigned on the basis of the handwriting to about 100 BC, there is much evidence to suggest "Jubilees" was written prior to this date.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: "Jubilees" could not have been written very long prior. "Jubilees" at 4:17-25 records that Enoch "saw in a vision what has happened and what will occur", and the book contains many points of information otherwise found earliest in the Enochian "Animal Apocalypse" (1 Enoch chapters 83-90), such as Enoch's wife being Edna. The Animal Apocalypse claims to predict the Maccabean Revolt (which occurred 167-160 BC) and is commonly dated to that time. The direction of dependence has been controversial, but the consensus since 2008 has been that the Animal Apocalypse came first and Jubilees after.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: As a result, general reference works such as the Oxford Annotated Bible and the Mercer Bible Dictionary conclude the work can be dated to 160–150 BC.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: The Hasmoneans adopted "Jubilees" immediately, and it became a source for the "Aramaic Levi Document". "Jubilees" remained a point of reference for priestly circles (although they disputed its calendric proposal), and the Temple Scroll and "Epistle of Enoch" (1 Enoch 91:1–10, 92:3–93:10, 91:11–92:2, 93:11–105:3) are based on "Jubilees". It is the source for certain of the "Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs", for instance that of Reuben.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: There is no official record of it in Pharisaic or Rabbinic sources. It was among several books that the Sanhedrin left out when the Bible was canonized. "Sub rosa", many of the traditions which Jubilees had novelly included are echoed in later Jewish sources, in particular in the 12th century Midrash Tadshe which contains multiple similarities to Jubilees. The sole exception within Judaism, the Beta Israel Jews formerly of Ethiopia, regard the Ge'ez text as canonical.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: It appears that early Christian writers held the book of Jubilees in high regard, as many of them cited and alluded to Jubilees in their writing. In relationship to the New Testament, the book of Jubilees contains one of the earliest references to the idea that God gave the Law to Moses through an angelic mediator. This idea is likewise reflected in the epistle to the Galatians.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Jan van Reeth argues that the Book of Jubilees had great influence on the formation of Islam. Etsuko Katsumata, comparing the Book of Jubilees and the Quran, notices significant differences, especially in Abraham's role in the Quranic narrative. He says that "The Quran has many passages in which Abraham expounds the errors in idolatry. In these passages, Abraham always addresses his words to local people, and he does not leave their land. This probably reflects Islam’s position that aims at converting idol worshippers to monotheistic religion and settling in their place of residence."


title: Book of Jubilees

text: "Jubilees" covers much of the same ground as "Genesis", but often with additional detail, and addressing Moses in the second person as the entire history of creation, and of Israel up to that point, is recounted in divisions of 49 years each, or "Jubilees". The elapsed time from the creation, up to Moses receiving the scriptures upon Sinai during the Exodus, is calculated as fifty Jubilees, less the 40 years still to be spent wandering in the desert before entering Canaan – or 2,410 years.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Four classes of angels are mentioned: angels of the presence, angels of sanctifications, guardian angels over individuals, and angels presiding over the phenomena of nature. Enoch was the first man initiated by the angels in the art of writing, and wrote down, accordingly, all the secrets of astronomy, of chronology, and of the world's epochs. As regards demonology, the writer's position is largely that of the deuterocanonical writings from both New and Old Testament times.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: The "Book of Jubilees" narrates the genesis of angels on the first day of Creation and the story of how a group of fallen angels mated with mortal females, giving rise to a race of giants known as the Nephilim, and then to their descendants, the Elioud. The Ethiopian version states that the "angels" were in fact the disobedient offspring of Seth ("Deqiqa Set"), while the "mortal females" were daughters of Cain. This is also the view held by Clementine literature, Sextus Julius Africanus, Ephrem the Syrian, Augustine of Hippo, and John Chrysostom among many early Christian authorities. Their hybrid children, the Nephilim in existence during the time of Noah, were wiped out by the great flood. Jubilees also states that God granted ten percent of the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim to try to lead mankind astray after the flood.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: Jubilees makes an incestuous reference regarding the son of Adam and Eve, Cain, and his wife. In chapter iv (1–12) (Cain and Abel), it mentions that Cain took his sister Awan to be his wife and Enoch was their child. It also mentions that Seth (the third son of Adam and Eve) married his sister Azura.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: According to this book, Hebrew is the language of Heaven, and was originally spoken by all creatures in the Garden, animals and man; however, the animals lost their power of speech when Adam and Eve were expelled. Following the Deluge, the earth was apportioned into three divisions for the three sons of Noah, and his sixteen grandsons. After the destruction of the Tower of Babel, their families were scattered to their respective allotments, and Hebrew was forgotten, until Abraham was taught it by the angels.


title: Book of Jubilees

text: "Jubilees" also contains a few scattered allusions to the Messianic kingdom. Robert Henry Charles wrote in 1913:


title: Book of Jubilees

text: "Jubilees" insists (in Chapter 6) on a 364 day yearly calendar, made up of four quarters of 13 weeks each, rather than a year of 12 lunar months, which it says is off by 10 days per year (the actual number being about 11¼ days). It also insists on a "Double Sabbath" each year being counted as only one day to arrive at this computation.


title: Long bone

text: The long bones are those that are longer than they are wide. They are one of five types of bones: long, short, flat, irregular and sesamoid. Long bones, especially the femur and tibia, are subjected to most of the load during daily activities and they are crucial for skeletal mobility. They grow primarily by elongation of the diaphysis, with an epiphysis at each end of the growing bone. The ends of epiphyses are covered with hyaline cartilage ("articular cartilage"). The longitudinal growth of long bones is a result of endochondral ossification at the epiphyseal plate. Bone growth in length is stimulated by the production of growth hormone (GH), a secretion of the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.


title: Long bone

text: The long bone category includes the femora, tibiae, and fibulae of the legs; the humeri, radii, and ulnae of the arms; metacarpals and metatarsals of the hands and feet, the phalanges of the fingers and toes, and the clavicles or collar bones. The long bones of the human leg comprise nearly half of adult height. The other primary skeletal component of height are the vertebrae and skull.


title: Long bone

text: The outside of the bone consists of a layer of connective tissue called the periosteum. Additionally, the outer shell of the long bone is compact bone, then a deeper layer of cancellous bone (spongy bone) which contains in the medullary cavity the bone marrow.


title: Long bone

text: The outer shell of the long bone is made of cortical bone also known as compact bone. This is covered by a membrane of connective tissue called the periosteum. Beneath the cortical bone layer is a layer of spongy cancellous bone. Inside this is the medullary cavity which has an inner core of bone marrow, it contains nutrients and help in formation of cells, made up of yellow marrow in the adult and red marrow in the child.


title: Long bone

text: There are two congenital disorders of the long bones. In a disorder known as "rachitis fetalis anularis" the ends of the long bones (epiphyses) are enlarged. Another disorder, "rachitis fetalis micromelica", is a deficiency in the growth (as a shortness) of the bones.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: The 2021–22 season was Juventus Football Club's 124th season in existence and the club's 15th consecutive season in the top flight of Italian football. In addition to the domestic league, Juventus participated in this season's edition of the Coppa Italia, the Supercoppa Italiana, and the UEFA Champions League.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 11 May 2021, Gianluigi Buffon announced that he would leave Juventus at end of the previous season. On 28 May, Andrea Pirlo was sacked and Massimiliano Allegri was chosen in his place as team's coach. On 15 June, Juventus announced that Álvaro Morata's loan had been renewed.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 24 July, Juventus played a friendly match against Serie C side Cesena, winning 3–1, through goals scored by Koni De Winter, Weston McKennie, and Matías Soulé. On 31 July, Juventus won their 11th Trofeo Luigi Berlusconi, winning 2–1 against Serie B side Monza at Stadio Brianteo through goals scored by Filippo Ranocchia in the 13th minute and Dejan Kulusevski in the 53rd minute.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 2 August, Juventus announced that Giorgio Chiellini's contract had been renewed. On 8 August, Juventus played the Joan Gamper Trophy against Spanish La Liga side Barcelona at Johan Cruyff Stadium, losing 3–0. On 14 August, Juventus played a friendly match against Serie A side Atalanta, winning 3–1, thanks to goals scored by Paulo Dybala, Federico Bernardeschi, and Álvaro Morata. On 17 August, Juventus announced that Kaio Jorge's purchase had been officialised from Brazilian Série A side Santos. On 18 August, Juventus announced that Manuel Locatelli's purchase had been officialised from Serie A side Sassuolo. On 19 August, Juventus played the last pre-season friendly match against Serie C side Juventus U23, winning 3–0, through goals scored by Dybala, Morata, and Aaron Ramsey.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 22 August, Juventus made their official season debut, drawing 2–2 against Udinese. Dybala scored after three minutes to the start and Juan Cuadrado doubled the result in the 23rd minute. In the 51st minute, the referee awarded a penalty kick after Juventus' goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny fouled Tolgay Arslan; Roberto Pereyra scored from the spot reducing the disadvantage. In the 83rd minute, Stefano Okaka scored the equalizing goal due to a Szczęsny mistake. On 28 August, Juventus lost 1–0 against Empoli in the second matchday due to a Leonardo Mancuso's goal in the 21st minute. On 31 August, Juventus announced that Cristiano Ronaldo had been sold to English Premier League side Manchester United, as well as Moise Kean's purchase from another English side, Everton.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 14 September, Juventus made their debut in UEFA Champions League against Swedish side Malmö FF, winning 0–3. The match resulted in being the first season victory: in the 23rd minute, Alex Sandro scored the opening goal through a header from a Juan Cuadrado's cross; in the 45th minute, the captain Paulo Dybala scored his penalty caused by a foul on Álvaro Morata; one minute later, in the additional time, again Morata scored the third overall goal.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 2 October, Juventus played the Derby della Mole against Torino side, winning 0–1. Manuel Locatelli scored the only goal late in the second half. The same result was achieved against Roma on 17 October; Moise Kean scored in the 16th minute.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 24 October, Juventus played the Derby d'Italia against Internazionale, drawing 1–1: Paulo Dybala equalised the score on penalty late in the second half, after the first goal scored by Edin Džeko in the first period.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 2 November, Juventus qualified to the knockout phase of the UEFA Champions League thanks to the 4–2 win against Russian side Zenit Saint Petersburg. Paulo Dybala scored twice, including a penalty, followed by other two goals scored by Federico Chiesa and Álvaro Morata, respectively. Zenit Saint Petersburg's goals were provided by Leonardo Bonucci's own goal and Sardar Azmoun.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 8 December, Juventus achieved first position in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League with 15 points. Home win 1–0 against Malmö FF with the only goal scored by Moise Kean in the 18th minute and 3–3 between Zenit Saint Petersburg and Chelsea meant Juventus was seeded in the knockout phase round of 16 draw.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 6 January, as the championship returned for its second leg, Juventus drew 1–1 against Napoli. Dries Mertens scored in the first half; his goal was equalized by Federico Chiesa in the second period. On 9 January, Juventus went against Roma, achieving a 4–3 comeback. In the first half, Tammy Abraham scored for Roma, followed by a Paulo Dybala's goal. In the second period, Henrikh Mkhitaryan put Roma in front, with Lorenzo Pellegrini scoring the third goal for the home team. In less than eights minutes, Juventus scored three times: Manuel Locatelli, Dejan Kulusevski and Mattia De Sciglio completed the comeback. Later in the second half, Matthijs de Ligt was sent off, costing a penalty, and offering Roma the chance to equalise the match, but Lorenzo Pellegrini's penalty was saved by Wojciech Szczęsny.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 12 January 2022, Juventus played their 17th Supercoppa Italiana against Internazionale, losing 2–1 on extra time. Weston McKennie opened the score in the 25th minute, but Lautaro Martínez put Internazionale on level in the 35th minute by penalty. In the last additional minute in the second half on extra time Alexis Sánchez scored the decisive goal.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 18 January, Juventus made the debut in Coppa Italia against Sampdoria, starting from Round of 16. The match ended with a 4–1 win to Juventus, which meant that they qualified for the quarter-finals. Juan Cuadrado, Daniele Rugani, Paulo Dybala and Álvaro Morata, on penalty, scored for the home team, while the only goal for Sampdoria was provided by Andrea Conti.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 28 January, Juventus announced that Serbian forward Dušan Vlahović had been bought from Serie A side Fiorentina. On 31 January, Italian defender Federico Gatti was bought from Serie B side Frosinone. He was sent on loan to the same team until June 2022. Uruguayan midfielder Rodrigo Bentancur was sold to English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur, along with Swedish midfielder Dejan Kulusevski, but on loan until June 2023 with obligation to buy. Swiss midfielder Denis Zakaria was bought from German Bundesliga side Borussia Mönchengladbach, and Welsh midfielder Aaron Ramsey was sent on loan to Scottish Premiership side Rangers until June 2022 with option to buy.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 10 February, Juventus faced Sassuolo in the quarter-finals of the Coppa Italia, and won 2–1. Paulo Dybala scored in the third minute, with Hamed Traorè equalizing the score in the 24th minute. An own goal in favour of Juventus late in the second half permitted the home team to qualify for the semi-finals.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 18 February, Juventus played the Derby della Mole return match against Torino, drawing 1–1. Matthijs de Ligt opened the score in the 13th minute, whose goal was put on level by Andrea Belotti in the 62nd minute.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 22 February, Juventus restarted their campaign in the Champions League, going against Spanish La Liga side Villarreal in the Round of 16 first leg. The final score was 1–1: Dušan Vlahović put Juventus in front in the first minute, while in the second half Dani Parejo equalised the result.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 2 March, Juventus went against Fiorentina in the semi-finals first leg of the Coppa Italia: thanks to a Lorenzo Venuti's own goal late in the second half Juventus won 1–0.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 16 March, Juventus faced Spanish La Liga side Villarreal in the Champions League Round of 16 second leg, losing 3–0. Gerard Moreno, Pau Torres and Arnaut Danjuma secured Villarreal's qualification to the next round. Juventus were then eliminated from the competition with an aggregate score of 4–1.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 3 April, Juventus played the return match of Derby d'Italia. It resulted in a 1–0 win for Internazionale: Hakan Çalhanoğlu scored on penalty in the additional time of the first half.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 20 April, Juventus went against Fiorentina in the semi-finals second leg of the Coppa Italia, winning 2–0. Federico Bernardeschi and Danilo secured the qualification to the final with an aggregate score of 3–0.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 11 May, Juventus played the final of the Coppa Italia in the Derby d'Italia against Internazionale. It ended after extra time, 2–4 in favour of Internazionale. Nicolò Barella opened the score in the seventh minute. In the second half, Alex Sandro in the 50th minute and Dušan Vlahović two minutes later put Juventus in front, before Hakan Çalhanoğlu equalised the score in 80th minute via a penalty. During the extra time, Ivan Perišić scored twice, in the 99th minute and a penalty in the 102nd minute.


title: 2021–22 Juventus F.C. season

text: On 21 May, Juventus faced Fiorentina for their last match of the season, losing 2–0. Juventus concluded the Serie A in the fourth place which meant they qualified for the 2022–23 UEFA Champions League, starting from the group stage phase.


title: Qawwali

text: Qawwali (Punjabi: , ; Urdu: ; Hindi: क़व्वाली ; Bengali: কাওয়ালি ()) is a form of Sufi Islamic devotional singing, originating from the Indian subcontinent. It is popular mostly in the Punjab and Sindh regions of Pakistan; in Hyderabad, Delhi and other parts of India, especially North India; as well as the Dhaka and Chittagong Divisions of Bangladesh.


title: Qawwali

text: Originally performed at Sufi shrines or dargahs throughout South Asia, it gained mainstream popularity and an international audience in late 20th century. Qawwali music received international exposure through the work of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Aziz Mian and Sabri Brothers largely due to several releases on the Real World label, followed by live appearances at WOMAD festivals. Other famous Qawwali singers include Fareed Ayyaz & Abu Muhammad, Rahat Fateh Ali Khan, Badar Miandad, Rizwan & Moazzam Duo, Qutbi Brothers, the late Amjad Sabri, Wadali Brothers, Nizami Bandhu, Bahauddin Qutbuddin, among others. Most modern Qawwali singers including Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Fareed Ayyaz & Abu Muhammad belong to the famed 'Qawwal Bachon ka Gharana' school of Qawwali, which was based in Delhi before 1947 and migrated to Pakistan.


title: Qawwali

text: "Qawl" () is an "utterance (of the prophet)", Qawwāl is someone who often repeats (sings) a Qaul, Qawwāli is what a Qawwāl sings.


title: Qawwali

text: Delhi's Sufi saint Amir Khusrow of the Chisti order of Sufis is credited with fusing the Persian, Arabic, Turkish, and Indian traditions in the late 13th century in India to create Qawwali as we know it today. The word "Sama" is often still used in Central Asia and Turkey to refer to forms very similar to Qawwali, and in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the formal name used for a session of Qawwali is "Mehfil-e-Sama".


title: Qawwali

text: Originally, musical instrument use in Qawwali was prohibited. The following conditions were initially placed on Qawwali:


title: Qawwali

text: Moreover, such Sufi Saints, such as Nizamuddin Auliya, the teacher of the famous Sufi singer, Amir Khusrow, were quite blunt about the prohibition:


title: Qawwali

text: Eventually however, musical instrument use found its way into Qawwali and modern performers of musical Qawwali will justify their use of instruments by saying that the Sufi Saints do not stop them when they use them near their shrines. Instruments such as Harmoniums, tabla and dholak are now common in many Qawwali parties.


title: Qawwali

text: The songs which constitute the qawwali repertoire are primarily in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and Punjabi. There are some in Persian from the Mughal era, and a smattering in Saraiki and dialects of north India like Braj Bhasha and Awadhi. There is also qawwali in some regional languages but the regional language tradition is relatively obscure. Also, the sound of the regional language qawwali can be totally different from that of mainstream qawwali. This is certainly true of Chhote Babu Qawwal, whose style of singing is much closer to the Bengali Baul music than to the qawwali of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, for example.


title: Qawwali

text: The poetry is implicitly understood to be spiritual in its meaning, even though the lyrics can sometimes sound wildly secular, or outright hedonistic. The central themes of qawwali are love, devotion and longing (of men for the Divine).


title: Qawwali

text: A group of qawwali musicians, called a "party" (or Humnawa in Urdu), typically consists of eight or nine men including a lead singer, one or two side singers, one or two harmoniums (which may be played by the lead singer, side singer or someone else), and percussion. If there is only one percussionist, he plays the tabla and dholak, usually the tabla with the dominant hand and the dholak with the other one (i.e. a left-handed percussionist would play the tabla with his left hand). Often there will be two percussionists, in which case one might play the tabla and the other the dholak. There is also a chorus of four or five men who repeat key verses, and who aid percussion by hand-clapping.


title: Qawwali

text: The performers sit cross-legged on the ground in two rows — the lead singer, side singers and harmonium players in the front row, and the chorus and percussionists in the back row.


title: Qawwali

text: Before the fairly recent introduction of the harmonium, qawwalis were usually accompanied by the sarangi. The sarangi had to be retuned between songs; the harmonium didn't, and was soon preferred.


title: Qawwali

text: Women used to be excluded from traditional Muslim music, since they are traditionally prohibited from singing in the presence of men. These traditions have changed, however, as is evident by the popularity (and acceptance) of female singers such as Abida Parveen. However, qawwali has remained an exclusively male business. There are still no mainstream female qawwals. Although "kafi" singer Abida Parveen has increasingly incorporated qawwali techniques into her performances, she is still not considered a qawwali singer.


title: Qawwali

text: The longest recorded commercially released qawwali runs slightly over 115 minutes (Hashr Ke Roz Yeh Poochhunga by Aziz Mian Qawwal). The qawwali maestro Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan has at least two songs that are more than 60 minutes long.


title: Qawwali

text: Qawwalis tend to begin gently and build steadily to a very high energy level in order to induce hypnotic states both among the musicians and within the audience. Almost all Qawwalis are based on a Raga from the Hindustani classical music tradition. Songs are usually arranged as follows:


title: Qawwali

text: The singing style of qawwali is different from Western singing styles in many ways. For example, in words beginning with an "m", Western singers are apt to stress the vowel following the "m" rather than the "m" itself, whereas in qawwali, the "m" will usually be held, producing a muted tone. Also in qawwali, there is no distinction between what is known as the chest voice and the head voice (the different areas that sound will resonate in depending on the frequency sung). Rather, qawwals sing very loudly and forcefully, which allows them to extend their chest voice to much higher frequencies than those used in Western singing, even though this usually causes a more noisy or strained sound than what would be acceptable in the West.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On March 22, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Ten people were killed, including a local on-duty police officer. The alleged shooter, 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa, was arrested after being shot in the right leg. He was temporarily hospitalized before being moved to the county jail. After undergoing mental evaluations during the legal proceedings, Al-Issa was found mentally incompetent to stand trial in December 2021 and in April 2022.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: The shooting began shortly after when a gunman entered the parking lot of a King Soopers supermarket and began to fire at people. He was described by witnesses as wearing an "armored" vest and holding a "rifle", which turned out to be a semi-automatic Ruger AR-556 AR-15 style pistol that was used in the shooting; he also carried a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. He was first seen by employees and customers who watched him shoot at customers in the parking lot before turning and entering the store. At the time, there were at least 115 people inside the building and at least 25 others in the parking lot.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: The first victim was a repairman who was killed in a van parked next to the gunman's vehicle. The gunman then walked towards the store; along the way, he killed another person in the parking lot who was trying to flee, shooting him multiple times. Next, he killed two more people while entering the store through its eastern entrance.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: A man waiting in line with his family for his COVID-19 vaccine at the store's pharmacy witnessed the gunman shoot a woman at the front of the line before finding safety in a coat closet with his family. Some customers and employees reached safety through a back exit for the supermarket. Some were praised for their actions in helping evacuate and hide individuals away from the gunman.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: At 2:33p.m., the Boulder Police Department began receiving calls of a person with a "patrol rifle" in the area and shots being fired. Witnesses at the scene reported hearing anywhere from ten to thirty shots fired in rapid succession by the gunman. At 2:34p.m., a Boulder Police dispatcher provided an initial description of the gunman as "a white male, middle-aged, dark hair, beard, black vest, short-sleeved shirt." The first three responding officers arrived at the scene within two minutes of the first calls and entered the store within 30 seconds of their arrival; at around 2:37p.m., one of the other officers radioed in to say that they were going in. Running towards gunfire, one of the officers, Eric Talley, was shot and killed by the gunman. He was the last victim in the shooting, according to Boulder police.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Less than thirty seconds after Talley's death, additional officers entered the store. By 2:39p.m., responding officers reported being fired upon repeatedly by the gunman. At around the same time, an armored police vehicle was used to break the store's front windows. Officers engaged the gunman in a shootout from 3:00p.m. to 3:21p.m. They also used a sound system to order him to surrender. According to police and witnesses, the gunman was laughing and occasionally mumbling. A store employee said that while she was hiding, she heard gunshots and screams and then only the store music and phones ringing afterwards.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Police did not enter the store again until 3:22p.m., fearing an ambush. When a team of ten officers from multiple agencies reentered, they encountered the gunman at one of the aisles within twenty seconds of their entry; he fired at them at least twice. One of the officers returned fire on two different occasions, eventually striking the gunman in the thigh. He surrendered by saying, "I surrender. I'm naked", and at 3:28p.m., he was taken into custody using Talley's handcuffs. He had a leg gunshot wound at the time of his arrest, so he was first transported to Boulder Community Health Foothills Hospital. Police eventually transferred him to the Boulder County Jail, where he was held without bond.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: After the gunman was taken into custody, police searched through the store and evacuated people who had remained inside. A shelter-in-place order was issued in the area at 4:18p.m. and lifted at 6:40p.m. Up to fifteen agencies responded to the shooting, including the Jefferson County SWAT, the Boulder Sheriff's Office, the University of Colorado Police Department, the FBI, the ATF, and local police departments. A fire department ladder truck was used to get a SWAT team onto the roof. At least three medical helicopters were summoned to a staging area at nearby Fairview High School.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Officer Talley, who had been working with the Boulder Police Department since 2010, was one of the first police officers to arrive at the scene. His death marked the first time a Boulder police officer was killed in the line of duty since 1994, and only the sixth such death in the department's history. Seven of the victims died inside the store, while the other three died outside.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: While Boulder Police Chief Maris Herold initially said several other police officers were injured during the response, the department later said that no other officers were injured. Aside from the suspect who was wounded by police, the only other injury from the shooting was a woman who fractured her back while trying to escape.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Ahmad Al Aliwi Al-Issa (or Alissa), age 21, is from nearby Arvada, Colorado. He was born in Raqqa, Syria, on April 17, 1999, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. His family immigrated to the U.S. in 2002 and moved to Arvada in 2014. Al-Issa's older brother said that Al-Issa has a history of paranoid, disturbed, and antisocial behavior that developed after Al-Issa was bullied in high school, and his brother was concerned for his mental health. Al-Issa was convicted of a misdemeanor in 2018 for punching a classmate at Arvada West High School. He pleaded guilty to an assault charge in relation to the incident, received a year of probation, and was ordered to undergo 48 hours of community service.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: According to a police affidavit, Al-Issa bought a semi-automatic Ruger AR-556 Pistol. Boulder police clarified in a news conference on March 26 that they believed the AR-556 pistol was the only weapon used by the suspect during the shooting and added that he also had a 9mm handgun with him. Al-Issa's identity was already known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to a link to another person under investigation by law enforcement officials.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Al-Issa expressed on his now-deleted Facebook page and to his former high school wrestling teammates that he believed he was being targeted for harassment due to racism and Islamophobia. According to SITE Intelligence Group, "there was no indication on his Facebook account that suggested radical views of any kind, whether it be Islamist, anti-Trump, or anything else." Al-Issa's brother said he believed that the shootings were not a political statement. The Boulder County District Attorney waited to reveal more information about Al-Issa's motives while the FBI and other agencies were investigating the case, to help ensure a fair trial.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: After the shooting, Al-Issa was charged with ten counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. Al-Issa's identity was revealed to the public on March 23, the day after the shooting. At Al-Issa's first court appearance on March 25, his lawyer asked for a mental health assessment. It was later reported that, due to "safety concerns and threats", Al-Issa was moved to another county.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On April 22, Al-Issa was charged with 43 new felony charges, including 32 counts of attempted murder, 10 counts of using a high-capacity magazine, and one count of first-degree assault. The 32 counts of attempted murder include those of eleven police officers, along with a number of civilians. If convicted, Al-Issa would be sentenced to life in prison without parole, as Colorado abolished the death penalty a year before.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On May 25, Al-Issa was charged with 13 additional counts of attempted murder and 47 "crime of violence sentence enhancers". His next court appearance was a preliminary hearing scheduled for September 7. However, on September 1, Al-Issa's lawyers filed a motion to raise the issue of their client's mental competency during the trial, and the preliminary hearing was changed to an advisement hearing. On September 7, Al-Issa was ordered to undergo a competency evaluation at the Boulder County Jail, to be completed within three weeks. On September 28, the evaluation's due date was delayed to October 11, while a hearing to review the results was rescheduled for October 14.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On October 11, psychologists expressed their beliefs that Al-Issa was mentally incompetent to proceed with the trial. On October 14, a judge granted the district attorney's request to have Al-Issa undergo a second evaluation. The protracted process of determining Al-Issa's competency was criticized by the family of shooting victim Rikki Olds, who said Al-Issa was competent enough to plan and carry out the shooting. On December 3, a judge ruled that Al-Issa was mentally incompetent to stand trial. On April 15, 2022, a judge ruled that Al-Issa was still mentally incompetent to stand trial. Six months later, on October 21, a judge ruled Al-Issa still incompetent for trial and set his next review hearing for January 27, 2023. In the meantime, the Colorado Mental Health Institute must provide monthly condition updates to the court. Based on doctors' assessments, District Attorney Michael Dougherty expects the defendant's competency will improve, that he will be able to stand trial and justice will be served.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: After the shooting, police investigated if Al-Issa used a 30-round magazine in the shooting, and also whether other firearms were connected to him. They found that he was equipped with ten high-capacity magazines, all of which were found on him, or in his car parked outside the store. Subsequent to other mass shootings, possession of high-capacity magazines was banned in Colorado after 2013. The Boulder District Attorney said that there was no evidence the magazines were sold or obtained illegally, but that Al-Issa broke laws by having them on his person and in his vehicle.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: At around 8:00p.m. on the day of the shooting, a procession honored Officer Eric Talley as his body was being taken to a funeral home. A separate memorial for the victims was created along a chain-link fence bordering the store, as mourners placed candles, flowers, and other items along its base or through the chain-link. The Museum of Boulder began collecting and preserving stories and artifacts from the memorial. On April 16, it started planning both short-term and permanent memorials with the City of Boulder. On May 12, the store was announced to be undergoing extensive renovations, with the expectation that it would reopen in late fall 2021.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Governor Jared Polis ordered the state's flags to fly at half-staff for ten days: one day for each victim. President Joe Biden also ordered flags on federal property nationwide to be flown at half-staff. This order came on the same day as the expiration of a federal order to fly flags at half-staff to honor the victims of the Atlanta spa shootings of March 16, less than a week before. A week after the shooting, Talley's funeral was held; it included a 21-gun salute and another procession.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Sports teams in Colorado and victims of other mass shootings expressed sympathy for the victims and family members of the Boulder shooting. A vigil for the victims and survivors of the shooting was held on March 25. U.S. Representative Joe Neguse, whose district includes Boulder, spoke at the vigil about curbing gun violence. University of Colorado Boulder professor and poet Khadijah Queen also spoke at the vigil, which was organized by gun violence prevention group Moms Demand Action. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper that day, the family of one of the victims spoke about him and their appreciation for the outpouring of support.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: As of June 29, more than $8 million of donations was collected by more than a dozen funds, primarily ones set up by Community Foundation Boulder County and the Colorado Healing Fund. However, victims' families criticized the organizations' distribution of the donations, saying that they were forced to produce bills and bank statements in order to receive support, and that they were not given sufficient input into the money's distribution. They have since called for an independent audit into the distribution's methods.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Al-Issa legally purchased a Ruger AR-556 pistol on March 16 at a local gun shop in Arvada that used Colorado's universal background check law, even though he was previously convicted of third-degree assault, a misdemeanor with a sentencing maximum of 18 months in county jail. Federal firearms laws only prohibit weapons purchases for those convicted of a felony, or a misdemeanor with a prison term of over 24 months. He was reported to be carrying a 9mm handgun in addition to his primary weapon.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On March 12, four days before Al-Issa bought his Ruger AR-556 pistol and ten days before the shooting, a Boulder County judge had blocked a ban on the sale and possession of assault weapons and large capacity magazines in a lawsuit backed by the National Rifle Association (NRA). The ban had been passed in Boulder in 2018 after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Following the shooting, discussion was renewed on the topic of gun control. Particular discussion was raised over the Ruger AR-556 pistol, a type of AR-15 style rifle with a modified arm brace, legally defined as a pistol and not a rifle according to current gun control laws.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Semi-automatic AR-15 style rifles are modeled after the automatic ArmaLite AR-15 rifle. As a pistol, the Ruger AR-556 is not bound by stricter regulations placed on rifles, and pistols usually aren't included in definitions of assault weapons. According to the federal Gun Control Act of 1968, a pistol is "designed to be gripped by one hand"; a rifle is a weapon designed "to be fired from the shoulder" with a single bullet fired for each pull of the trigger, among other criteria. As a result of this, the Ruger AR-556 pistol is designed with a 10.5-inch barrel and is sold with an adjustable stabilizing brace, as opposed to a stock (which would cause the AR-556 to be classified as a short-barreled rifle under the National Firearms Act of 1934), making it legally a pistol even though it is visually and operationally similar to a rifle. Similar to AR-15 style rifles, Ruger AR-556 magazines typically have a capacity of 30 rounds; but since Colorado law prohibits magazines carrying more than 15 rounds, some retailers sell a Colorado-specific version of the gun that comes with a magazine that holds under 15 rounds.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: NRA member and longtime gun violence researcher Garen Wintemute, a UC Davis Medical Center physician who is the director of the university's Violence Prevention Research Program, expressed concerns about the Ruger AR-556 pistol's "lethality over conventional handguns." Professor Joseph Vince, a former Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) agent and current director of Mount St. Mary's University's Criminal Justice Programs, said about the Ruger AR-556 pistol, "It's not a sporting rifle, it's not a hunting rifle. It's made for the military and short-range combat."


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: At the national level, President Joe Biden called for an immediate ban on assault weapons; other Democratic politicians echoed his sentiments, including U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, U.S. Representative Joe Neguse of Colorado, and former President Barack Obama. Biden also urged that loopholes be closed in the background check system and praised Officer Eric Talley, who was killed in the shooting, for his heroism. In an interview with "CBS This Morning", Vice President Kamala Harris responded to the mass shootings by discussing the need for gun reform legislation.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Similar calls for gun control and loopholes to be closed were echoed by newspaper editorial boards, and many celebrities. Satirical news site "The Onion" republished its 'No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens article the day following the shooting.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Republican politicians, such as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, have criticized the renewed push for gun control, saying that they believe gun control does not help lessen crime. Most Democratic members of Congress supported gun safety bills, and the House of Representatives (which has a Democratic majority) passed two bills to create universal background checks. However, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin opposed the House-passed bills, favoring instead a narrow bill he co-authored with Republican Senator Pat Toomey shortly after the Sandy Hook school shooting.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On April 8, Biden announced an executive order in response to the Boulder shooting that called for the U.S. Justice Department to clarify within 60 days whether a gun marketed with a stabilizing brace, such as the Ruger AR-556, effectively turns a pistol into a short-barreled rifle. On June 7, the Justice Department announced that Attorney General Merrick Garland signed proposed rule 2021R-08, "Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached 'Stabilizing Braces,'" to make this clarification by September 8. Under the proposed clarification, the definition for the term "rifle" would include "any weapon with a rifled barrel and equipped with an attached 'stabilizing brace' that has objective design features and characteristics that indicate that the firearm is designed to be fired from the shoulder." The proposed criteria would determine whether firearms equipped with a stabilizing brace are a "rifle" or "short-barreled rifle" under the Gun Control Act of 1968, or a "rifle" or "firearm" subject to National Firearms Act regulations. The proposed restrictions to amend regulations would not apply to stabilizing braces used by individuals with disabilities.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: The shooting led to the passage of gun reform legislation in the Colorado General Assembly. On April 20, Governor Jared Polis signed two gun control bills into law. One requires gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within five days or be fined. The other is a safe storage law that mandates standards on gun storage, such as requiring licensed gun dealers to provide locking devices during firearm sales or transfers. The bills, which passed in the Colorado General Assembly following party-line votes, had been introduced before the shooting.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: In late April, Democratic state lawmakers announced proposed gun control legislation that would create an Office of Gun Violence Prevention within the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, expand background checks, and allow municipalities to enact their own gun control laws. The proposed legislation would be the first of its kind since gun control bills were passed in 2013. Republican state legislators opposed the legislation. In May, the Colorado Senate passed SB 256, which repealed the state's ban on city and county governments enacting gun laws stricter than the state law. The bill passed on a party-line vote, 19–15, and went to the state House. A separate bill, HB 1298, would close the "Charleston loophole", which allows a licensed gun dealer to transfer a gun to a buyer if the background check has not been completed within three days; require licensed gun dealer to obtain Colorado Bureau of Investigation approval before transferring a gun; and ban persons convicted of a violent misdemeanor from buying a firearm for five years. HB 1298 was approved by the state House Judiciary Committee on a 7–4 party-line vote. The bills were signed into law by Polis in June.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: A man who livestreamed the crime to a YouTube channel received criticism from some and praise from others. He had identified himself repeatedly as a journalist to law enforcement before being removed from the scene. At peak viewership during the event, the livestream had about 30,000 viewers, and many criticized YouTube for allowing the video to remain on its site. The company responded with a statement that the video had enough news or documentary context to remain, regardless of the violence shown.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: Before officers arrived on the scene, a police dispatcher described the active shooter as a "white male"; the suspect's actual identity was released around 18 hours after the shooting. A police affidavit dated March 23 repeated Al-Issa's identity as a "white male". Deborah Richardson, ACLU of Colorado's executive director, said that early assumptions made by law enforcement about Al-Issa were affected by the perception that he was white.


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: On March 22, before the suspect's identity was made public, the Indian American race-and-inclusion editor of "USA Today"s Sports Media Group, Hemal Jhaveri, reacted to the shooting on Twitter, inaccurately saying, "It's always an angry white man. Always." She later expressed "regret" for the "careless error of judgement" in sending the tweet, and deleted it. By March 26, Jhaveri had been fired by "USA Today", with her attributing this to the tweet and its promotion by "several high profile alt-right Twitter" users "as an example of anti-white bias and racism against whites". "USA Today" did not directly comment on her firing, instead stressing their commitment to "diversity, equity and inclusion".


title: 2021 Boulder shooting

text: The store remained closed for remodeling for almost a year. It was scheduled to reopen in January 2022, but the reopening was delayed due to a union strike until February 9. The redesigned store, including a prominent mural at the entrance, was previewed to the media the evening before. The reopening ceremony featured first responders and store employees, led by the University of Colorado Boulder's marching band. Dignitaries included King Soopers president Joe Kelly, Mayor Aaron Brockett, and Polis, a Boulder resident.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The domesticated silver fox ("Vulpes vulpes" forma "amicus") is a form of the silver fox that has been to some extent domesticated under laboratory conditions. The silver fox is a melanistic form of the wild red fox. Domesticated silver foxes are the result of an experiment designed to demonstrate the power of selective breeding to transform species, as described by Charles Darwin in "On the Origin of Species". The experiment at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, Siberia explored whether selection for behaviour rather than morphology may have been the process that had produced dogs from wolves, by recording the changes in foxes when in each generation only the most tame foxes were allowed to breed. Many of the descendant foxes became both tamer and more dog-like in morphology, including displaying mottled- or spotted-coloured fur.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 2019, an international research team questioned the conclusion that this experiment had provided strong support for the validity of domestication syndrome. They did conclude that it remains "a resource for investigation of the genomics and biology of behavior".


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Dmitry Belyayev questioned how the diversity of canine breeds had arisen from the domestic dog's lupine ancestors. Like other scientists, he "could not figure out what mechanism could account for the differences in anatomy, physiology, and behavior" that were obvious in dogs, but he was confident that the answer lay "in the principles of Mendelian inheritance." The genetics of domestication had also been of great interest to Darwin.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The available research concluded that domesticated animals differ in several ways from their wild counterparts. Belyayev believed that many domesticated animals had a number of phenotypic traits in common. This hypothesis is called the domestication syndrome; it was challenged in 2019.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Scientists did not know what principle of selection had guided the Neolithic farmers who had first domesticated these species thousands of years ago. Belyayev's hypothesis was that "all domesticated species had been selected for a single criterion: tameness." Belyayev further theorized that this attribute "had dragged along with it most of the other features that distinguish domestic animals from their wild forebears, like droopy ears, patches of white in the fur and changes in skull shape." Jason Goldman of "Scientific American" said, "Belyaev hypothesized that the anatomical and physiological changes seen in domesticated animals could have been the result of selection on the basis of behavioral traits. More specifically, he believed that tameness was the critical factor."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Academic Claudio J. Bidau wrote that Belyayev's suspicion was "that domestication was ruled by a process of 'destabilizing selection' affecting mechanisms of ontogenetic neuroendocrine control, either directly or indirectly in response to the appearance of a factor of stress", and that "the key factor of domestication producing striking similar results in many species is selection for tameness."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Goldman said Belyayev wondered if a breeding program that involved "selecting for tameness and against aggression would result in hormonal and neurochemical changes, since behavior ultimately emerged from biology. Those hormonal and chemical changes could then be implicated in anatomy and physiology. It could be that the anatomical differences in domesticated dogs were related to the genetic changes underlying the behavioral temperament for which they selected (tameness and low aggression). He believed that he could investigate these questions about domestication by attempting to domesticate wild foxes." He decided to study the silver fox and to observe how the fox responds to selective pressures for tame behaviour.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Belyayev chose the silver fox for his experiment, "because it is a social animal and is related to the dog." The silver fox had, however, never before been domesticated. Belyayev designed a selective-breeding program for the foxes that was intended to reproduce a single major factor, namely "a strong selection pressure for tamability". This breeding experiment would be the focus of the last 26 years of Belyayev's life.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The fox species had been hard to domesticate. It would not breed in cages. In 1884, a domestication program was begun in Prince Edward Island, Canada, which ultimately succeeded. By 1887, this program had established a fox breeding farm that proved successful. Fifty years later, these domestic foxes were selling for $30,000 ($ adjusted for inflation), illustrating the difficulty of successfully establishing captive breeding. Belyayev himself failed to establish a captive breeding population of river otters unaccustomed to people. Few bred successfully in captivity and the attempt was discontinued.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Belyayev did not initiate the domestication of the Arctic fox, but rather started the scientifically rigorous documentation of the process, while it was only 66 years old. The domestication was well documented, satisfying Belyayev's desire to understand the domestication process from its inception with a given species.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Lyudmila Trut was a graduate who was chosen as manager of the program. In 1952, she began to collect the tamest foxes from fur farms. They "began with 30 male foxes and 100 vixens, most of them from a commercial fur farm in Estonia." From the beginning, Belyayev chose foxes solely for tameness, allowing only a tiny percentage of male offspring, and a slightly larger percentage of females, to breed. The foxes were not trained, in order to ensure that their tameness was a result of genetic selection and not of environmental influences. For the same reason, they spent most of their lives in cages and were permitted only brief encounters with human beings.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Belyayev set down strict guidelines for the breeding program. Goldman said, "Starting at one month of age, and continuing every month throughout infancy, the foxes were tested for their reactions to an experimenter. The experimenter would attempt to pet and handle the fox while offering it food. In addition, the experimenters noted whether the foxes preferred to spend time with other foxes, or with humans." After the fox had reached sexual maturity at an age of seven to eight months, "they had their final test and assigned an overall tameness score." Among the factors that went into this score were the tendency "to approach an experimenter standing at the front of its home pen" and "to bite the experimenters when they tried to touch it." By way of ensuring that the pups' tameness was a result of genetic selection and not of interactions with human beings, the foxes were not subjected to any kind of training and were only permitted brief periods of contact with people.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: As reported on by Trut, the tests for tameness took the following form, which was still in use as of 2009: "When a pup is one month old, an experimenter offers it food from his hand while trying to stroke and handle the pup. The pups are tested twice, once in a cage and once while moving freely with other pups in an enclosure, where they can choose to make contact either with the human experimenter or with another pup. The test is repeated monthly until the pups are six or seven months old." At the age of seven or eight months, the pups are given a tameness score and placed in one of three groups. The least domesticated are in Class III; those that allow humans to pet and handle them, but that do not respond to contact with friendliness, are in Class II; the ones that are friendly with humans are in Class I. After only six generations, Belyayev and his team had to add a higher category, Class IE, the "domesticated elite", which "are eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking experimenters like dogs. They start displaying this kind of behavior before they are one month old. By the 20th generation 35% were 'elite', and by the 30th generation 70% to 80% of the selected generation was 'elite.'"


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Once the foxes in each generation had been classified according to the latest research, only the least fearful and least aggressive foxes were selected for breeding. Goldman said, "In each successive generation, less than 20 percent of individuals were allowed to breed". The sole criterion for permitting them to breed was their tolerance of human contact.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 1978, Belyaev reported at an Invitational Lecture at the 14th International Congress of Genetics in Moscow the types of changes that were observed by Belyaeva and Trut in the tame-selected foxes. As early as the second generation, counting from 1959, the "tameness" score of the selected population continued to increase every generation. "Tail wagging" was observed in one male fox by the fourth generation (1963). As early as 1962 changes in the animals' reproductive behavior started taking place. They found that some of the "tame" foxes were showing signs of "proestrus", as early as October–November, as opposed to the normal time of January–March.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: By 1972, some of the females were coming into estrus in the October–November period. The males, by contrast, were not ready for mating. By 1976, the tamest females mated as early as December 20; some of the females gave birth and then mated again in March–April. In the 10th generation (1969), "floppy ears" appeared in a female pup, as well as a piebald coloration on other tame pups consisting of patches of white and brown on the belly, tail, and paws. A small white "star patch" appeared in the middle of forehead of one pup also in the 10th generation. Other correlated changes in the domesticated foxes reported by Belyaev included a shortened tail, a shortening and widening of the skull, and the tail rolled over the back.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The changes manifested by the tame foxes over the generations, moreover, were not only behavioral but also physiological, just as Belyayev had expected. The first physiological change detected in the tame foxes was a lower adrenaline level. Belyayev and his team "theorized that adrenaline might share a biochemical pathway with melanin, which controls pigment production in fur", a hypothesis that has since been confirmed by research. After eight to ten generations, the tame foxes began to develop multi-colored coats, a trait found more in domesticated animals than in wild ones; this was followed by the development of "floppy ears and rolled tails similar to those in some breeds of dog". After 15 to 20 generations, a very small percentage of the tame foxes developed shorter tails and legs and underbites or overbites. The experimenters also discovered that the domesticated foxes show a "fear response" several weeks later than their wild counterparts, and that this delay is "linked to changes in plasma levels of corticosteroids, hormones concerned with an animal's adaptation to stress". After 12 generations of selective breeding, the corticosteroid level in the tame foxes' plasma was "slightly more than half the level in a control group". After 28 to 30 generations, "the level had halved again." At the same time, the tame foxes' brains contained higher levels of serotonin. Moreover, tame male foxes' skulls gradually became narrower, more like those of females, and litters became "on average, one pup larger".


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: After over 40 generations of breeding, in short, Belyayev produced "a group of friendly, domesticated foxes who 'displayed behavioral, physiological, and anatomical characteristics that were not found in the wild population, or were found in wild foxes but with much lower frequency….Many of the domesticated foxes had floppy ears, short or curly tails, extended reproductive seasons, changes in fur coloration, and changes in the shape of their skulls, jaws, and teeth. They also lost their 'musky fox smell'." It was Belyayev's view that these new attributes, which were extremely similar to the attributes of other domesticated animals, "was the result of selection for amenability to domestication." His reasoning was that behavior is "regulated by a fine balance between neurotransmitters and hormones at the level of the whole organism ... . Because mammals from widely different taxonomic groups share similar regulatory mechanisms for hormones and neurochemistry, it is reasonable to believe that selecting them for similar behavior – tameness – should alter those mechanisms, and the developmental pathways they govern, in similar ways."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Trut wrote in 1999 "that after 40 years of the experiment, and the breeding of 45,000 foxes, a group of animals had emerged that were as tame and as eager to please as a dog." Fitch described the tame foxes as "incredibly endearing". "The New York Times" wrote that they


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Ceiridwen Terrill of Concordia University, who described Belyayev's fox farm in 2012 as looking like a set of "dilapidated army barracks", with "rows and rows of sheds that house about a hundred foxes each", said that the foxes were so tame that when she reached into a cage to show one of them some affection, it plainly "loved having its belly scratched". Some of the foxes had even been trained to fetch and sit. So it was, in the words of "Scientific American", that


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Belyayev's experimental animals and their descendants have been said to "form an unparalleled resource for studying the process and genetics of domestication". Brian Hare, a biological anthropologist, wanted to study "the unusual ability of dogs to understand human gestures". Hare


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: and that the inability of wild wolves to pick up human cues is caused by their fear of humans. While Belyayev and his team "didn't select for a smarter fox but for a nice fox",


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Understanding the genetic reasons for wildness compared to tameness may provide more insight into human behaviour and how humans domesticated animals. "National Geographic"'s Evan Ratliff asked:


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Belyayev died of cancer in 1985. After his death, his experiment was continued by Trut, who brought international attention to it with a 1999 article in "American Scientist". By that year, after 40 years and 45,000 foxes, the experimenters had a population of 100 foxes, the product of 30 to 35 generations of selection. Trut expressed the belief in that year that "Belyayev would be pleased" with the posthumous results of his experiment, which has "compressed into a few decades an ancient process that originally unfolded over thousands of years", causing "the aggressive behavior of our herd's wild progenitors" to "entirely disappear". The experimenters, she wrote, "have watched new morphological traits emerge, a process previously known only from archaeological evidence." Trut suggested that the most important remaining question is "just how much further our selective-breeding experiment can go".


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in declining funds towards scientific research, complicating Belyayev's and Trut's research continuation. They had difficulties even keeping the foxes alive. Belyayev died in 1985 before he could salvage the institute, so Trut fought to maintain the fox research. Today, the experiment is under the supervision of Lyudmila Trut. When Anna Kukekova, a Russian-born postdoctoral student in molecular genetics at Cornell, read about the project's financial difficulties, she secured funding from the National Institutes of Health and joined in Trut's effort to complete Belyayev's work, making it a joint Russian-American initiative.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The results from the experiments led the scientists at the institute to research domestication of other animals, such as rats in 1972, mink, and river otters. Similar research was carried out in Denmark with American minks. The project also bred the least-tameable foxes to study social behavior in canids. These foxes avoided human contact, as do their wild behavioral phenotypes.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Detailed genetic and physiological studies on the foxes have been done by Trut and colleagues. For example, the "star-shaped" pattern was found to be controlled by one dominant gene that was incompletely penetrant, "but its penetrance is significantly higher in offspring from tame mothers than from aggressive ones..." Trut reported that female foxes heterozygous for the gene controlling the star pattern also influenced the number of male pups, increasing the number of males over the expected 50%. As the fox experiment has progressed over time, it was found that in general the number of male pups increased over the expected 50% to approximately 54%.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Early in the experiment, Trut and Belyaev started comparing the hormonal responses of the tame and control foxes. They showed that selection for tame behavior caused the levels of 11-oxycorticosteroids in the blood to be reduced; selection had also caused the morphology of adrenal glands to change. Levels of the sex hormones estradiol and progesterone differed. Belyaev stated: "Perhaps the most important observation emerging from this series of experiments is that fact that tame females exhibit statistically significant changes in certain neurochemical characteristics in such regions of the brain as the hypothalamus, midbrain, and hippocampus. The level of serotonin and its metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid turned out to be higher in tame than in unselected females. This fact fits the type of behavior, since serotonin is known to inhibit some kinds of aggression. Serotonin plays a role in the central regulation of the hypothalmic-hypophyseal-adrenal-sexual system. Thus, selection for tame behavior is associated with changes in both the central and peripheral mechanisms of the neuro-endocrine control of ontogeny."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Trut and her colleagues have applied modern molecular techniques to the fox populations with the aim of not only identifying which genes are involved in domestication, but also in determining how changes in the fox genome compare to those of the domesticated dog. 400 canine microsatellites that are evenly distributed across the canine genome were analyzed in the fox genome. Based on amounts of homozygosity in both tame and aggressive foxes, it was found that there was no evidence of inbreeding between the two groups of foxes. In order to help understand the neurobiology of behavior, fox and dog orthologs of serotonin receptor genes were cloned. Using 320 microsatellites Trut and co-workers showed that all 16 fox autosomes and one X chromosome were covered, and that there was a high conservation of marker order between homologous regions of foxes and dogs, even though the fox genome has 16 pairs of metacentric autosomes and the dog has 37 pairs of acrocentric autosomes. Additional studies by these workers has shown that "tameness" and "aggressiveness" is associated with at least two loci.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 2005, DNA microarrays were utilized to find the differences in genetic expression between domesticated, non-domesticated (farm-raised), and wild foxes. It was found that there was a difference of 40 gene expressions between the domesticated and non-domesticated foxes. Although there was a difference in the genes of the three groups, the experimenters did not look into the behavioural and functional consequences of these differences. In 2007, a system of measuring fox behavior was described that is expected to be useful in QTL mapping to explore the genetic basis of tame and aggressive behavior in foxes.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: After initiating his selective breeding program for tameness, Belyayev also began breeding a line of fearful, aggressive foxes. In addition, he started domesticating other animals. He and his team started working with rats in 1972, and later with minks and, briefly, with river otters, although this last experiment was abandoned because the species "proved difficult to breed". The experiments with rats and minks, however, proved successful, with the subjects becoming tame alongside the foxes. After Belyayev's death, his rat experiment was carried on by Irina Plyusnina. "Siberian gray rats caught in the wild, bred separately for tameness and for ferocity", reported "The New York Times", "have developed ... entirely different behaviors in only 60 or so generations". When geneticist Svante Pääbo was in Novosibirsk in 2003, he visited the institute, and "was stunned" by the two groups of rats. "After just 30 years of selection", Pääbo said, "the IC&G researchers had fashioned two populations that could hardly be more different."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 2006, Frank Albert, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, was helping to continue Belyayev's work by studying the genetic roots of the differences between the tame and hyper-aggressive rats. In 2009, Albert and several colleagues published a paper in "Genetics" about the results of their cross-breeding of tame and hyper-aggressive rats, a stock of which they had established in Leipzig. In 2011, it was reported that Albert's team had "found several key regions of the genome that have a strong effect on tameness" and that they suspected the involvement of "at least half a dozen genes". The next step was "to locate individual genes that influence tameness and aggression".


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Elaine Ostrander of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health told "National Geographic" in 2011, "Understanding what has changed in these animals is going to be incredibly informative. Everyone is waiting with great excitement for what they come out with."


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 2014, officials stated that the number of foxes was never reduced and is still stable at about 2,000 foxes. , there are 270 tame vixens and 70 tame dogs on the farm.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The suggestion has been made "that the foxes be made available as pets, partly to ensure their survival should the Novosibirsk colony be wiped out by disease". Raymond Coppinger, a dog biologist at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, noted that at one time "Soviet science was in a desperate state and Belyayev's foxes were endangered", but his own efforts "to obtain some of the foxes to help preserve them" had been unsuccessful, with the animals apparently having "left Russia only once, for Finland, in a colony that no longer survives". The author of the "National Geographic" article about the experiments, however, said that his translator, Luda Mekertycheva, had adopted two foxes from Novosibirsk and that they had proven to be wonderful companions who


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: Between 2010 and 2012, a firm called "SibFox" was advertising foxes from the Novosibirsk lab for about $6,000 apiece, although, according to "Popular Science", "it's not clear that anyone ever actually received one of these foxes." Reportedly,


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: In 2011, two Americans set up a website through which Americans could order foxes from the lab, but as of April 2014 the site no longer existed.


title: Domesticated silver fox

text: The sculpture "Dmitriy Belyaev and Domesticated Fox" was built near Institute of Cytology and Genetics (Novosibirsk) in the honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dmitry Konstantinovich Belyaev. The tamed fox gives the scientist a paw and wags its tail. Konstantin Zinich, sculptor (Krasnoyarsk):


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Beyond the Black Rainbow is a 2010 Canadian science fiction horror film written and directed by Panos Cosmatos in his feature film debut. It stars Michael Rogers and Eva Allan.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: "Beyond the Black Rainbow" was distributed by Mongrel Media in Canada, and by Magnet Releasing, a sub-division of Magnolia Pictures, in the United States. Produced and filmed in Vancouver, the film premiered at the 2010 Whistler Film Festival, in Whistler, British Columbia. Through 2011, it was also screened at several film festivals across North America, including Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas and Fantasia Festival in Montreal.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: In the 1960s, Mercurio Arboria founded the Arboria Institute, a New Age research facility dedicated to finding a reconciliation between science and spirituality, allowing humans to move into a new age of "Serenity Through Technology" and perpetual happiness. Now, in 1983, Arboria's work has long since been taken over by his protégé, Dr. Barry Nyle. Outwardly a charming, handsome scientist, Nyle is a psychopath who has been keeping Elena, a young girl, captive deep within the lower levels of the institute. Because there is no sunlight or sense of time in this place, the facility operates in "Day Mode" and "Night Mode." Elena only communicates through telepathy and demonstrates psychic capabilities, which Nyle suppresses using a glowing, prismatic device located somewhere in the bowels of the institute, from where it emanates a deep, droning hum.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: In an effort to understand Elena's abilities, Nyle subjects her to daily "therapy" sessions, during which Elena begs to see her father, but Nyle tells her she is very ill, and "not ready" for the world. By night, Elena is kept in her room, where she uses her psychic abilities to surreptitiously watch television shows through a video monitor in the wall. Nyle spends his nights at home with his wife Rosemary, a docile woman who appears to exist in a state of marijuana-induced stupor, yet seems to genuinely care for Nyle despite his lack of tenderness towards her. Nyle takes significant quantities of prescription medication, smiling at his insane reflection in the bathroom mirror.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Attempting to elicit an emotional response from Elena, Nyle speaks about her dead mother, whom he calls "beautiful" and "desirable". He hints that a photo of her might be in Elena's room, which she later discovers under her bed.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: That evening, Elena's nurse Margo discovers Nyle's case notes regarding Elena in a hidden recess in the wall, finding strange symbols and images that indicate Nyle's violent sexual obsession with Elena. Fearful of what the notes contain, Margo puts them back. Afterward, Nyle receives a mysterious phone call and rushes back to the Institute where he discovers ash from Margo's cigarette near the case notes. Nyle takes a psychedelic drug to calm himself.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Suspicious of Margo, Nyle informs her that Elena has smuggled contraband into her room. Margo later harasses and verbally abuses Elena, destroying the photo, and Nyle deactivates the suppressor device. Elena kills her by telekinetically causing her brain to burst through her eyes. Nyle, having monitored these events, is intrigued by this blatant display of psychic ability and pleased at Margo's death. He allows Elena to leave her cell and reactivates the prism, causing her to convulse and fall to the floor. Nyle then releases an anaesthetic gas into the facility. As Elena lies unconscious, Nyle electronically summons an entity in a helmeted red environment suit (identified as a "Sentionaut"), who injects a tracking device in Elena's neck before carrying her back to bed and removing all traces of Margo's brutalized corpse.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Nyle goes to see Arboria in another area of the institute. Displaying signs of senility and drug addiction, Arboria does not acknowledge Nyle's psychosis, regarding him as his best protégé. A flashback to 1966 reveals that Elena's mother was Arboria's wife Anna, who was present when Arboria led a young Nyle through a procedure meant to allow him to achieve transcendence. As a part of the procedure, Nyle was submerged in a vat of black liquid and experienced otherworldly, hellish visions. Nyle emerged insane and killed Anna. Unperturbed, Arboria submerged the infant Elena in the black liquid. Back in the "present" of 1983, Nyle murders Arboria by administering a fatal drug overdose, which Elena experiences via telepathic link with her father.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Nyle returns home, while a television broadcasts an address from President Reagan. He reveals that he disguises his complete lack of hair and his black irises with an elaborate wig and contact lenses. Presenting himself to his wife without these appliances, and dressed in a strange black outfit, he declares his primacy as an evolved being from "Beyond the Black Rainbow," and pushes his thumbs into Rosemary's eye sockets, killing her.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Meanwhile, Elena escapes, having used her psychic powers to render herself undetectable to the prism. She rides an elevator, evades a Sentionaut, and traverses a deep ventilation shaft on her journey upward through the Arboria Institute. Along the way, she encounters and narrowly avoids a bound, monstrous humanoid as her defense against the suppressor briefly fails. As she arrives at an upper level, she is confronted by another Sentionaut, whom she influences with her telepathy, prompting it to remove the visor on its helmet to reveal a mutated, childlike face. Arriving in a staff lounge, Elena finds that no other people seem to be working at the institute. Walking through the Arboria Institute's "award-winning gardens," she at last arrives outside the walls and sees the night sky for the first time in her life.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Nyle, having at last shed the pretense of humanity, dissolved his final contact to the material world, and wielding a ceremonial dagger he calls "The Devil's Tear-Drop," arrives back at the institute to find Elena gone. He produces a transponder receiver and departs. While pursuing Elena through the wooded areas surrounding the institute, he encounters a pair of "heshers," whom he kills after insisting one of them had sex with Elena.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Having located her using the tracking implant, Nyle eventually corners Elena in a clearing and repeatedly implores her to come to him. Elena uses her psychic abilities to keep Nyle's feet planted on the ground and as he tries to approach her, Nyle falls, hits his head against a rock, and dies instantly. Free of her captor, Elena finds herself on a suburban street, guided by the light generated by a television set.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: As a child, Cosmatos frequented a video store named Video Attic. During these trips he would browse the horror film section looking at the boxes although he was not allowed to watch such films. During such times he would instead imagine what the film was. He would later reflect upon this experience when making "Black Rainbow" where one of his goals was "to create a film that is a sort of imagining of an old film that doesn't exist." The year 1983 was chosen for the story as it's the first year he went to Video Attic. Additionally he thought the idea of setting such a film one year before 1984 was funny. The film's genesis was an overlap between two projects Cosmatos wanted to do. One of these was a film about a girl trapped in an asylum while the other was an installation promoting a research facility that didn't exist. Eventually Cosmatos realized that he could use both ideas in the same project.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: The presence of his parents haunts "every frame of this film", said the Rome-born filmmaker. His father was film director George P. Cosmatos (whose credits include "" and "Cobra"), deceased in April 2005, and his mother Swedish sculptor Birgitta Ljungberg-Cosmatos, who died in July 1997 after a lengthy battle with cancer. Unable to deal with his mother's death, Panos "drifted into a slow motion mode of self-destruction and binge drinking." When elder Cosmatos died, the grief he felt compounded. After that the aspiring writer/director started therapy and decided he wanted to make a film as part of the healing process. Cosmatos felt that his "filmmaking sensibility is a weird hybrid of both of them" – his father's "popcorn movies" and his mother's haunting, experimental art.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Eva Allan, who plays the main female lead, found an acting agent right away after graduating from School Creative which led to her role on this film.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: "Beyond the Black Rainbow" was financed by DVD residuals from "Tombstone" (1993), directed by Panos' father. The film was shot in three weeks using a modified Panavision 35 mm camera. This was suggested by cinematographer Norm Li, for he noted that Panos' references – mostly films from the '70s and '80s – "were all grainy, colorful, and full of texture", and he felt the 35 mm format was "the only way to shoot."


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: "Beyond the Black Rainbow" has been praised for its visual style. Cosmatos declared that his "modernist" use of color was influenced by Michael Mann's "Manhunter" (1986) and "The Keep" (1983). The blue hue cinematography – the "night mode" as Cosmatos dubbed it – was inspired by the freezer room scene in John Carpenter's "Dark Star" (1974). Norm Li cited other references: Daft Punk's "Electroma" (2006), Dario Argento's "Suspiria" (1977), and George Lucas' "THX 1138" (1971). A number of reviewers noted similarities between the film and Stanley Kubrick's "" (1968) and "A Clockwork Orange" (1971). "I love Stanley Kubrick, and have seen, and probably internalized, all of his work, but any similarity was not my intent", explained Cosmatos. Critics have also compared "Beyond the Black Rainbow" to Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" (1972), Ken Russell's "Altered States" (1980), and Gaspar Noé's "Enter the Void" (2010). Of the latter, the director deemed it "a very interesting, very beautiful film."


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: The 1966 flashback segment of the movie was inspired by E. Elias Merhige's experimental horror film "Begotten" (1990). "Begotten" was entirely shot in high-contrast black-and-white, which for Cosmatos "was a perfect look for the flashback because I wanted it to feel like a fading and decayed artifact." The young Barry Nyle's acid trip in that segment of "Beyond the Black Rainbow" was inspired by the "Battle of the Gods" sequence in Jean-Luc Godard's "Contempt" (1963).


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Cosmatos also takes influence from other visual media. The director declared his love for "Heavy Metal" magazine and the work of French comics artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud. Fantasy art was also an influence, especially Frank Frazetta's paintings. Norm Li stated that both he and the director "also looked at abstract paintings, photographs, and architectural design books" for inspiration.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: One of "Beyond the Black Rainbow"'s notable characteristics is its deliberately slow, hypnotic pace. According to Cosmatos, "Beyond the Black Rainbow" belongs to what he dubbed the "trance film" subgenre. Cosmatos mentioned Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961) and Saul Bass's "Phase IV" (1974) as cinematographic blueprints for his debut film. Cosmatos explained the rationale behind his screen-writing, which downplays the "very concrete story at the heart of it" in favor of an "atmospheric" approach:


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Jeremy Schmidt, keyboard player for Vancouver-based rockers Black Mountain, was invited by Cosmatos to compose the film's soundtrack. "Evil Ball", a track from Schmidt's solo project, Sinoia Caves, was used by the movie's director on a private screening held for Schmidt. A mutual appreciation for Tangerine Dream, John Carpenter soundtracks and Giorgio Moroder's music for "Midnight Express" (1978) and "American Gigolo" (1980) cemented their bond. Schmidt also pointed out the background music from "The Shining" (1980) and "Risky Business" (1983) as musical blueprints for the "Beyond the Black Rainbow" score.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Regarding the impact of "The Shining"s soundtrack on his score, Schmidt singled out the compositions by György Ligeti and Krzysztof Penderecki as sonic touchstones. Their music had already been featured in the sci-fi and horror genres, two of Cosmatos's main cinematic obsessions when young. Ligeti pieces "Lux Aeterna" and "Atmosphères" had been featured in "2001: A Space Odyssey", and Penderecki's "Polymorphia" and a portion of "The Devils of Loudun" was used in "The Exorcist" (1973).


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: For his analogue synthesizer score, Schmidt used the following equipment: a Prophet 5, two Oberheims, Moog Taurus bass pedals, a Korg CX-3 organ and a Mellotron. An extensive use of the Mellotron can be heard on the flashback sequence, where Cosmatos had been using Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" as a temp track. All in all, "the chosen palette of sounds definitely harkens back to 'The New Age of Enlightenment'", said Schmidt.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Director Cosmatos stated that he's interested in social control mechanisms, our own personal, internal controls and how religion affects our consciousness and society. These philosophical ideas are present in "Beyond the Black Rainbow", a film focused on issues of repression and control of emotions. Cosmatos partly picked up these themes by reading the science fiction works of Beat novelist William S. Burroughs, books by and large dealing with societal control.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: According to Cosmatos, the "rigid geometric world" of the Arboria Institute visually fits the movie's control theme. This is especially true for the Dr. Nyle character, someone "very knowledged, trying to create a very controlled environment to give himself a feeling of power." The light triangle, responsible for dampening Elena's psychic powers, is another control symbol. The institute's plethora of reflecting surfaces – the walls in the hallways, the giant piece of glass in the therapy room, the infinity-mirrored Sentionaut room, Margo's glasses – might somewhat hint at this idea. To many ancient cultures, the mirror was a symbol of self-awareness, consciousness and intelligence, but also a source of pride and vanity. The visual reference for Arboria Institute's interior design was "THX 1138".


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: The film's control leitmotif is shown in a subtler way by reflecting North America's political climate in the 1980s. "Beyond the Black Rainbow" has been called a "Reagan-era fever dream". Its paranoid, Cold War mood contains nods to the late U.S. president – through a clip of an ominous televised speech by Ronald Reagan himself – and former Panamenian general and convicted drug lord Manuel Noriega (Dr. Nyle's "Noriega" jacket). The Central American dictator had direct involvement in the "Iran-Contra" scandal. Noriega's fight against the Sandinistas, Nicaragua's left-wing guerrillas, was backed up by the CIA and the Pentagon. The CIA funded Noriega's military campaign with profits from the illegal sale of arms to Iran. The CIA also turned a blind eye to Noriega's drug trafficking.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Another of "Beyond the Black Rainbow"‘s main themes is identity. Over the course of the movie Dr. Nyle experiences a radical change of personality whose roots lie in the terrifying drug experience he had in 1966, under Mercurio Arboria's supervision. Being exposed to his shadow side so intensely crippled not only his mind, but his body: Barry is forced to use appliances such as a wig and contact lenses. Similar to many Lovecraftian protagonists, Barry Nyle is ultimately a pathetic character: his far-reaching knowledge, restrained demeanor and carefully controlled work environment are unable to dominate the forces of irrationality and chaos burning in his mind. In the end, the doctor undergoes a physical and psychological transformation where he forfeits all control and gives in to madness.


title: Beyond the Black Rainbow

text: Cosmatos admits a dislike for Baby Boomers' spiritual ideals, an issue he addresses in "Beyond the Black Rainbow". For him, the Boomers' search for alternative belief systems made them dabble in the dark side of occultism, which in turn corrupted their quest for spiritual enlightenment. The use of psychedelic drugs for mind-expansion purposes is also explored, although Cosmatos' take on it is "dark and disturbing", a "brand of psychedelia that stands in direct opposition to the flower child, magic mushroom peace trip" wrote a reviewer. UGO Networks's Jordan Hoffman noted both elements, stating in his review that in the movie some "up-to-no-good new age scientists have let their experiments with consciousness-altering drugs mutate a young woman" – in this case, Elena. Cosmatos explains why Dr. Arboria's mission to create a superior human ultimately failed: