title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: On the other hand, 85 percent of engineering doctoral degree holders are likely to initially go into business or the industry sector. Under the circumstances, providing doctoral students as well as postdoctoral researchers with necessary skills for nonacademic positions has become one of the important roles for graduate schools and institutions. The America COMPETES Act recognized the importance of graduate student support for obtaining skills needed when they pursue nonacademic careers, and required National Science Foundation (NSF) to increase or decrease funding for the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) programs at least at the same rate as it increases or decreases funding for the Graduate Research Fellowship. There are no comprehensive data of international postdoctoral researchers in the US because of the less-organized survey and the difficulty in counting international postdoctoral researchers. The proportion of postdoctoral researchers on temporary visas reached 53.6% in 2010. The life sciences hold the largest percentage of postdoctoral researchers on temporary visas; in 2008, approximately 56% of postdoctoral researchers in the life sciences were temporary residents. Of these postdoctoral researchers on temporary visas, four out of five earned their PhD outside of the United States. There exists fear that foreign PhD's are taking postdoctoral research positions from American researchers. The influx of foreign PhD's has influenced the supply of ready-researchers, and thereby, the wages. One estimate claims that a 10% increase in the supply of foreign postdoctoral researchers lower the position salary by 3–4%.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: In the US, life sciences have a greater share than other fields due to higher federal funding of life and medical science areas since mid 1990. One survey shows that 54% of postdoctoral researchers major in life sciences, whereas those who majored in physical science, mathematics, and engineering account for 28%.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: In 2010, postdoctoral researchers in California formed a union, UAW Local 5810 in order to secure better working conditions such as the right to file a complaint for alleged discrimination or sexual harassment through a formal grievance procedure. In California, new postdoctoral appointments receive at least the NIH postdoctoral minimum salary ($50,004 in 2019) and many receive annual pay raises of 5–7% or more in accordance with the NIH's Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Awards (NRSA).


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: In 2014, postdoctoral researchers in Boston organized the "Future of Research" Symposium to respond to a conversation about the state of biomedical research from the perspective of junior scientists. The meeting included panel discussions with academics concerned about the scientific enterprise, a video message from Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, and workshops discussing training, funding, the structure of the biomedical workforce, and metrics and incentives in science which were used to generate recommendations in a white paper. Meetings organized by postdoctoral researchers in 2015 spread to New York University (NYU), Chicago and San Francisco and a second meeting in Boston discussed data collection, labor economics and evidence-based policy to advocate for changes to science, including the future of the PhD.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: Most of India's premier engineering, science and management institutes (like Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISERs), Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and All India Institutes of Medical Sciences(AIIMS) have postdoctoral positions. The salary typically varies from INR 40,000 – 70,000 per month. For example, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Delhi, IIT Kanpur, IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IISER Mohali, IISER Pune, IISER Kolkata, IIM Kolkata offer postdoctoral fellowships. The Indian Council of Social Science Research also offers fellowship(s) for pursuing a post doctoral degree.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: Salaried appointments at the minimum Level A, Step 6 for academic salaries, for doctoral qualified employees (beginning in 2008) are set at A$75,612 p.a. at the University of Sydney, A$75,404 p.a. at the University of Melbourne, and A$75,612 p.a. at the University of New South Wales.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: Alternatively the Australian Research Council (ARC) provides Postdoctoral Fellowships. For example, their Discovery Projects, funds 3 year Fellowships, beginning in 2009, with A$61,399 p.a. Furthermore, a mandatory superannuation payment of 11–17% is paid by Universities.


title: Postdoctoral researcher

text: The postdoctoral system in China was founded in 1985 upon suggestion by Chinese American physicist and Nobel laureate Tsung-Dao Lee. The Office of the National Administrative Committee of Postdoctoral Researchers () regulates all postdoctoral mobile stations () at universities and postdoctoral work stations () at institutes and enterprises in mainland China. Applicants to postdoctoral positions have to pass a detailed medical check-up in order to enter the stations (). Postdoctoral researchers are required to undergo regular evaluations, and submit a research report for evaluation at the end of the postdoctoral period to obtain approval to leave the stations (). Those who are approved to leave the stations will receive a postdoctoral certificate from the national administration office. In some universities, postdoctoral researchers who fail to leave their stations normally, either due to failing their evaluations or early withdrawal from the stations (), may be asked to pay back the grants or even the salaries that they have received. Because of the way that the postdoctoral system is managed, postdoctoral research is widely mistaken to be an academic degree in China. The government's administration of the postdoctoral system has been criticized for hindering innovative research, as too much effort is spent on evaluations, and overemphasis on performance prevents the creation of a relaxing research environment.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: King Kong is an American media franchise featuring King Kong, a character initially created by Merian C. Cooper at RKO Radio Pictures and now owned by Warner Bros. (owners of 1933 film), Universal Pictures (owners of 2005 film) with more recent films being licensed to Legendary Pictures for production with Warner Bros. handling distribution. Films featuring Kong over the years are currently owned by various studios, including Toho, Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros. The film franchise consists of twelve monster films, including seven Hollywood films, two Japanese kaiju films produced by Toho, and the first three direct-to-video animated films. The first film, "King Kong", was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack and released by Radio Pictures in 1933 and became an influential classic of the genre. Toho was later inspired to make the original "Godzilla " after the commercial success of the 1952 re-release of "King Kong" and the success of "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms" (1953). The success of "King Kong" would go on to inspire other monster films worldwide. The popularity of the films has led to the franchise expanding to other media, such as television, music, literature and video games. King Kong has been one of the most recognizable symbols in American pop culture worldwide and remains a well-known facet of American films. The character of King Kong has become one of the world's most famous movie icons, having inspired a number of sequels, remakes, spin-offs, imitators, parodies, cartoons, books, comics, video games, theme park rides, and a stage play. His role in the different narratives varies, ranging from a rampaging monster to a tragic antihero.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Following the release of the original film, a sequel was produced that same year with "Son of Kong", featuring Little Kong. In the 1960s, Toho produced "King Kong vs. Godzilla" (1962), pitting a larger Kong against Toho's own Godzilla, and "King Kong Escapes" (1967), based on "The King Kong Show" (1966–1969) from Rankin/Bass Productions and pitting Kong against Mechani-Kong and Gorosaurus. In 1976, Dino De Laurentiis produced a modern remake of the original film directed by John Guillermin. A sequel, "King Kong Lives", followed a decade later featuring a Lady Kong. Another remake of the original, this time set in 1933, was released in 2005 from filmmaker Peter Jackson. The second-most recent film, "" (2017), is a reboot set in 1973 and is part of Legendary Entertainment's MonsterVerse, which began with Legendary's reboot of "Godzilla" in 2014 and continuing with "" in 2019, in which Kong made multiple guest appearances, and a second crossover sequel, "Godzilla vs. Kong", released in 2021, once again pitted the characters against one another.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1933, RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. produced the original "King Kong", which was followed by the sequel "Son of Kong" later the same year. The films were largely praised for effects artist Willis O'Brien's use of stop-motion effects. Both films star Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham. Ernest B. Schoedsack and Kong creator Merian C. Cooper co-directed and co-produced the first film, with Shoedsack performing those functions solo on the sequel.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1962, the Japanese company Toho Co., Ltd. produced a successful crossover between "King Kong" and their own "Godzilla" franchise with "King Kong vs. Godzilla", in which a larger version of Kong is pitted against Godzilla (both for their third film) and later released the stand-alone film "King Kong Escapes" in 1967 where Kong is instead put up against a robot version of himself called Mechani-Kong. The latter film was inspired by the Japanese-American animated TV series "The King Kong Show".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1976, Italian filmmaker Dino De Laurentiis produced a remake of the original film also titled "King Kong", which follows the same basic plot. Though it was less well-received than the original film, it was a box office success and was followed by a 1986 sequel, "King Kong Lives", in which Kong is resurrected and meets a female version of his own species and eventually forms a family.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1998, Warner Bros. released the direct-to-video animated musical film "The Mighty Kong" based upon the plot of the original 1933 film. It features the voices of Jodi Benson as Ann Darrow and Dudley Moore as Carl Denham. This film also features a song score by the Sherman Brothers. At the end of the film, King Kong falls from the Empire State Building after getting out of a net that the blimps were using on him. Due to this being a family film, King Kong survives the fall.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Between 2005 and 2006, BKN International released two animated films, "Kong: King of Atlantis" and "Kong: Return to the Jungle", acting as spin-offs to "".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2005, Universal Pictures released another remake of the 1933 film, once more titled "King Kong". The movie was well received by audiences and praised for its special effects and cinematography and spawned masses of merchandise and spin-off attractions, including a highly praised video game adaptation acting as an alternate version of the movie.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: The film, which was directed by Peter Jackson (then of "The Lord of the Rings" fame), is known for its high fidelity to the original (when compared to De Laurentiis's version) and the many visual, dialogue, and musical references to it, although some changes and additions are present, including Driscoll being a playwright and screenwriter rather than a mariner, and his sailor role being distributed to various other characters; Denham being chased by the Police; and also the crew of the "Venture" having their role fused with the unseen Norwegian ship's one.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Although it is not a full feature film, during this period Jackson also directed a short scene, realized in the style of the original film, replacing the long-lost "spider pit" scene, which is greatly discussed among fans. The scene is intercut with shots from the original film, and was released on the DVD of the 1933 film.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2017, Legendary Pictures released a reboot of the franchise with "", the second film in Legendary's "MonsterVerse" (a shared universe in which various kaiju films take place) which began with Gareth Edwards' 2014 film "Godzilla" (also being a reboot of its own series) and continued with "" in 2019, where Kong made multiple appearances, before concluding with a second crossover film titled "Godzilla vs. Kong", released on March 24, 2021 and once again pitting the two monsters against each other.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: From 1933 through 2021, there have been 12 "King Kong" films produced, with 10 American productions and 2 Japanese productions.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1966 a cartoon series titled "The King Kong Show" featured the giant ape befriending the Bond family, with whom he goes on various adventures, fighting monsters, robots, mad scientists and other threats. Produced by Rankin/Bass, the animation was provided in Japan by Toei Animation, making this the very first anime series to be commissioned right out of Japan by an American company. The show debuted with an hour-long pilot episode and then was followed by 24 half-hour episodes that aired on ABC. This was also the cartoon that resulted in the production of Toho's "Ebirah, Horror of the Deep" (originally planned as a Kong film) and "King Kong Escapes".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2000, an animated production from BKN International, Ellipsanime and M6 titled "" was released and is set many decades after the events of the original film. "Kong" is cloned by a scientist named Dr. Lorna Jenkins who also used the DNA of her grandson Jason to bring it to life. Jason uses the Cyber-Link to combine with Kong in order to fight evil, allowing Kong to draw on Jason's knowledge of hand-to-hand combat. The show was created in order to cash-in on "", which had repeated at least two of the monsters (although with vastly different backgrounds) seen in the Godzilla series.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: An animated series by 41 Entertainment titled "" aired as a Netflix original in 2016. The first episode aired as a two-hour movie followed by 12 half-hour episodes. Avi Arad is executive producer of the series. The series synopsis reads "Set in 2050, Kong becomes a wanted fugitive after wreaking havoc at Alcatraz Island's Natural History and Marine Preserve. What most humans on the hunt for the formidable animal do not realize, though, is that Kong was framed by an evil genius who plans to terrorize the world with an army of enormous robotic dinosaurs. As the only beast strong enough to save humanity from the mechanical dinosaurs, Kong must rely on the help of three kids who know the truth about him." Kong appears in "Tarzan and Jane" season 2 episode "The Return of the King". A live action series titled "King Kong of Skull Island" based on Joe Devito's book of the same name, which was produced with the Merian C. Cooper estate, is being developed by Stacy Title and Jonathan Penner.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In late January 2021, Netflix and Legendary Entertainment announced that an anime-style series adaptation based on the franchise is in the works from Powerhouse Animation Studios.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In August 2022, it was reported that a live-action television series adaptation based on the franchise is in the works for Disney+ from Disney Branded Television and Atomic Monster.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: King Kong, as well as the series of films featuring him, have been featured many times in popular culture outside of the films themselves, in forms ranging from straight copies to parodies and joke references, and in media from comic books to video games. The Beatles' 1968 animated film "Yellow Submarine" includes a scene of the characters opening a door to reveal King Kong abducting a woman from her bed. "The Simpsons" episode "Treehouse of Horror III" features a segment called "King Homer" which parodies the plot of the original film, with Homer as Kong and Marge in the Ann Darrow role. It ends with King Homer marrying Marge and eating her father.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: The British comedy TV series "The Goodies" made an episode called "Kitten Kong", in which a giant cat called Twinkle roams the streets of London, knocking over the British Telecom Tower. The controversial World War II Dutch resistance fighter Christiaan Lindemans — eventually arrested on suspicion of having betrayed secrets to the Nazis — was nicknamed "King Kong" due to his being exceptionally tall. Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention recorded an instrumental about "King Kong" in 1967 and featured it on the album "Uncle Meat". Zappa went on to make many other versions of the song on albums such as "Make a Jazz Noise Here", "You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 3", "Ahead of Their Time", and "Beat the Boots".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: The Kinks recorded a song called "King Kong" as the B-side to their 1969 "Plastic Man" single. In 1972, a fiberglass statue of King Kong was erected in Birmingham, England. The second track of The Jimmy Castor Bunch album "Supersound" from 1975 is titled "King Kong". Filk Music artists Ookla the Mok's "Song of Kong", which explores the reasons why King Kong and Godzilla should not be roommates, appears on their 2001 album "Smell No Evil". Daniel Johnston wrote and recorded a song called "King Kong" on his fifth self-released music cassette, "Yip/Jump Music" in 1983, rereleased on CD and double LP by Homestead Records in 1988. The song is an a cappella narrative of the original movie's story line. Tom Waits recorded a cover version of the song with various sound effects on the 2004 release, "". ABBA recorded "King Kong Song" for their 1974 album "Waterloo". Although later singled out by ABBA songwriters Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus as one of their weakest tracks., it was released as a single in 1977 to coincide with the 1976 film playing in theatres.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Various electronic games featuring King Kong have been released through the years by numerous companies. These range from handheld LCD games, to video games, to pinball machines. Tiger Electronics released various King Kong games in the early 1980s, including a Tabletop LCD game in 1981, a video game for the Atari 2600 home video game system in 1982, a handheld game in 1982 in both a regular edition a large screen edition (the regular edition was later reissued by Tandy in 1984), an "Orlitronic" game (for the international markets) in 1983, and a color "Flip-Up" game in 1984.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Epoch Co. released two LCD games in 1982. One was "King Kong: New York", and the other was "King Kong: Jungle" Konami released two games based on the film "King Kong Lives" in 1986. The first game was "" for the Famicom, and the second was "", for the MSX computer. In 1988, Konami featured the character in the crossover game "Konami Wai Wai World". All of these games were only released in Japan. Data East planned to release a pinball machine called "King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World" in 1990, but only 9 units were made. In 1992, Nintendo produced an educational game called "Mario is Missing" that features a treasure hunt level involving King Kong in New York City. The character is represented by images of his arm grabbing the Empire State Building in the NES version and a full body statue in the SNES version. Bam! Entertainment released a Game Boy Advance game based on "Kong: The Animated Series" in 2002. MGA Entertainment released an electronic handheld King Kong game (packaged with a small figurine) in 2003. Majesco Entertainment released a Game Boy Advance game based on the straight to video animated film "Kong: King of Atlantis" in 2005.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2005, Ubisoft released two video games based on the 2005 "King Kong". "" was released on all video game platforms, while "" was released for the Game Boy Advance. Also to tie into the film, Gameloft released "King Kong: The Official Mobile Game of the Movie" for mobile phones, while Radio Shack released a miniature pinball game. Taiyo Elec Co released a "King Kong" Pachinko game in 2007. King Kong has been featured in various online casino games. NYX gaming developed a King Kong online video slot casino game in 2016.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2017, Ainsworth Game Technology developed two licensed King Kong casino games. King Kong and Kong of Skull Island, while in 2018, NExtGen Gaming released a game called King Kong Fury. King Kong appears in the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment game "Lego Dimensions". He appears as a boss in "The Lego Batman Movie" pack. Besides starring in his own games, King Kong was the obvious influence behind other city-destroying gigantic apes, such as George from the "Rampage" series, Woo from "King of the Monsters" (who was modeled after the Toho version of the character), and Congar from "War of the Monsters", as well as giant apes worshiped as deities, like Chaos and Blizzard from "Primal Rage".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2021, Raw Thrills released a cinematic virtual reality motion game called "King Kong of Skull Island".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Also in 2021, King Kong became a playable character in the Toho mobile game "Godzilla Battle Line" as part of a crossover promotion with the film "Godzilla vs. Kong".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2022, King Kong appears as a non-playable character alongside Godzilla in "". Once again as part of a crossover promotion with "Godzilla vs. Kong", the update is titled "Operation Monarch". A cosmetic outfit based on Kong is also released for both "Warzone" and "".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Over the decades, there have been numerous books, novels, and comic books based on King Kong by various publishers.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In December 1932, as the film "King Kong" was finishing production, Merian C. Cooper asked his friend Delos W. Lovelace to adapt the film's screenplay into a novelization. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, the book was released later that month on December 27, 1932, just over 2 months before the film premiered on March 2, 1933. This was a part of the film's advance marketing campaign. The novelization was credited as being based on the "Screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose. Novelized from the Radio Picture". The byline written under the title was "Conceived by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper". However, despite the credit, Wallace had very little to do with the story or the character. In an interview, author-artist Joe DeVito explains:


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: This conclusion about Wallace's contribution was verified in the book "The Making of King Kong" by Orville Goldner and George E. Turner (1975) where Wallace stated in his diary, "Merian Cooper called and we talked over the big animal play we are going to write, or rather I am writing and he is directing", and "An announcement has been made in the local press that I am doing a super horror story with Merian Cooper, but the truth is it is much more his story than mine...I shall get much more credit out of the picture than I deserve if it is a success, but I shall be blamed by the public if it is a failure which seems fair". Wallace died of pneumonia complicated by diabetes on February 10, 1932, and Cooper later had James Creelman and finally Ruth Rose finish the screenplay. Cooper would later state "Actually, Edgar Wallace didn't write any of "Kong", not one bloody word...I'd promised him credit and so I gave it to him".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Cooper issued a reprint of the novelization in 1965 that was published by Bantam Books. Some time later, the copyright expired and the publishing rights to the book fell into the public domain. Since then a myriad of publishers have reprinted the novelization numerous times. In 1983, Judith Conaway wrote a juvenile adaptation of the novelization called "King Kong (Step Up Adventures)" that featured illustrations by Mike Berenstain and was published by Random House books, while Anthony Browne wrote and illustrated another juvenile adaptation called "Anthony Browne's King Kong" in 1994. Credited as "From the Story Conceived by Edgar Wallace & Merian C. Cooper", the book was published by the Turner Publishing Company. It was re-released as a paperback in the U.K in 2005 by Picture Corgi. Blackstone Audio produced an audio recording of the book in 2005 narrated by Stefan Rudnicki, while StarWarp Concepts released an Ebook version complete with 6 new illustrations from pulp-comic artist Paul Tuma in 2017.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Outside of the novelization, the film was serialized in a pulp magazine. In 1933, "Mystery" magazine published a "King Kong" serial under the byline of Edgar Wallace, and written by Walter F. Ripperger. This serialization was published in two parts in the February and March issues of the magazine.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In the U.K, the film was serialized in two different pulps, both on October 28, 1933: in the juvenile "Boys Magazine" (Vol. 23, No. 608). where the serialization was uncredited, and in that month's issue of "Cinema Weekly" where it was credited to Edgar Wallace and written by Draycott Montagu Dell (1888–1940). This short story adaptation would later appear in the Peter Haining book called "Movie Monsters" in 1988, published by Severn House in the U.K. The novel was serialized in the London Daily Herald by H. Kingsley Long as well. The serialization was first published in April 1933 and ran 37 installments.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1973, Philip Jose Farmer wrote a short story sequel to the Lovelace novelization called "After King Kong Fell" that was published in "OMEGA: a collection of original science fiction stories".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 1977, a novelization of the 1976 remake of "King Kong" was published by Ace Books. This novelization was called "The Dino De Laurentiis Production of King Kong" and was simply the 1976 Lorenzo Semple Jr. script published in book form. The cover was done by Frank Frazetta.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: To coincide with the 2005 remake of "King Kong", various books were released to tie into the film. A novelization was written by Christopher Golden based on the screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and Peter Jackson. Matt Costello wrote an official prequel to the film called "King Kong: The Island of the Skull". These books were published by Pocket Books. Various illustrated juvenile books were published, as well, by Harper Books: "Kong's Kingdom" was written by Julia Simon-Kerr; "Meet Kong and Ann" and "Journey to Skull Island" were written by Jennifer Franz; "Escape from Skull Island" and "Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World—Junior Novel" were written by Laura J. Burns; "The Search for Kong" was written by Catherine Hapka; and finally, a Deluxe Sound Storybook of "Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World" was written by Don Curry. Weta Workshop released a collection of concept art from the film entitled "The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island" that was published by Pocket Books. The book was written and designed to resemble and read like an actual nature guide and historical record.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2005, Ibooks, Inc., published an unofficial book featuring King Kong called "Kong Reborn", by Russell Blackford.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Starting in 1996, artist/writer Joe DeVito began working with the Merian C. Cooper estate to write and/or illustrate various books based on the King Kong character. The first of these was an origin story labeled as an authorized sequel/prequel to the 1932 novelization of "King Kong" called "Kong: King of Skull Island". This illustrated hardcover novel was published in 2004 by DH Press and featured a story DeVito co-wrote with Brad Strickland and John Michlig. It also included an introduction by Ray Harryhausen. A large paperback edition was then released in 2005, with extra pages at the end of the book. A CD audiobook narrated by Joey D'Auria was released by RadioArchives as well, and an interactive two-part app was released in 2011 and 2013, respectively, by Copyright 1957 LLC. In 2005, DeVito and Strickland co-wrote another book together called "Merian C. Cooper's King Kong" for the Merian C. Cooper estate. This book was published by St. Martin's Press. It was a full rewrite of the original 1932 novelization, which updates the language and paleontology and adds five new chapters. Some additional elements and characters tie into "Kong: King of Skull Island", enabling the two separate books to form a continuous storyline.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2013, the first of two books featuring crossovers with pulp heroes was published. To coincide with the 80th anniversary of both King Kong and Doc Savage, Altus Press published "Doc Savage: Skull Island" in both softcover and hardcover editions. This officially sanctioned book was written by Will Murray and based on concepts by DeVito. In 2016, Altus Press published the other crossover book, this time featuring a meeting between King Kong and Tarzan. The novel, called "King Kong vs. Tarzan", was once again written by Will Murray and featured artwork by DeVito. In 2017, a new book featuring another origin story, written and illustrated by DeVito, was released, called "King Kong of Skull Island". Expanded versions of the book titled "King Kong Skull Island: Exodus" and "King Kong Skull Island: The Wall" were released by Markosia in 2020.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In March 2017, to coincide with the release of "", Titan Books released a novelization of the film written by Tim Lebbon and a hardcover book "The Art and Making of Kong: Skull Island" by Simon Ward.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In 2021, to coincide with the release of "Godzilla vs Kong", various tie-in books were released. On March 30, Legendary Comics released a graphic prequel novel called "Kingdom Kong" written by Marie Anello, as well as a children's picture book called "Kong and Me" written by Kiki Thorpe and illustrated by Nidhi Chanani.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: On April 6, Titan Books released "Godzilla vs. Kong: The Official Movie Novelization" written by Greg Keyes. Insight Editions released a children's board book called "Godzilla vs. Kong: Sometimes Friends Fight (But They Always Make Up)" written by Carol Herring, and on May 21, also released "Godzilla vs. Kong: One Will Fall, The Art of the Ultimate Battle Royale" written by Daniel Wallace.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: Universal Studios has had popular King Kong attractions at Universal Studios Hollywood in Universal City, California and Universal Orlando Resort in Orlando, Florida.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: The first King Kong attraction was called "King Kong Encounter" and was a part of the Studio Tour at Universal Studios Hollywood. Based upon the 1976 film "King Kong", the tour took the guests in the world of 1976 New York City, where Kong was seen wreaking havoc on the city. It was opened on June 14, 1986 and was destroyed on June 1, 2008 in a major fire. Universal opened a replacement 3D King Kong ride called "" that opened on July 1, 2010, based upon Peter Jackson's 2005 film "King Kong".


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: A second more elaborate ride was constructed at Universal Studios Florida on June 7, 1990, called "Kongfrontation". The ride featured a stand-alone extended version of "King Kong Encounter" and pinned guests escaping on the Roosevelt Island Tramway from Kong, who was rampaging across New York City. The ride was closed down on September 8, 2002, and was replaced with "Revenge of the Mummy" on May 21, 2004.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: On May 6, 2015, Universal Orlando announced that a new King Kong attraction titled "" will open at Islands of Adventure in the summer of 2016, making it the first King Kong themed ride in Orlando since Kongfrontation closed down 14 years earlier at Universal Studios Florida. It officially opened on July 13, 2016.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: A Kong ride made by HUSS Park Attractions also appeared in Changzhou China Dinosaur Park and was opened in 2010. In this ride Kong will pick up your wagon, lower it down and tilt it all kinds of directions.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: In mid-2012, it was announced that a musical adaptation of the story (endorsed by Merian C. Cooper's estate) was going to be staged in Melbourne at the Regent Theatre. The show premiered on June 15, 2013 as "King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of The World", with music by Marius De Vries. The musical then premiered on Broadway on November 8, 2018 at the Broadway Theatre as "King Kong: Alive on Broadway". The creative team included book writer Jack Thorne, director-choreographer Drew McOnie, and Australian songwriter Eddie Perfect, who replace the former creatives.


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: The huge King Kong puppet was created by Global Creature Technology. The puppet stands 20 feet tall and weighs 2,400 pounds. It is operated by a large rig with 10 onstage puppeteers, and features an array of microprocessors and tiny motors that power nuanced movements in the facial features. According to Sonny Tilders, who designed the Fiberglas and steel puppet for Global Creatures Company, "It’s the most sophisticated marionette puppet ever made". Tilders also stated that Kong is built in layers, and is "quite similar to genuine anatomy". Over the steel skeleton, the body shell is a mixture of hard Fiberglas, enforced inflatables, high-pressure inflatables, and bags full of styrene beans that stretch and contort like muscles. "We really wanted to create the sense that he’s a moving sculpture," stated Tilders


title: King Kong (franchise)

text: There were other movies to have borne the "King Kong" name that have nothing to do with the character.


title: Captain Flint

text: Captain J. Flint is a fictional golden age pirate captain who features in a number of novels, television series, and films. The original character was created by the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894). Flint first appears in the classic adventure yarn "Treasure Island", which was first serialised in a children's magazine in 1881, and later published as a novel in 1883.


title: Captain Flint

text: Captain Flint is a fictional character in the book "Treasure Island", created by Robert Louis Stevenson in 1883. In Stevenson's book, Flint, whose first name is not given, was the captain of a pirate ship, "The Walrus", which accumulated an enormous amount of captured treasure, approximately £700,000. On August 1, 1750, Flint and six members of his crew bury the plunder on an island located somewhere in the Caribbean Sea. Flint then murders his six assistants, leaving the corpse of one, Allardyce, with its arms outstretched in the direction of the buried treasure.


title: Captain Flint

text: The only person Flint was said to fear was his quartermaster John Silver, who later even called his parrot "Captain Flint" in mockery.


title: Captain Flint

text: Flint is said to have died in Savannah, many years before the book's central plot takes place, with his last words being, "Darby M'Graw - fetch aft the rum..." His death was said in the book to have been caused by the effects of drinking too much rum. The inscription on the map suggests that he died on July 28, 1754. The location of the treasure had been marked by Flint on a map and while he was dying it entrusted to his first mate William "Billy" Bones. With the exception of Long John Silver many of Flint's crew spend all their ill-gotten booty and end up begging (e.g. Blind Pew). Bones however is too much of a drunken bully of a miser to either find the rest of the treasure or give up the map for his former crewmates and becomes a marked man on the run for 3 years after Flint's death by Flints old crew (Blind Pew; Black Dog; Job Anderson; Israel Hands; Dirk), of whom the ringleader is Long John Silver. They track Bones down (who like Flint dies of drinking too much rum); however before they can get the map it falls into the hands of the protagonist of the novel, Jim Hawkins.


title: Captain Flint

text: Flint has a major part in the 1924 prequel "Porto Bello Gold", by A. D. Howden Smith, which depicts the way that the treasure was captured from a Spanish galleon. In this version, Flint is described as having started his piratical career as the junior partner of Andrew Murray, an idealistic Jacobite turned pirate, who is not referenced in Stevenson's original book. Flint gradually becomes the dominant partner. The book describes how Flint secretly buries the treasure which would be recovered a generation later by the protagonists of "Treasure Island".


title: Captain Flint

text: John Drake's prequels: "Flint and Silver" (2008), "Pieces of Eight" (2009), and "Skull and Bones" (2010), all heavily feature Captain Flint and give his Christian name as Joseph.


title: Captain Flint

text: Flint is mentioned in the novel "Peter and Wendy" by J. M. Barrie, a friend of Stevenson. The first mention is in a passage introducing Captain Hook's pirate crew: "Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the same Bill Jukes who got six dozen on the WALRUS from Flint before he would drop the bag of moidores." The second mention is as Hook is attempting to intimidate the Darling children and the Lost Boys, but is heckled by his inner demons: "'I am the only man whom Barbecue feared,' he urged, 'and Flint feared Barbecue.' 'Barbecue, Flint—what house?' came the cutting retort."


title: Captain Flint

text: In Arthur Ransome's book "Swallows and Amazons", the Blacketts' uncle James Turner is nicknamed Captain Flint by the Walkers. This is because they believed that he looked like a retired pirate and took the name from "Treasure Island". He is nearly always referred to by this name in the rest of the books.


title: Captain Flint

text: Flint appears briefly in the Soviet comedy adaptation Return to Treasure Island in some live-action scenes, although not in the "main story" hand-drawn part. At the very beginning of the film, he is seen digging his treasure and completing his map. At the same scene, some pirates try to kill Flint to get that map, but instead they kill each other in a cartoon-ish way, unable to peacefully decide who is the best one to have it; however, then Billy Bones makes his step from behind of the tree and kills Flint with his gun, taking that map from his body. Nevertheless, a character meant to be Flint or resembling him (possibly, his ghost) still appears in most of the live-action scenes, ending with the final scene, in which he complains that the movie is over, so he "won't be probably killed". He was played by (throughout the movie) and Yuri Nevgamonny (second part of the movie, Ben Gunn story).


title: Captain Flint

text: In the movie "Muppet Treasure Island", a loose adaptation of the Stevenson story, Captain Flint is shown at the opening burying the said treasure and thereafter killing all the crew who buried it for him. He then returns to sea and gives his map of the place to Billy Bones, who takes it with him. Flint has fifteen crew members to dig the treasure pit in this version, not six, so there is a difference. Also, the treasure itself is guineas and pieces of eight. In the film, he is known as Bernie Flint, as Benjamina Gunn mentions.


title: Captain Flint

text: Captain Flint was shown briefly in the animated feature film "Treasure Planet" by Disney. In this film, the character was voiced by Peter Cullen, and known as Nathaniel Flint, a space pirate of non-human origins whose reputation was legendary for leading his ship and his crew to plunder merchant ships, infamously appearing and disappearing without a trace, and eventually burying his treasure (called by many "Flint's Trove" and/or "the loot of a thousand worlds") inside the giant alien mechanism known as Treasure Planet. To make sure nobody would steal his treasure, he rigged the planet to explode should anyone set off the booby trap and stole the memory of B.E.N so he would not let him tell anyone by the trap Flint set on the planet.


title: Captain Flint

text: Set roughly two decades before the events of "Treasure Island", the 2014 televised series "Black Sails" follows the adventures of Captain Flint and his pirate crew. His first name is given as James in the episode "VI." Episodes "IX" and "XIII" further reveal that he is a disgraced former Royal Navy lieutenant named James McGraw, dismissed from the service for falling in love and having an affair with Lord Thomas Hamilton. He was exiled from England with Thomas' wife, Miranda Barlow, who has subsequently since hidden herself as a lowly Puritan lady on the trading island of New Providence. Lord Thomas Hamilton was the son of Lord Alfred Hamilton, lord proprietor of the Bahama Islands. McGraw adopted the name "Flint" after a mysterious man who boarded his grandfather's ship while at anchor and then disappeared. He is portrayed by Toby Stephens.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The Emirate of Sicily () was an Islamic kingdom that ruled the island of Sicily from 831 to 1091. Its capital was Palermo (Arabic: "Balarm"), which during this period became a major cultural and political center of the Muslim world.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Sicily was part of the Byzantine Empire when Muslim forces from Ifriqiya began launching raids in 652. Through a prolonged series of conflicts from 827 to 902, they gradually conquered the entirety of Sicily, with only the stronghold of Rometta, in the far northeast, holding out until 965.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Under Muslim rule, the island became increasingly prosperous and cosmopolitan. Trade and agriculture flourished, and Palermo became one of the largest and wealthiest cities in Europe. Sicily became multiconfessional and multilingual, developing a distinct Arab-Byzantine culture that combined elements of its Islamic Arab and Berber migrants with those of the local Greek-Byzantine and Jewish communities. Beginning in the early eleventh century, the Emirate began to fracture from internal strife and dynastic disputes. Christian Norman mercenaries under Roger I ultimately conquered the island, founding the County of Sicily in 1071; the last Muslim city on the island, Noto, fell in 1091, marking the end of Islamic rule in Sicily.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: As the first Count of Sicily, Roger maintained a relative degree of tolerance and multiculturalism; Sicilian Muslims remained citizens of the County and the subsequent Kingdom of Sicily. Until the late 12th century, and probably as late as the 1220s, Muslims formed a majority of the island's population, except in the northeast region of Val Demone, which had remained predominantly Byzantine Greek and Christian, even during Islamic rule. But by the mid thirteenth century, Muslims who had not already left or converted to Christianity were expelled, ending roughly four hundred years of Islamic presence in Sicily.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Over two centuries of Islamic rule by the Emirate has left some traces in modern Sicily. Minor Arabic influence remains in the Sicilian language and in local place names; a much larger influence is in the Maltese language that derives from Siculo-Arabic. Other cultural remnants can be found in the island's agricultural methods and crops, the local cuisine, and architecture.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Due to its strategic location in the center of the Mediterranean, Sicily had a long history of being settled and contested by various civilizations. Greek and Phoenician colonies were present at least by the ninth century BC, and skirmished intermittently for centuries. Conflicts continued on a larger scale in the sixth through third centuries BC between the Carthaginians and the Sicilian Greeks, most of all the powerful city-state of Syracuse. The Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage saw Sicily serve as a major power base and theater of war for both sides, before the island was finally incorporated into the Roman Republic and Empire. By the fifth century AD, Sicily had become thoroughly Romanized and Christianized after nearly seven hundred years of Roman rule. But amid the decay of the Western Roman Empire, it fell to the Germanic Ostrogoths following Theodoric the Great's conquest of most of Italy in 488.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: In 535, Emperor Justinian I reconquered Sicily for the Roman Empire, which by then was ruled from Constantinople. As the power of what is now known as the Byzantine Empire waned in the West, a new and expansionist power was emerging in the Middle East: the Rashidun Caliphate, the first major Muslim state to emerge following the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 632. Over a period of twenty five years, the caliphate succeeded in annexing much of the Persian Sasanian Empire and former Roman territories in the Levant and North Africa. In 652, under Caliph Uthman, an invasion captured most of the island, but Muslims occupation was short-lived, as they left following his death.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: By the end of the seventh century, with the Umayyad conquest of North Africa, the Muslims had captured the nearby port city of Carthage, allowing them to build shipyards and a permanent base from which to launch more sustained attacks.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Around 700, the island of Pantelleria was captured by Muslims, and it was only discord among the Muslims that prevented an attempted invasion of Sicily at that time. Instead, trading agreements were arranged with the Byzantines, and Muslim merchants were allowed to trade goods at Sicilian ports.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The first true attempt at conquest was launched in 740; in that year the Muslim prince Habib, who had participated in the 728 attack, successfully captured Syracuse. Ready to conquer the whole island, they were however forced to return to Tunisia by a Berber revolt. A second attack in 752 aimed only to sack the same city.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: In 826, Euphemius, the commander of the Byzantine fleet of Sicily, forced a nun to marry him. Emperor Michael II caught wind of the matter and ordered that General Constantine end the marriage and cut off Euphemius' nose. Euphemius rose up, killed Constantine and then occupied Syracuse; he in turn was defeated and driven out to North Africa. He offered rule of Sicily over to Ziyadat Allah, the Aghlabid Emir of Tunisia, in return for a place as a general and safety; the Emir agreed, offering to give Euphemius the island in exchange for a yearly tribute. The conquest was entrusted to the 70-year-old "qadi" Asad ibn al-Furat, who led a force 10,000 infantry, 700 cavalry and 100 ships. Reinforced by the Muslims, Euphemius' ships landed at Mazara del Vallo, where the first battle against loyalist Byzantine troops occurred on July 15, 827, resulting in an Aghlabid victory.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Asad subsequently conquered the southern shore of the island and laid siege to Syracuse. After year-long siege, and an attempted mutiny, his troops were able to defeat a large army sent from Palermo, backed by a Venetian fleet led by Doge Giustiniano Participazio. A sudden outbreak of plague killed many of the Muslim troops, as well as Asad himself, forcing the Muslims to retreat to the castle Mineo. They later renewed their offensive, but failed to conquer Castrogiovanni (modern Enna) where Euphemius was killed, forcing them to retreat back to their stronghold at Mazara.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: In 830, the remaining Muslims of Sicily received a strong reinforcement of 30,000 Ifriqiyan and Andalusian troops. The Iberian Muslims defeated the Byzantine commander Teodotus between July and August of that year, but again a plague forced them to return to Mazara and later Ifriqiya. However, Ifriqiyan units sent to besiege the Sicilian capital of Palermo managed to capture it after a year long siege in September 831. Palermo was made the Muslim capital of Sicily, renamed "al-Madinah" ("The City").


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The conquest was an incremental, see-saw affair; with considerable resistance and many internal struggles, it took over a century for Byzantine Sicily to be fully conquered. Syracuse held out until 878, followed by Taormina in 902, and finally, Rometta, the last Byzantine outpost, in 965.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: In succession, Sicily was ruled by the Sunni Aghlabid dynasty in Tunisia and the Shiite Fatimids in Egypt. However, throughout this period, Sunni Muslims formed the majority of the Muslim community in Sicily, with most (if not all) of the people of Palermo being Sunni, leading to their hostility to the Shia Kalbids. The Sunni population of the island was replenished following sectarian rebellions across north Africa from 943–7 against the Fatimids' harsh religious policies, leading to several waves of refugees fleeing to Sicily in an attempt to escape Fatimid retaliation. The Byzantines took advantage of temporary discord to occupy the eastern end of the island for several years.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: After suppressing a revolt the Fatimid caliph Ismail al-Mansur appointed al-Hasan al-Kalbi (948–964) as Emir of Sicily. He successfully managed to control the continuously revolting Byzantines and founded the Kalbid dynasty. Raids into Southern Italy continued under the Kalbids into the 11th century, and in 982 a German army under Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor was defeated near Crotone in Calabria. With Emir Yusuf al-Kalbi (986–998) a period of steady decline began. Under al-Akhal (1017–1037) the dynastic conflict intensified, with factions within the ruling family allying themselves variously with the Byzantine Empire and the Zirids. After this period, Al-Mu'izz ibn Badis attempted to annex the island for the Zirids, while intervening in the affairs of the feuding Muslims; however, the attempt ultimately failed.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The new Arab rulers initiated land reforms, which in turn increased productivity and encouraged the growth of smallholdings, a dent to the dominance of the landed estates. The Arabs further improved irrigation systems through Qanats. Introducing oranges, lemons, pistachio and sugarcane to Sicily. A description of Palermo was given by Ibn Hawqal, a Baghdad merchant who visited Sicily in 950. A walled suburb called the "Kasr" (the palace) is the center of Palermo until today, with the great Friday mosque on the site of the later Roman cathedral. The suburb of Al-Khalisa (Kalsa) contained the Sultan's palace, baths, a mosque, government offices, and a private prison. Ibn Hawqual reckoned 7,000 individual butchers trading in 150 shops. The population of the city during this period is uncertain, as figures given by Arab writers during the era were unreliable. Paul Bairoch estimated Palermo's population at 350,000 in the 11th century, while other historians like Stephan R. Epstein estimated it to be closer to 60,000. Based on al-Maqdisi's statement that Palermo was larger than Old Cairo, Kenneth Meyer Setton put the figure above 100,000 but below 250,000.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Arab traveler, geographer, and poet Ibn Jubair visited the area in the end of the 12th century and described Al-Kasr and Al-Khalisa (Kalsa):


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Throughout this reign, revolts by Byzantine Sicilians occurred, especially in the east, and part of the lands were even re-occupied before being quashed.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The local population conquered by the Muslims were Greek-speaking Byzantine Christians, but there were also a significant number of Jews. The Orthodox and Catholic populations were members of one Church until the events of 1054 began to separate them, the sack of 1204 being the last straw as far as the Byzantine "Orthodox" were concerned.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Christians and Jews were tolerated under Muslim rule as dhimmis, but were subject to some restrictions. The dhimmis were also required to pay the jizya, or poll tax, and the kharaj or land tax, but were exempt from the tax that Muslims had to pay (Zakaat).


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: Under Arab rule there were different categories of Jizya payers, but their common denominator was the payment of the Jizya as a mark of subjection to Muslim rule in exchange for protection against foreign and internal aggression. The conquered population could avoid this subservient status by converting to Islam. Whether by honest religious conviction or compulsion large numbers of native Sicilians converted to Islam. About half the population was Muslim at the time of the Norman Conquest. The Fatimids in the mid-10th century adopted a policy of active conversion and increased oppression of Christians. However, even after 100 years of Islamic rule, numerous Greek speaking Christian communities prospered, especially in north-eastern Sicily, as dhimmis. This was largely a result of the Jizya system which allowed co-existence. The co-existence with the conquered population fell apart after the reconquest of Sicily starting in the 1160s and particularly following the death of King William II of Sicily in 1189. The policy of oppression visited upon Christians was applied to Muslims.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The emir was in charge of the army, administration, justice and minted money. It is also very likely that a "tiraz" was active in Palermo, a workshop in which the sovereign authorities had fabrics of great value created (often granted as a sign of appreciation to their subjects to reward them for their work or as a gift of the reception of foreign embassies). The Emir - who resided in today's Royal Palace - appointed the governors of the major cities, the most important judges ("qāḍī") and the arbitrators capable of resolving minor disputes between individuals ("hakam"). There was also an assembly of notables called "giamà'a" that supported and in some cases replaced the emir in decisions.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The Muslim domination across the island was not consistent and the division into the three valleys served to distinguish the different approaches to government. In fact, western Sicily was more Islamized and the numerical presence of the Arabs was much greater than the other parts. In Val Demone the difficulties in the conquest and the resistance of the population resulted in a focus concentrated on tax collection and the maintenance of public order.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The fighters or "junud" in conquering the lands obtained four-fifths as booty ("fai") and one fifth was reserved for the state or the local governor (the "khums"), following the rules of Islamic law . However this rule was not always respected and in many areas such as that of Agrigento the new owners would not have had the right. But it must be said that this distribution of the lands brought about the end of the large estates and the possibility of better exploitation of the lands. New crops were thus introduced where only wheat had been grown for centuries. Sugarcane, vegetables, citrus fruits, dates and mulberry trees appeared and mining exploitation began.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The coin introduced by the Arabs was the "dinar", in gold and weighing 4.25 grams. The "dirhem" was silver and weighed 2.97 grams. The Aghlabites introduced the "solidus" in gold and the "follis" in copper. While following the conquest of Palermo in 886 the "kharruba" was coined which was worth 1/6 of a "dirhem".


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: By the 11th century mainland southern Italian powers were hiring Norman mercenaries, who were Christian descendants of the Vikings; it was the Normans under Roger de Hauteville, who became Roger I of Sicily, that captured Sicily from the Muslims. In 1038, a Byzantine army under George Maniaces crossed the strait of Messina, and included a corps of Normans. After another decisive victory in the summer of 1040, Maniaces halted his march to lay siege to Syracuse. Despite his conquest of the latter, Maniaces was removed from his position, and the subsequent Muslim counter-offensive reconquered all the cities captured by the Byzantines. The Norman Robert Guiscard, son of Tancred, then conquered Sicily in 1060 after taking Apulia and Calabria, while his brother Roger de Hauteville occupied Messina with an army of 700 knights.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The Emirate of Sicily began to fragment as intra-dynastic quarrels took place within the Muslim regime. In 1044, under emir Hasan al-Samsam, the island fragmented into four qadits, or small fiefdoms: the qadit of Trapani, Marsala, Mazara and Sciacca led by Abdallah ibn Mankut; that of Girgenti, Castrogiovanni and Castronuovo under Ibn al-Hawwàs; Catania held by Ibn al-Maklatí; and that of Syracuse under Ibn Thumna, while al-Samsam retained control of Palermo longer, before it adopted self-rule under a council of sheikhs. There followed a period of squabbles among the qadits that likely represented kin-groups jockeying for power. Ibn Thumna killed Ibn al-Maklatí, took Catania and married the dead qadi's widow who was the sister of Ibn al-Hawwàs. He also took ibn Mankut's qadit, but when his wife was prevented from returning from a visit to her brother, the Fatimid-allied Ibn Thumna attacked Ibn al-Hawwàs only to be defeated. When he left Sicily to recruit more troops, this briefly left Ibn al-Hawwàs in control of most of the island. In waging his war on his rivals, Ibn Thumna had collaborated closely with the Normans, each using the other to further their goal of ruling the entire island, and though Ibn Thumna's death in a 1062 ambush led the Normans to draw back and consolidate, Ibn Thumna's former allies appear to have continued the alliance, such that Muslim troops constituted the majority of the Hauteville "Norman" army in Sicily.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The Zirids of North Africa sent an army to Sicily led by Ali and Ayyub ibn Tamin, and these troops progressively brought the qadits under their control, killing al-Hawwàs and effectively making Ayyub emir of Muslim Sicily. However, they lost two decisive battles against the Normans. Sicilians and Africans were defeated in 1063 by a small Norman force at the Battle of Cerami, cementing Norman control over the north-east of the island. The sizeable Christian population rose up against the ruling Muslims. Then in 1068, Roger and his men defeated Ayyub at the Battle of Misilmeri, and the Zirids returned to North Africa, leaving Sicily in disarray. Catania fell to the Normans in 1071. Palermo, ruled since the Zirid withdrawal by Ibn al-Ba'ba, a man apparently of Spanish Jewish descent from the city's merchant class who led the city with the support of its sheikhs, would in turn fall on 10 January 1072 after a five month siege. Trapani capitulated the same year.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The loss of the main port cities dealt a severe blow to Muslim power on the island. The last pocket of active resistance was Syracuse governed by Ibn Abbad (known as Benavert in western chronicles). He defeated Jordan, son of Roger of Sicily in 1075, and occupied Catania again in 1081 and raided Calabria shortly after. However, Roger besieged Syracuse in 1086, and Ibn Abbad tried to break the siege with naval battle, in which he died accidentally. Syracuse surrendered after this defeat. His wife and son fled to Noto and Butera. Meanwhile, the city of Qas'r Ianni (Castrogiovanni, modern Enna) was ruled by a Hammud, who surrendered and converted to Christianity only in 1087. After his conversion, Hammud subsequently became part of the Christian nobility and retired with his family to an estate in Calabria provided by Roger I. In 1091, Butera and Noto in the southern tip of Sicily and the island of Malta, the last Arab strongholds, fell to the Christians with ease. After the conquest of Sicily, the Normans removed the local emir, Yusuf Ibn Abdallah from power, while respecting the customs of the resident Arabs.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The Norman Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II has been characterized as "multi-ethnic in nature and religiously tolerant". Normans, Jews, Muslim Arabs, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards and native Sicilians lived in relative harmony. Arabic remained a language of government and administration for at least a century into Norman rule, and traces remain in the language of Sicily and evidently more in the language of Malta today. The Muslims also maintained their domination of industry, retailing and production, while Muslim artisans and expert knowledge in government and administration were highly sought after.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: However, the island's Muslims were faced with the choice of voluntary departure or subjection to Christian rule. Many Muslims chose to leave, provided they had the means to do so. "The transformation of Sicily into a Christian island", remarks Abulafia, "was also, paradoxically, the work of those whose culture was under threat". Also, Muslims gradually converted to Christianity, the Normans replaced Orthodox clergy with Latin clerics. Despite the presence of an Arab-speaking Christian population, Greek churchmen attracted Muslim peasants to receive a baptism and even adopted Greek Christian names; in several instances, Christian serfs with Greek names listed in the Monreale registers had living Muslim parents. The Norman rulers followed a policy of steady Latinization by bringing in thousands of Italian settlers from the northwest and south of Italy, and some others from southeast France. To this day, there are communities in central Sicily which speak the Gallo-Italic dialect. Some Muslims chose to feign conversion, but such a remedy could only provide individual protection and could not sustain a community.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: "Lombard" pogroms against Muslims started in the 1160s. Muslim and Christian communities in Sicily became increasingly geographically separated. The island's Muslim communities were mainly isolated beyond an internal frontier which divided the south and western half of the island from the Christian north and eastern half. Sicilian Muslims, a subject population, were dependent on the mercy of their Christian masters and, ultimately, on royal protection. After King William the Good died in 1189 royal protection was lifted, and the door was opened for widespread attacks against the island's Muslims. This destroyed any lingering hope of coexistence, however unequal the respective populations might have been. The death of Henry VI and his wife Constance a year later plunged Sicily into political turmoil. With the loss of royal protection and with Frederick II still an infant in papal custody Sicily became a battleground for rival German and papal forces. The island's Muslim rebels sided with German warlords like Markward von Anweiler. In response, Innocent III declared a crusade against Markward, alleging that he had made an unholy alliance with the Saracens of Sicily. Nevertheless, in 1206 that same pope attempted to convince the Muslim leaders to remain loyal. By this time the Muslim rebellion was in full swing. They were in control of Jato, Entella, Platani, Celso, Calatrasi, Corleone (taken in 1208), Guastanella and Cinisi. Muslim revolt extended throughout a whole stretch of western Sicily. The rebels were led by Muhammad Ibn Abbād. He called himself the "prince of believers", struck his own coins, and attempted to find Muslim support from other parts of the Muslim world.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: However, Frederick II, no longer a child, responded by launching a series of campaigns against the Muslim rebels in 1221. The Hohenstaufen forces rooted out the defenders of Jato, Entella, and the other fortresses. Rather than exterminate the Muslims who numbered about 60,000. In 1223, Frederick II and the Christians began the first deportations of Muslims to Lucera in Apulia. A year later, expeditions were sent against Malta and Djerba, to establish royal control and prevent their Muslim populations from helping the rebels. Paradoxically, in this era the Saracen archers were a common component of these "Christian" armies and the presence of Muslim contingents in the imperial army remained a reality even under Manfred and Conradin.


title: Emirate of Sicily

text: The House of Hohenstaufen and their successors (Capetian House of Anjou and Aragonese House of Barcelona) gradually "Latinized" Sicily over the course of two centuries, and this social process laid the groundwork for the introduction of Latin (as opposed to Byzantine) Catholicism. The process of Latinization was fostered largely by the Roman Church and its liturgy. The annihilation of Islam in Sicily was completed by the late 1240s, when the final deportations to Lucera took place. By the time of the Sicilian Vespers in 1282 there were no Muslims in Sicily and the society was completely Latinized.


title: HTTP/2

text: HTTP/2 (originally named HTTP/2.0) is a major revision of the HTTP network protocol used by the World Wide Web. It was derived from the earlier experimental SPDY protocol, originally developed by Google. HTTP/2 was developed by the HTTP Working Group (also called httpbis, where "" means "twice") of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). HTTP/2 is the first new version of HTTP since HTTP/1.1, which was standardized in in 1997. The Working Group presented HTTP/2 to the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) for consideration as a Proposed Standard in December 2014, and IESG approved it to publish as Proposed Standard on February 17, 2015 (and was updated in February 2020 in regard to TLS 1.3). The HTTP/2 specification was published as on May 14, 2015.


title: HTTP/2

text: The standardization effort was supported by Chrome, Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer 11, Safari, Amazon Silk, and Edge browsers. Most major browsers had added HTTP/2 support by the end of 2015. About 97% of web browsers used have the capability. , 41% (after topping out at just over 50%) of the top 10 million websites supported HTTP/2.


title: HTTP/2

text: The proposed changes do not require any changes to how existing web applications work, but new applications can take advantage of new features for increased speed. HTTP/2 leaves all of HTTP/1.1's high-level semantics, such as methods, status codes, header fields, and URIs, the same. What is new is how the data is framed and transported between the client and the server.


title: HTTP/2

text: Websites that are efficient minimize the number of requests required to render an entire page by minifying (reducing the amount of code and packing smaller pieces of code into bundles, without reducing its ability to function) resources such as images and scripts. However, minification is not necessarily convenient nor efficient and may still require separate HTTP connections to get the page and the minified resources. HTTP/2 allows the server to "push" content, that is, to respond with data for more queries than the client requested. This allows the server to supply data it knows a web browser will need to render a web page, without waiting for the browser to examine the first response, and without the overhead of an additional request cycle.


title: HTTP/2

text: Additional performance improvements in the first draft of HTTP/2 (which was a copy of SPDY) come from multiplexing of requests and responses to avoid some of the head-of-line blocking problem in HTTP 1 (even when HTTP pipelining is used), header compression, and prioritization of requests. However, as HTTP/2 runs on top of a single TCP connection there is still potential for head-of-line blocking to occur if TCP packets are lost or delayed in transmission.


title: HTTP/2

text: HTTP/2 no longer supports HTTP/1.1's chunked transfer encoding mechanism, as it provides its own, more efficient, mechanisms for data streaming.


title: HTTP/2

text: SPDY (pronounced like "speedy") was a previous HTTP-replacement protocol developed by a research project spearheaded by Google. Primarily focused on reducing latency, SPDY uses the same TCP pipe but different protocols to accomplish this reduction. The basic changes made to HTTP/1.1 to create SPDY included: "true request pipelining without FIFO restrictions, message framing mechanism to simplify client and server development, mandatory compression (including headers), priority scheduling, and even bi-directional communication".


title: HTTP/2

text: The HTTP Working Group considered Google's SPDY protocol, Microsoft's HTTP Speed+Mobility proposal (SPDY based), and Network-Friendly HTTP Upgrade. In July 2012, Facebook provided feedback on each of the proposals and recommended HTTP/2 be based on SPDY. The initial draft of HTTP/2 was published in November 2012 and was based on a straight copy of SPDY.


title: HTTP/2

text: The biggest difference between HTTP/1.1 and SPDY was that each user action in SPDY is given a "stream ID", meaning there is a single TCP channel connecting the user to the server. SPDY split requests into either control or data, using a "simple to parse binary protocol with two types of frames". SPDY showed evident improvement over HTTP, with a new page load speedup ranging from 11% to 47%.


title: HTTP/2

text: The development of HTTP/2 used SPDY as a jumping-off point. Among the many detailed differences between the protocols, the most notable is that HTTP/2 uses a fixed Huffman code-based header compression algorithm, instead of SPDY's dynamic stream-based compression. This helps to reduce the potential for compression oracle attacks on the protocol, such as the CRIME attack.


title: HTTP/2

text: On February 9, 2015, Google announced plans to remove support for SPDY in Chrome in favor of support for HTTP/2. That took effect, starting with Chrome 51.


title: HTTP/2

text: HTTP/2 is defined both for HTTP URIs (i.e. without TLS encryption, a configuration which is abbreviated in ) and for HTTPS URIs (over TLS using ALPN extension where TLS 1.2 or newer is required, a configuration which is abbreviated in ).


title: HTTP/2

text: Although the standard itself does not require usage of encryption,<ref name="HTTP/2 Frequently Asked Questions"></ref> all major client implementations (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, IE, Edge) have stated that they will only support HTTP/2 over TLS, which makes encryption de facto mandatory.


title: HTTP/2

text: The FreeBSD and Varnish developer Poul-Henning Kamp asserts that the standard was prepared on an unrealistically short schedule, ruling out any basis for the new HTTP/2 other than the SPDY protocol and resulting in other missed opportunities for improvement. Kamp criticizes the protocol itself for being inconsistent and having needless, overwhelming complexity. He also states that the protocol violates the protocol layering principle, for example by duplicating flow control that belongs in the transport layer (TCP). He also suggested that the new protocol should have removed HTTP Cookies, introducing a breaking change.


title: HTTP/2

text: Initially, some members of the Working Group tried to introduce an encryption requirement in the protocol. This faced criticism.


title: HTTP/2

text: Critics stated that encryption has non-negligible computing costs and that many HTTP applications actually have no need for encryption and their providers have no desire to spend additional resources on it. Encryption proponents have stated that this encryption overhead is negligible in practice. Poul-Henning Kamp has criticized the IETF for hastily standardizing Google's SPDY prototype as HTTP/2 due to political considerations. The criticism of the agenda of mandatory encryption within the existing certificate framework is not new, nor is it unique to members of the open-source community a Cisco employee stated in 2013 that the present certificate model is not compatible with small devices like routers, because the present model requires not only annual enrollment and remission of non-trivial fees for each certificate, but must be continually repeated on an annual basis. In the end the Working Group did not reach consensus over the mandatory encryption, although most client implementations require it, which makes encryption a "de facto" requirement.


title: HTTP/2

text: The HTTP/2 protocol also faced criticism for not supporting opportunistic encryption, a measure against passive monitoring similar to the STARTTLS mechanism that has long been available in other Internet protocols like SMTP. Critics have stated that the HTTP/2 proposal goes in violation of IETF's own "Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack", which also has a status of Best Current Practice 188. RFC7258/BCP188 mandates that passive monitoring be considered as an attack, and protocols designed by IETF should take steps to protect against passive monitoring (for example, through the use of opportunistic encryption). A number of specifications for opportunistic encryption of HTTP/2 have been provided, of which draft-nottingham-http2-encryption was adopted as an official work item of the working group, leading to the publication of in May 2017.


title: HTTP/2

text: Although the design of HTTP/2 effectively addresses the HTTP-transaction-level head-of-line blocking problem by allowing multiple concurrent HTTP transactions, all those transactions are multiplexed over a single TCP connection, meaning that any packet-level head-of-line blocking of the TCP stream simultaneously blocks all transactions being accessed via that connection. This head-of-line blocking in HTTP/2 is now widely regarded as a design flaw, and much of the effort behind QUIC and HTTP/3 has been devoted to reduce head-of-line blocking issues.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In physics and mathematics, a brachistochrone curve (), or curve of fastest descent, is the one lying on the plane between a point "A" and a lower point "B", where "B" is not directly below "A", on which a bead slides frictionlessly under the influence of a uniform gravitational field to a given end point in the shortest time. The problem was posed by Johann Bernoulli in 1696.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The brachistochrone curve is the same shape as the tautochrone curve; both are cycloids. However, the portion of the cycloid used for each of the two varies. More specifically, the brachistochrone can use up to a complete rotation of the cycloid (at the limit when A and B are at the same level), but always starts at a cusp. In contrast, the tautochrone problem can use only up to the first half rotation, and always ends at the horizontal. The problem can be solved using tools from the calculus of variations and optimal control.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The curve is independent of both the mass of the test body and the local strength of gravity. Only a parameter is chosen so that the curve fits the starting point "A" and the ending point "B". If the body is given an initial velocity at "A", or if friction is taken into account, then the curve that minimizes time differs from the tautochrone curve.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Johann Bernoulli posed the problem of the brachistochrone to the readers of "Acta Eruditorum" in June, 1696. He said:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Johann and his brother Jakob Bernoulli derived the same solution, but Johann's derivation was incorrect, and he tried to pass off Jakob's solution as his own. Johann published the solution in the journal in May of the following year, and noted that the solution is the same curve as Huygens's tautochrone curve. After deriving the differential equation for the curve by the method given below, he went on to show that it does yield a cycloid. However, his proof is marred by his use of a single constant instead of the three constants, "v", "2g" and "D", below.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Bernoulli allowed six months for the solutions but none were received during this period. At the request of Leibniz, the time was publicly extended for a year and a half. At 4 p.m. on 29 January 1697 when he arrived home from the Royal Mint, Isaac Newton found the challenge in a letter from Johann Bernoulli. Newton stayed up all night to solve it and mailed the solution anonymously by the next post. Upon reading the solution, Bernoulli immediately recognized its author, exclaiming that he "recognizes a lion from his claw mark". This story gives some idea of Newton's power, since Johann Bernoulli took two weeks to solve it. Newton also wrote, "I do not love to be dunned [pestered] and teased by foreigners about mathematical things...", and Newton had already solved Newton's minimal resistance problem, which is considered the first of the kind in calculus of variations.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In the end, five mathematicians responded with solutions: Newton, Jakob Bernoulli, Gottfried Leibniz, Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus and Guillaume de l'Hôpital. Four of the solutions (excluding l'Hôpital's) were published in the same edition of the journal as Johann Bernoulli's. In his paper, Jakob Bernoulli gave a proof of the condition for least time similar to that below before showing that its solution is a cycloid. According to Newtonian scholar Tom Whiteside, in an attempt to outdo his brother, Jakob Bernoulli created a harder version of the brachistochrone problem. In solving it, he developed new methods that were refined by Leonhard Euler into what the latter called (in 1766) the "calculus of variations". Joseph-Louis Lagrange did further work that resulted in modern infinitesimal calculus.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Earlier, in 1638, Galileo had tried to solve a similar problem for the path of the fastest descent from a point to a wall in his "Two New Sciences". He draws the conclusion that the arc of a circle is faster than any number of its chords,


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: From the preceding it is possible to infer that the quickest path of all [lationem omnium velocissimam], from one point to another, is not the shortest path, namely, a straight line, but the arc of a circle.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Consequently the nearer the inscribed polygon approaches a circle the shorter the time required for descent from A to C. What has been proven for the quadrant holds true also for smaller arcs; the reasoning is the same.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Just after Theorem 6 of "Two New Sciences", Galileo warns of possible fallacies and the need for a "higher science". In this dialogue Galileo reviews his own work. Galileo studied the cycloid and gave it its name, but the connection between it and his problem had to wait for advances in mathematics.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Galileo’s conjecture is that “The shortest time of all [for a movable body] will be that of its fall along the arc ADB [of a quarter circle] and similar properties are to be understood as holding for all lesser arcs taken upward from the lowest limit B.”


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In Fig.1, from the “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, Galileo claims that the body sliding along the circular arc of a quarter circle, from A to B will reach B in less time than if it took any other path from A to B. Similarly, in Fig. 2, from any point D on the arc AB, he claims that the time along the lesser arc DB will be less than for any other path from D to B. In fact, the quickest path from A to B or from D to B, the brachistochrone, is a cycloidal arc, which is shown in Fig. 3 for the path from A to B, and Fig.4 for the path from D to B, superposed on the respective circular arc.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In a letter to L’Hôpital, (21/12/1696), Bernoulli stated that when considering the problem of the curve of quickest descent, after only 2 days he noticed a curious affinity or connection with another no less remarkable problem leading to an ‘indirect method’ of solution. Then shortly afterwards he discovered a ‘direct method’.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In a letter to Henri Basnage, held at the University of Basel Public Library, dated 30 March 1697, Johann Bernoulli stated that he had found two methods (always referred to as "direct" and "indirect") to show that the Brachistochrone was the "common cycloid", also called the "roulette". Following advice from Leibniz, he included only the indirect method in the "Acta Eruditorum Lipsidae" of May 1697. He wrote that this was partly because he believed it was sufficient to convince anyone who doubted the conclusion, partly because it also resolved two famous problems in optics that "the late Mr. Huygens" had raised in his treatise on light. In the same letter he criticised Newton for concealing his method.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In addition to his indirect method he also published the five other replies to the problem that he received.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Johann Bernoulli's direct method is historically important as a proof that the brachistochrone is the cycloid. The method is to determine the curvature of the curve at each point. All the other proofs, including Newton's (which was not revealed at the time) are based on finding the gradient at each point.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: He explained that he had not published it in 1697, for reasons that no longer applied in 1718. This paper was largely ignored until 1904 when the depth of the method was first appreciated by Constantin Carathéodory, who stated that it shows that the cycloid is the only possible curve of quickest descent. According to him, the other solutions simply implied that the time of descent is stationary for the cycloid, but not necessarily the minimum possible.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: A body is regarded as sliding along any small circular arc Ce between the radii KC and Ke, with centre K fixed. The first stage of the proof involves finding the particular circular arc, Mm, which the body traverses in the minimum time.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The line KNC intersects AL at N, and line Kne intersects it at n, and they make a small angle CKe at K. Let NK = a, and define a variable point, C on KN extended. Of all the possible circular arcs Ce, it is required to find the arc Mm, which requires the minimum time to slide between the 2 radii, KM and Km. To find Mm Bernoulli argues as follows.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Let MN = x. He defines m so that MD = mx, and n so that Mm = nx + na and notes that x is the only variable and that m is finite and n is infinitely small. The small time to travel along arc Mm is formula_1, which has to be a minimum (‘un plus petit’). He does not explain that because Mm is so small the speed along it can be assumed to be the speed at M, which is as the square root of MD, the vertical distance of M below the horizontal line AL.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: This condition defines the curve that the body slides along in the shortest time possible. For each point, M on the curve, the radius of curvature, MK is cut in 2 equal parts by its axis AL. This property, which Bernoulli says had been known for a long time, is unique to the cycloid.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Finally, he considers the more general case where the speed is an arbitrary function X(x), so the time to be minimised is formula_3.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: and which gives MN (=x) as a function of NK (= a). From this the equation of the curve could be obtained from the integral calculus, though he does not demonstrate this.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: He then proceeds with what he called his Synthetic Solution, which was a classical, geometrical proof, that there is only a single curve that a body can slide down in the minimum time, and that curve is the cycloid.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The reason for the synthetic demonstration, in the manner of the ancients, is to convince Mr de la Hire. He has little time for our new analysis, describing it as false (He claims he has found 3 ways to prove that the curve is a cubic parabola) – Letter from Johan Bernoulli to Pierre Varignon dated 27 Jul 1697.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Assume AMmB is the part of the cycloid joining A to B, which the body slides down in the minimum time. Let ICcJ be part of a different curve joining A to B, which can be closer to AL than AMmB. If the arc Mm subtends the angle MKm at its centre of curvature, K, let the arc on IJ that subtends the same angle be Cc. The circular arc through C with centre K is Ce. Point D on AL is vertically above M. Join K to D and point H is where CG intersects KD, extended if necessary.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: If the arc, Cc subtended by the angle infinitesimal angle MKm on IJ is not circular, it must be greater than Ce, since Cec becomes a right-triangle in the limit as angle MKm approaches zero.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: According to Fermat’s principle, the actual path between two points taken by a beam of light is one that takes the least time. In 1697 Johann Bernoulli used this principle to derive the brachistochrone curve by considering the trajectory of a beam of light in a medium where the speed of light increases following a constant vertical acceleration (that of gravity "g").


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: By the conservation of energy, the instantaneous speed of a body "v" after falling a height "y" in a uniform gravitational field is given by:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The speed of motion of the body along an arbitrary curve does not depend on the horizontal displacement.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Bernoulli noted that the law of refraction gives a constant of the motion for a beam of light in a medium of variable density:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: where "v" is the constant and "formula_21" represents the angle of the trajectory with respect to the vertical.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Assuming for simplicity that the particle (or the beam) with coordinates (x,y) departs from the point (0,0) and reaches maximum speed after falling a vertical distance "D":


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: which is the differential equation of an inverted cycloid generated by a circle of diameter "D=2r", whose parametric equation is:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: where φ is a real parameter, corresponding to the angle through which the rolling circle has rotated. For given φ, the circle's centre lies at .


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In the brachistochrone problem, the motion of the body is given by the time evolution of the parameter:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Johann's brother Jakob showed how 2nd differentials can be used to obtain the condition for least time. A modernized version of the proof is as follows. If we make a negligible deviation from the path of least time, then, for the differential triangle formed by the displacement along the path and the horizontal and vertical displacements,


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: where the last part is the displacement for given change in time for 2nd differentials. Now consider the changes along the two neighboring paths in the figure below for which the horizontal separation between paths along the central line is "dx" (the same for both the upper and lower differential triangles). Along the old and new paths, the parts that differ are,


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: In June 1696, Johann Bernoulli had used the pages of the "Acta Eruditorum Lipsidae" to pose a challenge to the international mathematical community: to find the form of the curve joining two fixed points so that a mass will slide down along it, under the influence of gravity alone, in the minimum amount of time. The solution was originally to be submitted within six months. At the suggestion of Leibniz, Bernoulli extended the challenge until Easter 1697, by means of a printed text called "Programma", published in Groningen, in the Netherlands.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The "Programma" is dated 1 January 1697, in the Gregorian Calendar. This was 22 December 1696 in the Julian Calendar, in use in Britain.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: According to Newton's niece, Catherine Conduitt, Newton learned of the challenge at 4 pm on 29 January and had solved it by 4 am the following morning. His solution, communicated to the Royal Society, is dated 30 January. This solution, later published anonymously in the "Philosophical Transactions", is correct but does not indicate the method by which Newton arrived at his conclusion. Bernoulli, writing to Henri Basnage in March 1697, indicated that even though its author, "by an excess of modesty", had not revealed his name, yet even from the scant details supplied it could be recognised as Newton's work, "as the lion by its claw" (in Latin, "ex ungue Leonem").


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: D. T. Whiteside characteristically explains the origin of the Latin expression, originally from Greek, in considerable detail. The letter in French has ‘ex ungue Leonem’ preceded by the French word ‘comme’. The much quoted version ‘tanquam ex ungue Leonem’ is due to David Brewster’s book on the life and works of Newton in 1855. Bernoulli's intention was simply that he could tell the anonymous solution was Newton’s, just as it was possible to tell that an animal was a lion given its claw. It was not meant to suggest that Bernoulli considered Newton to be the lion among mathematicians, as it has since come to be interpreted.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: John Wallis, who was 80 years old at the time, had learned of the problem in September 1696 from Johann Bernoulli's youngest brother Hieronymus, and had spent three months attempting a solution before passing it in December to David Gregory, who also failed to solve it. After Newton had submitted his solution, Gregory asked him for the details and made notes from their conversation. These can be found in the University of Edinburgh Library, manuscript A formula_35, dated 7 March 1697. Either Gregory did not understand Newton's argument, or Newton's explanation was very brief. However, it is possible, with a high degree of confidence, to construct Newton's proof from Gregory's notes, by analogy with his method to determine the solid of minimum resistance (Principia, Book 2, Proposition 34, Scholium 2). A detailed description of his solution of this latter problem is included in the draft of a letter in 1694, also to David Gregory. In addition to the minimum time curve problem, there was a second problem that Newton also solved at the same time. Both solutions appeared anonymously in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, for January 1697.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Fig. 1, shows Gregory’s diagram (except the additional line IF is absent from it, and Z, the start point has been added). The curve ZVA is a cycloid and CHV is its generating circle. Since it appears that the body is moving upward from e to E, it must be assumed that a small body is released from Z and slides along the curve to A, without friction, under the action of gravity.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Consider a small arc eE, which the body is ascending. Assume that it traverses the straight line eL to point L, horizontally displaced from E by a small distance, o, instead of the arc eE. Note, that eL is not the tangent at e, and that o is negative when L is between B and E. Draw the line through E parallel to CH, cutting eL at n. From a property of the cycloid, En is the normal to the tangent at E, and similarly the tangent at E is parallel to VH.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Since the displacement EL is small, it differs little in direction from the tangent at E so that the angle EnL is close to a right-angle. In the limit as the arc eE approaches zero, eL becomes parallel to VH, provided o is small compared to eE making the triangles EnL and CHV similar.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Also en approaches the length of chord eE, and the increase in length, formula_36, ignoring terms in formula_37 and higher, which represent the error due to the approximation that eL and VH are parallel.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The speed along eE or eL can be taken as that at E, proportional to formula_38, which is as CH, since formula_39


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Therefore, the increase in time to traverse a small arc displaced at one endpoint depends only on the displacement at the endpoint and is independent of the position of the arc. However, by Newton’s method, this is just the condition required for the curve to be traversed in the minimum time possible. Therefore, he concludes that the minimum curve must be the cycloid.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Assuming now that Fig. 1 is the minimum curve not yet determined, with vertical axis CV, and the circle CHV removed, and Fig. 2 shows part of the curve between the infinitesimal arc eE and a further infinitesimal arc Ff a finite distance along the curve. The extra time, t, to traverse eL (rather than eE) is nL divided by the speed at E (proportional to formula_38), ignoring terms in formula_37 and higher:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: At L the particle continues along a path LM, parallel to the original EF, to some arbitrary point M. As it has the same speed at L as at E, the time to traverse LM is the same as it would have been along the original curve EF. At M it returns to the original path at point f. By the same reasoning, the reduction in time, T, to reach f from M rather than from F is


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: The difference (t – T) is the extra time it takes along the path eLMf compared to the original eEFf :


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Because eEFf is the minimum curve, (t – T) is must be greater than zero, whether o is positive or negative. It follows that the coefficient of o in (1) must be zero:


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: formula_47 (2) in the limit as eE and fF approach zero. Note since eEFf is the minimum curve it has to be assumed that the coefficient of formula_37 is greater than zero.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Clearly there has to be 2 equal and opposite displacements, or the body would not return to the endpoint, A, of the curve.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: If e is fixed, and if f is considered a variable point higher up the curve, then for all such points, f, formula_49 is constant (equal to formula_50). By keeping f fixed and making e variable it is clear that formula_50 is also constant.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: But, since points, e and f are arbitrary, equation (2) can be true only if formula_52, everywhere, and this condition characterises the curve that is sought. This is the same technique he uses to find the form of the Solid of Least Resistance.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: For the cycloid, formula_53 , so that formula_54, which was shown above to be constant, and the Brachistochrone is the cycloid.


title: Brachistochrone curve

text: Newton gives no indication of how he discovered that the cycloid satisfied this last relation. It may have been by trial and error, or he may have recognised immediately that it implied the curve was the cycloid.


title: Bering Sea

text: The Bering Sea (, ; ) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasses on Earth: Eurasia and The Americas. It comprises a deep water basin, which then rises through a narrow slope into the shallower water above the continental shelves. The Bering Sea is named for Vitus Bering, a Danish navigator in Russian service, who, in 1728, was the first European to systematically explore it, sailing from the Pacific Ocean northward to the Arctic Ocean.


title: Bering Sea

text: The Bering Sea is separated from the Gulf of Alaska by the Alaska Peninsula. It covers over and is bordered on the east and northeast by Alaska, on the west by the Russian Far East and the Kamchatka Peninsula, on the south by the Alaska Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands and on the far north by the Bering Strait, which connects the Bering Sea to the Arctic Ocean's Chukchi Sea. Bristol Bay is the portion of the Bering Sea between the Alaska Peninsula and Cape Newenham on mainland Southwest Alaska.


title: Bering Sea

text: The Bering Sea ecosystem includes resources within the jurisdiction of the United States and Russia, as well as international waters in the middle of the sea (known as the "Donut Hole"). The interaction between currents, sea ice, and weather makes for a vigorous and productive ecosystem.


title: Bering Sea

text: Most scientists think that during the most recent ice age, sea level was low enough to allow humans to migrate east on foot from Asia to North America across what is now the Bering Strait. Other animals including megafauna migrated in both directions. This is commonly referred to as the "Bering land bridge" and is accepted by most, though not all scientists, to be the first point of entry of humans into the Americas.


title: Bering Sea

text: There is a small portion of the Kula Plate in the Bering Sea. The Kula Plate is an ancient tectonic plate that used to subduct under Alaska.


title: Bering Sea

text: On 18 December 2018, a large meteor exploded above the Bering Sea. The meteor exploded at an altitude of 25.6km releasing 49 kilotons of energy.


title: Bering Sea

text: The Bering Sea contains 16 submarine canyons including the largest submarine canyon in the world, Zhemchug Canyon.


title: Bering Sea

text: The Bering Sea shelf break is the dominant driver of primary productivity in the Bering Sea. This zone, where the shallower continental shelf drops off into the North Aleutians Basin is also known as the "Greenbelt". Nutrient upwelling from the cold waters of the Aleutian basin flowing up the slope and mixing with shallower waters of the shelf provide for constant production of phytoplankton.