title: Islam in France

text: In September 1994, a third ministerial circular ("circulaire Bayrou") was published, making a distinction between "discreet" symbols to be tolerated in public schools, and "ostentatious" symbols, including the Islamic headscarf, to be banned from public schools. In October, some students demonstrated at the "lycée Saint Exupéry" in Mantes-la-Jolie (northwest of Paris) to support the freedom to wear Islamic headscarves in school. In November, approximately twenty-four veiled schoolgirls were expelled from the "lycée Saint Exupéry" in Mantes-la-Jolie and the "lycée Faidherbe" in Lille.


title: Islam in France

text: In December 2003, President Chirac decided that the law should prohibit the wearing of visible religious signs in schools, according to "laïcité" requirements. The law was approved by parliament in March 2004. Items prohibited by this law include Muslim hijabs, Jewish yarmulkes, or large Christian crosses. It is still permissible to wear discreet symbols of faith such as small crosses, Stars of David, or Fatima's hands.


title: Islam in France

text: Two French journalists working in Iraq, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were taken hostage by the "Islamic Army in Iraq" (an Iraqi resistance militant movement) under accusations of spying. Threats to kill the two journalists if the law on headscarves was not revoked were published on the Internet by groups claiming to be the "Islamic Army in Iraq". The two journalists were later released unharmed.


title: Islam in France

text: The arguments resurfaced when, on 22 June 2009, at the "Congrès de Versailles", President Nicolas Sarkozy declared that the Islamic burqa is not welcome in France, claiming that the full-length, body-covering gown was a symbol of subservience that suppresses women's identities and turns them into "prisoners behind a screen." A parliamentary commission of thirty-two deputies led by André Gerin (PCF), was also formed to study the possibility of banning the public wearing of the burqa or niqab. There is suspicion, however, that Sarkozy is "playing politics in a time of economic unhappiness and social anxiety."


title: Islam in France

text: A Muslim group spokesman expressed serious concern over the proposed legislation, noting that "even if they ban the burqa, it will not stop there," adding that "there is a permanent demand for legislating against Muslims. This could go really bad, and I'm scared of it. I feel like they're turning the screws on us."


title: Islam in France

text: On 25 January 2010 it was announced that the parliamentary committee, having concluded its study, would recommend that a ban on veils covering the face in public locations such as hospitals and schools be enacted, but not in private buildings or on the street.


title: Islam in France

text: In February 2019, Decathlon, Europe's largest sports retailer, announced plans to begin selling a sports hijab in their stores in France. Decathlon had begun selling the product in Morocco the previous week, but the plan was criticized on social media, with several politicians expressing discomfort with the product being sold. Decathlon originally stood firm, arguing it was focused on "democratizing" sports. The company released a statement saying its goal was to "offer them a suitable sports product, without judging." While Nike had already sold hijabs in France, Decathlon was met with much more scrutiny. Multiple salespeople were threatened physically in stores. The company also received hundreds of calls and emails in regard to the product. Decathlon was forced to backtrack and has since halted its plans to sell the sports hijab. Many throughout France were left disappointed with one Muslim entrepreneur stating, "it's a shame that Decathlon didn't stand firm."


title: Islam in France

text: Formal as well as informal Muslim organizations help the new French citizens to integrate. Several political parties like Parti égalité et Justice have now appeared. Their most frequent activities are homework help and language classes in Arabic, ping pong, Muslim discussion groups etc. are also common. However, most important associations active in assisting with the immigration process are either secular (GISTI, for example) or ecumenist (such as the protestant-founded Cimade).


title: Islam in France

text: The most important national institution is the CFCM ("Conseil Français du Culte Musulman") this institution was designed on the model of the "Consistoire Juif de France" and of the "Fédération protestante de France" both Napoleonic creations. The aim of the CFCM (like its Jewish and protestant counterparts) is to discuss religious problem with the state, participate in certain public institutions, and organize the religious life of French Muslims. The CFCM is elected by the French Muslims through local election. It is the only official instance of the French Muslims.


title: Islam in France

text: There were four organizations represented in the CFCM elected in 2003, GMP (Grande mosquée de Paris), UOIF (Union des organizations islamiques de France), FNMF (Fédération nationale des musulmans de France) CCMTF (Comité de coordination des musulmans Turcs de France). In 2008 a new council was elected. The winner was RMF (Rassemblement des musulmans de France) with a large majority of the votes, followed by the UOIF and the CCMTF. It is a very broad and young organization and there is a beginning of consensus on major issues. Other elections took place since then, the latest was due in 2019 but is still pending.


title: Islam in France

text: Other organizations exist, such as PCM (Muslim Participation and Spirituality), which combine political mobilization (against racism, sexism etc.) and spiritual meetings, and put emphasis on the need to get involved in French society – by joining organizations, registering to vote, working with your children's schools etc. They do not have clear-cut political positions as such but push for active citizenship. They are vaguely on the left in practice.


title: Islam in France

text: The government has yet to formulate an official policy towards making integration easier. As mentioned above, it is difficult to determine in France who may be called a Muslim. Some Muslims in France describe themselves as "non-practicing". Most simply observe "Ramadan" and other basic rules but are otherwise secular.


title: Islam in France

text: Due to a law dating from 1872, the French Republic prohibits performing census by making distinction between its citizens regarding their race or their beliefs. However, that law does not concern surveys and polls, which are free to ask those questions if they wish. The law also allows for an exception for public institutions such as INED or INSEE whose job it is to collect data on demographics, social trends and other related subjects, on condition that the collection of such data has been authorized by the CNIL and the National Council of Statistical Information ().


title: Islam in France

text: Surveys from INED and the INSEE in October 2010 concluded that France has 2.1 million "declared Muslims".


title: Islam in France

text: According to the French Government, which does not have the right to ask direct questions about religion and uses a criterion of people's geographic origin as a basis for calculation, there were between 5 and 6 million Muslims in metropolitan France in 2010. The government counted all those people in France who migrated from countries with a dominant Muslim population, or whose parents did.


title: Islam in France

text: The United States Department of State placed it at roughly 10%, while two 2007 polls estimated it at about 3% of the total population. The CIA World Factbook places it at 7–9%.


title: Islam in France

text: A Pew Forum study, published in January 2011, estimated 4.7 million Muslims in France in 2010 (and forecasted 6.9 million in 2030).


title: Islam in France

text: The French polling company IFOP estimated in 2016 that French Muslims number between 3 and 4 million and criticized suggestions of a significant demographic religious slide (The so-called in French politics). IFOP claims that they make up 5.6% of those older than 15, and 10% of those younger than 25. According to an IFOP survey for the newspaper "La Croix" in 2011, based on a combination of previous surveys, 75% of people from families ""of Muslim origin"" said they were believers. This is more than the previous study in 2007 (71%) but less than the one before 2001 (78%). This variation, caused by the declarative aspect of the survey, illustrates the difficulty of establishing precisely the number of believers. According to the same survey 155 of those surveyed who had at-least one Muslim parent 84.8% Identified as Muslims, 3.4% Identified as Christians, 10.0% identified as not religious and 1.3% belonged to other religions.


title: Islam in France

text: An Interior ministry source in "l'Islam dans la République" published the following estimated distribution of Muslims by Alain Boyer by affiliated countries in 1999:


title: Islam in France

text: In 2008, thirty-nine percent of Muslims surveyed by the polling group IFOP said they observed Islam's five prayers daily, a steady rise from 31 percent in 1994, according to the study published in the Catholic daily La Croix.


title: Islam in France

text: Mosque attendance for Friday prayers has risen to 23 percent, in 2008 up from 16 percent in 1994, while in 2008 Ramadan observance has reached 70 percent compared to 60 percent in 1994, it said. Drinking alcohol, which Islam forbids, has also declined to 34 percent from 39 percent in 1994, according to the survey of 537 people of Muslim origin.


title: Islam in France

text: A 2015 study found that up to 12,000 French Muslim converted to Christianity, but cited that this number may be underestimated, and it may include only Protestant converts.


title: Islam in France

text: According to , a researcher at INED, an acceptance of 5 to 6 million Muslims in France in 1999 was overestimated. Her work has shown that there were 3.7 million people of "possible Muslim faith" in France in 1999 (6.3% of the total population of Metropolitan France). In 2009, she estimated that the number of people of the Muslim faith in France was about 4.5 million.


title: Islam in France

text: According to Jean-Paul Gourévitch, there were 8.5 million of Muslim origin (about 1/8 of the population), in metropolitan France in 2017.


title: Islam in France

text: In 2017, François Héran, former Head of the Population Surveys Branch at INSEE and Director of INED (French National Institute for Demographic Research) between 1999 and 2009, stated that about one eighth of the French population was of Muslim origin in 2017 (8.4 million).


title: Islam in France

text: According to the latest Special Eurobarometer 493 (2019) the Muslim population in France is estimated to be 5% or 3.35 million.


title: Islam in France

text: Pew Research Center predicts the Muslim population would rise to 8.6 million or 12.7 percent of the country in 2050.


title: Islam in France

text: A recent and extansive Europe-wide survey by the Pew Research Center in 2006 showed that French Muslims were the ones with the strongest positive view of their Jewish compatriots at 71% and lowest support for Hamas and Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: Turn: Washington's Spies (originally titled Turn and stylized as TURИ: Washington's Spies) is an American period drama television series based on Alexander Rose's book "" (2007), a history of the Culper Ring. The series originally aired on the AMC network for four seasons, from April 6, 2014, to August 12, 2017.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: The story covers events from 1776 to 1781 and features a farmer from Setauket, New York, and his childhood friends. They form an unlikely group of spies called the Culper Ring, which eventually helps to turn the tide during the American Revolutionary War. The series begins in October 1776, shortly after British victories recapture Long Island and the Port of New York for the Crown, and leave General George Washington's army in dire straits. The first episode opens with the following introductory text:


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: Autumn 1776. Insurgents have declared war against the Crown. Following a successful naval landing, His Majesty's Army has forced Washington's rebels into the wilderness. New York City serves as military base of operations for the British. The Loyalists of nearby Long Island keep vigilant watch out for sympathizers and spies.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: "Turn: Washington's Spies" was renewed for a second 10-episode season on June 23, 2014, which premiered on April 13, 2015, and for a third 10-episode season on July 15, 2015, which premiered on April 25, 2016. On July 26, 2016, "Turn: Washington's Spies" was renewed for a fourth and final 10-episode season, which had a two-hour premiere on June 17, 2017.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: The first season of "Turn: Washington's Spies" received mixed reviews. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes rated the season 54%, based on 39 reviews, with an average rating of 6.30/10. The site's consensus reads, ""Turn"s uneven treatment of the American Revolution is more frustrating than exciting and memorable." On Metacritic, the first season scored 62 out of 100, based on reviews from 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: The second season received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 90%, based on 10 reviews, with an average rating of 7.40/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "The revolution gains steam in an improved second season that delivers on the series' promise of espionage thrills along with an expanded historical grandeur." On Metacritic, the season has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100, based on reviews from 4 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the third season has a rating of 100%, based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 8.00/10 and the fourth season has a rating of 80% based on 5 reviews, with an average rating of 7.60/10.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: The first season of "TURN: Washington's Spies" was awarded the 2014 Media & Entertainment Award by the Daughters of the American Revolution.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: The first season of "TURN: Washington's Spies" was released on DVD and Blu-ray on March 17, 2015; it became available on Netflix on March 25, 2015. The second season was released on DVD on March 22, 2016 and became available on Netflix on April 11, 2016. The third season was released on DVD on November 8, 2016. and became available on Netflix on June 4, 2017. The fourth season became available on Netflix on December 1, 2017. The series departed Netflix after four years in December 2021. The fourth season still has not been released on DVD and Blu-ray. A Complete Series (Season 1-4) boxset has yet to be released in the US.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: On March 26, 2014, AMC released the digital comic "TURN: Origins", illustrated by Steve Ellis, that portrays childhood and adulthood events from the lives of several of the series' main characters, including Abraham Woodhull, Benjamin Tallmadge, Anna Strong, and Caleb Brewster.


title: Turn: Washington's Spies

text: On April 10 and April 15, 2015, AMC released the first and second chapters, respectively, of a second digital comic, "TURN: Rivals", that portrays the past rivalry of George Washington and Robert Rogers.


title: WSP Global

text: WSP Global Inc. is a Canadian company with American and British roots, providing management and consultancy services to the built and natural environment. It is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. After the purchase of New York-headquartered professional services firm Parsons Brinckerhoff in October 2014, WSP Global effectively became one of the largest professional services firms in the world, with approximately 47,000 employees in 500 offices serving in 40 countries.


title: WSP Global

text: "Williams Sale Partnership" was established in 1969 in England by Chris Cole and three other partners. In 1976, it was a founding member of the Building Services Research and Information Association (BSRIA). It was first listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1987.


title: WSP Global

text: In the 1990s, the company expanded at home and overseas forming "WSP Asia" in 1995, incorporating "T P O'Sullivan and Partners" in 1997, acquiring US practices "Cantor Seinuk" and "Flack + Kurtz" in 2000, as well as buying "Jacobson & Widmark" (J&W) in Sweden in 2001 (J&W was founded in 1938), "LT Consultants Oyj" and "EMP Projects Oyj" in Finland in 2003 and, "PHB Group" in the UAE in 2005.


title: WSP Global

text: After acquiring three firms and geographical expansion in 1993, the name of the Canadian firm GBGM was changed to Genivar Inc.


title: WSP Global

text: On 7 June 2012, Genivar made a friendly takeover cash offer of £278 million (C$442 million) for WSP Group plc, headquartered in London. The offer was backed by WSP's board of directors as well as investors holding 37% of the company's shares and the take over was completed on 1 August 2012.


title: WSP Global

text: This merger created a professional-services firm with approximately 15,000 employees, working in over 300 offices worldwide.


title: WSP Global

text: The company reorganised its corporate structure on 1 January 2014, to create a parent company named WSP Global Inc. and adopted the common brand of WSP.


title: WSP Global

text: In October 2014, WSP Global completed the purchase of New York-headquartered professional services firm Parsons Brinckerhoff from Balfour Beatty for USD$1.24 billion. The company has a network of approximately 170 offices and nearly 13,500 employees on five continents and became a wholly owned independent subsidiary. Together, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff is one of the largest professional services firms in the world with approximately 32,000 employees in 500 offices serving 39 countries.


title: WSP Global

text: In early 2015, WSP Global announced plans to expand to 45,000 employees by 2020. In October 2016, WSP purchased Mouchel Consulting from the Kier Group for approximately £75 million.


title: WSP Global

text: In January 2017, WSP | Parsons Brinckerhoff announced that it would assume the name "WSP USA", effective from May 2017. In August 2017, WSP made a takeover bid for Opus International Consultants.


title: WSP Global

text: In July 2018, WSP announced its intention to buy Berger Group Holdings Inc., parent of the group of companies operating under the name of Louis Berger Group, a Morristown, N.J.-based international professional-services firm, for $400 million.


title: WSP Global

text: In February 2020, WSP acquired US-based environmental consulting firm LT Environmental (LTE). On December 3, 2020, WSP acquired Canadian-based geotechnical, earth-science, and environmental consulting firm Golder for $1.14 billion.


title: WSP Global

text: On June 1, 2022, WSP announced an agreement of sale with Wood Group plc for the Environment & Infrastructure group (E&I) part of its business. The £1.6 bn acquisition was concluded in September 2022. In August 2022, WSP Global made an unsuccessful takeover offer to purchase RPS Group for £591 million. In September 2022, RPS received a counter takeover offer from Tetra Tech for £636 million with WSP opting not to increase its bid. RPS' shareholders voted to accept the Tetra Tech offer in November 2022.


title: WSP Global

text: In December 2022, WSP announced plans to acquire a 700-strong Swiss engineering firm, BG Consulting Engineers, based in Lausanne with offices in France, Portugal and Italy.


title: Humanoid robot

text: A humanoid robot is a robot resembling the human body in shape. The design may be for functional purposes, such as interacting with human tools and environments, for experimental purposes, such as the study of bipedal locomotion, or for other purposes. In general, humanoid robots have a torso, a head, two arms, and two legs, though some humanoid robots may replicate only part of the body, for example, from the waist up. Some humanoid robots also have heads designed to replicate human facial features such as eyes and mouths. Androids are humanoid robots built to aesthetically resemble humans.


title: Humanoid robot

text: The concept of a humanoid robot originated in many different cultures around the world. Some of the earliest accounts of the idea of humanoid automata date to the 4th century BCE in Greek mythologies and various religious and philosophical texts from China. Physical prototypes of humanoid automata were later created in the Middle East, Italy, Japan, and France.


title: Humanoid robot

text: The Greek god of blacksmiths, Hephaestus, created several different humanoid automata in various myths. In Homer's "Iliad," Hephaestus created golden handmaidens and imbued them with human-like voices to serve as speaking tools or instruments. Another Greek myth details how Hephaestus crafted a giant bronze automaton named Talos to protect the island of Crete from invaders.


title: Humanoid robot

text: In the 3rd century BCE, a Taoist philosophical text called the "Liezi", written by Chinese philosopher Lie Yukou, detailed the idea of a humanoid automaton. The text includes mention of an engineer named Yan Shi who created a life-size, human-like robot for the fifth king of the Chinese Zhou Dynasty, King Mu. The robot was primarily constructed of leather and wood. It was capable of walking, singing, and moving all parts of its body.


title: Humanoid robot

text: In the 13th century, a Muslim engineer named Ismail al-Jazari designed various humanoid automata. He created a waitress robot that would dispense drinks from a liquid reservoir and appear out of an automatic door to serve them. Another automaton he created was used for hand washing to refill a basin with water after being drained.


title: Humanoid robot

text: In the 1400s, Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized a complex mechanical robot clad in a suit of armor, capable of sitting, standing, and independently moving its arms. The entire robot was operated by a system of pulleys and cables.


title: Humanoid robot

text: From the 17th to 19th centuries, the Japanese built humanoid automata called "karakuri" puppets. These puppets resembled dolls and were used for entertainment in theatre, homes, and religious festivals. "Karakuri" puppets that were used for theater plays were called "butai karakuri". Small "karakuri puppets" found in homes, called "zashiki kurakuri", were placed on tables to dance, beat drums, or serve drinks. The puppets used in religious festivals were known as "Dashi karakuri", and they served to reenact myths and legends.


title: Humanoid robot

text: In the 18th century, French inventor Jacques de Vaucanson created a significant humanoid automaton called "The Flute Player". This wooden, human-sized robot was capable of playing various melodies with the flute. It consisted of a system of bellows, pipes, weights, and other mechanical components to simulate to the muscles necessary to play the flute.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots are now used as research tools in several scientific areas. Researchers study the human body structure and behavior (biomechanics) to build humanoid robots. On the other side, the attempt to simulate the human body leads to a better understanding of it. Human cognition is a field of study which is focused on how humans learn from sensory information in order to acquire perceptual and motor skills. This knowledge is used to develop computational models of human behavior, and it has been improving over time.


title: Humanoid robot

text: It has been suggested that very advanced robotics will facilitate the enhancement of ordinary humans. See transhumanism.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots are a valuable resource in the world of medicine and biotechnology, as well as other fields of research such as biomechanics and cognitive science. Humanoid robots are being used to develop complex prosthetics for individuals with physical disabilities such as missing limbs. The WABIAN-2 is a new medical humanoid robot created to help patients in the rehabilitation of their lower limbs.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Although the initial aim of humanoid research was to build better orthosis and prosthesis for human beings, knowledge has been transferred between both disciplines. A few examples are powered leg prosthesis for the neuromuscularly impaired, ankle-foot orthosis, biological realistic leg prosthesis, and forearm prosthesis.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots can be used as test subjects for the practice and development of personalized healthcare aids, essentially performing as robotic nurses for demographics such as the elderly. Humanoids are also suitable for some procedurally-based vocations, such as reception-desk administrators and automotive manufacturing line workers. In essence, since they can use tools and operate equipment and vehicles designed for the human form, humanoids could theoretically perform any task a human being can, so long as they have the proper software. However, the complexity of doing so is immense.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots have had a long history in the realm of entertainment, from the conception and ideas in the story of Prometheus to the application and physical build of modern animatronics used for theme parks. Current uses and development of humanoid robots in theme parks are focused on creating stuntronics. Stuntronics are humanoid robots built for serving as stunt doubles, and are designed to simulate life-like, untethered, dynamic movement. Several Disney theme park shows utilize animatronic robots that look, move and speak much like human beings. Although these robots look realistic, they have no cognition or physical autonomy. Various humanoid robots and their possible applications in daily life are featured in an independent documentary film called "Plug & Pray", which was released in 2010.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Though many real-world applications for humanoid robots are unexplored, their primary use is to demonstrate up-and-coming technologies. Modern examples of humanoid robots, such as the Honda Asimo, are revealed to the public in order to demonstrate new technological advancements in motor skills, such as walking, climbing, and playing an instrument. Other humanoid robots have been developed for household purposes, however excel only in single purpose skills and are far from autonomous. Humanoid robots, especially those with artificial intelligence algorithms, could be useful for future dangerous and/or distant space exploration missions, without having the need to turn back around again and return to Earth once the mission is completed.


title: Humanoid robot

text: A sensor is a device that measures some attribute of the world. Being one of the three primitives of robotics (besides planning and control), sensing plays an important role in robotic paradigms.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Sensors can be classified according to the physical process with which they work or according to the type of measurement information that they give as output. In this case, the second approach was used.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Proprioceptive sensors sense the position, orientation, and speed of the humanoid's body and joints, along with other internal values.


title: Humanoid robot

text: In human beings, the otoliths and semi-circular canals (in the inner ear) are used to maintain balance and orientation. Additionally, humans use their own proprioceptive sensors (e.g. touch, muscle extension, limb position) to help with their orientation. Humanoid robots use accelerometers to measure the acceleration, from which velocity can be calculated by integration; tilt sensors to measure inclination; force sensors placed in robot's hands and feet to measure contact force with environment; position sensors that indicate the actual position of the robot (from which the velocity can be calculated by derivation); and even speed sensors.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Arrays of tactels can be used to provide data on what has been touched. The Shadow Hand uses an array of 34 tactels arranged beneath its polyurethane skin on each finger tip. Tactile sensors also provide information about forces and torques transferred between the robot and other objects.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Vision refers to processing data from any modality which uses the electromagnetic spectrum to produce an image. In humanoid robots it is used to recognize objects and determine their properties. Vision sensors work most similarly to the eyes of human beings. Most humanoid robots use CCD cameras as vision sensors.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Sound sensors allow humanoid robots to hear speech and environmental sounds, akin to the ears of the human being. Microphones are usually used for the robots to convey speech.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots are constructed in such a way that they mimic the human body. They use actuators that perform like muscles and joints, though with a different structure. The actuators of humanoid robots can be either electric, pneumatic, or hydraulic. It is ideal for these actuators to have high power, low mass, and small dimensions.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Electric actuators are the most popular types of actuators in humanoid robots. These actuators are smaller in size, and a single electric actuator may not produce enough power for a human-sized joint. Therefore, it is common to use multiple electric actuators for a single joint in a humanoid robot. An example of a humanoid robot using electric actuators is HRP-2.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Hydraulic actuators produce higher power than electric actuators and pneumatic actuators, and they have the ability to control the torque they produce better than other types of actuators. However, they can become very bulky in size. One solution to counter the size issue is electro-hydrostatic actuators (EHA). The most popular example of a humanoid robot using hydraulic actuators is the ATLAS robot made by Boston Dynamics.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Pneumatic actuators operate on the basis of gas compressibility. As they are inflated, they expand along the axis, and as they deflate, they contract. If one end is fixed, the other will move in a linear trajectory. A popular example of a pneumatic actuator is the Mac Kibben muscle.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Planning in robots is the process of planning out motions and trajectories for the robot to carry out. Control is the actual execution of these planned motions and trajectories. In humanoid robots, the planning must carry out biped motions, meaning that robots should plan motions similar to a human. Since one of the main uses of humanoid robots is to interact with humans, it is important for the planning and control mechanisms of humanoid robots to work in a variety of terrain and environments.


title: Humanoid robot

text: The question of walking biped robots stabilization on the surface is of great importance. Maintenance of the robot's gravity center over the center of bearing area for providing a stable position can be chosen as a goal of control.


title: Humanoid robot

text: To maintain dynamic balance during the walk, a robot needs information about contact force and its current and desired motion. The solution to this problem relies on a major concept, the Zero Moment Point (ZMP).


title: Humanoid robot

text: Another characteristic of humanoid robots is that they move, gather information (using sensors) on the "real world", and interact with it. They do not stay still like factory manipulators and other robots that work in highly structured environments. To allow humanoids to move in complex environments, planning and control must focus on self-collision detection, path planning and obstacle avoidance.


title: Humanoid robot

text: Humanoid robots do not yet have some features of the human body. They include structures with variable flexibility, which provide safety (to the robot itself and to the people), and redundancy of movements, i.e. more degrees of freedom and therefore wide task availability. Although these characteristics are desirable to humanoid robots, they will bring more complexity and new problems to planning and control. The field of whole-body control deals with these issues and addresses the proper coordination of numerous degrees of freedom, e.g. to realize several control tasks simultaneously while following a given order of priority.


title: Humanoid robot

text: A common theme for the depiction of humanoid robots in science fiction pertains to how they can help humans in society or serve as threats to humanity. This theme essentially questions whether artificial intelligence is a force of good or bad for mankind. Humanoid robots that are depicted as good for society and benefit humans are Commander Data in "Star Trek" and C-3PO in "Star Wars". Opposite portrayals where humanoid robots are shown as scary and threatening to humans are the T-800 in "Terminator" and Megatron in "Transformers."


title: Humanoid robot

text: Another prominent theme found in science fiction regarding humanoid robots focuses on personhood. Certain films, particularly "Blade Runner" and "Blade Runner 2049", explore whether or not a constructed, synthetic being should be considered a person. In the films, androids called "replicants" are created indistinguishably from human beings, yet they are shunned and do not possess the same rights as humans. This theme incites audience sympathy while also sparking unease at the idea of humanoid robots mimicking humans too closely.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Heavy equipment or heavy machinery refers to heavy-duty vehicles specially designed to execute construction tasks, most frequently involving earthwork operations or other large construction tasks. "Heavy equipment" usually comprises five equipment systems: the implement, traction, structure, power train, and control/information.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Heavy equipment has been used since at least the 1st century BC when the ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius described a crane in "De architectura" when it was powered via human or animal labor.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Heavy equipment functions through the mechanical advantage of a simple machine, the ratio between input force applied and force exerted is multiplied, making tasks which could take hundreds of people and weeks of labor without heavy equipment far less intensive in nature. Some equipment uses hydraulic drives as a primary source of motion.


title: Heavy equipment

text: The use of heavy equipment has a long history; the ancient Roman engineer Vitruvius (1st century BCE) gave descriptions of heavy equipment and cranes in ancient Rome in his treatise "De architectura". The pile driver was invented around 1500. The first tunnelling shield was patented by Marc Isambard Brunel in 1818.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Until the 19th century and into the early 20th century heavy machines were drawn under human or animal power. With the advent of portable steam-powered engines the drawn machine precursors were reconfigured with the new engines, such as the combine harvester. The design of a core tractor evolved around the new steam power source into a new machine core traction engine, that can be configured as the steam tractor and the steamroller. During the 20th century, internal-combustion engines became the major power source of heavy equipment. Kerosene and ethanol engines were used, but today diesel engines are dominant. Mechanical transmission was in many cases replaced by hydraulic machinery. The early 20th century also saw new electric-powered machines such as the forklift. Caterpillar Inc. is a present-day brand from these days, starting out as the Holt Manufacturing Company. The first mass-produced heavy machine was the Fordson tractor in 1917.


title: Heavy equipment

text: The first commercial continuous track vehicle was the 1901 Lombard Steam Log Hauler. The use of tracks became popular for tanks during World War I, and later for civilian machinery like the bulldozer. The largest engineering vehicles and mobile land machines are bucket-wheel excavators, built since the 1920s.


title: Heavy equipment

text: "Until almost the twentieth century, one simple tool constituted the primary earthmoving machine: the hand shovel – moved with animal and human powered, sleds, barges, and wagons. This tool was the principal method by which material was either sidecast or elevated to load a conveyance, usually a wheelbarrow, or a cart or wagon drawn by a draft animal. In antiquity, an equivalent of the hand shovel or hoe and head basket—and masses of men—were used to move earth to build civil works. Builders have long used the inclined plane, levers, and pulleys to place solid building materials, but these labor-saving devices did not lend themselves to earthmoving, which required digging, raising, moving, and placing loose materials. The two elements required for mechanized earthmoving, then as now, were an independent power source and off-road mobility, neither of which could be provided by the technology of that time."


title: Heavy equipment

text: Nowadays such is the importance of this machinery, some transport companies have developed specific equipment to transport heavy construction equipment to and from sites.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Most of the major equipment manufacturers such as Caterpillar, Volvo, Liebherr, and Bobcat have released or have been developing fully or partially electric-powered heavy equipment. Commercially-available models and R&D models were announced in 2019 and 2020.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Robotics and autonomy has been a growing concern for heavy equipment manufacturers with manufacturers beginning research and technology acquisition. A number of companies are currently developing (Caterpillar and Bobcat) or have launched (Built Robotics) commercial solutions to the market.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Heavy equipment requires specialized tires for various construction applications. While many types of equipment have continuous tracks applicable to more severe service requirements, tires are used where greater speed or mobility is required. An understanding of what equipment will be used for during the life of the tires is required for proper selection. Tire selection can have a significant impact on production and unit cost. There are three types of off-the-road tires, "transport" for earthmoving machines, "work" for slow moving earthmoving machines, and "load and carry" for transporting as well as digging. Off-highway tires have six categories of service C compactor, E earthmover, G grader, L loader, LS log-skidder and ML mining and logging. Within these service categories are various tread types designed for use on hard-packed surface, soft surface and rock. Tires are a large expense on any construction project, careful consideration should be given to prevent excessive wear or damage.


title: Heavy equipment

text: A heavy equipment operator drives and operates heavy equipment used in engineering and construction projects. Typically only skilled workers may operate heavy equipment, and there is specialized training for learning to use heavy equipment.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Much publication about heavy equipment operators focuses on improving safety for such workers. The field of occupational medicine researches and makes recommendations about safety for these and other workers in safety-sensitive positions.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Due to the small profit margins on construction projects it is important to maintain accurate records concerning equipment utilization, repairs and maintenance. The two main categories of equipment costs are ownership cost and operating cost.


title: Heavy equipment

text: To classify as an ownership cost an expense must have been incurred regardless of if the equipment is used or not. These costs are as follows:


title: Heavy equipment

text: Depreciation can be calculated several ways, the simplest is the straight-line method. The annual depreciation is constant, reducing the equipment value annually. The following are simple equations paraphrased from the Peurifoy & Schexnayder text:


title: Heavy equipment

text: For an expense to be classified as an operating cost, it must be incurred through use of the equipment. These costs are as follows:


title: Heavy equipment

text: The biggest distinction from a cost standpoint is if a repair is classified as a "major repair" or a "minor repair". A major repair can change the depreciable equipment value due to an extension in service life, while a minor repair is normal maintenance. How a firm chooses to cost major and minor repairs vary from firm to firm depending on the costing strategies being used. Some firms will charge only major repairs to the equipment while minor repairs are costed to a project. Another common costing strategy is to cost all repairs to the equipment and only frequently replaced wear items are excluded from the equipment cost. Many firms keep their costing structure closely guarded as it can impact the bidding strategies of their competition. In a company with multiple semi-independent divisions, the equipment department often wants to classify all repairs as "minor" and charge the work to a job – therefore improving their 'profit' from the equipment.


title: Heavy equipment

text: Die-cast metal promotional scale models of heavy equipment are often produced for each vehicle to give to prospective customers. These are typically in . The popular manufacturers of these models are Conrad and NZG in Germany, even for US vehicles.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Michael Paul Lookinland (born December 19, 1960) is an American actor and cameraman. He is best known for his role as the youngest brother, Bobby Brady, on the ABC sitcom "The Brady Bunch" from 1969 to 1974, and its many sequels and spinoffs.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland was born in Mount Pleasant, Utah to Paul (a principal at Steven White Junior High, Carson, California) and Karen Lookinland. Paul and Karen were residing in the Los Angeles area, but they were visiting family in Spring City over Christmas break 1960 when Michael was born. His grandfather was an administrator at LDS Hospital. He has two siblings: sister Theresa and brother Todd, who starred in "The Blue Bird" with Elizabeth Taylor. Todd would later appear in a "Brady Bunch" episode that served as the pilot for a spin-off series, "Kelly's Kids", about a husband and wife with three boys: one white, one black, and one Asian. The series was not bought.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Michael was raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He began working as an actor at age seven. By age nine, he had appeared in numerous television commercials for such products as toys, Cheerios cereal, and Band-Aid bandages.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland was a TV-commercial actor before he was cast in "The Brady Bunch," having done around thirty commercials. He had been offered two roles - Eddie on The Courtship of Eddie's Father and Bobby on The Brady Bunch; his parents chose the latter, feeling it would be healthier for him to be around other children closer to his age rather than an only child on an all-adult cast (the role of Eddie eventually went to Brandon Cruz). He has naturally sandy-colored, wavy hair. Because his hair color did not match TV-siblings Peter's or Greg's natural dark brown color, his was dyed dark brown and straightened. Occasionally, the lights on set were so hot that his dye would run down his face. During the last two seasons of "The Brady Bunch", his natural hair color was allowed to show.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland provided the voice of Oblio in the 1971 animated film "The Point!." Shortly after the final season of "The Brady Bunch" wrapped filming, he appeared alongside Jennifer Jones and Paul Newman in the 1974 disaster film blockbuster "The Towering Inferno" and on the 1970s TV show "The Secrets of Isis."


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland continued to reprise his role as Bobby Brady in the show's many sequels and spin-offs. In 1976, he was uninterested in participating in "The Brady Bunch Hour", so he asked for double the offered salary in hopes his role would be recast, however, instead his request was accepted and resulted in increased salaries for all cast members. He also reprised his role in the 1981 TV movie "The Brady Girls Get Married", the 1988 Christmas special "A Very Brady Christmas" and again in the 1990 sequel series "The Bradys", in which Bobby Brady was involved in a racing-car accident, which made him a wheelchair user throughout the series. Lookinland spent several years as a television camera operator and made an uncredited appearance in the 2000 TV movie "Growing Up Brady" as a camera operator filming an episode of "The Brady Bunch". He also joined with the other "Brady Bunch" cast in the 2019 television series "A Very Brady Renovation" on HGTV.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Having left show business, Lookinland operates a business (as of 2019) that makes decorative concrete in Salt Lake City, Utah. In 2021, Lookinland returned to the world of acting by starring in the Lifetime Christmas movie, "Blending Christmas", alongside his "Brady Bunch" co-stars Barry Williams, Christopher Knight, Susan Olsen, and Robbie Rist.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: In 2022, Lookinland, Knight, and Williams competed in season eight of "The Masked Singer" as "Mummies". They were eliminated on "TV Theme Night" alongside Daymond John as "Fortune Teller".


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland graduated from Chadwick School in 1978, an independent school located in Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles, California. During the Brady Bunch years, he also attended Hollywood Professional School alongside his TV siblings Maureen McCormick, Christopher Knight and Susan Olsen. After graduating from high school, Lookinland wanted to leave Los Angeles, so he moved to Salt Lake City, Utah to attend the University of Utah, but dropped out in order to pursue a career as a production assistant and camera operator.


title: Mike Lookinland

text: He wed on May 1, 1987, Kelly Wermuth (born 1962), an occasional actress. Together, they have two children, sons Scott Michael Lookinland (born July 6, 1990), who portrayed him in "Growing Up Brady" (2000), and Joseph Kelly "Joe" Lookinland (born August 6, 1993), both born in Utah. The two worked together, with Lookinland as a production assistant and Wermuth as an extra on "" and "".


title: Mike Lookinland

text: Lookinland is a self-described Deadhead, having attended more than 100 Grateful Dead concerts and shows. In 1989, the California skate rock band Wonderful Broken Thing recorded their debut full-length album "Looking For Mike Lookinland"; several songs from this album were featured on the H-Street video "Hokus Pokus."


title: Mike Lookinland

text: On November 9, 1997, shortly after 7:30 p.m., after leaving the set of the TV series "Promised Land" in St. George, Utah, where he worked as first assistant cameraman, Lookinland was driving in his 1990 Ford Bronco on Utah State Route 18, 35 miles north of St. George, when he looked down to adjust the radio as he was approached a curve and drifted onto the left shoulder. He then overcorrected when trying to steer back onto the pavement and rolled at least two times off the right side of the road. His blood alcohol content was 0.258, more than three times over Utah's legal limit of 0.08. After being treated for cuts and bruises at Dixie Regional Medical Center, he was booked into Washington County Jail, but released on a $1,550 bail. In December, he completed court-ordered rehabilitation service and on May 27, 1998, was sentenced to 24 hours of community service and fined $1,500. He cited this incident as having inspired him to stop drinking.


title: Pixiv

text: Starting as the idea of the programmer Takahiro Kamitani, who is himself an artist known as Bakotsu on the website, Pixiv was launched on September 10, 2007, as a beta test. When the number of users exceeded 10,000 only nineteen days after launch, it became difficult for Kamitani to maintain Pixiv on his own, leading him to establish Crooc Inc. on October 1, 2007. The website underwent a major upgrade on December 18, 2007, into what is similar to the current version of the website. While the website was originally only available in Japanese, Chinese was the first additional language offered due to an increasing tendency of international registrants from Taiwan and China; there is also an increasing number of registrants from the United States and South Korea. In 2009, an English-language version was considered to be the lowest in terms of priority, but was later established in early 2011. Internationalization of the website continued with the addition of French, Korean, Russian and Thai. Certain European countries with a high number of hits on the website such as Germany and Italy will also be considered. The management company Crooc was renamed Pixiv Inc. on November 1, 2008. The CEO of Pixiv Inc. is Takanori Katagiri.


title: Pixiv

text: A free membership is required in order to browse the website. Pixiv's main concept is for users to submit their own art illustrations, which excludes most forms of photography; creative writing can also be submitted. Users can participate in a social network where one can rate contributions, leave comments on art pieces, and change tags on any entry. Due to the flexibility of tags, users can start impromptu user-generated participation events where users submit art related to a common specific subject. Each user has a personal bulletin board system where other users can leave messages. One can also respond to images with another image, known as an "image response". Pixiv differentiates itself from its most notable western counterpart, DeviantArt, in that it permits hardcore pornography to be posted on the site, albeit with genitals censored so as to conform with Japanese obscenity laws. Images such as these, or other images not suitable for children such as grotesque images, are separated from the other content through two filters which can be turned on or off via the user's profile. Both of these filters, the first preventing the user from seeing any adult content and the second hiding grotesque ("R18-G") content, are enabled by default and as such unregistered users cannot view adult works. The majority of contributions are of anime, manga, and video game fan art, or of original art which resembles these art forms. The website's global policy includes protecting the privacy of all Pixiv users, and refraining from posting others' works, reprinting others' works without permission, and advertising for commerce. The current English slogan is "It's fun drawing!" but earlier versions used a literal translation of the Japanese slogan as "A place where drawing becomes more enjoyable." This explains the subtitle "Pixiv, the online artist's community, aims to be that place."


title: Pixiv

text: Formal events are periodically held on Pixiv to gather participation in formal events revolving around a common theme depending on the time of year; these events revolve around the user-submitted artwork. Throughout the year, seasonal events occur, such as tie-ins with the holidays Halloween, Christmas, New Years, and "Tanabata". For a fixed period of time, a section of the website is dedicated to these seasonal submissions, and aspects of the website such as the logo design and star-rating system are altered; for example, the stars are pumpkins during the Halloween-tie in event. On and thereafter the Tanabata event in mid-2008, prizes are offered by either sponsors or from Pixiv itself for participants in the event whose art proves to be popular with the community. Other than during seasonal events, sponsors can also work with Pixiv on PR events, again offering prizes to the users with the most popular works. Pixiv has held an event called "Doodle 4 Pixiv", an event inspired by Google's Doodle4Google competition where participating members take the Pixiv logo and modify it in some way.


title: Pixiv

text: Before the Comiket 73 convention in December 2007, users set up a "Pixiv Edition C73 Catalog" on the website via the tags on the images, and following this Pixiv began setting up a section of the website for members participating at Comiket starting in preparation for Comiket 74 in August 2008. This enables users to search through a catalog by "dōjin" circles and by username which also includes information on where in the convention center a user's circle is located. Along the same lines, due to the high level of Touhou Project fan art contributions to the website (about 3.9% of all submissions), Pixiv also sets up a similar catalog for the annual Reitaisai "Touhou" convention.


title: Pixiv

text: When the top page of Pixiv is viewed when not logged in, a random selection of the newest highly rated contributions to the website are previewed as thumbnails. A set of tags from the most recent submissions is shown in a tag cloud under the illustrations. When logged in, six of the newest illustrations are previewed at the top, and several top-three rankings are shown including daily, popular among men, rookie, and original for illustrations, and a daily ranking for written contributions. Other rankings not on the top page include weekly, monthly, and popular among women. Tag clouds are displayed, as well as official events and new illustrations from favorited artists. A random selection of a user's favorite artists, linking to their user pages, can be viewed under the user's profile image on the left. Two links are available to a user to review their past evaluations and comments left on images. A link to go to the adult version of the top page is available as well, if enabled.


title: Pixiv

text: On a given user's user page, the user's three most-recent submissions are previewed as thumbnails, along with the user's three most recently bookmarked images, and the three most-recent image responses by the user who responded to another user's submissions. A selection of a user's favorite artists is available, with links to the full lists of artists divided between "favorite users" and "my picks". A short profile detailing the artist's basic information, such as nickname, birthday, sex, and location, is available, along with a short self-introduction. An additional profile detailing an artist's computer workspace is also available. Each user has a profile image used to distinguish the artist which appears above their username on their user page. Each user is given a simple, personal BBS which the user, or anyone else, can write comments on with a limit of 140 characters, and only the 60 most-recent entries are available for viewing.


title: Pixiv

text: A user can submit an unlimited number of images, though a user must wait five minutes between submissions. When searching for contributions, the number of users who bookmarked a given image will appear under the thumbnail as "# users" in blue, and the number of users who gave an image response to a given image will also appear under the thumbnail as "# res" in red. If a submitted image is larger than 600x600 pixels, the image will appear as a 600-pixel length image on the image's page which, when clicked, will open up a new browser window or tab containing the full image. It is possible for a user to evaluate each submission once per 24-hour period with a scale of star-shaped icons from one to ten (low to high). The number of times an image has been evaluated, the sum score, and the number of times an image has been viewed are posted above the stars. A summary of the image written by the artist appears above the image with its title.


title: Pixiv

text: It is possible to make a short comment on an image with a limit of 140 characters; the 20 most-recent comments are posted, and it is possible for a user to delete their own comments. A set of tags are attached to each image which can be edited by any Pixiv user, and any tag can be added, even overly specific tags containing full sentences; however, only ten tags per image are allowed. If a submission received an image response, the five most-recent image responses are previewed as thumbnails under the comment input line with a link to the full list of image responses. Previews of submissions can be embedded into other websites such as blogs which link back to the image's page on Pixiv.


title: Pixiv

text: Tags are an important feature of Pixiv which enable images to be grouped together in common themes and subjects. While each image is only allowed ten tags, the artist who posted a given image can choose which tags to lock or unlock; if a given tag is unlocked, any user can remove or alter the tag. Any user can add in additional tags, and it is possible to report any unpleasant or defamatory tags. A section of the website contains a list of the top 5,000 used tags on the website, with the most-used tags at the top; the two most-used tags are "Touhou" and "original" with over 1 million submissions each. Another section of the website lists the number of users who have images with common tags; for example, the "original" tag is used the most by users. There are advanced search options to search for images by size, aspect ratio, and tools used.


title: Pixiv

text: It is possible to bookmark favorite images and have them easily available for viewing via a user's user page. The bookmarks are organized by tags, and a short comment on the image can be added by the bookmarker. The number of images one can bookmark is unrestricted, and the images are listed by either newest-first or oldest-first. The images bookmarked by a user are available for any user to view. A user can add other users to their "favorite users", which can either be public or private, and are listed by most-recently added. A user can add their friends as "my picks" (or "my Pixiv") which is shown in a public listing organized by the order in which the members joined Pixiv starting with the earliest.


title: Pixiv

text: Launched on April 1, 2009, users can pay a fee of 525 yen per month to obtain an upgraded account known as Pixiv Premium. Users with premium accounts are given various special privileges, such as trying new services earlier than other members, sorting search results by popularity, and getting preferential treatment in the events organized through the website.


title: Pixiv

text: Premium users are given 2,000 Pixiv Points (abbreviated pp) per month, which users give to others they like and support via a "goodP" button visible on each user's user page. It is possible to send anywhere between 10 and 500 points at a time. A third party not related to the exchange of points between two users will not be aware any points were exchanged; they are meant as a private feature between two users to show thanks or gratitude. If any points gained within any 30-day period are not used in one year's time, the points expire. There are plans to use the points to exchange them for original Pixiv goods.


title: Pixiv

text: Premium members can make use of the event community portion of the website which allows users to organize events off-site. Only premium users can organize the events, but any Pixiv member can view the events in a public calendar, and any member can join any of the events. All of the events are for members of Pixiv to meet offline in user-organized events to showcase art, "dōjinshi", or anything else Pixiv-related. Events can only be planned up to three months in advance, and each premium member can only organize one event at a time, though can join however many one wishes. Only Pixiv-related events can be organized in the event community, and if any event which is found to be unsuitable will be removed. Up to three people can be given co-managerial status on Pixiv for an event.


title: Pixiv

text: The search feature on the website enables a user to search for images via their tags, or by their titles and captions. A random-tag search feature is available, which excludes the adult images, where a set of forty images are displayed as thumbnails. Users can be found via a specific search feature which searches for matches with users' profiles. It is possible to message other users with a 10–10,000 character limit. A mobile phone version of the website is available called Pixiv Mobile or for short.


title: Pixiv

text: Between February 27 and March 1, 2009, Pixiv held their first convention, Pixiv Festa, at the East Design Festa Gallery in Omotesandō, Tokyo, Japan. The event consisted of several exhibitions by 145 different artists. Participants could freely interact with the art exhibits in the three ways one can interact on the website: via rating an image from one to ten (low to high) stars, making comments about an image, or having the ability to change tags on any entry. Participants were given a set of gold star-shaped stickers which they could place below any of the art pieces, showing their satisfaction or lack thereof by not placing any stars. Each of the art pieces was hung with a comment book that people could write anything they wanted in, critiquing the art pieces. Finally, participants were given a set of blank tags that they could write anything they wanted on, and attach below a given art piece; each art piece had ten spots to place tags on.


title: Pixiv

text: Further attractions included an area where participants could draw art pieces and get feedback from others, and a "Pixiv Zone" on the second floor which contained an exhibit chronicling the -year history of Pixiv. Each participant was also given a quiz sheet regarding Pixiv trivia whose answers could be found in the Pixiv Zone. People who completed the quiz, and got at least twenty-five of thirty questions correct would receive special gifts while supplies lasted. The second Pixiv Festa convention was held in the same place between July 11–12, 2009. For the third Pixiv Festa held between June 12–13, 2010, both the East and West Design Festa Galleries were used for the convention. The fourth Pixiv Festa was held between October 16–17, 2010.


title: Pixiv

text: Pixiv held an event called Pixiv Market on November 15, 2009, at the Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake, Tokyo, Japan. The event was similar to Comiket where participants were able to sell and distribute their works of art, whether they were single illustrations or entire "dōjinshi". The application period for Pixiv Premium members was held between July 31 and August 12, 2009, and the application period for regular Pixiv members was held between August 25 and September 10, 2009. About 200 booths were set up for the event.


title: Pixiv

text: In addition to the website Pixiv, Pixiv Inc. began to develop the idea of expanding Pixiv beyond its website's boundaries while being able to use a user's Pixiv account for other peripheral services. In October 2008, Pixiv Inc. launched an oekaki Internet forum called Drawr, which anyone with a Pixiv account can use. The website uses a Flash-based system to enable users to draw art via a web application. Other users can submit art replies to any art piece; there is no interface for text entry. Unlike Pixiv, there is no search feature as there are no tags available, and it is not required to sign-up or login to Drawr to browse the entries. On Drawr, users can create threads where users submit art on a common theme, or add to the image which started the thread.


title: Pixiv

text: In collaboration with Twitter, Pixiv Inc. launched a web service in July 2009 called DrawTwit, which anyone with a Twitter account can use and allows users to draw artwork and post them to Twitter. Others can comments on the artwork with either writing a 110-character limit or drawing a 140-brush stroke limit image response (in the same spirit as Twitter's limit of 140 characters per tweet). DrawTwit was originally a temporary service available during maintenance of the Pixiv website on July 16, 2009, but the service proved popular enough to develop into its own entity. In collaboration with Livedoor, a blogging service called Pixiv Blog was launched on April 23, 2009, which anyone with a Pixiv account can use. A Pixiv wiki called Pixiv Encyclopedia was launched on November 10, 2009, as a way to index and define the more than 1.6 million different tags used on Pixiv, which anyone with a Pixiv account can use. An English-language version of the encyclopedia and an English-language official Twitter account started in May 2011. An oekaki chat service called Pixiv Chat was launched on December 15, 2009, for users to draw oekaki art while in a chat room.


title: Pixiv

text: In collaboration with Enterbrain, Pixiv began to produce an online magazine entitled on April 20, 2009. The magazine contains information pertaining to the Pixiv community, and useful information for its users. This includes news articles on latest Pixiv news, how-to articles, interviews with popular artists on the website, and columns, including other things. Also, the magazine covers proactive activities artists on the website are doing related to the website such as the holding of art exhibitions. Also in collaboration with Enterbrain, a magazine titled "Quarterly Pixiv" will begin publication on May 28, 2010, containing material similar to that in "Pixiv Tsūshin".


title: Pixiv

text: Pixiv also launched Pawoo, an instance of the decentralized open source social media network Mastodon, for its artist community. Pawoo Music, another Mastodon instance focusing on music services, was also launched. In July 2019, Pixiv announced it would shutdown Pawoo Music on August 31, and end support for Pawoo's mobile Mastodon application. The Pawoo instance would still be kept operating. Pawoo is banned by most instances on Mastodon due to allowing art.


title: Pixiv

text: In December 2016, Pixiv launched the initial version of pixivFanbox as a service to connect creators and fans. At the time, pixivFanbox offered blog-like features to creators, allowing them to publish content through auto-renewal subscription or pay-per-article. In April 2018, pixivFanbox was reworked, opening up registration for anyone on Pixiv. Payment plans were changed into monthly subscription plans, and creators were now able to set the number of support plans and the amount to pledge. The rework was made to allow the "fan community to support artists and creative activities." In April 2020, pixivFanbox celebrated its second anniversary, receiving its own domain name at fanbox.cc. With the update, creators were also able to set and share their own custom creator URL.


title: Pixiv

text: The self-styled modern art group was suspected of collaborating with top-level management at Pixiv, though Pixiv later denied any connection to the group. Takanori Katagiri and Chaos Lounge deliberately used art solicited from a Pixiv contest in their own modern art collages. In these collages, visitors to the gallery were encouraged to "slowly trample upon" the images strewn out around the floor. When Pixiv users complained that their work was being used inappropriately, Pixiv took no action to punish or suspend the accounts of Chaos Lounge or Takanori Katagiri. The controversy has created a mass exodus of frustrated artists from Pixiv to alternative art-centric sites such as Tinami and Pixa (now Egakuba). Traffic from the influx of frustrated Pixiv users has increased by as much as 50 times the normal rate for these sites, causing many of them to buckle under the weight of new users and go offline for maintenance. On July 27, 2011, Pixiv formally apologized on their website, promising to improve their management practices in the future.


title: Pixiv

text: In June 2018, a former member of the idol girl group Niji no Conquistador filed a lawsuit against Pixiv representative director, Hiroaki Nagata (as well as Niji no Conquistador's management companies Dear Stage, Animate, and Pixiv), for voyeurism and sexual harassment during her time with the group. Nagata filed a counter lawsuit against her for libel. He then resigned following the lawsuit. On February 10, 2020, the Tokyo District Court dismissed Nagata's claims and ordered him to pay to the woman in damages.


title: Pixiv

text: On May 27, 2022, Bengo4 reported a transgender woman filed a lawsuit against Pixiv and her boss for sexual harassment taking place as early as 2018, asking for in damages. In addition, several female and transgender employees also reported being sexually harassed by their bosses in the company. The incident sparked discussion among Pixiv users, many of whom have decided to delete or hide their works on the website. On May 30, 2022, Pixiv released a statement of regret, acknowledging that disciplinary action was being taken. In the same statement, they mentioned that, in 2019, the perpetrator was demoted, had his pay cut, and was banned from approaching the victim.


The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C. It is responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources, and the administration of programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, territorial affairs, and insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. About 75% of federal public land is managed by the department, with most of the remainder managed by the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. The department was created on March 3, 1849.


title: United States Department of the Interior

text: The department is headed by the secretary of the interior, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current secretary is Deb Haaland.


text: Despite its name, the Department of the Interior has a different role from that of the interior ministries of other nations, which are usually responsible for police matters and internal security. In the United States, national security and immigration functions are performed by the Department of Homeland Security primarily and the Department of Justice secondarily. The Department of the Interior has often been humorously called "the Department of Everything Else" because of its broad range of responsibilities.


text: A department for domestic concern was first considered by the 1st United States Congress in 1789, but those duties were placed in the Department of State. The idea of a separate domestic department continued to percolate for a half-century and was supported by presidents from James Madison to James Polk. The 1846–48 Mexican–American War gave the proposal new steam as the responsibilities of the federal government grew. Polk's secretary of the treasury, Robert J. Walker, became a vocal champion of creating the new department.


text: In 1849, Walker stated in his annual report that several federal offices were placed in departments with which they had little to do. He noted that the General Land Office had little to do with the Treasury and also highlighted the Indian Affairs office, part of the Department of War, and the Patent Office, part of the Department of State. Walker argued that these and other bureaus should be brought together in a new Department of the Interior. A bill authorizing its creation of the department passed the House of Representatives on February 15, 1849, and spent just over two weeks in the Senate. The department was established on March 3, 1849 (), the eve of President Zachary Taylor's inauguration, when the Senate voted 31 to 25 to create the department. Its passage was delayed by Democrats in Congress who were reluctant to create more patronage posts for the incoming Whig administration to fill. The first secretary of the interior was Thomas Ewing.


text: On Tuesday September 1, 2020, Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt signed Secretary’s Order 3384 establishing the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration (BTFA). The BTFA initially reported to the assistant secretary of Indian affairs Tara "Katuk" Sweeney and assumed responsibility for financial operations functions formerly performed by the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians (OST) effective October 1, 2020.


text: As of mid-2004, the department managed 507 million acres (2,050,000 km) of surface land, or about one-fifth of the land in the United States. It manages 476 dams and 348 reservoirs through the Bureau of Reclamation, 410 national parks, monuments, seashore sites, etc. through the National Park Service, and 544 national wildlife refuges through the Fish and Wildlife Service. Several of the domestic concerns the department originally dealt with were gradually transferred to other departments. For example, the Department of Interior was responsible for water pollution control prior to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Other agencies became separate departments, such as the Bureau of Agriculture, which later became the Department of Agriculture. However, land and natural resource management, American Indian affairs, wildlife conservation, and territorial affairs remain the responsibilities of the Department of the Interior. The department in January 2020 grounded its fleet of 810 DJI drones used to monitor wildlife and infrastructure over security concerns.


text: Within the Interior Department, the Bureau of Indian Affairs handles some federal relations with Native Americans, while others are handled by the Office of Special Trustee. The current acting assistant secretary for Indian affairs is Lawrence S. Roberts, an enrolled member of the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin.


text: The department has been the subject of disputes over proper accounting for Native American Trusts set up to track the income and distribution of monies that are generated by the trust and specific Native American lands, which the government leases for fees to companies that extract oil, timber, minerals, and other resources. Several cases have sought an accounting of such funds from departments within the Interior and Treasury (such as the Minerals Management Service), in what has been a 15-year-old lawsuit. Some Native American nations have also sued the government over water-rights issues and their treaties with the US. In 2010 Congress passed the Claims Settlement Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-291), which provided $3.4 billion for the settlement of the "Cobell v. Salazar" class-action trust case and four Native American water rights cases.


text: The $3.4 billion will be placed in a still-to-be-selected bank and $1.4 billion will go to individuals, mostly in the form of checks ranging from $500 to $1,500. A small group, such as members of the Osage tribe who benefit from huge Oklahoma oil revenues, will get far more, based on a formula incorporating their 10 highest years of income between 1985 and 2009. As important, $2 billion will be used to buy trust land from Native American owners at fair market prices, with the government finally returning the land to tribes. Nobody can be forced to sell.


text: On March 16, 2021, Deb Haaland, serving at that time as a member of Congress for New Mexico, took the oath of office as secretary, becoming the first Indigenous person to lead an executive department, and the third woman to lead the department.


text: DOI Convocation Honor Award is the most prestigious recognition that can be granted by the department.


text: Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall was implicated in the Teapot Dome scandal of 1921. He was convicted of bribery in 1929, and served one year in prison, for his part in the controversy. A major factor in the scandal was a transfer of certain oil leases from the jurisdiction of the Department of the Navy to that of the Department of the Interior, at Fall's behest.


text: Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt faced criticism for his alleged hostility to environmentalism, for his support of the development and use of federal lands by foresting, ranching, and other commercial interests, and for banning The Beach Boys from playing a 1983 Independence Day concert on the National Mall out of concerns of attracting "an undesirable element". His 1983 resignation was prompted by a speech in which he said about his staff: "I have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple. And we have talent."


text: Under the Administration of President George W. Bush, the Interior Department's maintenance backlog climbed from $5 billion to $8.7 billion, despite Bush's campaign pledges to eliminate it completely. Of the agency under Bush's leadership, Interior Department Inspector General Earl Devaney has cited a "culture of fear" and of "ethical failure." Devaney has also said, "Simply stated, short of a crime, anything goes at the highest levels of the Department of Interior."


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In business theory, disruptive innovation is innovation that creates a new market and value network or enters at the bottom of an existing market and eventually displaces established market-leading firms, products, and alliances. The concept was developed by the American academic Clayton Christensen and his collaborators beginning in 1995, and has been called the most influential business idea of the early 21st century. Lingfei Wu, Dashun Wang, and James A. Evans generalized this term to identify disruptive science and technological advances from more than 65 million papers, patents and software products that span the period 1954–2014. Their work was featured as the cover of the February 2019 issue of "Nature" and was selected as the Altmetric 100 most-discussed work in 2019.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Not all innovations are disruptive, even if they are revolutionary. For example, the first automobiles in the late 19th century were not a disruptive innovation, because early automobiles were expensive luxury items that did not disrupt the market for horse-drawn vehicles. The market for transportation essentially remained intact until the debut of the lower-priced Ford Model T in 1908. The "mass-produced" automobile was a disruptive innovation, because it changed the transportation market, whereas the first thirty years of automobiles did not.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Disruptive innovations tend to be produced by outsiders and entrepreneurs in startups, rather than existing market-leading companies. The business environment of market leaders does not allow them to pursue disruptive innovations when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). Small teams are more likely to create disruptive innovations than large teams. A disruptive process can take longer to develop than by the conventional approach and the risk associated to it is higher than the other more incremental, architectural or evolutionary forms of innovations, but once it is deployed in the market, it achieves a much faster penetration and higher degree of impact on the established markets.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Beyond business and economics disruptive innovations can also be considered to disrupt complex systems, including economic and business-related aspects. Through identifying and analyzing systems for possible points of intervention, one can then design changes focused on disruptive interventions.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: The term disruptive technologies was coined by Clayton M. Christensen and introduced in his 1995 article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave", which he cowrote with Joseph Bower. The article is aimed at both management executives who make the funding or purchasing decisions in companies, as well as the research community, which is largely responsible for introducing the disruptive vector to the consumer market. He describes the term further in his book "The Innovator's Dilemma". "Innovator's Dilemma" explored the case of the disk drive industry (the disk drive and memory industry, with its rapid technological evolution, is to the study of technology what fruit flies are to the study of genetics, as Christensen was told in the 1990s) and the excavating and Earth-moving industry (where hydraulic actuation slowly, yet eventually, displaced cable-actuated machinery). In his sequel with Michael E. Raynor, "The Innovator's Solution", Christensen replaced the term "disruptive technology" with "disruptive innovation" because he recognized that most technologies are not intrinsically disruptive or sustaining in character; rather, it is the "business model" that identifies the crucial idea that potentiates profound market success and subsequently serves as the disruptive vector. However, comprehending Christensen's business model, which takes the disruptive vector from the idea borne from the mind of the innovator to a marketable product, is central to understanding how novel technology facilitates the rapid destruction of established technologies and markets by the disruptor. Christensen and Mark W. Johnson, who cofounded the management consulting firm Innosight, described the dynamics of "business model innovation" in the 2008 "Harvard Business Review" article "Reinventing Your Business Model". The concept of disruptive technology continues a long tradition of identifying radical technological change in the study of innovation by economists, and its implementation and execution by its management at a corporate or policy level.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: According to Christensen, "the term 'disruptive innovation' is misleading when it is used to refer to the derivative, or 'instantaneous value', of the market behavior of the product or service, rather than the integral, or 'sum over histories', of the product's market behavior."


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In the late 1990s, the automotive sector began to embrace a perspective of "constructive disruptive technology" by working with the consultant David E. O'Ryan, whereby the use of current off-the-shelf technology was integrated with newer innovation to create what he called "an unfair advantage". The process or technology change as a whole had to be "constructive" in improving the current method of manufacturing, yet disruptively impact the whole of the business case model, resulting in a significant reduction of waste, energy, materials, labor, or legacy costs to the user.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In keeping with the insight that a persuasive advertising campaign can be just as effective as technological sophistication at bringing a successful product to market, Christensen's theory explains why many disruptive innovations are "not" advanced or useful technologies, which a default hypothesis would lead one to expect. Rather, they are often combinations of existing off-the-shelf components, applied shrewdly to a small, fledgling value network.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Online news site TechRepublic proposes an end using the term, and similar related terms, suggesting that, as of 2014, it is overused jargon.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Christensen continues to develop and refine the theory and has accepted that not all examples of disruptive innovation perfectly fit into his theory. For example, he conceded that originating in the low end of the market is not always a cause of disruptive innovation, but rather it fosters competitive business models, using Uber as an example. In an interview with Forbes magazine he stated:"Uber helped me realize that it isn’t that being at the bottom of the market is the causal mechanism, but that it’s correlated with a business model that is unattractive to its competitor".


title: Disruptive innovation

text: The current theoretical understanding of disruptive innovation is different from what might be expected by default, an idea that Clayton M. Christensen called the "technology mudslide hypothesis". This is the simplistic idea that an established firm fails because it doesn't "keep up technologically" with other firms. In this hypothesis, firms are like climbers scrambling upward on crumbling footing, where it takes constant upward-climbing effort just to stay still, and any break from the effort (such as complacency born of profitability) causes a rapid downhill slide. Christensen and colleagues have shown that this simplistic hypothesis is wrong; it doesn't model reality. What they have shown is that good firms are usually aware of the innovations, but their business environment does not allow them to pursue them when they first arise, because they are not profitable enough at first and because their development can take scarce resources away from that of sustaining innovations (which are needed to compete against current competition). In Christensen's terms, a firm's existing "value networks" place insufficient value on the disruptive innovation to allow its pursuit by that firm. Meanwhile, start-up firms inhabit different value networks, at least until the day that their disruptive innovation is able to invade the older value network. At that time, the established firm in that network can at best only fend off the market share attack with a me-too entry, for which survival (not thriving) is the only reward.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In the technology mudslide hypothesis, Christensen differentiated disruptive innovation from sustaining innovation. He explained that the latter's goal is to improve existing product performance. On the other hand, he defines a disruptive innovation as a product or service designed for a new set of customers.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Christensen also noted that products considered as disruptive innovations tend to skip stages in the traditional product design and development process to quickly gain market traction and competitive advantage. He argued that disruptive innovations can hurt successful, well-managed companies that are responsive to their customers and have excellent research and development. These companies tend to ignore the markets most susceptible to disruptive innovations, because the markets have very tight profit margins and are too small to provide a good growth rate to an established (sizable) firm. Thus, disruptive technology provides an example of an instance when the common business-world advice to "focus on the customer" (or "stay close to the customer", or "listen to the customer") can be strategically counterproductive.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: While Christensen argued that disruptive innovations can hurt successful, well-managed companies, O'Ryan countered that "constructive" integration of existing, new, and forward-thinking innovation could improve the economic benefits of these same well-managed companies, once decision-making management understood the systemic benefits as a whole.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Christensen distinguishes between "low-end disruption", which targets customers who do not need the full performance valued by customers at the high end of the market, and "new-market disruption", which targets customers who have needs that were previously unserved by existing incumbents.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: "Low-end disruption" occurs when the rate at which products improve exceeds the rate at which customers can adopt the new performance. Therefore, at some point the performance of the product overshoots the needs of certain customer segments. At this point, a disruptive technology may enter the market and provide a product that has lower performance than the incumbent but that exceeds the requirements of certain segments, thereby gaining a foothold in the market.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In low-end disruption, the disruptor is focused initially on serving the least profitable customer, who is happy with a good enough product. This type of customer is not willing to pay premium for enhancements in product functionality. Once the disruptor has gained a foothold in this customer segment, it seeks to improve its profit margin. To get higher profit margins, the disruptor needs to enter the segment where the customer is willing to pay a little more for higher quality. To ensure this quality in its product, the disruptor needs to innovate. The incumbent will not do much to retain its share in a not-so-profitable segment, and will move up-market and focus on its more attractive customers. After a number of such encounters, the incumbent is squeezed into smaller markets than it was previously serving. And then, finally, the disruptive technology meets the demands of the most profitable segment and drives the established company out of the market.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: "New market disruption" occurs when a product fits a new or emerging market segment that is not being served by existing incumbents in the industry. Some scholars note that the creation of a new market is a defining feature of disruptive innovation, particularly in the way it tend to improve products or services differently in comparison to normal market drivers. It initially caters to a niche market and proceeds on defining the industry over time once it is able to penetrate the market or induce consumers to defect from the existing market into the new market it created.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: The extrapolation of the theory to all aspects of life has been challenged, as has the methodology of relying on selected case studies as the principal form of evidence. Jill Lepore points out that some companies identified by the theory as victims of disruption a decade or more ago, rather than being defunct, remain dominant in their industries today (including Seagate Technology, U.S. Steel, and Bucyrus). Lepore questions whether the theory has been oversold and misapplied, as if it were able to explain everything in every sphere of life, including not just business but education and public institutions.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: In 2009, Milan Zeleny described high technology as disruptive technology and raised the question of what is being disrupted. The answer, according to Zeleny, is the "support network" of high technology. For example, introducing electric cars disrupts the support network for gasoline cars (network of gas and service stations). Such disruption is fully expected and therefore effectively resisted by support net owners. In the long run, high (disruptive) technology bypasses, upgrades, or replaces the outdated support network.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Questioning the concept of a disruptive technology, Haxell (2012) questions how such technologies get named and framed, pointing out that this is a positioned and retrospective act.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Technology, being a form of social relationship, always evolves. No technology remains fixed. Technology starts, develops, persists, mutates, stagnates, and declines, just like living organisms. The evolutionary life cycle occurs in the use and development of any technology. A new high-technology core emerges and challenges existing technology support nets (TSNs), which are thus forced to coevolve with it. New versions of the core are designed and fitted into an increasingly appropriate TSN, with smaller and smaller high-technology effects. High technology becomes regular technology, with more efficient versions fitting the same support net. Finally, even the efficiency gains diminish, emphasis shifts to product tertiary attributes (appearance, style), and technology becomes TSN-preserving appropriate technology. This technological equilibrium state becomes established and fixated, resisting being interrupted by a technological mutation; then new high technology appears and the cycle is repeated.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: The World Bank's 2019 World Development Report on "The Changing Nature of Work" examines how technology shapes the relative demand for certain skills in labor markets and expands the reach of firms - robotics and digital technologies, for example, enable firms to automate, replacing labor with machines to become more efficient, and innovate, expanding the number of tasks and products. Joseph Bower explained the process of how disruptive technology, through its requisite support net, dramatically transforms a certain industry.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: For example, the automobile was high technology with respect to the horse carriage; however, it evolved into technology and finally into appropriate technology with a stable, unchanging TSN. The main high-technology advance in the offing is some form of electric car—whether the energy source is the sun, hydrogen, water, air pressure, or traditional charging outlet. Electric cars preceded the gasoline automobile by many decades and are now returning to replace the traditional gasoline automobile. The printing press was a development that changed the way that information was stored, transmitted, and replicated. This allowed empowered authors but it also promoted censorship and information overload in writing technology.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Social media could be considered a disruptive innovation within sports. More specifically, the way that news in sports circulates nowadays versus the pre-internet era where sports news was mainly on T.V., radio, and newspapers. Social media has created a new market for sports that was not around before in the sense that players and fans have instant access to information related to sports.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: High technology is a technology core that changes the very architecture (structure and organization) of the components of the technology support net. High technology therefore transforms the qualitative nature of the TSN's tasks and their relations, as well as their requisite physical, energy, and information flows. It also affects the skills required, the roles played, and the styles of management and coordination—the organizational culture itself.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: This kind of technology core is different from regular technology core, which preserves the qualitative nature of flows and the structure of the support and only allows users to perform the same tasks in the same way, but faster, more reliably, in larger quantities, or more efficiently. It is also different from appropriate technology core, which preserves the TSN itself with the purpose of technology implementation and allows users to do the same thing in the same way at comparable levels of efficiency, instead of improving the efficiency of performance.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: However, not all modern technologies are high technologies. They have to be used as such, function as such, and be embedded in their requisite TSNs. They have to empower the individual because only through the individual can they empower knowledge. Not all information technologies have integrative effects. Some information systems are still designed to improve the traditional hierarchy of command and thus preserve and entrench the existing TSN. The administrative model of management, for instance, further aggravates the division of task and labor, further specializes knowledge, separates management from workers, and concentrates information and knowledge in centers.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: As knowledge surpasses capital, labor, and raw materials as the dominant economic resource, technologies are also starting to reflect this shift. Technologies are rapidly shifting from centralized hierarchies to distributed networks. Nowadays knowledge does not reside in a super-mind, super-book, or super-database, but in a complex relational pattern of networks brought forth to coordinate human action.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: Internal audit plays a critical role maintaining effective control mitigating emerging risks. Businesses will increase risk or bypass opportunity if auditors do not address disruption-related risks. Michael G. Alles has discussed that Big Data is a disruptive innovation that auditors must incorporate in practice. A 2019 study, "Internal Auditors' Response to Disruptive Innovation", reports on the evolution of internal audit to react to changes. Disruptions examined include data analytics, agile processes, cloud computing, robotic process automation, continuous auditing, regulatory change, and artificial intelligence.


title: Disruptive innovation

text: A proactive approach to addressing the challenge posited by disruptive innovations has been debated by scholars. Petzold criticized the lack of acknowledgment of underlying process of the change to study the disruptive innovation over time from a process view and complexify the concept to support the understanding of its unfolding and advance its manageability. Keeping in view the multidimensional nature of disruptive innovation a measurement framework has been developed by Guo to enable a systemic assessment of disruptive potential of innovations, providing insights for the decisions in product/service launch and resource allocation. Middle managers play an important role in long term sustainability of any firm and thus have been studied to have a proactive role in exploitation of the disruptive innovation process.