title: Long Island City

text: The Standard Motor Products headquarters, a manufacturing site producing items like distributor caps, was once located in the industrial neighborhood of Long Island City until purchased by Acuman Partners in 2008 for $40 million. The Standard Motor Products Building was put on the market by Acuman in 2014 and acquired by RXR Realty, LLC for $110 million. The former factory built in 1919 now houses the Jim Henson Company, Society Awards, and a commercial rooftop farm run by Brooklyn Grange.


title: Long Island City

text: High-rise housing is being built on a former Pepsi-Cola site on the East River. From June 2002 to September 2004, the former Swingline Staplers plant was the temporary headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art. Other former factories in Long Island City include Fisher Electronics, Marantz and Chiclets Gum. Long Island City's turn-of-the-century district of residential towers, called Queens West, is located along the East River, just north of the LIRR's Long Island City Station. Redevelopment in Queens West reflects the intent to have the area as a major residential area in New York City, with its high-rise residences very close to public transportation, making it convenient for commuters to travel to Manhattan by ferry or subway. The first tower, the 42-floor Citylights, opened in 1998 with an elementary school at the base. Others have been completed since then and more are being planned or under construction.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City contains several of the tallest buildings in Queens. The One Court Square, formerly the Citicorp Building, was built in 1990 on Courthouse Square; it is the second tallest building in Queens and the third-tallest on Long Island, and was Queens' tallest building until 2019. The tallest building in both Queens and Long Island, the Skyline Tower one block away, was architecturally topped-out in October 2019. Yet another skyscraper, the Queens Plaza Park, is under construction at Queens Plaza and will become the tallest skyscraper in Queens and Long Island when complete.


title: Long Island City

text: The Queensbridge Houses, a public-housing complex, comprises over 3,000 units, making it the largest such complex in North America.


title: Long Island City

text: Eagle Electric, now known as Cooper Wiring Devices, was one of the last major factories in the area, before it moved to China; Plant No. 7, which was the largest of their factories and housed their corporate offices, is being converted to residential luxury lofts.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City is currently home to the largest fortune cookie factory in the United States, owned by Wonton Foods and producing four million fortune cookies a day. Lucky numbers included on fortunes in the company's cookies led to 110 people across the United States winning $100,000 each in a May 2005 drawing for Powerball.


title: Long Island City

text: The Brooks Brothers tie manufacturing factory, which employs 122 people and produces more than 1.5 million ties per year, has operated in Long Island City since 1999.


title: Long Island City

text: In spring 2010, JetBlue Airways announced it was moving its headquarters from Forest Hills to Long Island City, also incorporating the jobs from its Darien, Connecticut, office. The airline, which operates its largest hub at JFK Airport, also operates from LaGuardia Airport, and made the Brewster Building in Queens Plaza its home. The airline moved there around mid-2012.


title: Long Island City

text: In November 2018, news media claimed that Amazon.com was in final talks with the government of New York State to construct one of two campuses for its proposed Amazon HQ2 at Queens West in Long Island City. The other campus would be located at National Landing in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia. Both campuses would have 25,000 workers. The selection was confirmed by Amazon on November 13, 2018. On February 14, 2019, Amazon announced it was pulling out, citing unexpected opposition from local lawmakers and unions.


title: Long Island City

text: In 1870, the villages of Astoria, Ravenswood, Hunters Point, Dutch Kills, Middletown, Sunnyside, Blissville, and Bowery Bay were incorporated into Long Island City.


title: Long Island City

text: Dutch Kills was a hamlet, named for its navigable tributary of Newtown Creek, that occupied what today is Queens Plaza. Dutch Kills was an important road hub during the American Revolutionary War, and the site of a British Army garrison from 1776 to 1783. The area supported farms during the 19th century. The tributary of the same name connected to Sunswick Creek at its north end, which facilitated commerce in the region. The canalization of Newtown Creek and the Kills at the end of the 19th century intensified industrial development of the area, which prospered until the middle of the 20th century. The neighborhood is currently undergoing a massive rezoning of mixed residential and commercial properties.


title: Long Island City

text: Blissville, which has the ZIP Code 11101, is a neighborhood within Long Island City, located at and bordered by Calvary Cemetery to the east; the Long Island Expressway to the north; Newtown Creek to the south; and Dutch Kills, a tributary of Newtown Creek, to the west. Blissville was named after Neziah Bliss, who owned most of the land in the 1830s and 1840s. Bliss built the first version of what was known for many years as the Blissville Bridge, a drawbridge over Newtown Creek, connecting Greenpoint, Brooklyn and Blissville; it was replaced in the 20th century by the Greenpoint Avenue Bridge, also called the J. J. Byrne Memorial Bridge, located slightly upstream. Blissville existed as a small village until 1870 when it was incorporated into Long Island City. Historically an industrial neighborhood, it has Triangle 54, a small park with a monument at 54th Avenue and 48th Street.


title: Long Island City

text: Hunters Point is located on the south side of Long Island City, along Newtown Creek. The area took the name Hunters Point in 1825, named after British sea captain George Hunter whose family operated the site as a 210-acre farm.


title: Long Island City

text: It contains the Hunters Point Historic District, a national historic district that includes 19 contributing buildings along 45th Avenue between 21st and 23rd Streets. They are a set of townhouses built in the late 19th century. The historic district was created by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1968, and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.


title: Long Island City

text: Woodside, Sunnyside, and Long Island City are patrolled by the 108th Precinct of the NYPD, located at 5-47 50th Avenue. The 108th Precinct ranked 25th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 19 per 100,000 people, Sunnyside and Woodside's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 163 per 100,000 people is lower than that of the city as a whole.


title: Long Island City

text: The 108th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 88.2% between 1990 and 2018. The precinct reported 2 murders, 12 rapes, 90 robberies, 108 felony assaults, 109 burglaries, 490 grand larcenies, and 114 grand larcenies auto in 2018.


title: Long Island City

text: Formerly, Engine Company 261/Ladder Company 116 was located at 37-20 29th Street, until it was closed in 2003 as a cost-saving measure.


title: Long Island City

text: , preterm births are more common in southern Long Island City than in other places citywide, but are less common in northern Long Island City; births to teenage mothers are less common than citywide in both areas. In northern Long Island City, there were 84 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 15.1 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide). In southern Long Island City, there were 90 preterm births per 1,000 live births, and 14.9 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births. Long Island City has a high population of residents who are uninsured. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 12% in Community Board 1 and 16% in Community Board 2, compared to the citywide rate of 12%.


title: Long Island City

text: The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, is in northern Long Island City and in southern Long Island City. Nineteen percent of Community Board 1 residents and fourteen percent of Community Board 2 residents are smokers, compared to the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In Community Board 1, 19% of residents are obese, 11% are diabetic, and 29% have high blood pressure—compared to the citywide averages of 24%, 11%, and 28% respectively. In Community Board 2, 20% of residents are obese, 9% are diabetic, and 23% have high blood pressure. In addition, 22% of children in northern Long Island City and 19% of children in southern Long Island City are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.


title: Long Island City

text: Eighty-nine percent of Community Board 1 residents and ninety-two percent of Community Board 2 residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is higher than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 79% of residents in both areas described their health as "good", "very good", or "excellent", slightly higher than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket, there are 17 bodegas in southern Long Island City and 10 in northern Long Island City.


title: Long Island City

text: The nearest large hospitals in the area are the Elmhurst Hospital Center in Elmhurst and the Mount Sinai Hospital of Queens in Astoria.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City is covered by ZIP Code 11101. The United States Post Office operates the Long Island City Station at 46-02 21st Street.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City generally has a slightly higher ratio of college-educated residents than the rest of the city . In Community Board 1, half of residents (50%) have a college education or higher, while 16% have less than a high school education and 33% are high school graduates or have some college education. In Community Board 2, 45% of residents age 25 and older have a college education or higher, 19% have less than a high school education and 35% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 39% of Queens residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of Community Board 1 students excelling in math rose from 43 percent in 2000 to 65 percent in 2011, and reading achievement rose from 47% to 49% during the same time period. Similarly, the percentage of Community Board 2 students excelling in math rose from 40% in to 65%, and reading achievement rose from 45% to 49%, during the same time period.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is about equal to the rest of New York City. Nineteen percent of elementary school students in Community Board 1 and eleven percent in Community Board 2 missed twenty or more days per school year, less than the citywide average of 20%. Additionally, 78% of high school students in Community Board 1 and 86% of high school students in Community Board 2 graduate on time, more than the citywide average of 75%.


title: Long Island City

text: The New York City Department of Education operates a facility in Long Island City housing the Office of School Support Services and several related departments.


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City is served by the New York City Department of Education. Long Island City is zoned to:


title: Long Island City

text: Long Island City is home to numerous high schools, some of which offer specializations, as indicated below. These specialized schools are not to be confused with the elite specialized high schools. Rather, these schools offer programs that are included at specialized high schools.


title: Long Island City

text: The Queens Public Library operates two branches in Long Island City. The Hunters Point Community Library is located at 47-40 Center Boulevard on the bank of the East River. Designed by Steven Holl Architects in 2010 and opened on September 24, 2019, the library has a floor area of and is tall, measuring along the New York City waterfront. Features include an art installation by Julianne Swartz, designer furniture by Eames and Jean Prouvé, and a reading garden surrounded by ginkgo trees and designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh. The branch cost $40 million to construct because the site had to undergo pollution remediation, since it was previously used by a factory that processed asphalt and other bituminous products. The Hunters Point Library includes over 50,000 books with Spanish and Chinese language collections, as well as an environmental education center, a section for young children, and a teenagers' space equipped with a video game area. Though the building is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, its stepped terraces and single elevator have been criticized for being inaccessible to the disabled. The fourth floor where the cyber center is has a curved wooden element in the design of the interior atrium.


title: Long Island City

text: A third branch, the Court Square branch, opened in 1989 and was located on the ground floor of One Court Square. One Court Square's former owner, Citigroup, leased the space to the library for $1 per month. After the tower's new owner Savanna failed to renew the Court Square branch's lease, the location was closed in February 2020, and the branch would either move to a new location or be closed permanently. , the Court Square branch had closed and a mobile branch had opened nearby.


title: Long Island City

text: The Long Island City and Hunterspoint Avenue stations of the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) are also located within Long Island City. The US$11.1 billion East Side Access project, which will bring LIRR trains to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, is under construction and is scheduled to open in 2022; this project will create a new train tunnel beneath the East River, connecting Long Island City and Queens with the East Side of Manhattan.


title: Long Island City

text: During the summer, the New York Water Taxi Company used to operate Water Taxi Beach, a public beach artificially created on a wharf along the East River, accessible at the corner of Second Street and Borden Avenue. It was discontinued in 2011 due to new construction on the site of the old landing.


title: Long Island City

text: In June 2011, NY Waterway started service to points along the East River. On May 1, 2017, that route became part of the NYC Ferry's East River route, which runs between Pier 11/Wall Street in Manhattan's Financial District and the East 34th Street Ferry Landing in Murray Hill, Manhattan, with five intermediate stops in Brooklyn and Queens. One NYC Ferry stop for the East River route is located at Hunters Point South, while another NYC Ferry stop for a route to Astoria is located at Gantry Plaza State Park.


title: Long Island City

text: There are plans to build the Brooklyn–Queens Connector (BQX), a light rail system that would run along the waterfront from Red Hook in Brooklyn through Long Island City to Astoria. However, the system is projected to cost $2.7 billion, and the projected opening has been delayed until at least 2029.


title: Long Island City

text: Cars enter from Brooklyn by the Pulaski Bridge from Brooklyn; from Manhattan by the Queensboro Bridge and the Queens–Midtown Tunnel; and from Roosevelt Island by the Roosevelt Island Bridge. Major thoroughfares include 21st Street, which is mostly industrial and commercial; I-495 (Long Island Expressway); the westernmost portion of Northern Boulevard (New York State Route 25A), which becomes Jackson Avenue (the former name of Northern Boulevard) south of Queens Plaza; and Queens Boulevard, which leads westward to the bridge and eastward follows New York State Route 25 through Long Island; and Vernon Boulevard.


title: Long Island City

text: The NBA's Metta World Peace and filmmaker Julie Dash both grew up in the Queensbridge Houses, as did hip-hop producer Marley Marl, and rappers MC Shan, Mobb Deep, Nas, and Roxanne Shante.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: In chemistry, a solution is a special type of homogeneous mixture composed of two or more substances. In such a mixture, a solute is a substance dissolved in another substance, known as a solvent. If the attractive forces between the solvent and solute particles are greater than the attractive forces holding the solute particles together, the solvent particles pull the solute particles apart and surround them. These surrounded solute particles then move away from the solid solute and out into the solution. The mixing process of a solution happens at a scale where the effects of chemical polarity are involved, resulting in interactions that are specific to solvation. The solution usually has the state of the solvent when the solvent is the larger fraction of the mixture, as is commonly the case. One important parameter of a solution is the concentration, which is a measure of the amount of solute in a given amount of solution or solvent. The term "aqueous solution" is used when one of the solvents is water.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: "Homogeneous" means that the components of the mixture form a single phase. "Heterogeneous" means that the components of the mixture are of different phase. The properties of the mixture (such as concentration, temperature, and density) can be uniformly distributed through the volume but only in absence of diffusion phenomena or after their completion. Usually, the substance present in the greatest amount is considered the solvent. Solvents can be gases, liquids, or solids. One or more components present in the solution other than the solvent are called solutes. The solution has the same physical state as the solvent.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: If the solvent is a gas, only gases (non-condensable) or vapors (condensable) are dissolved under a given set of conditions. An example of a gaseous solution is air (oxygen and other gases dissolved in nitrogen). Since interactions between gaseous molecules play almost no role, non-condensable gases form rather trivial solutions. In the literature, they are not even classified as solutions, but simply addressed as homogeneous mixtures of gases. The Brownian motion and the permanent molecular agitation of gas molecules guarantee the homogeneity of the gaseous systems. Non-condensable gases mixtures ("e.g.", air/CO, or air/xenon) do not spontaneously demix, nor sediment, as distinctly stratified and separate gas layers as a function of their relative density. Diffusion forces efficiently counteract gravitation forces under normal conditions prevailing on Earth. The case of condensable vapors is different: once the saturation vapor pressure at a given temperature is reached, vapor excess condenses into the liquid state.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: If the solvent is a liquid, then almost all gases, liquids, and solids can be dissolved. Here are some examples:


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Counter examples are provided by liquid mixtures that are not homogeneous: colloids, suspensions, emulsions are not considered solutions.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Body fluids are examples of complex liquid solutions, containing many solutes. Many of these are electrolytes since they contain solute ions, such as potassium. Furthermore, they contain solute molecules like sugar and urea. Oxygen and carbon dioxide are also essential components of blood chemistry, where significant changes in their concentrations may be a sign of severe illness or injury.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: The ability of one compound to dissolve in another compound is called solubility. When a liquid can completely dissolve in another liquid the two liquids are "miscible". Two substances that can never mix to form a solution are said to be "immiscible".


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: All solutions have a positive entropy of mixing. The interactions between different molecules or ions may be energetically favored or not. If interactions are unfavorable, then the free energy decreases with increasing solute concentration. At some point, the energy loss outweighs the entropy gain, and no more solute particles can be dissolved; the solution is said to be saturated. However, the point at which a solution can become saturated can change significantly with different environmental factors, such as temperature, pressure, and contamination. For some solute-solvent combinations, a supersaturated solution can be prepared by raising the solubility (for example by increasing the temperature) to dissolve more solute and then lowering it (for example by cooling).


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Usually, the greater the temperature of the solvent, the more of a given solid solute it can dissolve. However, most gases and some compounds exhibit solubilities that decrease with increased temperature. Such behavior is a result of an exothermic enthalpy of solution. Some surfactants exhibit this behaviour. The solubility of liquids in liquids is generally less temperature-sensitive than that of solids or gases.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: The physical properties of compounds such as melting point and boiling point change when other compounds are added. Together they are called colligative properties. There are several ways to quantify the amount of one compound dissolved in the other compounds collectively called concentration. Examples include molarity, volume fraction, and mole fraction.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: The properties of ideal solutions can be calculated by the linear combination of the properties of its components. If both solute and solvent exist in equal quantities (such as in a 50% ethanol, 50% water solution), the concepts of "solute" and "solvent" become less relevant, but the substance that is more often used as a solvent is normally designated as the solvent (in this example, water).


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: In principle, all types of liquids can behave as solvents: liquid noble gases, molten metals, molten salts, molten covalent networks, and molecular liquids. In the practice of chemistry and biochemistry, most solvents are molecular liquids. They can be classified into polar and non-polar, according to whether their molecules possess a permanent electric dipole moment. Another distinction is whether their molecules can form hydrogen bonds (protic and aprotic solvents). Water, the most commonly used solvent, is both polar and sustains hydrogen bonds.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Salts dissolve in polar solvents, forming positive and negative ions that are attracted to the negative and positive ends of the solvent molecule, respectively. If the solvent is water, hydration occurs when the charged solute ions become surrounded by water molecules. A standard example is aqueous saltwater. Such solutions are called electrolytes. Whenever salt dissolves in water ion association has to be taken into account.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Polar solutes dissolve in polar solvents, forming polar bonds or hydrogen bonds. As an example, all alcoholic beverages are aqueous solutions of ethanol. On the other hand, non-polar solutes dissolve better in non-polar solvents. Examples are hydrocarbons such as oil and grease that easily mix, while being incompatible with water.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: An example of the immiscibility of oil and water is a leak of petroleum from a damaged tanker, that does not dissolve in the ocean water but rather floats on the surface.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: It is common practice in laboratories to make a solution directly from its constituent ingredients. There are three cases in practical calculation:


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: In the following equations, A is solvent, B is solute, and C is concentration. Solute volume contribution is considered through the ideal solution model.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Example: Make 2 g/100mL of NaCl solution with 1 L water. The density of the resulting solution is considered to be equal to that of water, statement holding especially for dilute solutions, so the density information is not required.


title: Solution (chemistry)

text: Chemists often make concentrated stock solutions that may then be diluted as needed for laboratory applications. Standard solutions are those where concentrations of solutes are accurately and precisely known.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Publius Quinctilius Varus (Cremona, 46 BC – Teutoburg Forest, AD 9) was a Roman general and politician under the first Roman emperor Augustus. Varus is generally remembered for having lost three Roman legions when ambushed by Germanic tribes led by Arminius in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, whereupon he took his own life.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Although he was a patrician by birth, his family, the Quinctilii Vari, had long been impoverished and was unimportant; Ronald Syme notes, "The sole and last consul of that family", Sextus Quinctilius, "had been two years antecedent to the Decemvirs" (i.e. 453 BC). His father, Sextus Quinctilius Varus, was a senator who had served as a quaestor in 49 BC. This Sextus aligned with the Senatorial Party in the civil war against Julius Caesar. Although Sextus survived the defeat, it is unknown whether he was involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar. Sextus committed suicide after the Battle of Philippi in 42 BC. The mother of Varus is unknown; Syme notes that "no relatives on either side of the family can be discovered or surmised."


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Varus had three sisters, all named Quinctilia. They were probably all younger based on when they started having children, so it seems likely he was born at least four years before his father's suicide. The fact that they had advantageous marriages indicates someone was involved in their upbringing. One sister married Publius Cornelius Dolabella, consul of 35 BC; another married Sextus Appuleius, consul of 29 BC; and the third married Lucius Nonius Asprenas, son of the consul of 36 BC.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Despite Varus’ father's political allegiances, he became a supporter of Julius Caesar's heir, Octavian. When Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa died in early 12 BC, Varus delivered the funeral eulogy alongside the future emperor Tiberius. With his political career thus boosted, he was elected consul in 13 BC as the colleague of Tiberius.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Varus married Vipsania, daughter of Agrippa, at an unknown date before 13 BC. Varus became a personal friend to Marcus Agrippa and Tiberius. The historian Josephus says (in a section of his "Antiquities" whose manuscript tradition Walther John believed to be corrupt) that the son of Varus, also named "Publius Quinctilius Varus", served under him during his command in Syria. If true, that son would have to be a son by a prior marriage and not the son by his last wife, Claudia Pulchra. It is possible that this son might have instead been an older son, Sextus Nonius Quinctilianus, who might have ended up adopted by his sister's husband after Varus and Vipsania died. That would explain why a son of Lucius Nonius Asprenas was named "Quinctilianus", which implied adoption.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Vipsania disappears from history. It is unknown whether she died or was divorced. Varus then married Claudia Pulchra. She was a daughter of Claudia Marcella Minor and the Roman consul of 12 BC, Marcus Valerius Messalla Appianus. Her maternal grandmother was Octavia the Younger, sister of Augustus. Hence she was a grand-niece of Augustus. His marriage to Pulchra shows that Varus still enjoyed political favor. Pulchra bore Varus a son, also called Publius Quinctilius Varus. Through their son, they may have had further descendants.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: In 8–7 BC, Varus governed the province of Africa. Later he went to govern Syria from 7–6 BC until 4 BC with four legions under his command, where he was known for his harsh rule and high taxes. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions the swift action of Varus against a messianic revolt in Judaea after the death of the Roman client king, Herod the Great, in 4 BC. After occupying Jerusalem, he crucified 2000 Jewish rebels and may have thus been one of the prime objects of popular anti-Roman sentiment in Judaea (Josephus, who made every effort to reconcile the Jewish people to Roman rule, felt it necessary to point out how lenient this judicial massacre had been). Indeed, at precisely this moment the Jews, nearly "en masse", began a full-scale boycott of Roman pottery (red slip ware). Thus, the archaeological record seems to verify mass popular protest against Rome because of Varus' cruelty.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Following the massacre in Judaea, Varus returned to Antioch. Between 10 BC and 6 AD Tiberius, his brother Drusus, Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Germanicus conducted long campaigns in Germania, the area north of the Upper Danube and east of the Rhine, in an attempt at achieving a further major expansion of the Roman Empire together with a shortening of its frontier line. They subdued several Germanic tribes, such as the Cherusci. In 6 AD, Tiberius declared Germania pacified, and Varus was appointed to govern it. Tiberius, who would later rule as emperor, left the region to suppress the Great Illyrian Revolt. Augustus made Publius Quinctilius Varus the first "officially appointed" governor of the newly created Roman province of Germania in 7 AD.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: In September 9 AD Varus was preparing to leave his summer headquarters in Vetera (today Xanten) and march three legions – the Seventeenth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth – with him to Moguntiacum (modern-day Mainz), when news arrived from the Germanic prince Arminius (a Roman citizen and leader of an auxiliary cavalry unit) of a growing revolt in the Rhine area to the West. Ignoring a warning from Segestes not to trust Arminius, Varus marched his forces behind the latter's lead.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Not only was Varus' trust in Arminius a terrible misjudgement, but Varus compounded it by placing his legions in a position where their fighting strengths would be minimized and those of the Germanic tribesmen maximized – because he expected no ambush and very little trouble in intimidating the rebels. Arminius and the Cherusci tribe along with other allies, had skillfully laid an ambush, and in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in September at Kalkriese (East of modern Osnabrück), the Romans marched right into it.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: The heavily forested, swampy terrain made the infantry manoeuvres of the legions impossible to execute and allowed the Germans to defeat the legions in detail. On the third day of fighting, the Germans overwhelmed the Romans at Kalkriese Hill, north of Osnabrück. Accounts of the defeat are scarce, due to the totality of the defeat, but Velleius Paterculus testifies that some Roman cavalrymen abandoned the infantry and fled towards the Rhine, but they were intercepted by the German tribesmen and killed. Varus himself, upon seeing all hope was lost, committed suicide by falling on his sword. Arminius cut off his head and sent it to Bohemia as a present to King Marbod of the Marcomanni, the other most important Germanic leader, whom Arminius wanted to coax into an alliance, but Marbod declined the offer and sent the head on to Rome for burial.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Some captured Romans were caged and burned alive; others were enslaved or ransomed. Tacitus and Florus report that the victorious Germanic tribes tortured and sacrificed captive officers to their gods on altars that could still be seen years later. The Romans did later recover the lost legions' eagles, one each in 15 AD, 16 AD and 42 AD.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Due to the shame and the ill luck thought to be created by the Roman defeat, the XVII, XVIII and XIX legions never again appeared in the Roman Army's order of battle. The loss at the Teutoburg Forest was keenly felt by Augustus in his remaining years. According to the biographer Suetonius, upon hearing the news, Augustus tore his clothes, refused to cut his hair for months and, for years afterwards, was heard, upon occasion, to moan, "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" (). Roman historians referred to the battle as the "clades Variana" ("Varian disaster").


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Gibbon describes Augustus' reaction to the defeat as one of the few times the normally stoic ruler lost his composure. Varus' political legacy in Rome was destroyed and the government blamed him for the defeat. His son's (the younger Varus) chances for a political career were ruined. Tiberius himself fell under severe criticism for recommending Varus as the governor of Germania. Tiberius, according to Gaius Stern, was forced to sacrifice his friend and former brother-in-law to save his career. Furthermore, Varus himself had been one of the figures on the Ara Pacis, but the figure is lost today.


title: Publius Quinctilius Varus

text: Stern has proposed that common citizens vandalized the Ara Pacis by damaging Varus in anger over their lost loved ones, leaving the regime, which had blamed Varus, uncertain as to whether or not to fix the damage. Approximately 40 years after Varus' death, a general under Claudius, Pomponius Secundus, raided Germany and by chance rescued a few POWs from Varus' army. Claudius welcomed them home after their long captivity, their stories arousing much pity.


title: Randomness

text: In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual random events are, by definition, unpredictable, but if the probability distribution is known, the frequency of different outcomes over repeated events (or "trials") is predictable. For example, when throwing two dice, the outcome of any particular roll is unpredictable, but a sum of 7 will tend to occur twice as often as 4. In this view, randomness is not haphazardness; it is a measure of uncertainty of an outcome. Randomness applies to concepts of chance, probability, and information entropy.


title: Randomness

text: The fields of mathematics, probability, and statistics use formal definitions of randomness. In statistics, a random variable is an assignment of a numerical value to each possible outcome of an event space. This association facilitates the identification and the calculation of probabilities of the events. Random variables can appear in random sequences. A random process is a sequence of random variables whose outcomes do not follow a deterministic pattern, but follow an evolution described by probability distributions. These and other constructs are extremely useful in probability theory and the various applications of randomness.


title: Randomness

text: Randomness is most often used in statistics to signify well-defined statistical properties. Monte Carlo methods, which rely on random input (such as from random number generators or pseudorandom number generators), are important techniques in science, particularly in the field of computational science. By analogy, quasi-Monte Carlo methods use quasi-random number generators.


title: Randomness

text: Random selection, when narrowly associated with a simple random sample, is a method of selecting items (often called units) from a population where the probability of choosing a specific item is the proportion of those items in the population. For example, with a bowl containing just 10 red marbles and 90 blue marbles, a random selection mechanism would choose a red marble with probability 1/10. Note that a random selection mechanism that selected 10 marbles from this bowl would not necessarily result in 1 red and 9 blue. In situations where a population consists of items that are distinguishable, a random selection mechanism requires equal probabilities for any item to be chosen. That is, if the selection process is such that each member of a population, say research subjects, has the same probability of being chosen, then we can say the selection process is random.


title: Randomness

text: According to Ramsey theory, pure randomness is impossible, especially for large structures. Mathematician Theodore Motzkin suggested that "while disorder is more probable in general, complete disorder is impossible". Misunderstanding this can lead to numerous conspiracy theories. Cristian S. Calude stated that "given the impossibility of true randomness, the effort is directed towards studying degrees of randomness". It can be proven that there is infinite hierarchy (in terms of quality or strength) of forms of randomness.


title: Randomness

text: In ancient history, the concepts of chance and randomness were intertwined with that of fate. Many ancient peoples threw dice to determine fate, and this later evolved into games of chance. Most ancient cultures used various methods of divination to attempt to circumvent randomness and fate. Beyond religion and games of chance, randomness has been attested for sortition since at least ancient Athenian democracy in the form of a kleroterion.


title: Randomness

text: The formalization of odds and chance was perhaps earliest done by the Chinese of 3000 years ago. The Greek philosophers discussed randomness at length, but only in non-quantitative forms. It was only in the 16th century that Italian mathematicians began to formalize the odds associated with various games of chance. The invention of calculus had a positive impact on the formal study of randomness. In the 1888 edition of his book "The Logic of Chance", John Venn wrote a chapter on "The conception of randomness" that included his view of the randomness of the digits of pi, by using them to construct a random walk in two dimensions.


title: Randomness

text: The early part of the 20th century saw a rapid growth in the formal analysis of randomness, as various approaches to the mathematical foundations of probability were introduced. In the mid-to-late-20th century, ideas of algorithmic information theory introduced new dimensions to the field via the concept of algorithmic randomness.


title: Randomness

text: Although randomness had often been viewed as an obstacle and a nuisance for many centuries, in the 20th century computer scientists began to realize that the "deliberate" introduction of randomness into computations can be an effective tool for designing better algorithms. In some cases, such randomized algorithms even outperform the best deterministic methods.


title: Randomness

text: In the 19th century, scientists used the idea of random motions of molecules in the development of statistical mechanics to explain phenomena in thermodynamics and the properties of gases.


title: Randomness

text: According to several standard interpretations of quantum mechanics, microscopic phenomena are objectively random. That is, in an experiment that controls all causally relevant parameters, some aspects of the outcome still vary randomly. For example, if a single unstable atom is placed in a controlled environment, it cannot be predicted how long it will take for the atom to decay—only the probability of decay in a given time. Thus, quantum mechanics does not specify the outcome of individual experiments, but only the probabilities. Hidden variable theories reject the view that nature contains irreducible randomness: such theories posit that in the processes that appear random, properties with a certain statistical distribution are at work behind the scenes, determining the outcome in each case.


title: Randomness

text: The modern evolutionary synthesis ascribes the observed diversity of life to random genetic mutations followed by natural selection. The latter retains some random mutations in the gene pool due to the systematically improved chance for survival and reproduction that those mutated genes confer on individuals who possess them. The location of the mutation is not entirely random however as e.g. biologically important regions may be more protected from mutations.


title: Randomness

text: Several authors also claim that evolution (and sometimes development) requires a specific form of randomness, namely the introduction of qualitatively new behaviors. Instead of the choice of one possibility among several pre-given ones, this randomness corresponds to the formation of new possibilities.


title: Randomness

text: The characteristics of an organism arise to some extent deterministically (e.g., under the influence of genes and the environment), and to some extent randomly. For example, the "density" of freckles that appear on a person's skin is controlled by genes and exposure to light; whereas the exact location of "individual" freckles seems random.


title: Randomness

text: As far as behavior is concerned, randomness is important if an animal is to behave in a way that is unpredictable to others. For instance, insects in flight tend to move about with random changes in direction, making it difficult for pursuing predators to predict their trajectories.


title: Randomness

text: The mathematical theory of probability arose from attempts to formulate mathematical descriptions of chance events, originally in the context of gambling, but later in connection with physics. Statistics is used to infer the underlying probability distribution of a collection of empirical observations. For the purposes of simulation, it is necessary to have a large supply of random numbers—or means to generate them on demand.


title: Randomness

text: Algorithmic information theory studies, among other topics, what constitutes a random sequence. The central idea is that a string of bits is random if and only if it is shorter than any computer program that can produce that string (Kolmogorov randomness), which means that random strings are those that cannot be compressed. Pioneers of this field include Andrey Kolmogorov and his student Per Martin-Löf, Ray Solomonoff, and Gregory Chaitin. For the notion of infinite sequence, mathematicians generally accept Per Martin-Löf's semi-eponymous definition: An infinite sequence is random if and only if it withstands all recursively enumerable null sets. The other notions of random sequences include, among others, recursive randomness and Schnorr randomness, which are based on recursively computable martingales. It was shown by Yongge Wang that these randomness notions are generally different.


title: Randomness

text: Randomness occurs in numbers such as log(2) and pi. The decimal digits of pi constitute an infinite sequence and "never repeat in a cyclical fashion." Numbers like pi are also considered likely to be normal:


title: Randomness

text: In statistics, randomness is commonly used to create simple random samples. This allows surveys of completely random groups of people to provide realistic data that is reflective of the population. Common methods of doing this include drawing names out of a hat or using a random digit chart (a large table of random digits).


title: Randomness

text: In information science, irrelevant or meaningless data is considered noise. Noise consists of numerous transient disturbances, with a statistically randomized time distribution.


title: Randomness

text: In communication theory, randomness in a signal is called "noise", and is opposed to that component of its variation that is causally attributable to the source, the signal.


title: Randomness

text: In terms of the development of random networks, for communication randomness rests on the two simple assumptions of Paul Erdős and Alfréd Rényi, who said that there were a fixed number of nodes and this number remained fixed for the life of the network, and that all nodes were equal and linked randomly to each other.


title: Randomness

text: The random walk hypothesis considers that asset prices in an organized market evolve at random, in the sense that the expected value of their change is zero but the actual value may turn out to be positive or negative. More generally, asset prices are influenced by a variety of unpredictable events in the general economic environment.


title: Randomness

text: Random selection can be an official method to resolve tied elections in some jurisdictions. Its use in politics originates long ago. Many offices in Ancient Athens were chosen by lot instead of modern voting.


title: Randomness

text: Randomness can be seen as conflicting with the deterministic ideas of some religions, such as those where the universe is created by an omniscient deity who is aware of all past and future events. If the universe is regarded to have a purpose, then randomness can be seen as impossible. This is one of the rationales for religious opposition to evolution, which states that non-random selection is applied to the results of random genetic variation.


title: Randomness

text: Hindu and Buddhist philosophies state that any event is the result of previous events, as is reflected in the concept of karma. As such, this conception is at odd with the idea of randomness, and any reconciliation between both of them would require an explanation.


title: Randomness

text: In some religious contexts, procedures that are commonly perceived as randomizers are used for divination. Cleromancy uses the casting of bones or dice to reveal what is seen as the will of the gods.


title: Randomness

text: In most of its mathematical, political, social and religious uses, randomness is used for its innate "fairness" and lack of bias.


title: Randomness

text: Politics: Athenian democracy was based on the concept of isonomia (equality of political rights), and used complex allotment machines to ensure that the positions on the ruling committees that ran Athens were fairly allocated. Allotment is now restricted to selecting jurors in Anglo-Saxon legal systems, and in situations where "fairness" is approximated by randomization, such as selecting jurors and military draft lotteries.


title: Randomness

text: Games: Random numbers were first investigated in the context of gambling, and many randomizing devices, such as dice, shuffling playing cards, and roulette wheels, were first developed for use in gambling. The ability to produce random numbers fairly is vital to electronic gambling, and, as such, the methods used to create them are usually regulated by government Gaming Control Boards. Random drawings are also used to determine lottery winners. In fact, randomness has been used for games of chance throughout history, and to select out individuals for an unwanted task in a fair way (see drawing straws).


title: Randomness

text: Sports: Some sports, including American football, use coin tosses to randomly select starting conditions for games or seed tied teams for postseason play. The National Basketball Association uses a weighted lottery to order teams in its draft.


title: Randomness

text: Mathematics: Random numbers are also employed where their use is mathematically important, such as sampling for opinion polls and for statistical sampling in quality control systems. Computational solutions for some types of problems use random numbers extensively, such as in the Monte Carlo method and in genetic algorithms.


title: Randomness

text: Medicine: Random allocation of a clinical intervention is used to reduce bias in controlled trials (e.g., randomized controlled trials).


title: Randomness

text: Religion: Although not intended to be random, various forms of divination such as cleromancy see what appears to be a random event as a means for a divine being to communicate their will (see also Free will and Determinism for more).


title: Randomness

text: It is generally accepted that there exist three mechanisms responsible for (apparently) random behavior in systems:


title: Randomness

text: The many applications of randomness have led to many different methods for generating random data. These methods may vary as to how unpredictable or statistically random they are, and how quickly they can generate random numbers.


title: Randomness

text: Before the advent of computational random number generators, generating large amounts of sufficiently random numbers (which is important in statistics) required a lot of work. Results would sometimes be collected and distributed as random number tables.


title: Randomness

text: There are many practical measures of randomness for a binary sequence. These include measures based on frequency, discrete transforms, complexity, or a mixture of these, such as the tests by Kak, Phillips, Yuen, Hopkins, Beth and Dai, Mund, and Marsaglia and Zaman.


title: Randomness

text: Quantum nonlocality has been used to certify the presence of genuine or strong form of randomness in a given string of numbers.


title: Randomness

text: Popular perceptions of randomness are frequently mistaken, and are often based on fallacious reasoning or intuitions.


title: Randomness

text: This argument is, "In a random selection of numbers, since all numbers eventually appear, those that have not come up yet are 'due', and thus more likely to come up soon." This logic is only correct if applied to a system where numbers that come up are removed from the system, such as when playing cards are drawn and not returned to the deck. In this case, once a jack is removed from the deck, the next draw is less likely to be a jack and more likely to be some other card. However, if the jack is returned to the deck, and the deck is thoroughly reshuffled, a jack is as likely to be drawn as any other card. The same applies in any other process where objects are selected independently, and none are removed after each event, such as the roll of a die, a coin toss, or most lottery number selection schemes. Truly random processes such as these do not have memory, which makes it impossible for past outcomes to affect future outcomes. In fact, there is no finite number of trials that can guarantee a success.


title: Randomness

text: In a random sequence of numbers, a number may be said to be cursed because it has come up less often in the past, and so it is thought that it will occur less often in the future. A number may be assumed to be blessed because it has occurred more often than others in the past, and so it is thought likely to come up more often in the future. This logic is valid only if the randomisation might be biased, for example if a die is suspected to be loaded then its failure to roll enough sixes would be evidence of that loading. If the die is known to be fair, then previous rolls can give no indication of future events.


title: Randomness

text: In nature, events rarely occur with a frequency that is known "a priori", so observing outcomes to determine which events are more probable makes sense. However, it is fallacious to apply this logic to systems designed and known to make all outcomes equally likely, such as shuffled cards, dice, and roulette wheels.


title: Randomness

text: In the beginning of a scenario, one might calculate the probability of a certain event. However, as soon as one gains more information about the scenario, one may need to re-calculate the probability accordingly.


title: Randomness

text: For example, when being told that a woman has two children, one might be interested in knowing if either of them is a girl, and if yes, what is probability that the other child is also a girl. Considering the two events independently, one might expect that the probability that the other child is female is ½ (50%), but by building a probability space illustrating all possible outcomes, one would notice that the probability is actually only ⅓ (33%).


title: Randomness

text: To be sure, the probability space does illustrate four ways of having these two children: boy-boy, girl-boy, boy-girl, and girl-girl. But once it is known that at least one of the children is female, this rules out the boy-boy scenario, leaving only three ways of having the two children: boy-girl, girl-boy, girl-girl. From this, it can be seen only ⅓ of these scenarios would have the other child also be a girl (see Boy or girl paradox for more).


title: Randomness

text: In general, by using a probability space, one is less likely to miss out on possible scenarios, or to neglect the importance of new information. This technique can be used to provide insights in other situations such as the Monty Hall problem, a game show scenario in which a car is hidden behind one of three doors, and two goats are hidden as booby prizes behind the others. Once the contestant has chosen a door, the host opens one of the remaining doors to reveal a goat, eliminating that door as an option. With only two doors left (one with the car, the other with another goat), the player must decide to either keep their decision, or to switch and select the other door. Intuitively, one might think the player is choosing between two doors with equal probability, and that the opportunity to choose another door makes no difference. However, an analysis of the probability spaces would reveal that the contestant has received new information, and that changing to the other door would increase their chances of winning.


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin (from Ancient Greek: "" "almond") is a naturally occurring chemical compound found in many plants, most notably in the seeds (kernels) of apricots, bitter almonds, apples, peaches, cherries, and plums.


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin is classified as a cyanogenic glycoside because each amygdalin molecule includes a nitrile group, which can be released as the toxic cyanide anion by the action of a beta-glucosidase. Eating amygdalin will cause it to release cyanide in the human body, and may lead to cyanide poisoning.


title: Amygdalin

text: Since the early 1950s, both amygdalin and a chemical derivative named laetrile have been promoted as alternative cancer treatments, often under the misnomer vitamin B (neither amygdalin nor laetrile is a vitamin). Scientific study has found them to not only be clinically ineffective in treating cancer, but also potentially toxic or lethal when taken by mouth due to cyanide poisoning. The promotion of laetrile to treat cancer has been described in the medical literature as a canonical example of quackery, and as "the slickest, most sophisticated, and certainly the most remunerative cancer quack promotion in medical history".


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin is a cyanogenic glycoside derived from the aromatic amino acid phenylalanine. Amygdalin and prunasin are common among plants of the family Rosaceae, particularly the genus "Prunus", Poaceae (grasses), Fabaceae (legumes), and in other food plants, including flaxseed and manioc. Within these plants, amygdalin and the enzymes necessary to hydrolyze it are stored in separate locations so that they will mix in response to tissue damage. This provides a natural defense system.


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin is contained in stone fruit kernels, such as almonds, apricot (14 g/kg), peach (6.8 g/kg), and plum (4–17.5 g/kg depending on variety), and also in the seeds of the apple (3 g/kg). Benzaldehyde released from amygdalin provides a bitter flavor. Because of a difference in a recessive gene called "Sweet kernal [Sk]", less amygdalin is present in nonbitter (or sweet) almond than bitter almond. In one study, bitter almond amygdalin concentrations ranged from 33 to 54 g/kg depending on variety; semibitter varieties averaged 1 g/kg and sweet varieties averaged 0.063 g/kg with significant variability based on variety and growing region.


title: Amygdalin

text: For one method of isolating amygdalin, the stones are removed from the fruit and cracked to obtain the kernels, which are dried in the sun or in ovens. The kernels are boiled in ethanol; on evaporation of the solution and the addition of diethyl ether, amygdalin is precipitated as minute white crystals. Natural amygdalin has the ("R")-configuration at the chiral phenyl center. Under mild basic conditions, this stereogenic center isomerizes; the ("S")-epimer is called neoamygdalin. Although the synthesized version of amygdalin is the ("R")-epimer, the stereogenic center attached to the nitrile and phenyl groups easily epimerizes if the manufacturer does not store the compound correctly.


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin is hydrolyzed by intestinal β-glucosidase (emulsin) and amygdalin beta-glucosidase (amygdalase) to give gentiobiose and -mandelonitrile. Gentiobiose is further hydrolyzed to give glucose, whereas mandelonitrile (the cyanohydrin of benzaldehyde) decomposes to give benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide. Hydrogen cyanide in sufficient quantities (allowable daily intake: ~0.6 mg) causes cyanide poisoning which has a fatal oral dose range of 0.6–1.5 mg/kg of body weight.


title: Amygdalin

text: Laetrile (patented 1961) is a simpler semisynthetic derivative of amygdalin. Laetrile is synthesized from amygdalin by hydrolysis. The usual preferred commercial source is from apricot kernels ("Prunus armeniaca"). The name is derived from the separate words "laevorotatory" and "mandelonitrile". Laevorotatory describes the stereochemistry of the molecule, while mandelonitrile refers to the portion of the molecule from which cyanide is released by decomposition.


title: Amygdalin

text: Like amygdalin, laetrile is hydrolyzed in the duodenum (alkaline) and in the intestine (enzymatically) to -glucuronic acid and -mandelonitrile; the latter hydrolyzes to benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, that in sufficient quantities causes cyanide poisoning.


title: Amygdalin

text: Claims for laetrile were based on three different hypotheses: The first hypothesis proposed that cancerous cells contained copious beta-glucosidases, which release HCN from laetrile via hydrolysis. Normal cells were reportedly unaffected, because they contained low concentrations of beta-glucosidases and high concentrations of rhodanese, which converts HCN to the less toxic thiocyanate. Later, however, it was shown that both cancerous and normal cells contain only trace amounts of beta-glucosidases and similar amounts of rhodanese.


title: Amygdalin

text: The second proposed that, after ingestion, amygdalin was hydrolyzed to mandelonitrile, transported intact to the liver and converted to a beta-glucuronide complex, which was then carried to the cancerous cells, hydrolyzed by beta-glucuronidases to release mandelonitrile and then HCN. Mandelonitrile, however, dissociates to benzaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide, and cannot be stabilized by glycosylation.


title: Amygdalin

text: Finally, the third asserted that laetrile is the discovered vitamin B-17, and further suggests that cancer is a result of "B-17 deficiency". It postulated that regular dietary administration of this form of laetrile would, therefore, actually prevent all incidences of cancer. There is no evidence supporting this conjecture in the form of a physiologic process, nutritional requirement, or identification of any deficiency syndrome. The term "vitamin B-17" is not recognized by Committee on Nomenclature of the American Institute of Nutrition Vitamins. Ernst T. Krebs (not to be confused with Hans Adolf Krebs, the discoverer of the citric acid cycle) branded laetrile as a vitamin in order to have it classified as a nutritional supplement rather than as a pharmaceutical.


title: Amygdalin

text: Amygdalin was first isolated in 1830 from bitter almond seeds ("Prunus dulcis") by Pierre-Jean Robiquet and Antoine Boutron-Charlard. Liebig and Wöhler found three hydrolysis products of amygdalin: sugar, benzaldehyde, and prussic acid (hydrogen cyanide, HCN). Later research showed that sulfuric acid hydrolyzes it into -glucose, benzaldehyde, and prussic acid; while hydrochloric acid gives mandelic acid, -glucose, and ammonia.


title: Amygdalin

text: In 1845 amygdalin was used as a cancer treatment in Russia, and in the 1920s in the United States, but it was considered too poisonous. In the 1950s, a purportedly non-toxic, synthetic form was patented for use as a meat preservative, and later marketed as laetrile for cancer treatment.


title: Amygdalin

text: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited the interstate shipment of amygdalin and laetrile in 1977. Thereafter, 27 U.S. states legalized the use of amygdalin within those states.


title: Amygdalin

text: Subsequently, laetrile was tested on 14 tumor systems without evidence of effectiveness. The Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) concluded that "laetrile showed no beneficial effects." Mistakes in an earlier MSKCC press release were highlighted by a group of laetrile proponents led by Ralph Moss, former public affairs official of MSKCC who had been fired following his appearance at a press conference accusing the hospital of covering up the benefits of laetrile. These mistakes were considered scientifically inconsequential, but Nicholas Wade in "Science" stated that "even the appearance of a departure from strict objectivity is unfortunate." The results from these studies were published all together.


title: Amygdalin

text: The authors also recommended, on ethical and scientific grounds, that no further clinical research into laetrile or amygdalin be conducted.


title: Amygdalin

text: Given the lack of evidence, laetrile has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration or the European Commission.


title: Amygdalin

text: The U.S. National Institutes of Health evaluated the evidence separately and concluded that clinical trials of amygdalin showed little or no effect against cancer. For example, a 1982 trial by the Mayo Clinic of 175 patients found that tumor size had increased in all but one patient. The authors reported that "the hazards of amygdalin therapy were evidenced in several patients by symptoms of cyanide toxicity or by blood cyanide levels approaching the lethal range."


title: Amygdalin

text: The study concluded "Patients exposed to this agent should be instructed about the danger of cyanide poisoning, and their blood cyanide levels should be carefully monitored. Amygdalin (Laetrile) is a toxic drug that is not effective as a cancer treatment".


title: Amygdalin

text: Additionally, "No controlled clinical trials (trials that compare groups of patients who receive the new treatment to groups who do not) of laetrile have been reported."


title: Amygdalin

text: The side effects of laetrile treatment are the symptoms of cyanide poisoning. These symptoms include: nausea and vomiting, headache, dizziness, cherry red skin color, liver damage, abnormally low blood pressure, droopy upper eyelid, trouble walking due to damaged nerves, fever, mental confusion, coma, and death.


title: Amygdalin

text: The European Food Safety Agency's Panel on Contaminants in the Food Chain has studied the potential toxicity of the amygdalin in apricot kernels. The Panel reported, "If consumers follow the recommendations of websites that promote consumption of apricot kernels, their exposure to cyanide will greatly exceed" the dose expected to be toxic. The Panel also reported that acute cyanide toxicity had occurred in adults who had consumed 20 or more kernels and that in children "five or more kernels appear to be toxic".


title: Amygdalin

text: Advocates for laetrile assert that there is a conspiracy between the US Food and Drug Administration, the pharmaceutical industry and the medical community, including the American Medical Association and the American Cancer Society, to exploit the American people, and especially cancer patients.


title: Amygdalin

text: Advocates of the use of laetrile have also changed the rationale for its use, first as a treatment of cancer, then as a vitamin, then as part of a "holistic" nutritional regimen, or as treatment for cancer pain, among others, none of which have any significant evidence supporting its use.


title: Amygdalin

text: Despite the lack of evidence for its use, laetrile developed a significant following due to its wide promotion as a "pain-free" treatment of cancer as an alternative to surgery and chemotherapy that have significant side effects. The use of laetrile led to a number of deaths.


title: Amygdalin

text: The FDA and AMA crackdown, begun in the 1970s, effectively escalated prices on the black market, played into the conspiracy narrative and enabled unscrupulous profiteers to foster multimillion-dollar smuggling empires.


title: Amygdalin

text: Some American cancer patients have traveled to Mexico for treatment with the substance, for example at the Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana. The actor Steve McQueen died in Mexico following surgery to remove a stomach tumor, having previously undergone extended treatment for pleural mesothelioma (a cancer associated with asbestos exposure) under the care of William D. Kelley, a de-licensed dentist and orthodontist who claimed to have devised a cancer treatment involving pancreatic enzymes, 50 daily vitamins and minerals, frequent body shampoos, enemas, and a specific diet as well as laetrile.


title: Amygdalin

text: Laetrile advocates in the United States include Dean Burk, a former chief chemist of the National Cancer Institute cytochemistry laboratory, and national arm wrestling champion Jason Vale, who falsely claimed that his kidney and pancreatic cancers were cured by eating apricot seeds. Vale was convicted in 2004 for, among other things, fraudulently marketing laetrile as a cancer cure. The court also found that Vale had made at least $500,000 from his fraudulent sales of laetrile.


title: Amygdalin

text: In the 1970s, court cases in several states challenged the FDA's authority to restrict access to what they claimed are potentially lifesaving drugs. More than twenty states passed laws making the use of Laetrile legal. After the unanimous Supreme Court ruling in "United States v. Rutherford" which established that interstate transport of the compound was illegal, usage fell off dramatically. The US Food and Drug Administration continues to seek jail sentences for vendors marketing laetrile for cancer treatment, calling it a "highly toxic product that has not shown any effect on treating cancer."


title: Amygdalin

text: The Law & Order episode "Second Opinion" is about a nutritional counselor named "Doctor" Hoss giving patients laetrile as a cancer treatment for breast cancer as an alternative to getting a mastectomy.


title: Vibraphone

text: The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a "vibraphonist," "vibraharpist," or "vibist".


title: Vibraphone

text: The vibraphone resembles the steel marimba, which it superseded. One of the main differences between the vibraphone and other keyboard percussion instruments is that each bar suspends over a resonator tube containing a flat metal disc. These discs are attached together by a common axle and spin when the motor is turned on. This causes the instrument to produce its namesake tremolo or vibrato effect. The vibraphone also has a sustain pedal similar to a piano. When the pedal is up, the bars produce a muted sound; when the pedal is down, the bars sustain for several seconds or until again muted with the pedal.


title: Vibraphone

text: The vibraphone is commonly used in jazz music, in which it often plays a featured role, and was a defining element of the sound of mid-20th-century "Tiki lounge" exotica, as popularized by Arthur Lyman. It is the second most popular solo keyboard percussion instrument in classical music, after the marimba, and is part of the standard college-level percussion performance education. It is a standard instrument in the modern percussion section for orchestras, concert bands, and in the marching arts (typically as part of the front ensemble).


title: Vibraphone

text: Around 1916, instrument maker Herman Winterhoff of the Leedy Manufacturing Company began experimenting with "vox humana" effects on a three octave (F to F) steel marimba. His original design attempted to produce this effect by raising and lowering the resonators which caused a noticeable vibrato. In 1921, Winterhoff perfected the design by instead attaching a motor that rotated small discs underneath the bars to achieve the same effect. After sales manager George H. Way termed this instrument the "vibraphone", it was marketed by Leedy starting in 1924. The Leedy vibraphone managed to achieve a decent degree of popularity after it was used in the novelty recordings of "Aloha 'Oe" and "Gypsy Love Song" in 1924 by vaudeville performer Louis Frank Chiha.


title: Vibraphone

text: However, this instrument differed significantly from the instrument now called the "vibraphone". The Leedy vibraphone did not have a pedal mechanism, and it had bars made of steel rather than aluminum. The growing popularity of Leedy's instrument led competitor J.C. Deagan, Inc., the inventor of the original steel marimba of which Leedy's design was based on, to ask its chief tuner, Henry Schluter, to develop a similar instrument in 1927. Instead of just copying the Leedy design, Schluter introduced several significant improvements. He made the bars from aluminum instead of steel for a mellower tone, adjusted the dimensions and tuning of the bars to eliminate the dissonant harmonics present in the Leedy design, and introduced a foot-controlled damper bar. Schluter's design became more popular than the Leedy design and has become the template for all instruments now called "vibraphone""".


title: Vibraphone

text: Both the terms "vibraphone" and "vibraharp" were trademarked by Leedy and Deagan, respectively. Other manufacturers were forced to use the generic name "vibes" or devise new trade names such as "vibraceleste" for their instruments incorporating the newer design.


title: Vibraphone

text: While the initial purpose of the vibraphone was as a novelty instrument for vaudeville orchestras, that use was quickly overwhelmed in the 1930s by its development in jazz music. The use of the vibraphone in jazz was popularized by Lionel Hampton, a jazz drummer from California. At one recording session with bandleader Louis Armstrong, Hampton was asked to play a vibraphone that had been left behind in the studio. This resulted in the recording of the song "Memories of You" in 1930, containing what is often considered to be the first instance of an improvised vibraphone solo.


title: Vibraphone

text: In its early history, the vibraphone was often used in classical music to give compositions a jazz influence. The first known composer to use the vibraphone was Havergal Brian in his 1917 opera, "The Tigers", which called for two of them. However, since the piece was lost and did not premiere until 1983, Ferde Grofé's "Grand Canyon Suite", completed in 1931, is sometimes considered to be the first piece to use a vibraphone instead. Other early classical composers to use the vibraphone were Alban Berg, who used it prominently in his opera "Lulu" in 1935, and William Grant Still, who used it in his "Afro-American Symphony" that same year. While the vibraphone has not been used quite as extensively in the realm of classical music as it has with jazz, it can often be heard in theatre or film music, such as in Leonard Bernstein's "West Side Story".


title: Vibraphone

text: The standard modern instrument has a range of 3 octaves, starting from the F below middle C (F to F in scientific pitch notation). Larger or 4 octave models from the C below middle C are also becoming more common (C to F or C). Unlike its cousin, the glockenspiel, the vibraphone is generally a non-transposing instrument, written at concert pitch.


title: Vibraphone

text: Vibraphone mallets usually consist of a rubber ball core wrapped in yarn or cord and attached to a narrow dowel, most commonly made of rattan or birch and sometimes of fiberglass or nylon. Mallets suitable for the vibraphone are also generally suitable for the marimba.


title: Vibraphone

text: The mallets can have a great effect on the timbre, ranging from a bright metallic clang to a mellow ring with no obvious initial attack. Consequently a wide array of mallets is available, offering variations in hardness, head size, weight, shaft length and flexibility.


title: Vibraphone

text: Classical players must carry a wide range of mallet types to accommodate the changing demands of composers who are looking for particular sounds. Jazz players, on the other hand, often make use of multi-purpose mallets to allow for improvisation.


title: Vibraphone

text: Vibraphone bars are made from aluminum bar stock, cut into blanks of predetermined length. Holes are drilled through the width of the bars, so they can be suspended by a cord (typically paracord). To maximize the sustain of the bars, the holes are placed at approximately the nodal points of the bar (i.e., the points of minimum amplitude around which the bar vibrates). For a uniform bar, the nodal points are located 22.4% from each end of the bar.


title: Vibraphone

text: Material is ground away from the underside of the bars in an arch shape to lower the pitch. This allows the lower-pitched bars to be a manageable length. It is also the key to the mellow sound of the vibraphone (and marimba, which uses the same deep arch) compared with the brighter xylophone, which uses a shallower arch, and the glockenspiel, which has no arch at all. These rectangular bars have three primary modes of vibration. The deep arch causes these modes to align and create a consonant arrangement of intervals: a fundamental pitch, a pitch two octaves above that, and a third pitch an octave and a major third above the second. For the F bar that usually forms the lowest note on a vibraphone, there would be F as the fundamental, F as the first overtone, and A as the second overtone. As a side effect, the arch causes the nodal points of the fundamental vibration to shift closer towards the ends of the bar.


title: Vibraphone

text: After beveling or rounding the edges, fine-tuning adjustments are made. If a bar is flat, its overall pitch structure can be raised by removing material from the ends of the bar. Once this slightly sharp bar is created, the secondary and tertiary tones can be lowered by removing material from specific locations of the bar. Vibraphones are tuned to a standard of A = 442 Hz or A = 440 Hz, depending on the manufacturer or the customer's preference. While concert pitch is generally A = 440 Hz, the sharper tuning of A = 442 Hz is used to give the vibraphone a slightly brighter sound to cut through the ensemble.


title: Vibraphone

text: Like marimbas, professional vibraphones have bars of graduated width. Lower bars are made from wider stock, and higher notes from narrower stock, to help balance volume and tone across the range of the instrument. The bars are anodized after fine-tuning (typically in a silver or gold color) and may have a glossy or matte finish. These are cosmetic features with a negligible effect on the sound.


title: Vibraphone

text: The bed for the bars is made by laying down four wooden rails onto each end of the frame. Each rail has a series of pins with rubber spacers. As the cord passes through the holes of the bar, they rest on the pins to suspend the bars. On each outer side, the ends of the cord attach together with a spring to provide tension and flex.


title: Vibraphone

text: Resonators are thin-walled tubes, typically made of aluminum, but any suitably strong material can be used. They are open at one end and closed at the other. Each bar is paired with a resonator whose diameter is slightly wider than the width of the bar and whose length to the closure is one-quarter of the wavelength of the fundamental frequency of the bar. When the bar and resonator are properly in tune with each other, the vibrating air beneath the bar travels down the resonator and is reflected from the closure at the bottom, then returns to the top and is reflected back by the bar, over and over, creating a much stronger standing wave and increasing the amplitude of the fundamental frequency. The resonators, besides raising the upper end of the vibraphone's dynamic range, also affect the overall tone of the vibraphone, since they amplify the fundamental frequency, but not the upper partials.


title: Vibraphone

text: There is a trade-off between the amplifying effect of the resonators and the length of sustain of a ringing bar. The energy in a ringing bar comes from the initial mallet strike, and that energy can either be used to make the bar ring louder initially, or not as loudly but for a longer period of time. This is not an issue with marimbas and xylophones, where the natural sustain time of the wooden bars is short, but vibraphone bars can ring for many seconds after being struck, and this effect is highly desirable in many circumstances. Therefore, the resonators in a vibraphone are usually tuned slightly off-pitch to create a balance between loudness and sustain.


title: Vibraphone

text: A unique feature of vibraphone resonators is the shaft of rotating discs, commonly called fans, across the top. When the fans are open, the resonators have full function. When the fans are closed, the resonators are partially occluded, reducing the resonance of the fundamental pitch. A drive belt connects the shafts to an electric motor beneath the playing surface and rotates the fans. This rotation of the fans creates a tremolo effect and a slight vibrato.


title: Vibraphone

text: Oftentimes, vibraphones, and other mallet instruments, will include non-functional, decorative resonator tubes with no corresponding bar above to make the instrument look more complete.


title: Vibraphone

text: In 1970, Deagan introduced the ElectraVibe, which dispensed with resonator tubes entirely and took a signal directly from the bars, adding a tremolo in a preamplifier. This sought to improve the portability of the instrument and solve the problem inherent in all tuned mallet instruments: miking the bars evenly.


title: Vibraphone

text: For the first few years of production, the original Leedy vibraphone did not include a mechanism for damping, or stopping, the sustaining tones. In 1927, the J.C. Deagan company introduced a pedal mechanism that has not changed substantially since. A rigid bar beneath the center of the instrument is pressed upward by an adjustable spring and engages a long felt pad against the sharps and the naturals. A foot pedal lowers the bar and allows notes to ring freely; releasing the pedal engages the damper and stops any vibrating notes. One common flaw of this damping mechanism is that the bar is often supported at one point in the middle, causing it to damp the instrument unevenly in the upper and lower registers. To combat this, some manufacturers have made silicone- or liquid-filled damper pads whose fluid shape can conform evenly around the bars.


title: Vibraphone

text: Vibraphones usually have an electric motor and pulley assembly mounted on one side or the other to drive the disks in the resonators. Often, especially within classical music, the vibraphone is played with the motor off. Certain models for outdoor use as part of a front ensemble have the motor removed entirely. In those cases having the motor off is the norm and is not used unless specifically called for.


title: Vibraphone

text: The early vibraphones used motors that were intended to power record-player turntables and had limited to no speed-adjustment capabilities. Whatever speed adjustments were possible were made by moving the drive belt among a small number of pulleys (usually three) of varying diameters. Later, variable-speed AC motors became available at reasonable prices. These motors allow the adjustment of the rotating speed by a potentiometer mounted on a control panel near the motor. They typically support rotation rates in the range of 1–12 Hz.


title: Vibraphone

text: The two-mallet approach to vibes is traditionally linear, playing like a horn rather than comping like a guitar or piano. Two-mallet players usually concentrate on playing a single melodic line and rely on other musicians to provide accompaniment. Double stops (two notes played simultaneously) are sometimes used, but mostly as a reinforcement of the main melodic line, similar to the use of double stops in solo violin music. In jazz groups, two-mallet vibraphonists are usually considered part of the "front line" with the horn players, contributing solos of their own but contributing very little in the way of accompaniment to other soloists.


title: Vibraphone

text: Two-mallet players use several different grips, the most common being a matched grip called German grip, in which the mallets are played palms down, with the thumbs facing each other. In this grip, the mallets are held between the thumb and index finger of each hand, with the remaining three fingers of each hand supporting the shafts. This grip uses a combination of wrist movement and fingertip control to manipulate the mallet. Another popular grip is French grip, a grip also commonly used on timpani. The mallets are again held between the thumb and index fingers and controlled with the remaining three fingers, but the palms are held vertically, with the thumbs pointed upward. Most of the stroke action comes from the fingertip control of the shafts, with the wrists contributing slightly less than they do with the German grip.Passages are usually played with alternating sticking, but double strokes (playing two notes in a row with the same hand) are used when convenient to minimize crossing the hands.


title: Vibraphone

text: The player must pay close attention to the damper pedal to avoid multiple notes ringing unintentionally at the same time. Because the notes ring for a considerable fraction of a second when struck with the damper pad up, and ringing bars do not stop ringing immediately when contacted by the pad, players use a technique called "after pedaling". In this technique, the player presses the damper pedal slightly after striking the bar—shortly enough after so the recently struck note continues to ring, but long enough after so that the previous note stops ringing.


title: Vibraphone

text: In another damper technique—"half pedaling"—the player depresses the pedal just enough to remove the spring pressure from the bars, but not enough to make the pad lose contact with the bars. This lets the bars ring slightly longer than with the pad fully up and can make a medium-fast passage sound more legato without pedaling every note.


title: Vibraphone

text: The four-mallet vibraphone style is multi-linear, like a piano. In jazz groups, four-mallet vibraphonists are often considered part of the rhythm section, typically substituting for piano or guitar and providing accompaniment for other soloists in addition to soloing themselves. Furthermore, the four-mallet style has led to a significant body of unaccompanied solo vibes playing. One notable example is Gary Burton’s performance of "Chega de Saudade (No More Blues)" from his Grammy-winning 1971 album, "Alone at Last".


title: Vibraphone

text: The most popular four-mallet grip for vibraphone is the Burton grip, named for Gary Burton. One mallet is held between the thumb and index finger and the other is held between the index and middle fingers. The shafts cross in the middle of the palm and extend past the heel of the hand. For wide intervals, the thumb often moves in between the two mallets, and the inside mallet is held in the crook of the fingers. Unlike many other grips, the outer right mallet is the leading mallet rather than the inside two. Although some early vibes players made use of four mallets, notably Red Norvo, Adrian Rollini, and sometimes Lionel Hampton, the fully pianistic four-mallet approach to jazz on the vibraphone is almost entirely the creation of Burton.


title: Vibraphone

text: Practitioners of Burton grip tend to make more use of double strokes as compared to two-mallet players. This is done not only to avoid crossing the hands, but also to help minimize the motions between the two bar rows. For example, an ascending E major scale could be played by keeping the left hand on the upper bars and the right hand on the lower. For linear passages with leaps, all four mallets are often used sequentially.


title: Vibraphone

text: Also popular is the Stevens grip, named for marimbist Leigh Howard Stevens. Many other grips are in use, some variations on the Burton or Stevens, others idiosyncratic creations of individual vibes players.


title: Vibraphone

text: Pedaling techniques are at least as important for the four-mallet vibraphonist as for two-mallet players, but the all-or-nothing damping system of the sustain pedal presents many obstacles to multi-linear playing, since each line normally has its own damping requirements independent of the other lines. To overcome this, four-mallet players also use "mallet dampening" and "hand dampening". There are many benefits of being proficient in these techniques, as it allows the player to transition between chords much more smoothly and play new notes without having them affect the quality of the chord when the pedal is down.


title: Vibraphone

text: The most common form of mallet dampening occurs when the vibraphonist plays a note with one mallet before pressing another mallet into the ringing bar to stop it from sounding. Usually the damping mallet and the original striking mallet are held in different hands, but advanced players can, in some circumstances, use the same hand. Mallet dampening also includes "dead strokes", where a player strikes a bar and then, instead of drawing the mallet back, directly presses the head of the mallet onto the bar, causing the ringing to stop immediately. This produces a fairly distinctive "choked" sound, and dead strokes are often used just for that particular sound in addition to the damping aspects.


title: Vibraphone

text: Hand dampening (also known as "finger dampening") can be used to damp a note on the lower bars while striking a nearby upper bar. As the player strikes the upper bar with a mallet, they simultaneously press the heel of their hand or the side of their finger into the ringing lower bar, using the same hand to strike the upper bar and damp the lower one. Using both hands, it's possible to damp and strike two bars at once.


title: Vibraphone

text: To achieve a denser sound and richer chord voicings, some vibraphonists have experimented with three mallets per hand, either in both hands for a total of six mallets or in just the left hand for a total of five.


title: Vibraphone

text: Like many other metallophones, percussionists can use an orchestral bow on the vibraphone to achieve sustained tones that will not decay, nor have a percussive attack. This is done by bowing the bars perpendicular to their outer edges. Due to the different mode of vibration, this also changes the sound of the vibraphone by emphasizing the higher harmonics and giving it a more "glassy" tone. Because changing notes requires large and precise movements, fast passages are not often written for bowed vibraphone.


title: Vibraphone

text: Bent notes can be achieved on the vibraphone by sliding a rubber or plastic mallet from the nodal point to the center of the bar. This technique is only able to lower the pitch by about a half step.


title: Vibraphone

text: As part of the standard percussion section, the use of the vibraphone in classical music has increased over the past fifty years, especially within the collegiate percussion ensemble.


title: Vibraphone

text: Several concertos have been written for the vibraphone, the first of these being Darius Milhaud's Concerto for Marimba, Vibraphone and Orchestra written in 1947. Other prominent concertos for the vibraphone include Ney Rosauro's Concerto No. 1 for Vibraphone written in 1996 and Emmanuel Séjourné's Concerto for Vibraphone and Strings written in 1999.


title: Vibraphone

text: The vibraphone is the second most popular solo keyboard percussion instrument, after the marimba. Solos may be jazz standards specifically arranged for the instrument or newly composed pieces that are either jazz-oriented or classical in nature. Some of the most performed solo literature includes "Mirror from Another" by David Friedman, "Mourning Dove Sonnet" by Christopher Deane, "Trilogy" by Tim Huesgen, and "Blues for Gilbert" by Mark Glentworth.


title: Vibraphone

text: Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, each manufacturer attracted its own following in various specialties, but the Deagan vibraphones were the models preferred by many of the specialist jazz players. Deagan struck endorsement deals with many of the leading players, including Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson. However, the Deagan company went out of business in the 1980s, and its trademark and patents were purchased by Yamaha. Yamaha continues to make percussion instruments based on the Deagan designs.


title: Vibraphone

text: In 1948, the Musser Mallet Company was founded by Clair Omar Musser, who had been a designer at Deagan. The Musser Mallet Company continues to manufacture vibraphones as part of the Ludwig Drum Company after their purchase in 1965. The Leedy Manufacturing Company, the original designers of the vibraphone, had already merged with Ludwig Drums in 1929 under C. G. Conn.


title: Matroska

text: Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanced Systems Format (ASF), but is an open standard.


title: Matroska

text: Matroska file extensions are ".mkv" for video (which may include subtitles or audio), ".mk3d" for stereoscopic video, ".mka" for audio-only files (which may include subtitles), and ".mks" for subtitles only.


title: Matroska

text: The project was announced on 6 December 2002 as a fork of the Multimedia Container Format (MCF), after disagreements between MCF lead developer Lasse Kärkkäinen and soon-to-be Matroska founder Steve Lhomme about the use of the Extensible Binary Meta Language (EBML) instead of a binary format. This coincided with a 6-month coding break by the MCF's lead developer for his military service, during which most of the community quickly migrated to the new project.


title: Matroska

text: In 2010, it was announced that the WebM audio/video format would be based on a profile of the Matroska container format together with VP8 video and Vorbis audio.


title: Matroska

text: On 31 October 2014, Microsoft confirmed that Windows 10 would support HEVC and Matroska out of the box, according to a statement from Gabriel Aul, the leader of Microsoft Operating Systems Group's Data and Fundamentals Team. Windows 10 Technical Preview Build 9860 added platform level support for HEVC and Matroska.


title: Matroska

text: "Matroska" is derived from "matryoshka" ( ), the Russian word for the hollow wooden dolls which open to expose another smaller doll, that in turn opens to expose another doll, and so on. The logo writes it as "Matroška"; the letter š, an "s" with a caron over it, represents the "sh" sound () in various languages.


title: Matroska

text: The use of EBML allows extension for future format changes. The Matroska team has expressed some of their long-term goals on Doom9.org and Hydrogen Audio forums. Thus, the following are "goals", not necessarily existing features, of Matroska:


title: Matroska

text: Matroska is supported by a non-profit organization (association loi 1901) in France, and the specifications are open to everyone. It is a royalty-free open standard that is free to use, and its technical specifications are available for private and commercial use. The Matroska development team licenses its libraries under the LGPL, with parsing and playback libraries available under BSD licenses.


title: Matroska

text: Software supporting Matroska include all ffmpeg/libav-based ones, including, notably, mplayer, mpv, VLC, Foobar2000, Media Player Classic-HC, BS.player, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Blender, Kdenlive, Handbrake, MKVToolNix as well as YouTube (which uses WebM extensively).


title: Matroska

text: Outside of ffmpeg, Windows 10 supports Matroska natively as well. Earlier versions relied on codec packs (like K-Lite Codec Pack or Combined Community Codec Pack) to integrate ffmpeg (via ffdshow) and other additions into Windows’ native DirectShow.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: Lassie is an American television series that follows the adventures of a female Rough Collie dog named Lassie and her companions, both human and animal. The show was the creation of producer Robert Maxwell and animal trainer Rudd Weatherwax and was televised from September 12, 1954, to March 25, 1973. The sixth longest-running U.S. primetime television series after "The Simpsons", "", "Gunsmoke," "Law & Order and Family Guy," the show ran for 17 seasons on CBS before entering first-run syndication for its final two seasons. Initially filmed in black and white, the show transitioned to color in 1965.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: The show's first 10 seasons follow Lassie's adventures living on a farm. 11-year-old Jeff Miller, his mother Ellen, and his grandfather are Lassie's first human companions until seven-year-old Timmy Martin and his adoptive parents take over in the fourth season. When Lassie's exploits on the farm end in the 11th season, she finds new adventures in the wilderness, alongside United States Forest Service Rangers. After traveling on her own for a year, Lassie settles at a children's home for her final two syndicated seasons.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: "Lassie" received critical favor at its debut and won two Emmy Awards in its first years. Stars Jan Clayton and June Lockhart were nominated for Emmys. Merchandise produced during the show's run included books, a Halloween costume, clothing, toys, and other items. Campbell's Soup, the show's lifelong sponsor, offered two premiums (a ring and a wallet), and distributed thousands to fans. A multi-part episode was edited into the feature film "Lassie's Great Adventure" and released in August 1963. Selected episodes have been released to DVD.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: Between 1943 and 1951, fictional collie Lassie was the inspiration for seven feature films produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. With the completion of the seventh film in 1951, MGM had no further films planned for the Lassie character or Pal, the male dog actor who portrayed Lassie. In lieu of $40,000 back pay owed him by MGM, Pal's owner and trainer Rudd Weatherwax was given all rights to the Lassie trademark and name. Weatherwax and Pal, appearing as Lassie, began to perform at county fairs, carnivals, rodeos, and other venues.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: Needing material for the relatively new medium of television, producer Robert Maxwell sold Weatherwax on the concept of a Lassie television series with a boy and his dog theme. The two men developed a scenario about a struggling war widow, her young son, and her father-in-law set on a weather-beaten, modern-day American farm. Two pilots were filmed in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with the first ("Inheritance") telling the story of the bond forged between boy and dog, and the second ("The Well") filmed to give potential sponsors and network buyers an idea of a typical episode. After viewing the pilots, CBS put the show on its fall 1954 schedule. Campbell's Soup Company signed on early as the show's sole sponsor and remained so for the show's entire 19 season run. Filming for the series began in the summer of 1954, and "Lassie" made its début Sunday, September 12, 1954, at 7:00 p.m. EST, a time slot the show would call home on CBS for the next seventeen years.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: In 1957, Jack Wrather, owner of the hit television series "The Lone Ranger" and "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" purchased all rights to the "Lassie" television show for $3.25 million, and guided the show through its next several seasons. As 1964 and the show's eleventh season approached, the decision was made to completely rework the show; the boy and his dog theme was dropped and Lassie was teamed with a succession of United States Forest Service workers. The show focused on conservation and environmentalism, but its relevance in a time of social change was questioned. The show began a steady decline in ratings. In 1971, new rulings regarding network prime time scheduling were handed down from the Federal Communications Commission, and CBS canceled the show. "Lassie" then entered first-run syndication for two seasons before televising its last new episode on Sunday March 25, 1973.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: The show's title character was portrayed in the two pilots by Pal, the MGM Lassie. Thereafter, five of Pal's male descendants played the role. His son Lassie Junior performed through the Jeff years and first two Timmy years before retiring in 1959 to battle cancer. Though he recovered, Lassie Junior never worked the show again. His son Spook was rushed into the series while his brother Baby was in training for the role. Spook was inadequately prepared and never became comfortable on the set after an overhead light crashed to the floor on his first day. Weatherwax, however, coaxed a natural and seemingly confident performance from the nervous dog, and some regard Spook's portrayal as Weatherwax's finest work. Spook played the role in the spring and fall of 1960. Baby, son of Lassie Junior and brother to Spook, worked the show for six years. He appeared in the last Timmy years, and two of the Forest Service seasons. Baby died at just eight years of age, the only Lassie not to live at least seventeen years. He was followed in the role by Mire who played Lassie for five years. He portrayed the fictional collie in the syndicated seasons.


title: Lassie (1954 TV series)

text: Broadway star and quiz show panelist Jan Clayton was hired to play farm widow Ellen Miller with septuagenarian George Cleveland playing her father-in-law, George "Gramps" Miller. Child actor Tommy Rettig was hired to portray Ellen's eleven-year-old son Jeff Miller, and Donald Keeler (the professional name used at the time by Joey D. Vieira) was cast as Jeff's friend, Sylvester "Porky" Brockway. Porky's basset hound Pokey became a recurring animal character through the first several seasons.