title: Attenuation

text: One area of research in which attenuation plays a prominent role, is in ultrasound physics. Attenuation in ultrasound is the reduction in amplitude of the ultrasound beam as a function of distance through the imaging medium. Accounting for attenuation effects in ultrasound is important because a reduced signal amplitude can affect the quality of the image produced. By knowing the attenuation that an ultrasound beam experiences traveling through a medium, one can adjust the input signal amplitude to compensate for any loss of energy at the desired imaging depth.


title: Attenuation

text: Wave equations which take acoustic attenuation into account can be written on a fractional derivative form.


title: Attenuation

text: In homogeneous media, the main physical properties contributing to sound attenuation are viscosity and thermal conductivity.


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation coefficients are used to quantify different media according to how strongly the transmitted ultrasound amplitude decreases as a function of frequency. The attenuation coefficient (formula_1) can be used to determine total attenuation in dB in the medium using the following formula:


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation is linearly dependent on the medium length and attenuation coefficient, as well as – approximately – the frequency of the incident ultrasound beam for biological tissue (while for simpler media, such as air, the relationship is quadratic). Attenuation coefficients vary widely for different media. In biomedical ultrasound imaging however, biological materials and water are the most commonly used media. The attenuation coefficients of common biological materials at a frequency of 1 MHz are listed below:


title: Attenuation

text: Ultrasound propagation through homogeneous media is associated only with absorption and can be characterized with absorption coefficient only. Propagation through heterogeneous media requires taking into account scattering.


title: Attenuation

text: Shortwave radiation emitted from the Sun have wavelengths in the visible spectrum of light that range from 360 nm (violet) to 750 nm (red). When the Sun's radiation reaches the sea surface, the shortwave radiation is attenuated by the water, and the intensity of light decreases exponentially with water depth. The intensity of light at depth can be calculated using the Beer-Lambert Law.


title: Attenuation

text: In clear mid-ocean waters, visible light is absorbed most strongly at the longest wavelengths. Thus, red, orange, and yellow wavelengths are totally absorbed at shallower depths, while blue and violet wavelengths reach deeper in the water column. Because the blue and violet wavelengths are absorbed least compared to the other wavelengths, open-ocean waters appear deep blue to the eye.


title: Attenuation

text: Near the shore, coastal water contains more phytoplankton than the very clear mid-ocean waters. Chlorophyll-a pigments in the phytoplankton absorb light, and the plants themselves scatter light, making coastal waters less clear than mid-ocean waters. Chlorophyll-a absorbs light most strongly in the shortest wavelengths (blue and violet) of the visible spectrum. In coastal waters where high concentrations of phytoplankton occur, the green wavelength reaches the deepest in the water column and the color of water appears blue-green or green.


title: Attenuation

text: The energy with which an earthquake affects a location depends on the running distance. The attenuation in the signal of ground motion intensity plays an important role in the assessment of possible strong groundshaking. A seismic wave loses energy as it propagates through the earth (seismic attenuation). This phenomenon is tied into the dispersion of the seismic energy with the distance. There are two types of dissipated energy:


title: Attenuation

text: In porous fluid—saturated sedimentary rocks such as sandstones, intrinsic attenuation of seismic waves is primarily caused by the wave-induced flow of the pore fluid relative to the solid frame.


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation decreases the intensity of electromagnetic radiation due to absorption or scattering of photons. Attenuation does not include the decrease in intensity due to inverse-square law geometric spreading. Therefore, calculation of the total change in intensity involves both the inverse-square law and an estimation of attenuation over the path.


title: Attenuation

text: The primary causes of attenuation in matter are the photoelectric effect, compton scattering, and, for photon energies of above 1.022 MeV, pair production.


title: Attenuation

text: where formula_4 is the input power into a 100 m long cable terminated with the nominal value of its characteristic impedance, and


title: Attenuation

text: The beam of X-ray is attenuated when photons are absorbed when the x-ray beam passes through the tissue. Interaction with matter varies between high energy photons and low energy photons. Photons travelling at higher energy are more capable of travelling through a tissue specimen as they have less chances of interacting with matter. This is mainly due to the photoelectric effect which states that "the probability of photoelectric absorption is approximately proportional to (Z/E), where Z is the atomic number of the tissue atom and E is the photon energy. In context of this, an increase in photon energy (E) will result in a rapid decrease in the interaction with matter.


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation in fiber optics, also known as transmission loss, is the reduction in intensity of the light beam (or signal) with respect to distance travelled through a transmission medium. Attenuation coefficients in fiber optics usually use units of dB/km through the medium due to the relatively high quality of transparency of modern optical transmission . The medium is typically a fiber of silica glass that confines the incident light beam to the inside. Attenuation is an important factor limiting the transmission of a digital signal across large distances. Thus, much research has gone into both limiting the attenuation and maximizing the amplification of the optical signal.


title: Attenuation

text: Empirical research has shown that attenuation in optical fiber is caused primarily by both scattering and absorption.


title: Attenuation

text: The propagation of light through the core of an optical fiber is based on total internal reflection of the lightwave. Rough and irregular surfaces, even at the molecular level of the glass, can cause light rays to be reflected in many random directions. This type of reflection is referred to as "diffuse reflection", and it is typically characterized by wide variety of reflection angles. Most objects that can be seen with the naked eye are visible due to diffuse reflection. Another term commonly used for this type of reflection is "light scattering". Light scattering from the surfaces of objects is our primary mechanism of physical observation.


title: Attenuation

text: Light scattering depends on the wavelength of the light being scattered. Thus, limits to spatial scales of visibility arise, depending on the frequency of the incident lightwave and the physical dimension (or spatial scale) of the scattering center, which is typically in the form of some specific microstructural feature. For example, since visible light has a wavelength scale on the order of one micrometer, scattering centers will have dimensions on a similar spatial scale.


title: Attenuation

text: Thus, attenuation results from the incoherent scattering of light at internal surfaces and interfaces. In (poly)crystalline materials such as metals and ceramics, in addition to pores, most of the internal surfaces or interfaces are in the form of grain boundaries that separate tiny regions of crystalline order. It has recently been shown that, when the size of the scattering center (or grain boundary) is reduced below the size of the wavelength of the light being scattered, the scattering no longer occurs to any significant extent. This phenomenon has given rise to the production of transparent ceramic materials.


title: Attenuation

text: Likewise, the scattering of light in optical quality glass fiber is caused by molecular-level irregularities (compositional fluctuations) in the glass structure. Indeed, one emerging school of thought is that a glass is simply the limiting case of a polycrystalline solid. Within this framework, "domains" exhibiting various degrees of short-range order become the building-blocks of both metals and alloys, as well as glasses and ceramics. Distributed both between and within these domains are microstructural defects that will provide the most ideal locations for the occurrence of light scattering. This same phenomenon is seen as one of the limiting factors in the transparency of IR missile domes.


title: Attenuation

text: In addition to light scattering, attenuation or signal loss can also occur due to selective absorption of specific wavelengths, in a manner similar to that responsible for the appearance of color. Primary material considerations include both electrons and molecules as follows:


title: Attenuation

text: The selective absorption of infrared (IR) light by a particular material occurs because the selected frequency of the light wave matches the frequency (or an integral multiple of the frequency) at which the particles of that material vibrate. Since different atoms and molecules have different natural frequencies of vibration, they will selectively absorb different frequencies (or portions of the spectrum) of infrared (IR) light.


title: Attenuation

text: In optical fibers, attenuation is the rate at which the signal light decreases in intensity. For this reason, glass fiber (which has a low attenuation) is used for long-distance fiber optic cables; plastic fiber has a higher attenuation and, hence, shorter range. There also exist optical attenuators that decrease the signal in a fiber optic cable intentionally.


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation of light is also important in physical oceanography. This same effect is an important consideration in weather radar, as raindrops absorb a part of the emitted beam that is more or less significant, depending on the wavelength used.


title: Attenuation

text: Due to the damaging effects of high-energy photons, it is necessary to know how much energy is deposited in tissue during diagnostic treatments involving such radiation. In addition, gamma radiation is used in cancer treatments where it is important to know how much energy will be deposited in healthy and in tumorous tissue.


title: Attenuation

text: In computer graphics attenuation defines the local or global influence of light sources and force fields.


title: Attenuation

text: Attenuation is an important consideration in the modern world of wireless telecommunication. Attenuation limits the range of radio signals and is affected by the materials a signal must travel through (e.g., air, wood, concrete, rain). See the article on path loss for more information on signal loss in wireless communication.


title: Military awards and decorations of the United Kingdom

text: The British Armed Forces recognises service and personal accomplishments of individuals while a member of the Royal Navy, British Army or Royal Air Force with the awarding of various awards and decorations.


text: Together with rank and qualification badges, such awards are a means to outwardly display the highlights of a serviceperson's career.


text: Note: Jubilee, Coronation and Durbar medals were worn before campaign medals until November 1918, after which the order of wear was changed, with them now worn after campaign medals and before long service awards.


text: Note [1] Eligibility period start dates reflect respective establishment dates, except where available evidence indicates otherwise.


text: Worn with other United Kingdom campaign medals in order of date of issue (except where noted otherwise).


text: Worn after all United Kingdom awards (including international awards treated as United Kingdom awards). Honorary awards are worn before substantive awards.


text: Official permission has been granted for this medal to be accepted, but it is not authorised for wear.


text: Official permission has been granted for these medals to be accepted, but they are not authorised for wear.


text: Official permission has been refused for these medals to be accepted and they are not authorised for wear.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Mark Goudeau (born September 6, 1964) is an American serial killer, kidnapper, thief and rapist. Goudeau terrorized victims in the Phoenix metro area between August 2005 and June 2006; coincidentally, Goudeau was active at the same time as two other Phoenix serial killers, jointly known as the "Serial Shooter.”


title: Mark Goudeau

text: In addition to committing nine murders, his extensive crime spree included 84 other felony crimes, totaling 93 felonies over the ten-month period. He faced two separate trials—one for 19 charges related to an attack on two sisters whom he raped and sexually assaulted, and another related to 74 more charges including murder, robbery, rape, kidnapping, sexual abuse and/or assault of minors and adults. All but one of his victims were females. Goudeau was convicted on a total of 76 of 93 crimes, and was sentenced to death 9 times (one for each murder conviction) and given a sum total of 1,634 years in Arizona state prison.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Goudeau was first referred to as the Baseline Rapist when Phoenix Police announced that a light-skinned black male was sexually assaulting females as young as 12 years old at gunpoint near Baseline Road. Goudeau would later be dubbed the Baseline Killer in the spring of 2006 after investigators linked him to a series of murders and armed robberies. The crimes later spread north, primarily in the North Central area of Phoenix, Arizona.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Goudeau is believed to have committed nine counts of first degree murder (the victims were eight women and one man), in addition to 15 sexual assaults on women and young girls, 11 counts of kidnapping, and a number of armed robberies. Although not initially linked, the crimes were distinguished by having no apparent motive, and the murders were particularly brutal, with the killer often shooting the victims in the head. The criminal was often described wearing various disguises such as a Halloween mask as well as attempting to impersonate a homeless man or drug addict.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Police say that the shell casings found at each of the crime scenes all came from the same gun. Phoenix police spent thousands of hours patrolling and following up on hundreds of tips during the summer of 2006. As residents of Phoenix became increasingly alarmed by the random nature of the violent crimes, community meetings were called by the police to distribute a sketch based on the description given by the surviving victims. Frustration and fear blanketed the city as posters and billboards displayed the sketch of the Baseline Killer, offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. It took the police over a year to finally come up with a viable suspect.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Mark Goudeau was at the time on community supervision (parole) with the Arizona Department of Corrections and supervised out of the Northeast Parole Office. In August 2006, parole officers in the Northeast Parole Office provided information to the Phoenix Police Department task force suggesting that Goudeau matched the sketch of the Baseline Killer. Parole officers searched Goudeau's residence and found a ski mask and a realistic "toy" handgun. Police used this information to obtain a search warrant for Goudeau's residence and found additional items that linked him to crimes committed by the Baseline Killer.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: On September 4, 2006, Mark Goudeau was arrested in connection to the sexual assault of two Phoenix sisters, an attack which was tied to the Baseline Killer investigation. The sisters, one of whom was visibly pregnant, were assaulted in a Phoenix city park on September 20, 2005. Goudeau was linked to the attack by DNA evidence collected shortly following the time of the crime. On September 7, 2007, Goudeau was tried and convicted of all 19 charges relating to the attack on the two sisters. He was sentenced on December 14, 2007, to 438 years in prison for the sexual assault charges. On November 30, 2011, a Phoenix jury sentenced him to death on the murder charges relating to the Baseline Killings. Goudeau is held on death row in ASPC Florence, awaiting execution.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Phoenix police released hundreds of pages of documents that detailed their investigation into the Baseline Killer. The paperwork obtained by ABC15 News revealed that police had at least 10 names of possible suspects that they had looked into, and that they had already ruled out some of those people. The 20,000 pages of police reports were primarily of other suspects with very little mention of Mark Goudeau. The documents revealed information on nine cases ranging from a double homicide to sexual assaults, robberies and kidnappings. The new information included police reports and narratives that described where and who police were looking at in the investigation. They also discussed investigative leads; however, much of the information was redacted.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: According to the documents, the Baseline Killer posed as a homeless person in one incident, pushing a shopping cart toward a woman in a parking lot near 32nd Street and Thomas Road. He forced himself into her car and told her to perform oral sex upon him or he would kill her. She fought him off, the records said. In that incident, the man believed to be the Baseline Killer was wearing gloves, a mask and clothing that covered his entire body. The records show police worked to obtain partial hand prints, DNA and ballistics reports to build their case; but those results were blacked out on the paperwork.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: While being interviewed by police in Kentucky on a burglary case, James Dewayne Mullins claimed responsibility for the murder of Georgia Thompson on September 8, 2005. Mullins told police he shot Thompson as she attempted to rob him outside the Scottsdale strip club where she worked. However, Thompson's body was found almost away in Tempe at her apartment complex. Police do not believe she was killed elsewhere.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Mullins changed his story when police definitively linked the homicide to the Baseline Killer. Since then, he has told police that he was not in Arizona. Mullins denies any involvement in Thompson's death. On August 3, 2006, murder charges against Mullins were dropped. Authorities stated that Mullins had caused a significant diversion of resources during the hunt for the genuine killer.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: In April 2009, the Times Publications, a chain of publications in the Phoenix metro area, published a story revealing that the Phoenix Police Department had possessed the key DNA evidence that was eventually used to crack the Baseline Killer case nine months before the arrest, but failed to analyze it in a timely manner.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: On September 4, 2006, Phoenix police announced an arrest in connection with a sexual assault previously linked to the Baseline Killer while serving a search warrant at 28th Street and Pinchot Avenue.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Police arrested Mark Goudeau, a construction worker living in Phoenix. Goudeau was charged with attacking two sisters on September 20, 2005, while they were walking home from a Phoenix city park at night. Goudeau was linked to the attack by matching DNA evidence found on the victims. Goudeau was tried and convicted on all 19 counts connected to the assault and all murders related to the Baseline Killer investigation.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: During the trial, the two sisters gave testimony that Goudeau suddenly approached them with a gun in his hand. They were forced into nearby bushes and told to remove their clothing. The victims said Goudeau sexually assaulted the younger sister as he pointed his gun at the other sister's pregnant abdomen. Prosecutors said Goudeau warned the women not to look at his face during the assault. They also stated he rubbed dirt on one of the women to remove saliva traces, and wore a condom during the assault on one of the sisters.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas stated he would seek the death penalty on Goudeau if he were convicted in the murder trial.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Goudeau's wife, Wendy Carr, told The Associated Press that police arrested the wrong man; "My husband is innocent," Carr reportedly said in a telephone interview. "This is a huge miscarriage of justice. And they have an innocent man in prison. This is all a mistake. He shouldn't be in prison for something he didn't do." Goudeau was described as a loving husband and exceptionally friendly neighbor who took meticulous care of his lawn. Friends and family deny any possibility that Goudeau could be the Baseline Killer, saying he was framed by Phoenix police who were desperate for a suspect.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: According to Arizona prison officials, Goudeau is an ex-convict who served 13 years of a 21-year sentence for aggravated assault, including beating a woman's head with a barbell, and armed robbery. Goudeau pleaded down to the charge of aggravated assault, but he had also originally been charged with rape and kidnapping. The rape charge was dropped, as there was no physical evidence of rape.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: On December 7, 2006, three months after Goudeau was arrested, Phoenix police said they were confident he was responsible for the full series of murders, rapes and robberies that terrorized the city for 13 months. Goudeau is believed to have committed nine murders, one more than originally attributed to the Baseline Killer (the murder of Sophia Nunez on April 10, 2006).


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Police say ballistics, DNA and circumstantial evidence prove that Goudeau is the Baseline Killer. During the trial, a forensic specialist with the Department of Public Safety told the Maricopa County Superior Court that Goudeau was undoubtedly the source of male DNA found on the left breast of one of the victims with it being 360 trillion times more likely that DNA collected from the crime scene came from Goudeau rather than an unrelated black male.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Corwin Townsend, Goudeau's defense attorney at the time, pointed out that Heath's analysis showed only a partial match. Under cross-examination, Heath agreed that Goudeau's DNA was consistent with only three of 13 genetic markers.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Police recommended that prosecutors charge Goudeau with 74 crimes, including nine counts of first-degree murder, five counts of sexual assault, three counts of attempted sexual assault, 10 counts of kidnapping, 12 counts of armed robbery, four counts of attempted armed robbery, three counts of sexual abuse, nine counts of sexual conduct with a minor, 13 counts of aggravated assault, and three counts of indecent exposure. On October 31, 2011, Mark Goudeau was found guilty of a total of 67 felony counts, including all murders attributed to the Baseline Killer. On November 30, 2011, Goudeau was sentenced to death 9 times for the murders and 1,196 years for the other 58 crimes he was convicted for- while serving a 438-year sentence after being convicted for 19 separate crimes related to the rape and assault of two sisters during this same crime spree. This sentence totals 1,634 years.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: In October 2015, Goudeau appealed his nine death sentences, with an appellate attorney arguing to the Arizona Supreme Court that Goudeau should have been tried separately for each of the murders and some other counts. In June 2016, The Arizona Supreme Court upheld nine death sentences and more than 60 other felony convictions against Mark Goudeau.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: In June 2009, a leaked police report indicated another suspect had been questioned in connection to the Vargas and Roman lunch truck murder in February 2006. Terry Wayne Smith, a black male who matched the description of the Baseline Killer and who lived near several of the Baseline Killer crime scenes was documented as a potential accomplice. Smith had a long, violent history of crime in California and Arizona including aggravated assault, armed robbery, and was a suspect in two homicide cases.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Smith was released from prison shortly before the Baseline Killer attacks began, and he was arrested a few days after Goudeau. Smith is currently imprisoned for four years after allegedly holding his family at gunpoint the night before his arrest.


title: Mark Goudeau

text: Police officer Rusty Stuart compiled 166 pages suggesting that Smith may have been involved in some of the Baseline murders. However, police spokesmen say that Smith had been properly questioned and dismissed as a suspect, and state that Smith was in jail at the time of one of the murders.


title: 2009–10 Inter Milan season

text: The 2009–10 season was Inter Milan's 101st in existence and 94th consecutive season in the top flight of Italian football. This was manager José Mourinho's second and final season with the club, before his departure to Real Madrid.


title: 2009–10 Inter Milan season

text: Inter had the greatest season in their history, winning Serie A for the fifth consecutive season on the final matchday, the Coppa Italia, and the UEFA Champions League for the first time in 45 years, completing a historic treble. Inter became the sixth European club to complete a treble and the first and only Italian club to achieve this feat to date.


title: 2009–10 Inter Milan season

text: The main transfer move was an exchange with Barcelona, as Zlatan Ibrahimović and Samuel Eto'o swapped clubs. From a tactical point of view, the line-up was not made up from this fact: Eto'o was himself a centre-forward. His partner was Diego Milito, acquired from Genoa, like the midfielder Thiago Motta. There were also the arrivals of the centre-back Lúcio and the playmaker Wesley Sneijder. Inter unveiled the season losing the Supercoppa Italiana, due to a 2–1 knockout against Lazio.


title: 2009–10 Inter Milan season

text: During the brief pause in September, Inter had four points in the league, which became 16 before the October pause. Meanwhile, the side had started its European adventure (from group phase) drawing in the first part of the stage: it was renamed the "group of death" due to the presences of only national champions, from Spain (Barcelona, who was the European defending champion), Ukraine (Dynamo Kyiv) and Russia (Rubin Kazan). Inter retained the first place in Serie A without obstacles and managed to recover the Champions League gap, finishing the group in second place behind Barcelona. In the round of 16, they defeated Chelsea (the club that José Mourinho coached from 2004 to 2007) via a 3–1 aggregate; in the quarter-finals, CSKA Moscow was beaten 1–0 in both legs. The last obstacle toward the final resulted – once again – Barcelona. Four days before the first leg, Inter won 2–0 over Juventus. The Spanish side lost the first leg, despite having scored the first goal (with Pedro): the final score was 3–1, enough for Inter to progress to the final despite a 1–0 loss in the second leg, and down to 10 men with a red card to Thiago Motta. As result, Inter went to their first UEFA final in 12 years since the 1998 UEFA Cup.


title: 2009–10 Inter Milan season

text: Prior to the final, Mourinho added two trophies to the season: a Coppa Italia and the second consecutive Scudetto, both won due to Milito's goals and leaving Roma behind. Milito was also "man of the match" for Champions League final, scoring both goals in the 2–0 victory whereby Inter defeated Bayern Munich, winning this trophy for the first time since 1965, and for the third overall. Inter became the first Italian club to achieve the Treble.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: Nigel de Jong (born 30 November 1984) is a Dutch former professional footballer who played as a defensive midfielder and current English language pundit for beIN Sports covering Premier League and Champions League football.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong joined the Ajax youth academy and made the first team at age 17. He moved in 2006 to join Hamburg and then joined Manchester City in January 2009 for an estimated £18 million, where he became an important part of their holding midfield. A tireless grafter, he garnered a reputation of being a combative and feisty player in his performances, a reputation that earned him nicknames such as ""The Destroyer"" and ""Lawnmower"". He moved to Italian side A.C. Milan in August 2012, before joining MLS side LA Galaxy in February 2016. He subsequently had spells with Galatasaray in Turkey, Mainz 05 in Germany, and Al Ahli and Al-Shahania in Qatar.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong made his international debut at the age of 18, and obtained 81 caps between 2004 and 2015, scoring one goal. He took part at two European Championships and two editions of the FIFA World Cup with the Netherlands, winning a World Cup runners-up medal in 2010, and a bronze medal at the 2014 FIFA World Cup.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong was born in Amsterdam. He is of Surinamese-Dutch descent; Surinamese parentage from his father and Dutch and Indonesian from his mother. His father is former Dutch international Jerry de Jong.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong is married to Winonah, a model and fashion designer, with whom he has two children. He owns a specialist car dealership (Continental Cars) operating in Europe (Hamburg) and the Middle East.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 19 October 2002, De Jong made his debut for the Ajax first team. He scored his first goal of his senior career on 18 February 2003 in a 1–1 draw against Arsenal in the Champions League. He became a first team regular the following season, in which Ajax won the Eredivisie title. In 2004–05, his last full season in Amsterdam, De Jong was named Ajax Player of the Season. After a period when he appeared regularly in midfield, he found himself sitting on the bench more often than being in the starting line-up. On 7 December 2005, it was announced that De Jong did not wish to extend his contract with Ajax, which was due to end in July 2006.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 26 January 2006, De Jong signed a four and a half-year contract at Bundesliga club Hamburg, the transfer fee approximately €1 million. At Hamburg he joined two other Dutchmen: Rafael van der Vaart and Khalid Boulahrouz. He made his Hamburg debut two days later in a 2–1 defeat at Nürnberg. In March 2006, De Jong scored the winning goal in Bayern Munich's first ever defeat at the Allianz Arena. The following week he received the first red card of his career for a second booking in a UEFA Cup match against Rapid București. His season was cut short in April, when he required surgery on a knee problem. The injury also kept him out of the Dutch squad for the 2006 World Cup, though he was later put on standby after regaining fitness.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 21 January 2009, De Jong was signed to Manchester City for an estimated fee of £18 million by manager Mark Hughes who deployed him in the role of midfield enforcer in a team whose defence badly needed reinforcement. He signed a four-and-a-half-year contract. and was assigned the number 34 shirt. He made his debut for the club against Newcastle United on 28 January 2009. He made sixteen appearances in the Premier League over the second half of the season.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong was given a start against Arsenal on 12 September 2009. He was named Man of the Match by Sky Sports in a 2–1 win over Chelsea on 5 December 2009. By the end of the season he had become a firm fans' favourite as well as being one of new manager Roberto Mancini's first picks as defensive midfielder as the team narrowly missed out on a Champions League berth. De Jong scored his first goal for Manchester City in a 2–1 victory against West Ham United on 1 May 2011.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong was a member of the City side which won the 2010–11 FA Cup and the 2011–12 Premier League, making 137 appearances and scoring twice before being sold to A.C. Milan in August 2012.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 31 August 2012, De Jong joined Italian club Milan for £3.5 million rising to £5 million depending on appearances, signing a three-year deal. On 1 September, De Jong made his debut against Bologna. De Jong scored his first goal for Milan in a 3–2 loss against Lazio on 20 October.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 4 May 2014, De Jong scored his second goal for Milan, the winning goal against Inter Milan in the Derby della Madonnina at the San Siro.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 26 June 2015, Milan announced De Jong had signed a contract extension to keep him at the club until 2018.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 31 January 2016, it was reported that De Jong had negotiated to terminate his contract with Milan and joined LA Galaxy on a free transfer, signing a one-year deal. He was involved in a controversial incident in a game against the Portland Timbers on 10 April when his strong tackle left Darlington Nagbe injured and in need of treatment. De Jong was only shown a yellow card by referee Allen Chapman, but was later suspended for three games. He received a red-card after a bad tackle on Blas Perez on 5 July; although a man down, the Galaxy were still able to hold on for the win over Vancouver Whitecaps FC.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 29 August 2016, the Galaxy announced that they and the Dutch midfielder mutually agreed to terminate de Jong's contract, freeing the 31-year-old to sign with Turkey's Galatasaray. De Jong reportedly would have been tagged as a Designated Player for the upcoming 2017 season. He appeared in 18 regular season contests for Los Angeles, failing to record a goal or an assist in regular season play but establishing himself as a starting presence as a defensive midfielder.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 5 January 2018, De Jong's contract was terminated by Galatasaray. On the same day, he agreed a free transfer to Bundesliga side Mainz 05.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: In July 2018, De Jong moved to Qatari club Al Ahli. A year later, he moved to Al-Shahania in the same league.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: On 31 March 2004, De Jong made his debut with the Netherlands in a friendly game against France. He was overlooked for the squad that went to play in UEFA Euro 2004, and missed the 2006 FIFA World Cup with a knee injury.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: He was selected by Marco van Basten to play for the "Oranje" at UEFA Euro 2008. During the tournament, he was played as a "screening midfielder", partnering with Orlando Engelaar in central midfield. This resulted in De Jong playing three out of the four games that saw the Netherlands reach the quarter-final stage, where they lost to Russia.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong scored his first international goal against Iceland on 6 June 2009 in a 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying match, which sealed the Netherlands' passage to the 2010 World Cup.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong was part of the Dutch team for the 2010 FIFA World Cup managed by Bert van Marwijk. The player was in the starting line-up for their first match in the competition, a 2–0 victory over Denmark. He was suspended in the semi-final against Uruguay after receiving his second yellow card of the tournament in the Netherlands' quarter-final win over Brazil. He played in the Final of the competition, which the Netherlands lost 1–0 to Spain after extra time. In the early stages of the match, De Jong made a chest high challenge on Xabi Alonso, with his studs making contact with the Spaniard's ribs. Referee Howard Webb later stated that he would have sent off De Jong if he'd had a better view of the incident.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong was part of the Netherlands UEFA Euro 2012 squad. The Dutch were eliminated in the first round after losing all three matches.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: He was also selected for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, where he was in the starting line-up for all three group matches. However, a groin injury led to his substitution in the 9th minute of the Round of 16 match win over Mexico and it was later confirmed the De Jong would be unable to take any further part in the tournament. Despite this, he later recovered to play 62 minutes of the semi-final against Argentina, which the Netherlands lost 4–2 on a penalty shoot-out, following a 0–0 draw after extra-time.


title: Nigel de Jong

text: De Jong began his career as an offensive-minded creative midfielder or forward. At Ajax he played a number of positions, including central midfield and right wing. De Jong credits his conversion to a defensive-minded player to Huub Stevens, under whom he played at Hamburg. Described as a "tireless grafter" by "The Telegraph", his work-rate and tenacity, combined with his new approach to midfield play, earned him the nicknames ""der Rasenmäher" ("the Lawnmower")", "The Terrier," and "The Destroyer." De Jong is typically the most defensively oriented midfielder in his team. When his team's defenders are in possession of the ball, De Jong will often drop back towards them to receive it. Sometimes De Jong is the sole holding midfielder, but often he plays alongside another defensive player, such as Gareth Barry at Manchester City or Mark van Bommel for the Dutch national team. In addition to his defensive capabilities and ability to cover ground, De Jong was also a competent passer; he had the highest passing completion percentage in the Premier League in the 2010–11 season out of the top 50 players (90%).


title: Nigel de Jong

text: Despite his ability, and reputation as one of the best defensive midfielders in the world at his peak, De Jong has also drawn criticism over his feisty, physical, and combative playing style, including from his former Dutch national team manager Van Marwijk. During an international friendly on 3 March 2010, De Jong fractured the leg of Bolton Wanderers' American international Stuart Holden as the result of a late challenge. In the 2010 FIFA World Cup Final he kicked Spanish player Xabi Alonso in the chest, a challenge for which De Jong admitted he was lucky not to have received a red card. On 3 October 2010, in a Premier League match against Newcastle United, a tackle by De Jong on Hatem Ben Arfa resulted in the latter being carried off the pitch with a double fracture of his left tibia and fibula. De Jong was later dropped from the Dutch national team by his coach Van Marwijk for an unspecified period of time, but was later reprieved. During his time at Manchester City, however, De Jong was never shown a red card. Indeed, despite his reputation as an aggressive and hard-tackling player, De Jong's first official direct card of his career came with Milan, in a 1–1 away draw against Verona in Serie A on 13 December 2015; previously, he had only been sent off once in an official game, namely for two bookable offences in a match for Hamburg against Rapid Bucharest in the 2005–06 edition of the UEFA Cup, while his only direct red card had come against Werder Bremen, in the semi-finals of the 2006 DFL-Ligapokal. In April 2016 while playing for the LA Galaxy De Jong was involved in another controversial incident when a strong takedown led to Portland Timbers midfielder Darlington Nagbe being removed from the field with an injury. The tackle led to a 3-game suspension for De Jong after the disciplinary committee determined the action to have been, "a clear and unequivocal red card."


title: Nigel de Jong

text: In December 2013, Spanish football website "El Gol Digital" ranked De Jong tenth in its list of the world's dirtiest footballers. This style of play earned him a title as the most violent footballer in the world, according to French newspaper "L'Équipe".


title: Novoland: Pearl Eclipse

text: Novoland: Pearl Eclipse () is a Chinese historical fantasy television series starring Yang Mi and William Chan, based on Xiao Ruse's novel with the same name. It aired on Tencent Video and WeTV from 10 November 2021, and on Beijing Television channel from 13 November 2021.


title: Novoland: Pearl Eclipse

text: During the Zheng Dynasty, efforts to obtain the rare Naga pearl causes Ye Haishi, a girl from a fishing village, to lose her father. As the rest of her family and villagers are threatened by soldiers, the passing first minister Fang Zhu takes her under his wing as his disciple. Disguised as a male, she enters the imperial court as the emperor Zhu Zhongxu's bodyguard.


title: Novoland: Pearl Eclipse

text: While Fang Zhu and Haishi love each other, a turn of events forces the couple apart. After Haishi’s real gender is revealed, she becomes the emperor’s consort in name and is conferred the title 'Madame Naga Pearl.'


title: Novoland: Pearl Eclipse

text: In November 2018, Yang Mi attended Tencent drama-round up press conference to announce her upcoming role in the "Novoland" franchise. Official filming began in Hengdian World Studios on 3 May 2020 and wrapped up on 20 September 2020.


title: Legal status of ayahuasca by country

text: This is an overview of the legality of ayahuasca by country. DMT, one of the active ingredients in ayahuasca, is classified as a Schedule I drug under the United Nations 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, meaning that international trade in DMT is supposed to be closely monitored; use of DMT is supposed to be restricted to scientific research and medical use. Natural materials containing DMT, including ayahuasca, are not regulated under the 1971 Psychotropic Convention. The majority of the world's nations classify DMT as a scheduled drug; however, few countries seem to have laws specifically addressing the possession or use of ayahuasca.


title: Next of kin

text: A person's next of kin (NOK) are that person's closest living blood relatives. Some countries, such as the United States, have a legal definition of "next of kin". In other countries, such as the United Kingdom, "next of kin" may have no legal definition and may not necessarily refer to blood relatives at all.


title: Next of kin

text: In some legal systems, rights regarding inheritance (which imply a decision-making capacity — for example, in a medical emergency — where no clear will or instructions have been given, and where the person has no spouse) flow to the closest relative (regardless of the age, with a representative appointed if a minor), usually a child, a parent or a sibling. However, there are people without any close adult relatives and, in such a case, decision-making power often flows to a niece or nephew, first cousin, aunt or uncle, or grandparent.


title: Next of kin

text: For example, if a person dies intestate, the laws of some jurisdictions require distribution of the estate to the decedent's spouse or children. However, if there are none of these, the estate can often be distributed to the next closest group of living relatives, whether they be parents, grandparents, first cousins, aunts and uncles, or second cousins in extreme cases. If a person dies intestate with no identifiable next of kin, the person's estate generally escheats (i.e., legally reverts) to the government.


title: Next of kin

text: In cases of medical emergency, where a person is incapable (either legally because of age or mental infirmity, or because they are unconscious) of making decisions for themselves and they have no spouse or children, the next of kin may participate in medical decisions made by medical personnel, subject to the specific laws of the jurisdiction.


title: Next of kin

text: The inability of persons who are not in a legal marriage to make decisions with respect to the care of a live-in partner has resulted in many jurisdictions giving live-in partners rights equivalent to a spouse in such situations, even though most jurisdictions still do not require non-spouses to be made beneficiaries of estates (it is improper in most jurisdictions to disinherit a spouse). The inability of same-sex partners to have rights with respect to a partner's medical care or funeral arrangements over and above those of the next-of-kin is one of the main reasons behind litigation to require same-sex marriage or its equivalent.


title: Next of kin

text: For the purposes of next of kin, adopted children are treated as blood relatives. However, relatives by marriage are never considered next of kin.


title: Next of kin

text: "American statutes typically provide that, "in absence of issue and subject to the share of a surviving spouse", intestate property passes to the parents or to the surviving parent of the decedent". Under the civil law system of computation and its various modified forms that are widely adopted by statute in the United States, "a claimant's degree of kinship is the total of (1) the number of the steps, counting one from each generation, from the decedent up to the nearest common ancestor of the decedent and the claimant, and (2) the number of steps from the common ancestor down to the claimant." "The claimant having the lowest degree count (i.e., the nearest or next of kin) is entitled to the property." "If there are two or more claimants who stand in equal degree of kinship to the decedent, they share per capita."


title: Next of kin

text: The term has no legal definition in the United Kingdom. An individual can nominate any other individual as his or her next-of-kin. There is no requirement for the nominated person to be a blood relative or spouse, although it is normally the case. Someone who has no close family (or who has little or no contact with their surviving family members) may decide to list someone outside their family as his or her next of kin, for instance a friend or a neighbour.


title: Next of kin

text: The nominated person must agree to the nomination, otherwise it is invalid. The status of next-of-kin confers no legal rights and has no special responsibilities, except as referred to below in the specific context of the Mental Health Act.


title: Next of kin

text: The status of next-of-kin does not in any way imply that they stand to inherit any of the individual's estate in the event of the individual's death. The intestacy rules stipulate who inherits automatically (in the absence of a will); an individual can make a will and nominate other persons. If a minor inherits (children inherit from parents even in the absence of a will), then, until the child is 18 years of age, there is a "trust" imposed, which means that the executors or trustees of the will remain responsible for the assets until the child is 18. The term "next of kin" should not be confused with parental responsibility.


title: Next of kin

text: In the context of health care, patients are often asked to nominate a next-of-kin when registering with their general practitioner, or alternatively on admission to hospital. Hospitals will then notify the next-of-kin that the patient has been admitted or if there is any change in his or her condition. If the patient is unconscious or otherwise unable to state their next-of-kin, hospitals will usually list his or her nearest blood relative, though there are no specific rules. Doctors attempt to seek the views of the next-of-kin when considering decision making for unconscious patients or those who lack capacity. The next-of-kin has no power to make any decisions regarding medical care, only to advise, and can neither override the previously stated wishes of the patient nor prevent the medical team acting in what they consider to be the best interests of the patient.


title: Next of kin

text: Traditionally, unmarried partners (especially same sex ones) were often excluded by certain institutions, but this has changed in recent years due to the increase in cohabitation in the UK, and in diverse families, such as those formed by unmarried partners with children (47.6% of children were born outside marriage in 2012). As a result of these social changes, the policy in most NHS trusts is to ask a person on his or her admission to hospital to nominate their next of kin formally.


title: Next of kin

text: Powers similar to next-of-kin as defined in other jurisdictions can be explicitly delegated to another person using lasting power of attorney, under the provisions of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (note that this Act does not relate specifically to mental health and is largely unrelated to the Mental Health Act).


title: Next of kin

text: The Mental Health Act 1983, Section 26 replaced the traditional term next-of-kin with "nearest relative".


title: Next of kin

text: In Ireland, the term "next of kin" does have a meaning with regard to inheritance law. If a person dies intestate, that is without leaving a will, then the rules of the Succession Act, 1965 apply. Part VI of the Act — "Distribution on Intestacy" (sections 66–75) — explains the rules of intestacy; this was amended by Civil Partnership and Certain Rights and Obligations of Cohabitants Act 2010. With regard to medical law, "next of kin" is a very vague concept which has no legally defined meaning. If a patient is incapable of making a decision (for instance due to unconsciousness), the present medical ethics in Ireland is to consult with the next of kin (in order: spouse, children, parents, siblings). However, the next of kin have no general right to make decisions on behalf of adult patients.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The second campaign of the "Dungeons & Dragons" web series "Critical Role" began on January 11, 2018, four months after the conclusion of the first campaign, and ended on June 3, 2021. It follows The Mighty Nein, a party of seven adventurers, in their travels across the continent of Wildemount. Campaign two aired each Thursday at 7 p.m. PT on Critical Role Productions' Twitch and YouTube channel.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: There were seven guest players for Campaign 2. Though he plays a different character, Chris Perkins is the only guest player who also appeared in Campaign 1.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The campaign is set in Exandria, a fictional world created by Matthew Mercer for the game. The second campaign is set about 20 years after Vox Machina's final battle against Vecna in "Critical Role"s first campaign, and features an entirely new cast of adventurers with the exception of a few secondary characters. Most of the story takes place on the continent of Wildemount, which is located to the east of Tal'Dorei, the setting of the first campaign. It takes place at a time when tensions between the Dwendalian Empire and the Kryn Dynasty—two of Wildemount's major powers, which are divided by the Ashkeeper Peaks mountain range—are very high and war is imminent.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Western Wildemount is governed by the Dwendalian Empire and is ruled by King Bertrand Dwendal. A council of powerful archmages called the Cerberus Assembly act as advisors to the House of Dwendal. The region of Xhorhas, which occupies the eastern side of the continent, is regarded as an inhospitable wasteland by the Empire. Xhorhas is governed by the Kryn Dynasty, ruled by the Bright Queen Leylas Kryn, and is primarily home to the drow and other races considered to be monstrous. The Menagerie Coast sits on the south-western coastline and is governed by the Clovis Concord, a coalition of eight city-states which includes Nicodranas and Port Damali. The tundra in the northernmost region of Wildemount is known as the Greying Wildlands; the harsh environment leaves it sparsely populated compared to other regions. Some parts of the story take place on the Lucidian Ocean, off the shore of the Menagerie Coast, and on Eiselcross, a frozen continent north of Wildemount.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Seven adventurers meet in the town of Trostenwald in the Dwendalian Empire and form an adventuring party after they are wrongly accused of a crime. Once they clear their names, they make their way to Zadash, become involved with a local rebellion and make the acquaintance of a crime lord named the Gentleman. They also encounter a covert drow raiding party from the neighboring region of Xhorhas and come into possession of a magical artifact called the "Beacon of Luxon".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The Empire declares war on the Dynasty and the Mighty Nein avoid the fighting by continuing their journey northwards outside the Empire. Along the way they complete several tasks for the Gentleman, one of which sees them come into possession of a relic linked to Fjord's patron Uk'otoa. During their travels Fjord, Jester and Yasha are captured by a slaver group. During the first rescue attempt Mollymauk is killed, so the survivors recruit more allies, including Caduceus Clay, to attack the slavers' base. The second rescue is successful and the slavers are destroyed.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The party heads south to Nicodranas which gives Fjord the opportunity to learn more about Uk'otoa. They are forced to steal a ship and flee as inadvertent pirates. On the open water they meet Avantika, a pirate captain who shares the patronage of Uk'otoa. Avantika joins the party on an expedition to unlock a shrine to Uk'otoa, but relations turn sour when the Mighty Nein make port in the pirate haven of Darktow. The party realize that Avantika plans to overthrow the pirate leader, the Plank King, and rule the oceans of Exandria. Avantika is executed by the Plank King when the party exposes her treachery, but they are banished.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The Mighty Nein return to land to discover that Felderwin, Nott's home town, was attacked by the Dynasty. During their investigation, they learn that Nott's husband Yeza was abducted by the Kryn Dynasty so they secretly cross into Xhorhas to search for him. After completing a job in Asarius, the Mighty Nein are granted an audience with the Bright Queen in the capital. During this meeting, the party's Empire origins are exposed, but Caleb earns the party the favor of the queen by handing over the Beacon. They make the acquaintance of Essek Thelyss who releases Yeza to them and grants them a house in Rosohna. While carrying out mercenary work, the Mighty Nein uncover a conspiracy to break down the barriers between the Prime Material Plane and the Abyssal Plane. The Mighty Nein identify Obann as a key figure in this conspiracy and discover he intends to awaken the champions of the Betrayer Gods. Although Obann is defeated during their confrontation, he turns Yasha against the party and releases one champion. The party flees and Yasha revives Obann. The Mighty Nein return to the Empire to research Obann's cult, the Angel of Irons, as the Dynasty is unwilling to take the threat seriously. Their pursuit of Obann leads them to the Empire capital Rexxentrum where they prevent him from releasing Tharizdûn, the god of uncontrolled madness, from his prison. Yasha rejoins the party when Obann's control over her is broken.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The Mighty Nein receive an audience with King Dwendal which allows them to broker peace negotiations as they have connections in both nations. During their downtime, the Mighty Nein spend time with Essek, the party frees the Clay family from petrification in the Whitedawn Lagoon and Jester tricks a hag into releasing the curse on Nott that keeps her in goblin form. This allows Caleb to attempt the transmogrification of Nott returning her to halfling form. In Nicodranas, the party confronts Essek on his role in stealing the Beacons for the Empire. On the way to the negotiations, the party is attacked by minions of Uk'otoa and they make acquaintance with Lady Vess DeRogna of the Cerberus Assembly.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: They then carry on to Rumblecusp, a remote island where they plan to host a gathering of followers of Jester's god, the Traveller. However, the Traveller reveals himself to be the archfey Artagan; the Mighty Nein agree to use the gathering to end the fledgling religion building up around him. Upon arrival, they find the island is already home to a false deity named Vokodo, who is controlling the people living there. The party defeats Vokodo whereupon they receive visions of an insane, sentient city in the Astral Sea. They carry on with their plans for the Traveller's gathering where they narrowly avoid incurring the wrath of an actual god, but successfully disband the cult.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The Mighty Nein are hired by Lady DeRogna to support an investigation of the crashed floating city of Aeor. Before they depart, the party learn that Mollymauk has been resurrected. En route to Eiselcross, the party is once again attacked by minions of Uk'otoa including an undead Avantika. At the Empire's base of operations, Lady DeRogna is murdered by the resurrected Mollymauk, who now goes by the name Lucien. The Mighty Nein pursue Lucien and his party, the Tombtakers, as Lucien is planning to summon the last remaining survivors of Aeor. Realizing that these survivors hail from the city in their visions, the Mighty Nein enter into an uneasy alliance with the Tombtakers in the hopes of stopping them but are eventually betrayed. They pursue the Tombtakers through the city of Aeor and into the Astral Sea, finally killing Lucien and the sentient city of Cognouza and ending the threat it posed to Exandria.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The show aired each Thursday at 19:00 PT on Critical Role's Twitch and YouTube channels. In May 2021, the cast announced that campaign two would end shortly, however, "the Mighty Nein's story wasn't finished". "Collider" reported that ""Campaign 2" has spanned 100 hours of battle, 440 slain villains, and 530 total hours of dice-roll-driven adventuring. And that's not even counting the upcoming 7-hour finale". The finale aired on June 3, 2021; it was the longest episode at just over seven hours.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The format of the show was initially largely unchanged from the later episodes of the first campaign; with videos of the cast and any battlemaps presented in 3-5 hour episodes. Technical changes however were introduced during the run of the second campaign, regarding subtitles and character information. Since February 28, 2019, a D&D Beyond branded Twitch overlay has been available to viewers using a web browser to watch live. The overlay displays character status information and allows viewers to access digital character sheets; but it is not available on the VODs on Twitch or YouTube. Episodes 1 through 53 were captioned by the same fan group who transcribed campaign one. From Episode 54 onward, episodes were transcribed live on Twitch by a professional transcription service. The YouTube VOD relied on YouTube's auto-generated captions until the broadcast transcription is reviewed and added "within a week or so of upload".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Episodes 1 through 51 were distributed in much the same way as the previous campaign, airing live on the Geek & Sundry Twitch and YouTube channels and on the Legendary Digital Networks Alpha service. Critical Role Productions split off from Geek & Sundry and Legendary Digital Networks in February 2019. The "Critical Role" series ceased to distribute on Alpha with live broadcasts and VODs distributed from then exclusively on Critical Role's YouTube and Twitch channels. Alpha shut down several weeks after the split.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Campaign Two featured all eight primary cast members from the end of Campaign One, in addition to occasional guests. However, Ashley Johnson was absent for several lengthy periods over the first 86 episodes, due to her filming schedule for the NBC drama "Blindspot", which ran from 2015 to 2020.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Two of the player characters for this campaign were based on characters that their actors had created previously. Jester was based on a character Bailey had previously portrayed on two collaboration one shot adventures, one with "GameSpot" and one with Kinda Funny. Mollymauk had originally been designed by Jaffe as a possible replacement for Percy, his character from campaign one, in the event that the latter died.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: On March 17, 2020, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the show went on an unplanned hiatus. The show returned with the 100th episode of the campaign on July 20, 2020. Prior to the show's return, a video was uploaded to Critical Role's YouTube channel; explaining how the production team was implementing the guidelines within the Hollywood White Paper, and setting out the social distancing requirements that would be followed. The measures included the cast no longer being sat around their custom gaming table—instead they are seated at separate tables, spaced at least seven feet apart. In addition each cast member had an individual camera, and the on-set production team was reduced to a skeleton crew. The show also switched to pre-recording episodes, rather than airing live. These changes were present until the end of the campaign on June 3, 2021.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: In October 2022, Critical Role announced an upcoming two-part special titled "The Mighty Nein Reunited". The canonical story will pick up several months after the conclusion of the second campaign with the cast reprising their roles. Part 1 is scheduled to air on November 17, 2022 and Part 2 is scheduled to air on December 1, 2022. In addition to being streamed on Twitch and YouTube, "The Mighty Nein Reunited" will be simulcast in Cinemark Theatres in both the United States and South America.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: The show's length has been emphasized as a potential viewer barrier to entry by multiple critics. Alexandria Turney, for "Screen Rant", highlighted that starting "Critical Role" can be a "little daunting" and that campaign one's "quality is noticeably lacking compared to future episodes which can be off-putting for those not already invested", while campaign two is "highly recommended for new Critters to watch, as it makes it easier to fall in love with the cast, which then makes it easier to go back and watch some of the lower-quality sessions of the first campaign". Turney wrote that viewers "should not stress about completing all episodes in a certain amount of time and just enjoy it at their own pace"; "there are also multiple "Critical Role" summaries and recaps that can be found online for Critters who want to quickly catch up to a certain arc". Dais Johnston, for "Inverse," included campaign two on their list of "8 Shows with Hundreds of Hours of Content for Your Quarantine Stream"; the total runtime of episodes 1-99 is "623 hours (25 days, 23 hours)". Johnston wrote, "that hefty episode length is daunting, but there's a perfect starting place in the middle: halfway through, a new campaign started, featuring all-new characters and storylines. It's only just now nearing 100 episodes". Brie Mihele, for "TheGamer", wrote, "It can be a huge barrier to starting a show where catching up seems like an uphill battle due to the sheer enormity of content that is produced every week and has been for the past two years". She highlighted three ways to catchup: Critical Role's official "Critical Recap" videos, the fan run website "CritRoleStats", and traditional binge-watching.


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: In December 2018, Chey Scott, for "Inlander", wrote: "one of the most popular live-play "Dungeons & Dragons" web series is "Critical Role" [...]. The first episode of the series' current season, which debuted in January 2018, has more than 3.1 million views". In February 2019, Jeremy Thomas, for "411Mania", wrote that "the cast of voice actors regularly garners viewership in the tens of thousands each Thursday night. It and its Tuesday discussion show Talks Machina are Geek & Sundry's most popular shows by far, both on Twitch and Legendary's Project Alpha".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Tyler Wilde, for "PC Gamer", wrote on the impact of Molly's death on both the community and the cast: "Twitch chat was inconsolable. A scripted show would probably not have casually rolled Jaffe's character, a carnival performer named Mollymauk and a favorite subject of cosplayers and fan artists, into a shallow grave just 26 episodes in. And neither would that show include a scene in which the actor is told they've been written off. [...] It was heartbreaking, but chance is partly what makes Critical Role and other tabletop gaming shows alluring. [...] Molly's death changed how the players play, too, as well as how their play is interpreted. Recklessness now indicates that a player is dead certain their character would behave recklessly in a given situation, whereas when mortality hadn't been directly experienced, risky playfulness didn't feel nearly as bold".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Christian Hoffer, for "ComicBook", has highlighted multiple reveals in campaign two such as Keyleth's mother being alive and that "Mollymauk's body seems to be once again among the living". The reveal of Keyleth's mother was "the first time that one of the unanswered questions from Campaign 1 has been answered in the current campaign". On Molly, Hoffer wrote, "Molly's seeming resurrection is one of the biggest twists of the series and seems to be pushing the game towards even bigger threats and adventures. With the Eyes of Nine looming in the background, we could be heading towards another an epic storyline centered around the only "Critical Role" PC who died in the middle of a campaign and wasn't brought back to finish his story".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Andy Wilson, for "Bleeding Cool", called "Critical Role" "the best show I've watched all year" in 2020 and highlighted their COVID-19 safety filming protocol that allowed their show to continue "in a safe way where no one has gotten sick". He wrote, "But even more important is what they did this year. They are, weekly, one of the most-watched streams on Twitch. [...] They gave fans something to look forward to every week– an incredible feat given the endless monotony and despair of socially distant quarantine life. [...] We cheered for characters in their growth and development. We got gigantic payoffs for story seeds planted literally years earlier, mysteries uncovered, and romances finally consummated. There is more heart, more pain and glory, more comedy, more tension on "Critical Role" every week than any other show on television. And they do it all with the most basic of methods".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Emily Duncan, for "Tor.com", wrote "the second campaign somehow has a radically different flavor to the first, while still being just as charming and chaotic". Duncan highlighted that campaign two "has player character deaths [...], more than one evil purple boy (one of them does do a war crime and I do love him), a city of Drow elves, a seafaring arc, so many fascinating interactions with the divine pantheon, and five kobolds in a trench coat. Something I really love in campaign two is that the setting moves into cities that are full of goblins and kobolds and bugbears, [...] and ignores the problematic Dungeons and Dragons concept of 'evil races.' There’s a different kind of tension in campaign two than in campaign one, as countries are at the brink of all out war and the party is forced to make tense political maneuvers (at times accidentally) to keep the worst from happening. It has less of a point A to point B feel and more of a wide expanse of story arcs that are all being woven together. The party is carrying a lot of trauma and watching them slowly work through it and start to heal is wonderfully rewarding".


title: Critical Role (campaign two)

text: Multiple spin-offs and adaptations of the campaign have been released or are currently in development. The campaign sourcebook, "Explorer's Guide to Wildemount", is a guide to the setting of campaign two. It is published by Wizards of the Coast and Critical Role. Two series of comic books expand on the campaign's setting, with "" focusing on the backstories of the main characters and "" covering the side stories of non-player characters, such as Leylas Kryn, the Bright Queen of the Kryn Dynasty, and her eternal lover Quana. The novel "" (2022) focuses on Lucien, the tiefling antagonist of campaign two, and his life before and after he met the Mighty Nein. Other products have included the art book, "Critical Role: The Chronicles of Exandria The Mighty Nein", and the board game, Uk'otoa.


title: Pictish language

text: Pictish is the extinct Brittonic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and the contemporary records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts, dating to the early medieval period. Such evidence, however, points strongly to the language being an Insular Celtic language related to the Brittonic language spoken prior to Anglo-Saxon settlement in what is now southern Scotland, England, and Wales.


title: Pictish language

text: The prevailing view in the second half of the 20th century was that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language isolate, predating a Gaelic colonisation of Scotland or that a non-Indo-European Pictish and Brittonic Pictish language coexisted.


title: Pictish language

text: Pictish was replaced by – or subsumed into – Gaelic in the latter centuries of the Pictish period. During the reign of Domnall mac Causantín (889–900), outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than the kingdom of the Picts. However, the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly. A process of Gaelicisation (which may have begun generations earlier) was clearly underway during the reigns of Domnall and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and the Pictish identity was forgotten.


title: Pictish language

text: The existence of a distinct Pictish language during the Early Middle Ages is attested clearly in Bede's early eighth-century "Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum", which names Pictish as a language distinct from that spoken by the Britons, the Irish, and the English. Bede states that Columba, a Gael, used an interpreter during his mission to the Picts. A number of competing theories have been advanced regarding the nature of the Pictish language:


title: Pictish language

text: Most modern scholars agree that Pictish was, at the time of the Roman conquest, a branch of the Brittonic language, while a few scholars accept that it was merely 'related' to the Brittonic language. Pictish came under increasing influence from the Goidelic language spoken in Dál Riata from the eighth century until its eventual replacement.


title: Pictish language

text: Pictish is thought to have influenced the development of modern Scottish Gaelic. This is perhaps most obvious in the contribution of loan words, but, more importantly, Pictish is thought to have influenced the syntax of Scottish Gaelic, which is more similar to Brittonic languages than to Irish.


title: Pictish language

text: The evidence of place names and personal names demonstrates that an insular Celtic language related to the more southerly Brittonic languages was formerly spoken in the Pictish area. The view of Pictish as a P-Celtic language was first proposed in 1582 by George Buchanan, who aligned the language with Gaulish. A compatible view was advanced by antiquarian George Chalmers in the early 19th century. Chalmers considered that Pictish and Brittonic were one and the same, basing his argument on P-Celtic orthography in the Pictish king lists and in place names predominant in historically Pictish areas.


title: Pictish language

text: Although demonstrably Celtic-speaking, the exact linguistic affinity of the Roman-era predecessors to the Picts is difficult to securely establish. The personal name "Vepogeni", recorded c. 230 AD, implies that P-Celtic was spoken by at least the Caledonians.


title: Pictish language

text: Celtic scholar Whitley Stokes, in a philological study of the Irish annals, concluded that Pictish was closely related to Welsh. This conclusion was supported by philologist Alexander MacBain's analysis of the place and tribe names in Ptolemy's second-century "Geographia". Toponymist William Watson's exhaustive review of Scottish place names demonstrated convincingly the existence of a dominant P-Celtic language in historically Pictish areas, concluding that the Pictish language was a northern extension of British and that Gaelic was a later introduction from Ireland.


title: Pictish language

text: William Forbes Skene argued in 1837 that Pictish was a Goidelic language, the ancestor of modern Scottish Gaelic. He suggested that Columba's use of an interpreter reflected his preaching to the Picts in Latin, rather than any difference between the Irish and Pictish languages. This view, involving independent settlement of Ireland and Scotland by Goidelic people, obviated an Irish influence in the development of Gaelic Scotland and enjoyed wide popular acceptance in 19th-century Scotland.


title: Pictish language

text: Skene later revised his view of Pictish, noting that it appeared to share elements of both Goidelic and Brittonic:


title: Pictish language

text: The Picts were under increasing political, social, and linguistic influence from Dál Riata from around the eighth century. The Picts were steadily Gaelicised through the latter centuries of the Pictish kingdom, and by the time of the merging of the Pictish and Dál Riatan kingdoms, the Picts were essentially a Gaelic-speaking people. Forsyth speculates that a period of bilingualism may have outlasted the Pictish kingdom in peripheral areas by several generations. Scottish Gaelic, unlike Irish, maintains a substantial corpus of Brittonic loan-words and, moreover, uses a verbal system modelled on the same pattern as Welsh.


title: Pictish language

text: The traditional Q-Celtic vs P-Celtic model, involving separate migrations of P-Celtic and Q-Celtic speaking settlers into the British Isles, is one of mutual unintelligibility, with the Irish Sea serving as the frontier between the two. However, it is likely that the Insular Celtic languages evolved from a more-or-less unified proto-Celtic language within the British Isles. Divergence between P-Celtic Pictish and Q-Celtic Dalriadan Goidelic was slight enough to allow Picts and Dalriadans to understand each other's language to some degree. Under this scenario, a gradual linguistic convergence is conceivable and even probable given the presence of the Columban Church in Pictland.


title: Pictish language

text: In 1892, John Rhys proposed that Pictish was a non-Indo-European language. This opinion was based on the apparently unintelligible ogham inscriptions found in historically Pictish areas (compare ). A similar position was taken by Heinrich Zimmer, who argued that the Picts' supposedly exotic cultural practices (tattooing and matriliny) were equally non-Indo-European, and a pre-Indo-European model was maintained by some well into the 20th century.


title: Pictish language

text: A modified version of this theory was advanced in an influential 1955 review of Pictish by Kenneth Jackson, who proposed a two-language model: while Pictish was undoubtedly P-Celtic, it may have had a non-Celtic substratum and a second language may have been used for inscriptions. Jackson's hypothesis was framed in the then-current model that a Brittonic elite, identified as the Broch-builders, had migrated from the south of Britain into Pictish territory, dominating a pre-Celtic majority. He used this to reconcile the perceived translational difficulties of Ogham with the overwhelming evidence for a P-Celtic Pictish language. Jackson was content to write off Ogham inscriptions as inherently unintelligible.


title: Pictish language

text: Jackson's model became the orthodox position for the latter half of the 20th century. However, it became progressively undermined by advances in understanding of late Iron Age archaeology. Celtic interpretations have been suggested for a number of Ogham inscriptions in recent years, though this remains a matter of debate.


title: Pictish language

text: Traditional accounts (now rejected) claimed that the Picts had migrated to Scotland from Scythia, a region that encompassed Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Buchanan, looking for a Scythian P-Celtic candidate for the ancestral Pict, settled on the Gaulish-speaking Cotini (which he rendered as "Gothuni"), a tribe from the region that is now Slovakia. This was later misunderstood by Robert Sibbald in 1710, who equated "Gothuni" with the Germanic-speaking "Goths". John Pinkerton expanded on this in 1789, claiming that Pictish was the predecessor to modern Scots. Pinkerton's arguments were often rambling, bizarre and clearly motivated by his belief that Celts were an inferior people. The theory of a Germanic Pictish language is no longer considered credible.


title: Pictish language

text: Linguist Guto Rhys summarized evidence for the Pictish language as amounting to "a few hundred" individual articles of information. Evidence is most numerous in the form of proper nouns, such as place-names in Pictish regions, and personal names borne by Picts according to Scottish, Irish and Anglo-Saxon sources. Other sources include Ogham inscriptions and Pictish words surviving as loans; especially in the Scottish Gaelic language.


title: Pictish language

text: Pictish toponyms occur in Scotland north of the River Forth. Distributed from Fife to the Isle of Skye, they are relatively abundant south of the Dornoch Firth but rare in the extreme north.


title: Pictish language

text: Many principal settlements and geographical features of the region bear names of Pictish origin, including:


title: Pictish language

text: Several Pictish elements occur multiple times in the region. This table lists selected instances according to the Welsh equivalent.


title: Pictish language

text: Some Pictish names have been succeeded by Gaelic forms, and in certain instances the earlier forms appear on historical record.


title: Pictish language

text: Although the interpretation of over 40 Ogham inscriptions remains uncertain, several have been acknowledged to contain Brittonic forms. Guto Rhys (2015) notes that significant caution is required in the interpretation of such inscriptions because crucial information, such as the orthographic key, the linguistic context in which they were composed and the extent of literacy in Pictland, remains unknown.


title: Pictish language

text: An Ogham inscription at the Broch of Burrian, Orkney has been transliterated as . Broken up as , this may reveal a Pictish cognate of Old Welsh 'he/she made' in (Middle Welsh ). (The only direct continuation in Middle Welsh is 1sg. < "*u̯rakt-ū" in the poem known as "Peis Dinogat" in the Book of Aneirin; this form was eventually reformed to "gwnaeth".) With the fourth word explained as spirantized Pictish 'cross' (Welsh < Latin ) and the corrupted first word a personal name, the inscription may represent a Pictish sentence explaining who carved the cross.


title: Pictish language

text: The Shetland inscriptions at Cunningsburgh and Lunnasting reading and have been understood as Brittonic expressions meaning "this is as great" and "this is as far", respectively, messages appropriate for boundary stones.


title: Pictish language

text: Transliterated as , it is possible that the Brandsbutt Stone inscription attests a Pictish form cognate with Old Breton , "he lies", in "IRA-", occurring at the Lomarec inscription in Brittany.


title: Pictish language

text: Etymological investigation of the Scottish Gaelic language, in particular the 1896 efforts of Alexander Macbain, has demonstrated the presence of a corpus of Pictish loanwords in the language.


title: Pictish language

text: On the basis of a number of the loans attesting shorter vowels than other British cognates, linguist Guto Rhys proposed Pictish resisted some 6th century Latin-influenced sound changes. Rhys has also noted the potentially "fiscal" profile of several of the loans, and hypothesized that they could have entered Gaelic as a package in a governmental context.


title: Pictish language

text: Several Gaelic nouns have meanings more closely matching their Brittonic cognates than those in Irish, indicating that Pictish may have influenced the sense and usage of these words as a substrate. "Srath" (> "Strath-") is recorded to have meant "grassland" in Old Irish, whereas the modern Gaelic realization means "broad valley", exactly as in its Brittonic cognates (cf. Welsh ). "Dùn", "foithir", "lios", "ràth" and "tom" may, by the same token, attest a substrate influence from Pictish.


title: Pictish language

text: Greene noted that the verbal system inherited in Gaelic from Old Irish had been brought "into complete conformity with that of modern spoken Welsh", and consequently Guto Rhys adjudged that Pictish may have modified Gaelic verbal syntax.


title: Pictish language

text: Pictish personal names, as acquired from documents such as the Poppleton manuscript, show significant diagnostically Brittonic features including the retention of final "-st" and initial "w-" (cf. P. "Uurgust" vs. Goidelic "Fergus") as well as development of "-ora-" to "-ara-" (cf. P. "Taran" vs G. "torann").


title: Pictish language

text: Several Pictish names are directly paralleled by names and nouns in other Brittonic languages. Several Pictish names are listed below according to their equivalents in Brittonic and other Celtic languages.


title: Pictish language

text: Several elements common in forming Brittonic names also appear in the names of Picts. These include "*jʉð", "lord" (> "Ciniod") and "*res", "ardor" (> "Resad"; cf. Welsh "Rhys").


title: Stroad

text: A stroad is a type of thoroughfare that is a mix between a street and a road. The word "stroad" is a portmanteau of "street" and "road", coined by American civil engineer and urban planner Charles Marohn in 2011, as a commentary about paved traffic structures in the United States. The term has also been applied to various traffic situations in Canada.


title: Stroad

text: According to Marohn, a stroad is a bad combination of two types of vehicular pathways: it is part "street"—which he describes as a "complex environment where life in the city happens", with pedestrians, cars, buildings close to the sidewalk for easy accessibility, with many (property) entrances / exits to and from the street, and with spaces for temporary parking and delivery vehicles—and part "road", which he describes as a "high-speed connection between two places" with wide lanes and limited entrances and exits, and which are generally straight or have gentle curves. In essence, Marohn defines a stroad as a high-speed road with many turnoffs which lacks safety features. In the commentary, Marohn states that stroads do not function well as either a street or a road. According to Marohn, the problem with stroads is that engineering codes tend to emphasize speed and traffic flow rather than safety, so that stroads try to be "all things to all people" but end up failing in every way as a result.


title: Stroad

text: Dover and Massengale (2014) stated that the design of roads as highways/motorways was originally modelled on the railroad, namely an efficient connection between two populated places (cities, towns, villages) with a car, while streets formed networks inside a place to move around that place with numerous different modes of transportation to make it financially productive; these two systems functioned well as long they were kept separated,But when we reconfigure our streets to have the characteristics of roads—as "stroads"—we are no longer able to capture the value of share the space. A modern stroad ... is about the least safe traffic environment you could be in, too, with high-speed designs mashed up with turning traffic, stop-and-go traffic, sudden lane changes, and obnoxious signage. This ridiculously unsafe design is accepted as "normal" just because it was allowed to become ubiquitous.They noted that the general public is often not aware of the functional distinction that engineers (as well as dictionaries) make between streets and roads, that street names ending with 'street' or 'road' (for historical reasons) may be misleading and not align with the current "de facto" traffic situation, and that mixing up the functions of streets and roads causes numerous problems.


title: Stroad

text: The concept of the stroad was popularized in large part as a result of an April 2021 short documentary by Canadian-born Amsterdam-based Youtube Channel, Jason Slaughter's urban planning YouTube channel "Not Just Bikes", which went viral, and stated that stroads in North America are "ugly, dangerous, and inefficient", as well as more expensive, at moving traffic, contrasting them with road design in the Netherlands, where clear functional distinctions between motorways (highways), roads, and streets were introduced in the 1990s. These measures were aimed at increasing safety, traffic flow, and cost-effectiveness, while also having the effect of reducing car dependency, increasing walkability, cycleability, and general livability.


title: Stroad

text: In some cases, roads become stroads due to a lack of access management implementation when facilities are expanded or widened, often with the aim of improving mobility. The road becomes a stroad over time from development adding private accessways onto the main road, increasing congestion and collisions, which thus requires traffic control additions such as traffic signals. This degrades the roadway quality in terms of mobility.


title: Stroad

text: According to Charles Marohn, the famous Champs-Élysées in Paris was effectively a stroad as recently as 2001. In the middle of the avenue were three automobile traffic lanes in either direction, ostensibly fulfilling the function of a road. A wide buffer of trees existed on either side of the road area, separating the roadway from slip lanes for slow-driving traffic. These slip lanes fulfilled the function of streets, providing access to parking, sidewalks, shops and restaurants. Because the street and road areas of the Champs-Élysées were physically separated, this stroad environment actually managed some success in allowing both safe high-speed traffic (up to 45 miles / 72 kilometers per hour) in the center roadway and a productive street environment on the sides. As of 2019, however, the slip lanes are fully pedestrianized, while the center roadway functions as a true road.


title: Stroad

text: The Esplanade in Chico, California is, according to Marohn, a rare example of a successful 'stroad' akin to the 2001 version of the Parisian Champs-Élysées in that buffers of trees physically separate the high-speed 'road' part in the middle from the two low-speed productive 'streets' on the sides (lined by houses which had high property values). He contrasted the Esplanade to Mangrove Avenue, a stroad just five blocks to the east in Chico that runs parallel to the Esplanade, but has all the typical issues of a stroad in that the street and road functions are not physically separated, and the environment is low-density and much less productive, with gas stations, strip malls and other car-oriented businesses.


title: Stroad

text: Unlike Marohn, however, Jason Slaughter ("Not Just Bikes") does not categorise such traffic situations as a 'stroad', but as "a road with streets on either side to access houses". Taking the Nieuwe Dedemsvaartweg (Provincial road N377) outside Nieuwleusen and the (s108) in Amstelveen in the Netherlands as examples, he used the fact that access from the middle to the sides is very restricted (through a limited number of roundabouts) to argue that they are three separate ways: the middle is a road, the sides are streets; there is no 'stroad'.


title: Stroad

text: Stroads often do not take into account how human psychology usually determines the speed at which people drive based on the road conditions they observe. Stroads in North America typically have designated speeds between 30 and 45 miles per hour, but in practice, motorists usually drive 20 to 55 miles per hour on stroads. Simply reducing the posted speed limit (PSL) with a traffic sign, which is a widely adopted strategy attempting to prevent motorists from driving dangerously fast, may not work in practice "if the road conditions suggest that the PSL is too low, drivers may simply ignore it." A better strategy to make people comply with the legal speed limit is to design roads and streets in a way that they are 'self-explanatory'. Self-explaining roads and streets use physical and perceptual cues (also referred to as traffic calming), which lead people to automatically drive more slowly and cautiously wherever they perceive that to be necessary for their own safety, as well as that of others, especially more vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and cyclists. Such cues include "narrower lanes, tighter corner radii, gateway treatments, changed roadway surface materials and appearance, mini roundabouts and other speed management techniques" such as speed bumps. The typical lack of these cues on stroads causes motorists to drive much faster than is safe to do in the environment they are in, with many entries and exits creating points of conflict and potential collisions, especially at higher speeds.


title: Stroad

text: Traffic planners in cities such as Boston, Houston and St. Louis are rethinking their street designs to lessen collisions and the deaths of pedestrians and cyclists. As of 2019, the city of Boston is studying how to minimize pedestrian traffic deaths by lowering speed limits and redesigning stroads via road diets; the 2018 report from its Vision Zero Coalition suggested that the problem with stroads was that they gave off a false sense that drivers could drive at dangerously fast speeds.


title: Stroad

text: Although stroads facilitate the goal of making all destinations reachable by car, they also practically force everyone to use (and own) a car, and thus increase car dependency (at the cost of walkability and easy use of public transport), while not necessarily making travelling by car more efficient. Despite the high speeds that stroads were designed for, which has made them needlessly dangerous, in practice they frequently end up being clogged with cars seeking access from the many entrances, so that the average speeds on stroads are low due to traffic congestion. Widening stroads to counter congestion usually only leads to induced demand and extra costs.


title: Stroad

text: The quality of sidewalks (British English: pavement) next to stroads is often poor. Many stroads do not feature any sidewalks at all. In the case of stroad-like suburban residential streets, sidewalks are sometimes deliberately left out by design in order 'to further the rural image'. Whereas stroads often feature a repetitive pattern of retail franchises on the side with very few sidewalks for pedestrians, there are usually large parking spaces for drivers. Sometimes there are only 'painted sidewalks' next to a strip mall, without curbs or traffic bollards to somewhat protect pedestrians against vehicles that may deviate from the road. Marohn (2021) stated: "A person on a sidewalk has no defense at all if a vehicle leaves the roadway at stroad speeds." He pointed out that traffic lights, such as those next to the State Street stroad in Springfield, Massachusetts, are often designed with shear pins at the base so as to break off if a vehicle happens to crash into it; although this design increases the safety of the driver and any passengers, it also significantly decreases the safety of any pedestrians who may be standing or walking on the sidewalk behind the traffic signal. Marohn was astonished to discover that even a bench had been placed right next to this breakaway traffic light pole, 'inviting people to sit in a place where the chance of a driver losing control and going off the roadway "at high speeds" is so great that the city installed breakaway poles.' At intersecting stroads, vehicles often need to decelerate from a high to a low speed to make a sharp turn right at a long turn lane next to a sidewalk; this makes walking there particularly dangerous for pedestrians. Sidewalks are sometimes too narrow, feature many obstructions such as street lights, as well as driveway cuts, which make them pedestrian-unfriendly.


title: Stroad

text: Walking for a distance of 800 metres along a stroad (Farm to Market Road 1960 or Cypress Creek Parkway) in Houston was what motivated Jason Slaughter ("Not Just Bikes") to wonder who could have possibly designed such a situation, and how urban planning could be done much safer and more efficiently (by improving walkability and reducing car dependency).


title: Stroad

text: Marohn (2017) stated that stroads "are enormously expensive to build and, ultimately, financially unproductive". This is because "stroads are built to a highway standard, their lanes are very wide, and there are never [fewer] than four lanes", or "at least three through lanes", and they usually take up extra space for shoulders and clear zones. Stroads feature many more entrances and exits than limited-access highways and roads and thus require more turning lanes, and because stroad vehicle speeds may be higher than on a street, the turning lanes are much longer to allow vehicles to decelerate and reduce the risk of rear-end collisions; this means stroads require more and longer turning lanes, which are more expensive to build and maintain and take up more space than streets and roads do. The high frequency of accesses to a stroad with much traffic often prompts the construction of traffic lights at intersections, which may cost up to 250,000 US dollar to build (excluding maintenance costs). An extreme example of this is found on the intersection of Charleston Boulevard with Decatur Boulevard in Las Vegas, which features seven approach lanes, each of which has traffic lights. The larger size of stroads compared to streets and roads means they require more space which needs to be purchased, flattened and asphalted, which reduces the property value of the land, increases the cost of flood protection infrastructure, and asphalt and traffic control system maintenance costs. Compared to households along urban streets, stroads tend to double the costs that households pay on the construction and maintenance of infrastructure, as well as the delivery of public services, while the tax revenues per acre of properties along stroads pale in comparison to urban commercial streets. The space taken up by stroads, as well as the large areas dedicated to parking lots at the destinations of cars using stroads, result in low-density land use (typical for urban sprawl). This makes stroad environments financially significantly less productive and tax-generating than a street, but with significantly more infrastructure and thus high-cost per area maintenance costs, so that they become a net-negative and financial burden for cities, because they cannot sustain themselves.


title: Erotic electrostimulation

text: Erotic electrostimulation (abbreviated erotic e-stim and also known as electrosex) is a sexual practice involving the application of electrical stimulation to the nerves of the body, with particular emphasis on the genitals, using a power source (such as a TENS, EMS, violet wands, or made-for-play units) for purposes of sexual stimulation. Electrostimulation has been associated with BDSM activities, and erotic electrostimulation is an evolution of that practice.


title: Erotic electrostimulation

text: Electrostimulation, in general, can cause tissue damage or even death if misused. The most common problems arising from electrostimulation tend to be burns from lack of sufficiently wide surface contact, i.e. bad contact, between the electrode and the skin's surface. Even at relatively low current and voltage, there is also risk of interference with normal heart function (potentially including cardiac arrest), and this risk is higher for those who use an artificial pacemaker or similar device or who have heart conditions. Because of this, it is not advisable to place the electrical contacts in such a way that current passes through the chest cavity.


title: Erotic electrostimulation

text: The international standard on the basic safety of medical nerve and muscle stimulators advises "that stimulation should not be applied across or through the head, directly on the eyes, covering the mouth, on the front of the neck, (especially the carotid sinus), or from electrodes placed on the chest and the upper back or crossing over the heart". The standard also notes that "any electrodes that have current densities exceeding 2 mA/cm² may require the special attention of the operator". It imposes the following limits on the output parameters of stimulators (for therapeutic purposes):


title: Erotic electrostimulation

text: Erotic electrostimulation devices should avoid DC currents entirely, in order to avoid electrolytic effects. This is usually achieved through “biphasic” waveforms, in which each positive current pulse is followed by an equivalent negative current pulse. Devices with multiple channels (e.g. for several users or body regions) should have a small pulse isolation transformer for galvanic isolation in each channel, such that currents cannot flow across the body between channels. Pulse frequency, duration and amplitude should be selected to achieve the desired stimulation with the least amount of power delivered into the body, for example avoiding current during the refractory period after each action potential, where neurons do not respond to stimuli. Typical erotic electrostimulation devices use pulse frequencies in the range 300–3000 Hz, where skin nerves are most sensitive.