title: Ford Field

text: The University of Detroit Mercy and Ford Field hosted the 2008 NCAA basketball tournament regional semifinal and final games (March 28 and 30). Ford Field was the site of the 2009 Final Four (April 4 and 6). For the 2008 NCAA basketball tournament, the court was placed in the center of the football field rather than in an end of the stadium. This was the first time this configuration was used for NCAA Tournament play with the new 70,000-seat capacity rule in effect.


title: Ford Field

text: The 2010 Frozen Four was held on April 8 and 10 with Boston College defeating Wisconsin to win the championship. This has been the only time NCAA hockey has used a football stadium for the championship (inspired in part by their college basketball counterparts) and resulted in the largest attendance (37,592) at a Frozen Four event.


title: Ford Field

text: Ford Field has hosted the MHSAA football state championships since 2005. It also hosted the MHSAA individual wrestling state finals in 2018.


title: Ford Field

text: The stadium also hosts the MCBA finals, where Michigan high school marching bands compete to be the best in the state.


title: Ford Field

text: Ford Field hosted two group stage matches of the 2011 CONCACAF Gold Cup soccer tournament on June 7, 2011. Panama played Guadeloupe in the first match, while the United States played Canada in the second match.


title: Ford Field

text: In 2016, Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores announced a bid for a Major League Soccer expansion franchise, first looking at building a new open-air stadium in downtown Detroit, then focusing on playing at Ford Field, which would be retrofitted with a retractable roof. However, in 2018, Gilbert and Gores and the Ford family would "not move forward with this proposed retrofit, because the risks that would inhere to such an undertaking would substantially outweigh the rewards".


title: Ford Field

text: The Professional Bull Riders brought their Built Ford Tough Series tour to Ford Field for the first time ever on March 10, 2012. Ford Field is the second Detroit area venue the BFTS has visited; they had visited The Palace of Auburn Hills in 2001, 2006 and 2007.


title: Ford Field

text: The United States Hot Rod Association (USHRA) holds multiple Monster Jam Monster Truck races at Ford Field. These races were previously held in the Pontiac Silverdome until it was closed. AMA Supercross Championship, also a Feld Entertainment competition, has competed at Ford Field from 2006 to 2008 and 2014 to 2017.


title: Ford Field

text: On April 1, 2007, Ford Field hosted WWE's WrestleMania 23. This event set a Ford Field attendance record of 80,103. It was the first WrestleMania held in the Detroit area since 93,173 fans set a world indoor attendance record at the Pontiac Silverdome for WrestleMania III in 1987.


title: Ford Field

text: Ford Field hosted the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) Midwest Regional in 2007 and 2014.


title: Ford Field

text: On November 18, 2017, Ford Field hosted the Beatification Mass of Fr. Solanus Casey, a Capuchin Franciscan Friar who ministered at the nearby St. Bonaventure Monastery on Mt. Elliott. The near-capacity crowd was one of the largest Catholic masses in Detroit history.


title: Ford Field

text: Ford Field hosted the FIRST Championship in 2018 and 2019 along with the nearby Cobo Center. The 2020 event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: The film was originally announced by the "Tekken" publisher of games, Namco Bandai in 2002 but did not start development until 2007 due to two directors wanting to handle the movie. Experienced in sports movies, Little decided to make "Tekken" focused on realism resulting in the removal of supernatural elements from the franchise as well as comic relief characters. This also led to the inclusion of martial artists as the main cast to produce well-choreographed battles. The movie was produced by Crystal Sky Pictures and premiered on November 5, 2009, at the AFI Film Festival and was released in Japan on March 20, 2010.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: It grossed $1.7 million worldwide. The film was generally praised for its fighting scenes but criticized for its unfaithful narrative and poor acting within the main cast. The criticism also came from the games' director Katsuhiro Harada too and the desire to produce a more accessible movie with "" two years later. Nevertheless, "Tekken" spawned the 2014 prequel "".


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: In the late 2010s, 8 megacorporations divide up the world around them; the biggest being Tekken Corporation, which controls North America. In order to placate the masses, the corporation's Chairman, Heihachi Mishima, sponsors the King of Iron Fist Tournament, or "Iron Fist" - in which fighters from the 8 corporations battle until one is left standing and receives a lifetime of stardom and wealth. In a slum area surrounding Tekken City called the Anvil, lives the rebellious young man Jin Kazama, who makes money as a contraband runner for resistance groups that fight against the Tekken Corporation. Jin has been raised and trained by his mother, Jun, who never speaks of Jin's father, claiming he is dead. One night, Jin is targeted by the Jackhammers, the elite specs group that patrols the Anvil and ensures the safety of Tekken City. Jun is killed by the Jackhammers instead and Jin swears revenge against Heihachi. In the ruins of his former home, he finds a "Tekken" Fighter I.D. belonging to Jun, revealing she was once an Iron Fist fighter. After defeating the disgraced Marshall Law, Jin goes to Tekken City, sponsored by former boxer Steve Fox.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Upon entering Tekken City, Jin befriends mixed martial artist Christie Monteiro. He wins the match against Miguel Caballero Rojo, nearly killing him in a fit of rage. Heihachi's son, Kazuya Mishima, is impressed and offers Jin a place in Tekken Corporation, but Jin refuses. Later that night, Jin is attacked by Nina Williams, at Kazuya's request. Jin survives the assassination attempt, thanks to Christie's interference. Jin vows to win Iron Fist and to kill both Heihachi and Kazuya. When he gives Fox Jun's ID, he realizes he is her son, telling him that he knew her. During the quarter-finals, Christie defeats Nina.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Kazuya then has Heihachi imprisoned, effectively seizing control of Tekken. Jin narrowly defeats the elite swordsman Yoshimitsu. Kazuya says rules have changed, and so they must now fight to the death. Jin, Christie, and Steve try to escape, along with Raven, leaving Nina and Anna Williams, and Sergei Dragunov behind. Kazuya brings down some guards, causing a firefight. Steve, Christie, and Raven cover Jin but he walks across Heihachi's cell. Angry, Jin tries to taunt Heihachi, saying he is responsible for killing Jin's mother. However, since Heihachi is their only mean of escaping Tekken, Steve frees Heihachi and joins the group. In the gunfight, Raven is wounded and recaptured.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: In the warehouse that Jin uses as protection, Heihachi reveals to Jin that Kazuya raped his mother, making him Jin's father, and left her for dead. Heihachi took her out of Tekken City to the Anvil to keep her alive. Heihachi states the corporation's true purpose is to restore order to the world. Later on, the group is located by Jackhammers, who kill Steve Fox in a firefight and recapture the rest of the escapees. Before taking them back to Iron Fist, Kazuya orders the Jackhammers to execute Heihachi. Back in Tekken City, Kazuya changes the rules of the tournament and now wants the fighters to fight to the death. In the Finals, Jin is forced to fight against Bryan Fury, who had already killed Sergei Dragunov in a death match, while Kazuya holds Christie in the control room. At first, he is outmatched, but remembering his mother's teachings, Jin defeats Bryan. Angered about Jin's victory, Kazuya enters the tournament himself armed with two moon axes. The weaponless Jin is saved by Christie, and pins Kazuya, who baits Jin by claiming that he remembers how Jun "put up quite a fight". Jin defeats Kazuya but refuses to kill his father.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Jin walks out of Tekken City's gate and is saluted by the Jackhammers, symbolizing his new role as CEO of Tekken Corporation. After the credits, Kazuya realizes that he lost control of the Jackhammers who spared Heihachi following his command.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Talks about making "Tekken" into a movie have been underway since June 2002 with Namco Bandai stating production would start in 2003. The film was meant to be released in 2005. It was reported that the production company, Crystal Sky Pictures, had acquired the film rights for $60 million. After several years of hiatus, the project resurfaced after a teaser poster appeared on the web in October 2008. This was mostly due to the global success of "" as well as the long-lasting popularity of the "Tekken" franchise. Originally, Charles Stone III was going to be film's director who teased in 2004 it would different from other adaptations like "Mortal Kombat" or "Tomb Raider"; He claimed the narrative would heavily focus on the characters to provoke a more dramatic style. He aimed to get famous actors like Jackie Chan and Jet Li believing the budget would be enough to get such skilled actors. The production of the movie was set to start during 2005. However, the project saw a major change in staff members. Stone was investigating K-1 in during the making of the movie while taking notes from "Enter the Dragon" (1973) with the objective of the making the final product both accessible and realistic. In 2007, Dwight H. Little signed to become the film's new director.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: The film originated from the next director's experience with martial arts-based films including "Marked for Death" (1990) and "Rapid Fire" (1992); Dwight H. Little was called by the producer to direct another martial art movie, "Tekken", which he had only knowledge due to his two children being gamers of the fighting game franchise. Little requested help from writer Alan B. McElroy, who had done "" and "Rapid Fire" while doing research for the movie. The director and writer agreed to remove the supernatural elements from the film, most notably Jin Kazama's devil mutation as well as the campy elements from the franchise, the animal fighter, once the film was being created. They wanted to focus more on the sports-like story like "Rocky" which is associated with family bonds as well as multiple cultures. The characters used in the narrative were chosen since they came across as the most realistic ones in contrast to the supernatural Devil Jin which they felt was more fitting for a more anime film. Luke Goss said that the team intended to make the film R rated.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: The main stuntman was Cyril Raffaelli who revealed the movie has a total of 9 fights with each containing nearly 50 moves. The film finished shooting in May 2009. In order to bring more realism to the fights, the team used real fighters including Lateef Crowder, Roger Huerta and Cung Le. In order to have more supporting fighters, the team also got Gary Daniels which gave them the need of the main character requiring to be played as a real fighter too rather than use two actors for the stunts. Finding Jon Foo as Jin proved to be a difficult task due to how they needed somebody who was young, skilled, and handsome. They met the actor in Thailand. Among other actors include Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa whom they found fitting for Heihachi Mishima as well as the skilled Ian Anthony Dale.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Little attempted to cast Danielle Harris based on her experience with "Marked For Death" but she did not appear. Nevertheless, he was surprised by Gary Daniels's performance as Brian Fury. Though the narrative appears to explore political events due to how the Tekken tournament has changed the world, there were no intentions to provide such context. Instead, the main conflict of the story involves Jin Kazama's relationship with his family, most notably the villain, Kazuya Mishima. While the film does not offer a proper closure to the family struggle, Little claimed they added scenes about him and Heihachi to provide content for a sequel, should it be approved. Though Jin has two love interests in the movie, Little claims the first one Jin has never become serious, citing the character's young age as the cause. Little describes the film's story as that of a rebel who wishes to give freedom to his people following their restricted lives in their hometown.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Jon Foo felt honored to play Jin's character in the live-action film based on the series. He says he is a fan of the "Tekken" games. Still, he found it difficult to play Jin as he spent three months on a diet in order to do the fighting moves for the live-action film. In recording for the movie, Thailand to do a screen test. He also flew to America to do another screen test. Foo was glad he was chosen for the role of Jin because it was the first he played the lead in his career. Among several scenes, Foo favorited Jin's and Brain's battle.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: In shooting the film, the team originally wanted to use Europe but ended up in North America in the need of arenas. They ended in Shreveport, Louisiana, because they had built a new public arena down the road. While the team used CGI visuals for the arenas, there was a mix of real buildings as well as crowds that viewed the battles, which was especially helpful since they did not have a big budget. In regards to battles, the staff aimed to make homages to the video games with Little specifying the faithful recreation of Eddy Gordo's moves. They compared the fighting styles they used with "Gladiator" (2000) when dealing with the Yoshimitsu and


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: The film was screened at the Mann's Criterion Theatre in Santa Monica on November 5, 2009, as part of the AFM Film Festival to find a solid distributor. It was released in Japan on March 20, 2010 through Warner Bros. Pictures (Japan). The film also premiered on July 27, 2010 in Singapore and August 4 in the Philippines (via Pioneer Films). One week before the Philippine premiere, Jon Foo visited Manila to promote the film. Due to its poor reception, the film never saw a wide theatrical release in the United States, and was released direct-to-video instead. They had a theatrical distributor, and we had a deal for theatrical, and, just because of the new economic times and the way business is done with DVD, that company went out of business. Then we were left as orphans and Anchor Bay made the release which the director found helpful.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Japan on August 11, 2010. In the United Kingdom, Optimum Released and distributed the film on May 2, 2011. Anchor Bay Entertainment released the film in the United States on DVD and Blu-ray Disc on July 19, 2011.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: "Tekken" holds a critical score of 0%, based on 6 reviews, and has a 31% approval rating by audiences on Rotten Tomatoes with an average rating of 2.68/10.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Brian Orndorf of DVD Talk gave the film two stars out of five, writing: ""Tekken" is a failure on many levels, but it does make a plucky attempt to replicate the flippy-floppy nature of the fighting elements, creating a limb-snapping effort of escapism surrounded by bland writing and sleepy performances". He opined that director Dwight H. Little "show[s] off an impressive spectrum of fighting styles and intensity, though he goes a little crazy with trendy cinematographic choices and hyperactive editing". Rating it "Guilty", DVD Verdict enjoyed how faithful are most of the character's designs to the games alongside the mutuals but with criticism aimed towards battles which employ weaponry. However, he felt that the protagonist's quest to seek revenge lacks focus. Martial Arts Action Movies claimed while the film seems universally hated due to how unfaithful is to the source material and "bland" storyline, he still liked thanks to the visuals and fight choreography. Roobia said that most of the budget went to the visuals as he felt that the cast had poor performance acting but still found it accessible to all audiences.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Critics enjoyed Jon Foo's appearance and movies but criticized some traits of Jin's portrayal. BeyondHollywood thought Jon Foo's appearance might appeal to viewers based on his similarities with Jin. Rating it B, The Fandom Post disliked the love interests presented to Jin as well as his fights in the Iron Fist Tournament where Jin ends up joining the finals without focus on the previous ones. Nevertheless, the writer felt the film was enjoyable. DVD Verdict criticized how Jin was lacking most of his important traits, most notably his Devil Gene. Although "Martial Arts and Action Movies" criticized Foo's acting to the point of making Jin emotionless, his fight sequences were praised. Roobla also praised the fight sequences, most notably Jin's fight against Eddie Gordo.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Paul Pritchard of DVD Verdict compared "Tekken" to other video game film adaptations: "In the grand scheme of things, "Tekken" bests both "Street Fighter: The Ultimate Battle" (1994) and "" (2009) movies with ease, but lacks the goofy charms of "Mortal Kombat". Had it embraced its roots more openly, the film may well have offered more excitement. As it is, "Tekken" is just an average action flick, with nothing to distinguish it from the rest of the crowd". MovieHole was also negative, thanking the lack theatrical release in North America as viewers would not waste money on it, comparing it to Uwe Boll's movies but still noted that the only appeal of the movie were its fighting scenbes.


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Katsuhiro Harada, director of the "Tekken" video game series, criticized the film: "That Hollywood movie is terrible. We were not able to supervise that movie; it was a cruel contract. I'm not interested in that movie". Reacting to Harada's comments, Nick Chester of Destructoid said the film is "not great, but 'terrible' is a stretch", saying that it "does a decent job of trying to stay true to the look and feel of the [games]" and that "the fight scenes weren't bad".


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: When the CGI film "" (2011) was announced, Harada said that he wanted to stop people from remembering the live-action film and instead focus on the CGI one as it would be more faithful to the franchise. However, he also said "That doesn't have anything to do with it this time," Harada insisted. "We're not trying to rewrite those wrongs. Fans are always asking us for a 3D movie. This is our response to them... We want to make a movie that everyone can enjoy, though. Not just Tekken fans."


title: Tekken (2009 film)

text: Crystal Sky Pictures later produced a prequel to "Tekken", named "", directed by Wych Kaos and starring Kane Kosugi. The film was released on August 6, 2014 and focuses on Kazuya Mishima's story years before the film's beginning.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harry Frederick Harlow (October 31, 1905 – December 6, 1981) was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which manifested the importance of caregiving and companionship to social and cognitive development. He conducted most of his research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow worked with him for a short period of time.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow's experiments were ethically controversial; they included creating inanimate wire and wood surrogate "mothers" for the rhesus infants. Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face. Harlow then investigated whether the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers in different situations: with the wire mother holding a bottle with food, and the cloth mother holding nothing, or with the wire mother holding nothing, while the cloth mother held a bottle with food. The monkeys overwhelmingly chose the cloth mother, with or without food, only visiting the wire mother that had food when needing sustenance.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Later in his career, he cultivated infant monkeys in isolation chambers for up to 24 months, from which they emerged intensely disturbed. Some researchers cite the experiments as a factor in the rise of the animal liberation movement in the United States.<ref name="Blum2002/225"></ref> A "Review of General Psychology" survey, published in 2002, ranked Harlow as the 26th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harry Harlow was born on October 31, 1905, to Mabel Rock and Alonzo Harlow Israel. Harlow was born and raised in Fairfield, Iowa, the third of four brothers. Little is known of Harlow's early life, but in an unfinished autobiography he recollected that his mother was cold to him and he experienced bouts of depression throughout his life. After a year at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Harlow obtained admission to Stanford University through a special aptitude test. After a semester as an English major with nearly disastrous grades, he declared himself as a psychology major.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow attended Stanford in 1924, and subsequently became a graduate student in psychology, working directly under Calvin Perry Stone, a well-known animal behaviorist, and Walter Richard Miles, a vision expert, who were all supervised by Lewis Terman. Harlow studied largely under Terman, the developer of the Stanford-Binet IQ Test, and Terman helped shape Harlow's future. After receiving a PhD in 1930, Harlow changed his name from Israel to Harlow. The change was made at Terman's prompting for fear of the negative consequences of having a seemingly Jewish last name, even though his family was not Jewish.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Directly after completing his doctoral dissertation, Harlow accepted a professorship at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Harlow was unsuccessful in persuading the Department of Psychology to provide him with adequate laboratory space. As a result, Harlow acquired a vacant building down the street from the University, and, with the assistance of his graduate students, renovated the building into what later became known as the Primate Laboratory, one of the first of its kind in the world. Under Harlow's direction, it became a place of cutting-edge research at which some 40 students earned their PhDs.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow received numerous awards and honors, including the Howard Crosby Warren Medal (1956), the National Medal of Science (1967), and the Gold Medal from the American Psychological Foundation (1973). He served as head of the Human Resources Research branch of the Department of the Army from 1950–1952, head of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology of the National Research Council from 1952–1955, consultant to the Army Scientific Advisory Panel, and president of the American Psychological Association from 1958–1959.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow married his first wife, Clara Mears, in 1932. One of the select students with an IQ above 150 whom Terman studied at Stanford, Clara was Harlow's student before becoming romantically involved with him. The couple had two children together, Robert and Richard. Harlow and Mears divorced in 1946. That same year, Harlow married child psychologist Margaret Kuenne. They had two children together, Pamela and Jonathan. Margaret died on 11 August 1971, after a prolonged struggle with cancer, with which she had been diagnosed in 1967. Her death led Harlow to depression once more, for which he was treated with electro-convulsive therapy. In March 1972, Harlow remarried Clara Mears. The couple lived together in Tucson, Arizona, until Harlow's death in 1981.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow came to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1930 after obtaining his doctorate under the guidance of several distinguished researchers, including Calvin Stone and Lewis Terman, at Stanford University. He began his career with nonhuman primate research. He worked with the primates at Henry Vilas Zoo, where he developed the Wisconsin General Testing Apparatus (WGTA) to study learning, cognition, and memory. It was through these studies that Harlow discovered that the monkeys he worked with were developing strategies for his tests. What would later become known as learning sets, Harlow described as "learning to learn."


title: Harry Harlow

text: In order to study the development of these learning sets, Harlow needed access to developing primates, so he established a breeding colony of rhesus macaques in 1932. Due to the nature of his study, Harlow needed regular access to infant primates and thus chose to rear them in a nursery setting, rather than with their protective mothers. This alternative rearing technique, also called maternal deprivation, is highly controversial to this day, and is used, in variants, as a model of early life adversity in primates.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Research with and caring for infant rhesus monkeys further inspired Harlow, and ultimately led to some of his best-known experiments: the use of surrogate mothers. Although Harlow, his students, contemporaries, and associates soon learned how to care for the physical needs of their infant monkeys, the nursery-reared infants remained very different from their mother-reared peers. Psychologically speaking, these infants were slightly strange: they were reclusive, had definite social deficits, and clung to their cloth diapers. At the same time in the reverse configuration, babies that had grown up with only a mother and no playmates showed signs of fear or aggressiveness.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Noticing their attachment to the soft cloth of their diapers and the psychological changes that correlated with the absence of a maternal figure, Harlow sought to investigate the mother–infant bond. This relationship was under constant scrutiny in the early twentieth century, as B. F. Skinner and the behaviorists took on John Bowlby in a discussion of the mother's importance in the development of the child, the nature of their relationship, and the impact of physical contact between mother and child.


title: Harry Harlow

text: The studies were motivated by John Bowlby's World Health Organization-sponsored study and report "Maternal Care and Mental Health" in 1950, in which Bowlby reviewed previous studies on the effects of institutionalization on child development, and the distress experienced by children when separated from their mothers, such as René Spitz's and his own surveys on children raised in a variety of settings. In 1953, his colleague James Robertson produced a short and controversial documentary film, titled "A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital," demonstrating the almost-immediate effects of maternal separation. Bowlby's report, coupled with Robertson's film, demonstrated the importance of the primary caregiver in human and non-human primate development. Bowlby de-emphasized the mother's role in feeding as a basis for the development of a strong mother–child relationship, but his conclusions generated much debate. It was the debate concerning the reasons behind the demonstrated need for maternal care that Harlow addressed in his studies with surrogates. Physical contact with infants was considered harmful to their development, and this view led to sterile, contact-less nurseries across the country. Bowlby disagreed, claiming that the mother provides much more than food to the infant, including a unique bond that positively influences the child's development and mental health.


title: Harry Harlow

text: To investigate the debate, Harlow created inanimate surrogate mothers for the rhesus infants from wire and wood. Each infant became attached to its particular mother, recognizing its unique face and preferring it above all others. Harlow next chose to investigate if the infants had a preference for bare-wire mothers or cloth-covered mothers. For this experiment, he presented the infants with a clothed mother and a wire mother under two conditions. In one situation, the wire mother held a bottle with food, and the cloth mother held no food. In the other situation, the cloth mother held the bottle, and the wire mother had nothing.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Overwhelmingly, the infant macaques preferred spending their time clinging to the cloth mother. Even when only the wire mother could provide nourishment, the monkeys visited her only to feed. Harlow concluded that there was much more to the mother–infant relationship than milk, and that this "contact comfort" was essential to the psychological development and health of infant monkeys and children. It was this research that gave strong, empirical support to Bowlby's assertions on the importance of love and mother–child interaction.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Successive experiments concluded that infants used the surrogate as a base for exploration, and a source of comfort and protection in novel and even frightening situations. In an experiment called the "open-field test", an infant was placed in a novel environment with novel objects. When the infant's surrogate mother was present, it clung to her, but then began venturing off to explore. If frightened, the infant ran back to the surrogate mother and clung to her for a time before venturing out again. Without the surrogate mother's presence, the monkeys were paralyzed with fear, huddling in a ball and sucking their thumbs.


title: Harry Harlow

text: In the "fear test", infants were presented with a fearful stimulus, often a noise-making teddy bear. Without the mother, the infants cowered and avoided the object. When the surrogate mother was present, however, the infant did not show great fearful responses and often contacted the device—exploring and attacking it.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Another study looked at the differentiated effects of being raised with only either a wire-mother or a cloth-mother. Both groups gained weight at equal rates, but the monkeys raised on a wire-mother had softer stool and trouble digesting the milk, frequently suffering from diarrhea. Harlow's interpretation of this behavior, which is still widely accepted, was that a lack of contact comfort is psychologically stressful to the monkeys, and the digestive problems are a physiological manifestation of that stress.


title: Harry Harlow

text: The importance of these findings is that they contradicted both the traditional pedagogic advice of limiting or avoiding bodily contact in an attempt to avoid spoiling children, and the insistence of the predominant behaviorist school of psychology that emotions were negligible. Feeding was thought to be the most important factor in the formation of a mother–child bond. Harlow concluded, however, that nursing strengthened the mother–child bond because of the intimate body contact that it provided. He described his experiments as a study of love. He also believed that contact comfort could be provided by either mother or father. Though widely accepted now, this idea was revolutionary at the time in provoking thoughts and values concerning the studies of love.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Some of Harlow's final experiments explored social deprivation in the quest to create an animal model for the study of depression. This study is the most controversial, and involved isolation of infant and juvenile macaques for various periods of time. Monkeys placed in isolation exhibited social deficits when introduced or re-introduced into a peer group. They appeared unsure of how to interact with their conspecifics, and mostly stayed separate from the group, demonstrating the importance of social interaction and stimuli in forming the ability to interact with conspecifics in developing monkeys, and, comparatively, in children.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Critics of Harlow's research have observed that clinging is a matter of survival in young rhesus monkeys, but not in humans, and have suggested that his conclusions, when applied to humans, overestimate the importance of contact comfort and underestimate the importance of nursing.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow first reported the results of these experiments in "The Nature of Love", the title of his address to the sixty-sixth Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in Washington, D.C., August 31, 1958.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Beginning in 1959, Harlow and his students began publishing their observations on the effects of partial and total social isolation. Partial isolation involved raising monkeys in bare wire cages that allowed them to see, smell, and hear other monkeys, but provided no opportunity for physical contact. Total social isolation involved rearing monkeys in isolation chambers that precluded any and all contact with other monkeys.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow "et al." reported that partial isolation resulted in various abnormalities such as blank staring, stereotyped repetitive circling in their cages, and self-mutilation. These monkeys were then observed in various settings. For the study, some of the monkeys were kept in solitary isolation for 15 years.


title: Harry Harlow

text: In the total isolation experiments, baby monkeys would be left alone for three, six, 12, or 24 months of "total social deprivation". The experiments produced monkeys that were severely psychologically disturbed. Harlow wrote:


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow tried to reintegrate the monkeys who had been isolated for six months by placing them with monkeys who had been raised normally. The rehabilitation attempts met with limited success. Harlow wrote that total social isolation for the first six months of life produced "severe deficits in virtually every aspect of social behavior". Isolates exposed to monkeys the same age who were reared normally "achieved only limited recovery of simple social responses". Some monkey mothers reared in isolation exhibited "acceptable maternal behavior when forced to accept infant contact over a period of months, but showed no further recovery". Isolates given to surrogate mothers developed "crude interactive patterns among themselves". Opposed to this, when six-month isolates were exposed to younger, three-month-old monkeys, they achieved "essentially complete social recovery for all situations tested". The findings were confirmed by other researchers, who found no difference between peer-therapy recipients and mother-reared infants, but found that artificial surrogates had very little effect.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Since Harlow's pioneering work on touch research in development, recent work in rats has found evidence that touch during infancy resulted in a decrease in corticosteroid, a steroid hormone involved in stress, and an increase in glucocorticoid receptors in many regions of the brain. Schanberg and Field found that even short-term interruption of mother–pup interaction in rats markedly affected several biochemical processes in the developing pup: a reduction in ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) activity, a sensitive index of cell growth and differentiation; a reduction in growth hormone release (in all body organs, including the heart and liver, and throughout the brain, including the cerebrum, cerebellum, and brain stem); an increase in corticosterone secretion; and suppressed tissue ODC responsivity to administered growth hormone. Additionally, it was found that animals who are touch-deprived have weakened immune systems. Investigators have measured a direct, positive relationship between the amount of contact and grooming an infant monkey receives during its first six months of life, and its ability to produce antibody titer (IgG and IgM) in response to an antibody challenge (tetanus) at a little over one year of age. Trying to identify a mechanism for the "immunology of touch", some investigators point to modulations of arousal and associated CNS-hormonal activity. Touch deprivation may cause stress-induced activation of the pituitary–adrenal system, which, in turn, leads to increased plasma cortisol and adrenocorticotropic hormone. Likewise, researchers suggest, regular and "natural" stimulation of the skin may moderate these pituitary–adrenal responses in a positive and healthful way.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow was well known for refusing to use conventional terminology, instead choosing deliberately outrageous terms for the experimental apparatus he devised. This came from an early conflict with the conventional psychological establishment in which Harlow used the term "love" in place of the popular and archaically correct term "attachment". Such terms and respective devices included a forced-mating device he called the "rape rack", tormenting surrogate-mother devices he called "Iron maidens", and an isolation chamber he called the "pit of despair", developed by him and a graduate student, Stephen Suomi.


title: Harry Harlow

text: In the last of these devices, alternatively called the "well of despair", baby monkeys were left alone in darkness for up to one year from birth, or repetitively separated from their peers and isolated in the chamber. These procedures quickly produced monkeys that were severely psychologically disturbed, which were used as models of human depression.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow tried to rehabilitate monkeys that had been subjected to varying degrees of isolation using various forms of therapy. "In our study of psychopathology, we began as sadists trying to produce abnormality. Today, we are psychiatrists trying to achieve normality and equanimity."


title: Harry Harlow

text: Sigmund Freud can be credited for providing the foundation of mother and child relationships, that would soon be the inspiration and the starting point for Harlow’s studies. Freud discovered, after years of observation, that people who lacked consistent mothering were more likely to develop behavioral problems later in life. Freud's findings displayed that people who experienced lack of mothering, suffered from hostility, anxiety withdraws, and alcoholism. Freud constructed the foundation for Harry Harlow to continue and be successful in his work.


title: Harry Harlow

text: The Freudian interpretation believed that “it was the focus around the importance of the breast and the instinctive oral, feeding tendencies during the first year of life”. Harlow took this Freudian interpretation and asked “what about that connection is so crucial?” He used what Freud had already determined, and continued to ask questions to further the research in his own studies. The Freudian hypotheses states that a partial component of sexual drives, orality, determines the choice of an object, mother’s breast, driven by hunger.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow's work influenced Bruno Bettelheim, director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School in Chicago. This was a home for “disturbed” children, Bettelheim studied autism in children. He was very fascinated with Harlow and his study with monkeys. He thought that he could use what Harlow learned in his own work.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Reactive attachment disorder (RAD) forms when a child has experienced maltreatment, sexual and emotional abuse, or other forms of neglect, and manifests as behavioral problems. The treatment for reactive attachment disorder is very complex. By the time a child has been seen and diagnosed with reactive attachment disorder, several different mental health, medical, and developmental conditions need to be treated. While more children are being diagnosed with RAD, most are first mis-diagnosed with other behavioral problems. Children diagnosed with RAD need to be in intensive therapy, and so should their caregivers. The confusing path to a diagnosis often leaves children and families suffering for longer periods of time.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow believed that the relationship between mother and child was created by the mother providing tactile comfort, meaning infants have a natural need to touch and cling to something for emotional support. Harry Harlow helped further research that contributed to the discovery of RAD. He believed, and his study results showed, that the bond between mother and child in the first few years of life is extremely important for the mental health and development of the child. The ideas that he put into the psychology field of study helped discover what we know as RAD today.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Many children are misdiagnosed with RAD when they have other behavioral problems, and vice versa. Harlow's experiments gave psychologists experimental data for the causes and development of RAD, which helped reduce misdiagnosis.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Many of Harlow's experiments are now considered unethical—in their nature as well as Harlow's descriptions of them—and they both contributed to heightened awareness of the treatment of laboratory animals, and helped propel the creation of today's ethics regulations. The monkeys in the experiment were deprived of maternal affection, potentially leading to what are now known as panic disorders. University of Washington professor Gene Sackett, one of Harlow's doctoral students, stated that Harlow's experiments provided the impetus for the animal liberation movement in the U.S.


title: Harry Harlow

text: William Mason, another one of Harlow's students who continued conducting deprivation experiments after leaving Wisconsin, has said that Harlow "kept this going to the point where it was clear to many people that the work was really violating ordinary sensibilities, that anybody with respect for life or people would find this offensive. It's as if he sat down and said, 'I'm only going to be around another ten years. What I'd like to do, then, is leave a great big mess behind.' If that was his aim, he did a perfect job."<ref name="Blum1994/96"></ref> Mason also published articles where he attempted to work through the issue between a scientist's wish to understand the natural world and the "rights" of animals to life and autonomy.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Deborah Blum, a science journalist, criticized Harlow's work; criticisms by her and by his colleagues, collected by Blum, mentioned almost exclusively the negative impact on the public of his untamed language. Blum reported in her own writing that even Suomi, a former student and supporter, felt that he had to wait until Harlow retired from the University of Wisconsin before he could shut down his unethical "pit of despair" projects; they had been causing him "nightmares".


title: Harry Harlow

text: Stephen Suomi, a former Harlow student who now conducts maternal deprivation experiments on monkeys at the National Institutes of Health, has been criticized by PETA and members of the U.S. Congress.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Yet another of Harlow's students, Leonard Rosenblum, also went on to conduct maternal deprivation experiments with bonnet and pigtail macaque monkeys, and other research, involving exposing monkeys to drug–maternal-deprivation combinations in an attempt to "model" human panic disorder. Rosenblum's research, and his justifications for it, have also been criticized.


title: Harry Harlow

text: E. H. Eyestone, Chief of the Animal Resources Branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), expressed the concern of a review committee with the "pits of despair" experiments. Any concerns for welfare and humaneness were reduced to issues of publicity.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harlow commented to an interviewer in 1974, “The only thing I care about is whether the monkeys will turn out a property I can publish. I don't have any love for them. Never have. I really don't like animals. I despise cats, I hate dogs. How could you like a monkey?”.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Although Harlow certainly was aware of the animal protection legislation in place in the United Kingdom since 1876, active legislative attempts in the United States did not begin until 1960, where the Animal Welfare Act was passed in 1966.


title: Harry Harlow

text: Harry Harlow won a national medal of science based on his work with monkeys, in addition to being named the president of the American Psychological Association (APA). The APA is the governing body for researchers in the field of psychology. The APA offers oversight of researchers' works, which includes whether ethical principles are being followed in their research. The APA eventually shut down Harlow’s work in the 1980s, on ethical grounds.


title: Harry Harlow

text: A theatrical play, "The Harry Harlow Project", based on the life and work of Harlow, has been produced in Victoria and performed nationally in Australia.


title: Flying saucer

text: A flying saucer (also referred to as "a flying disc") is a descriptive term for a type of flying craft having a disc or saucer-shaped body, commonly used generically to refer to an anomalous flying object. The term was coined in 1947 but has generally been supplanted since 1952 by the United States Air Force term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs for short). Early reported sightings of unknown "flying saucers" usually described them as silver or metallic, sometimes reported as covered with navigation lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly, either alone or in tight formations with other similar craft, and exhibiting high maneuverability.


title: Flying saucer

text: Disc-shaped flying objects have been interpreted as being sporadically recorded since the Middle Ages.


title: Flying saucer

text: On January 25, 1878, the "Denison Daily News" printed an article in which John Martin, a local farmer, had reported seeing a large, dark, circular object resembling a balloon flying "at wonderful speed". Martin, according to the newspaper account, said it appeared to be about the size of a saucer from his perspective, one of the first uses of the word "saucer" in association with a UFO.


title: Flying saucer

text: Another early recorded use of the term "flying saucer" for an unidentified flying object was to describe a probable meteor that fell over Texas and Oklahoma on June 17, 1930. "Some who saw the weird light described it as a huge comet, a flaming flying saucer, a great red glow, a ball of fire." The term "flying saucer" had been in use since 1890 to describe a clay pigeon shooting target, which resembles a classic UFO shape.


title: Flying saucer

text: The highly publicized sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, resulted in the popularization of the term "flying saucer" by U.S. newspapers. Although Arnold never specifically used the term "flying saucer", he was quoted at the time saying the shape of the objects he saw was like a "saucer", "disc", or "pie-plate", and several years later added he had also said "the objects moved like saucers skipping across the water." Both the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc" were used commonly and interchangeably in the media until the early 1950s.


title: Flying saucer

text: Arnold's sighting was followed by thousands of similar sightings across the world. Such sightings were once very common, to such an extent that "flying saucer" was a synonym for UFO through the 1960s before it began to fall out of favor. Many sightings of cigar or dirigible-shaped UFOs were reported following it. More recently, the flying saucer has been largely supplanted by other alleged UFO-related vehicles, such as the black triangle. In fact, the term UFO was invented in 1952, to try to reflect the wider diversity of shapes being seen. However, unknown saucer-like objects are still reported, such as in the widely publicized 2006 sighting over Chicago-O'Hare airport.


title: Flying saucer

text: Many of the alleged flying saucer photographs of the era are now believed to be hoaxes. The flying saucer is now considered largely an icon of the 1950s and of B movies in particular, and is a popular subject in comic science fiction.


title: Flying saucer

text: Beyond the common usage of the phrase, there have also been human-made saucer-like craft. The first flying disc craft was called the Discopter and was patented by Alexander Weygers in 1944. Other designs have followed, such as the American Vought V-173 / XF5U "Flying Flapjack", the British GFS Projects flying saucer, or the British "S.A.U.C.E.R." ("Saucer Aircraft Utilising Coanda Effect Reactions") flying saucer, by inventor Alf Beharie.


title: Flying saucer

text: A manuscript illustration of the 10th-century Japanese narrative, "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter", depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.


title: Flying saucer

text: A supposedly medieval record of a silver disc flying over a village in Yorkshire in 1290 has been shown to be a hoax dating from the 1950s. Disc-like flying objects were occasionally reported throughout the millennium. For example, in a mass sighting over Nuremberg in 1561, discs and spheres were reported emerging from large cylinders (see woodcut at left). They are also claimed by ufologists to frequently show up in religious artwork.


title: Flying saucer

text: Another well-documented specific comparison of the objects to saucers was the Kenneth Arnold sighting on June 24, 1947, while Arnold was flying near Mount Rainier. He reported seeing 9 brightly reflecting vehicles, one shaped like a crescent but the others more disc- or saucer-shaped, flying in an echelon formation, weaving like the tail of a kite, flipping and flashing in the sun, and traveling with a speed of at least 1,200 miles per hour (1,900 km/h). In addition to the saucer or disc shape (Arnold also used the terms "pie plate" and half-moon shaped), he also later said he described the motion of the craft as "like a saucer if you skip it across water", leading to the term "flying saucer" and also "flying disc" (which were synonymous for a number of years).


title: Flying saucer

text: Immediately following the report, hundreds of sightings of usually saucer-like objects were reported across the United States and also in some other countries. The most widely publicized of these was the sighting by a United Airlines crew on July 4 of nine more disc-like objects pacing their plane over Idaho, not far from Arnold's initial sighting. On July 8, the Army Air Force base at Roswell, New Mexico issued a press release saying that they had recovered a "flying disc" from a nearby ranch, the so-called Roswell UFO incident, which was front-page news until the military issued a retraction saying that it was a weather balloon.


title: Flying saucer

text: On July 9, the Army Air Force Directorate of Intelligence, assisted by the FBI, began a secret study of the best of the flying saucer reports, including Arnold's and the United Airlines' crew. Three weeks later they issued an intelligence estimate describing the typical characteristics reported (including that they were often reported as disc-like and metallic) and concluded that something was really flying around. A follow-up investigation by the Air Materiel Command at Wright Field, Ohio arrived at the same conclusion. A widespread official government study of the saucers was urged by General Nathan Twining. This led to the formation of Project Sign (also known as Project Saucer) at the end of 1947, the first public Air Force UFO study. This evolved into Project Grudge (1949–1951) and then Project Blue Book (1952–1970).


title: Flying saucer

text: The term "flying saucer" quickly became deeply ingrained in the English vernacular. A Gallup poll from August 1947 found that 90% had heard about the mysterious flying saucers or flying discs, and a 1950 Gallup poll found that 94% of those polled had heard the term, easily beating out all other mentioned commonly used terms in the news such as "Cold War", "universal military training", and "bookie".


title: Flying saucer

text: In addition to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, a variety of possible explanations for flying saucers have been put forward. One of the most common states that most photos of saucers were hoaxes; cylindrical metal objects such as pie tins, hubcaps and dustbin lids were easy to obtain, and the poor focus seen in UFO images makes the true scale of the object difficult to ascertain.


title: Flying saucer

text: Another theory states that most are natural phenomena such as lenticular clouds and balloons, which appear disc-like in some lighting conditions.


title: Flying saucer

text: A third theory puts all saucer sightings down to a form of mass hysteria. Arnold described the craft he saw as saucer-like but not perfectly round (he described them as thin, flat, rounded in front but chopped in back and coming to a point), but the image of the circular saucer was fixed in the public consciousness. The theory posits that as the use of the term flying saucer in popular culture decreased, so too did sightings.


title: Flying saucer

text: Long before the Kenneth Arnold sighting of 1947 and the adoption of the term "flying saucer" by the public, depictions of streamlined saucer-shaped aircraft or spacecraft had appeared in the popular press, dating back to at least 1911. In particular, commentators like Milton Rothman have noted the appearance of the "flying saucers" concept in the fantasy artwork of the 1930s pulp science fiction magazines, by artists like Frank R. Paul. Frank Wu, a notable contemporary science fiction illustrator, has written:


title: Flying saucer

text: "The point is that the idea of space vehicles shaped like flying saucers was imprinted in the national psyche for many years prior to 1947, when the Roswell incident took place. It didn't take much stretching for the first observers of UFOs to assume that the unknown objects hovering in the sky had the same disk shape as the science fictional vehicles."


title: Flying saucer

text: A scientific and statistical analysis of 3200 Air Force UFO cases by the Battelle Memorial Institute from 1952 to 1954 found that most were indeed due to natural phenomena, about 2% were due to hoaxes or psychological effects and only 0.4% were thought due to clouds. Other very minor contributors were birds, light phenomena such as mirages or searchlights, and various miscellany such as flares or kites. The vast majority of identified objects (about 84%) were explained as balloons, aircraft, or astronomical objects. However, about 22% of all sightings still defied any plausible explanation by the team of scientists, and percentage of unidentifieds rose to 33% for the best witnesses and cases. Thus when carefully studied, a substantial fraction of reports (given the available data) is currently not understood.


title: Flying saucer

text: Fata Morgana, a type of mirage, may be responsible for some flying saucers sightings, by displaying objects located below the astronomical horizon hovering in the sky, and magnifying and distorting them.


title: Flying saucer

text: Similarly some unidentifieds seen on radar might also be due to Fata Morgana-type atmospheric phenomena, though more technically known as "anomalous propagation" and more commonly as "radar ghosts". Official UFO investigations in France suggest:


title: Flying saucer

text: The first documented patent for a lenticular flying machine was submitted by Romanian inventor Henri Coanda. He made a functional small scale model which was flown in 1932 and a patent was granted in 1935. In 1967, Coanda told a symposium organized by the Romanian Academy:


title: Flying saucer

text: Other attempts have been made, with limited success, to produce crewed vehicles based on the flying saucer design. While some, such as the Avrocar and M200G Volantor have been produced in limited numbers, most fail to leave the drawing board. The Avrocar, with vertical takeoff and landing, was originally intended to replace both the Jeep and the helicopter in combat situations, but proved to be inadequate for both. In spite of a powerful turbojet, it could not rise more than four or five feet off the ground, i.e., out of ground effect. Thus, the Avrocar could be seen as a prototype for the early generations of hovercraft, lacking only a 'skirt' to make it a truly effective example of the type. Uncrewed saucers have had more success; the Sikorsky Cypher is a saucer-like UAV which uses the disc-shaped shroud to protect rotor blades.


title: Flying saucer

text: Some more advanced flying saucers capable of spaceflight have been proposed, often as black projects by aeronautics companies. The Lenticular Reentry Vehicle was a secret project run by Convair for a saucer device which could carry both astronauts and nuclear weapons into orbit; the nuclear-powered system was planned in depth, but is not believed to have ever flown. More exotically, British Rail worked on plans for the British Rail "Space Vehicle" a proposed, saucer-shaped craft based on advanced technologies utilizing nuclear fusion and superconductivity, which was supposed to have been able to transport multiple passenger between planets, but never went beyond the patent stage.


title: Flying saucer

text: There is at least one design that received a US patent in 2005: . It claims to be "propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state".


title: Flying saucer

text: Additionally, a professor at the University of Florida has begun work on a Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) for NASA which has received public interest because of its coincidental resemblance to a flying saucer.


title: Flying saucer

text: After 1947, the flying saucer quickly became a stereotypical symbol of both extraterrestrials and science fiction, and features in many films of mid-20th century science fiction, including "The Atomic Submarine" (1959), "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951), "Plan 9 from Outer Space" (1957), "Earth vs. the Flying Saucers" (1956), as well as the television series "The Invaders". As the flying saucer was surpassed by other designs and concepts, it fell out of favor with straight science-fiction moviemakers, but continued to be used ironically in comedy movies, especially in reference to the low-budget B movies which often featured saucer-shaped alien craft.


title: Flying saucer

text: However, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave its high production value film "Forbidden Planet" (1956) a flying saucer called the "United Planets Cruiser C-57D", presenting a plausible human exploration, faster-than-light starship of the 23rd century. The 1964 Italian movie "Il disco volante" featured a flying saucer, while the 1965 James Bond movie "Thunderball" featured Ernst Stavro Blofeld's yacht "Disco Volante". In the television series "Lost in Space" (1965-1968), the Robinson family had a disc-shaped spaceship. Saucers appeared in the television series "Babylon 5" (1994-1998) as the standard ship design used by a race called the Vree. Doctor Who has featured many different designs of flying saucer in its history, most notably the saucers used by the Daleks. Aliens in the film "Independence Day" (1996) attacked humanity in giant city-sized saucer-shaped spaceships.


title: Flying saucer

text: The sleek, silver flying saucer in particular is seen as a symbol of 1950s culture; the motif is common in Googie architecture and in Atomic Age décor. The image is often invoked retrofuturistically to produce a nostalgic feel in period works, especially in comic science fiction; both "Mars Attacks!" (1996) and "Destroy All Humans!" draw on the flying saucer as part of the larger satire of 1950s B movie tropes.


title: Flying saucer

text: "The Twilight Zone" episodes "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", "Third from the Sun", "Death Ship", "To Serve Man", "The Invaders" and "On Thursday We Leave for Home" all make use of the iconic saucer from "Forbidden Planet".


title: The Specialist

text: The Specialist is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by Luis Llosa and starring Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Eric Roberts, and Rod Steiger. It is loosely based on "The Specialist" series of novels by John Shirley. The film met with negative critical response, but became a box office success, and Gloria Estefan's version of "Turn the Beat Around" became a dance sensation.


title: The Specialist

text: In 1984, Captain Ray Quick and Colonel Ned Trent, explosives experts working for the CIA, are on a mission to blow up a car transporting a South American drug dealer. But when the car appears, a little girl is inside with the dealer. Ray insists they abort the mission, but Ned intends to see it through and allows the explosion to happen, resulting in the deaths of both the drug dealer and the child. Furious by the girl's wrongful death, Ray savagely beats Ned and flees, effectively resigning from the CIA right after getting Ned fired by reporting him to his superiors.


title: The Specialist

text: Years later, in Miami, Ray works as a freelance hit man. He lives a solitary existence with his cat, named "Timer". Desperate people contact him via an Internet bulletin board and he takes the cases that interest him. Ray specializes in "shaping" his explosions, building and planting bombs that blow up only the intended target while leaving innocent bystanders unharmed.


title: The Specialist

text: He answers ads placed by a woman named May Munro and speaks to her often to decide if he should take the job or not. During the talks, he becomes intrigued by her story, coupled with the fact that he sees how attractive she is while following her. She is the only child of parents who were killed by Tomas Leon and his men. Against his better judgment, and pushed by her insistence that she will infiltrate the gang with or without him, Ray is persuaded to accept the job. Even though he has agreed, May ingratiates herself into Tomas' world as Adrian Hastings.


title: The Specialist

text: Ned now works for Joe Leon, Tomas' father and director of their organized crime syndicate. Once the hits on their lower level men begin, they contact the chief of police to place Ned in their bomb squad. May tolerates Tomas and plays along as his girlfriend so she can watch the hits one by one. It is revealed after the second target is killed that May has actually been forced into a partnership with Ned, whose goal was to coax Ray out of hiding. After the job in South America went wrong, Ned was dismissed from the CIA and is intent on revenge.


title: The Specialist

text: When the trap for Tomas is set, May is in the room; the resulting explosion appears to kill them both. When Ned goes to Joe to pay his respects, he is left alive only so he can find Ray and bring him to Joe before Tomas is buried. Both Ray and Ned believe that May is dead, yet Ray discovers that bulletin board messages are still being posted. He responds to one, quickly realizing that it is a trap set by Ned and the bomb squad, and baits Ned into an explosive tirade.


title: The Specialist

text: When he goes to the funeral of Adrian Hastings, Ray finds that May is alive. She went to the funeral to see if Ray would attend. Then they go to the Fontainebleau Hotel. They undress and make love in bed and in the shower. After this, she leaves. Meanwhile, Ned has gone to the cathedral and learns that the person in the casket is not May. She runs into Ned in the hotel lobby and makes an excuse as to why she did not tell him that she was alive. A henchman is ordered to take her to the car, and on the way, she asks to use the restroom. Once there, she uses a cell phone to warn Ray. He rigs the hotel room to explode, and when Ned's henchmen enter the room, it detonates, breaking the entire room off into the ocean.


title: The Specialist

text: May is taken to Joe Leon but Ned insists on keeping her alive to lure Ray out. Ned listens in as Ray calls May, he refuses to meet with her and be "set up" again, but she convinces him that she truly does care about him. He arranges a meeting at a seafood restaurant and May uses secret coding to tell him it's a trap before hanging up. When Ned sends May inside, the restaurant explodes. Ray and May escape on a speed boat to his warehouse. Ned listens to the recording of Ray's call and tracks down his location. The next morning, May is preparing to leave to kill Joe Leon herself, but Ray tells her to let go of the past. Ned arrives with an army of police that surround the booby-trapped warehouse. In a final showdown, Ray and May are cornered. Ned pursues them, but is done in by his own hubris when he steps on a bomb. The entire warehouse goes up due to the chain of bombs exploding, killing Trent; Ray and May escape unseen through a tunnel.


title: The Specialist

text: The next day, Joe reads about the incident at the warehouse. He thanks God for bringing his revenge on Ray and May. He then opens the mail brought to him and finds a necklace. It contains a picture of May's parents, seeing that it's rigged with a bomb, he curses God just before the necklace explodes. After hearing the blast and knowing all responsible for her parents' death are dead, Ray asks how she feels, to which she responds, "Better". They drive off to start their life together.


title: The Specialist

text: Gloria Estefan's husband Emilio Estefan Jr. has a small part as the piano player, recording artist LaGaylia Frazier appears as a singer, and character actor Brent Sexton plays Manny.


title: The Specialist

text: "The Specialist" opened in the U.S. on October 7 and grossed $14,317,765 in its opening weekend finishing number one at the US box office. In its second weekend, it grossed $8,972,766, finishing second to the claimed $9.3 million gross of "Pulp Fiction", however, others disputed Miramax Films' claimed gross and felt that "The Specialist" was the highest-grossing for the weekend. The film ended up making back its budget with $57,362,582 at the domestic box office while making another $113,000,000 internationally, giving it a worldwide gross of $170,362,582. It set a Warner Bros. record opening in the Philippines with $1.1 million and had the fifth biggest opening of all time in Spain with a gross of $2.1 million. It was Stallone's third highest-grossing movie at the box office in the 1990s and the second highest overall gross next to "Cliffhanger".


title: The Specialist

text: Roger Ebert gave it two stars out of four, stating that ""The Specialist" is one of those films that forces the characters through torturous mazes of dialogue and action, to explain a plot that is so unlikely it's not worth the effort. You know a movie's in trouble when the people in line at the parking garage afterward are trying to figure out what the heroine's motivations were." James Berardinelli rated it one and a half out of four stars, writing "This movie is excruciatingly dumb. And, given the releases of "Speed" and "Blown Away" this summer, there's no dearth of explosion-based motion pictures. The only twist this one offers is that here, the bomber is the good guy (...)."


title: The Specialist

text: The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book "The Official Razzie Movie Guide" as one of "The 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made".


title: The Specialist

text: At the 17th Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, the film was nominated in four categories and won one of them.


title: Oil sands

text: Oil sands, tar sands, crude bitumen, or bituminous sands, are a type of unconventional petroleum deposit. Oil sands are either loose sands or partially consolidated sandstone containing a naturally occurring mixture of sand, clay, and water, soaked with bitumen, a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum.


title: Oil sands

text: Significant bitumen deposits are reported in Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Venezuela. The estimated worldwide deposits of oil are more than ; the estimates include deposits that have not been discovered. Proven reserves of bitumen contain approximately 100 billion barrels, and total natural bitumen reserves are estimated at worldwide, of which , or 70.8%, are in Alberta, Canada.


title: Oil sands

text: Crude bitumen is a thick, sticky form of crude oil, so viscous that it will not flow unless heated or diluted with lighter hydrocarbons such as light crude oil or natural-gas condensate. At room temperature, it is much like cold molasses. The Orinoco Belt in Venezuela is sometimes described as oil sands, but these deposits are non-bituminous, falling instead into the category of heavy or extra-heavy oil due to their lower viscosity. Natural bitumen and extra-heavy oil differ in the degree by which they have been degraded from the original conventional oils by bacteria.


title: Oil sands

text: The 1973 and 1979 oil price increases, and development of improved extraction technology enabled profitable extraction and processing of the oil sands. Together with other so-called unconventional oil extraction practices, oil sands are implicated in the unburnable carbon debate but also contribute to energy security and counteract the international price cartel OPEC. According to the Oil Climate Index, carbon emissions from oil-sand crude are 31% higher than from conventional oil. In Canada, oil sands production in general, and in-situ extraction, in particular, are the largest contributors to the increase in the nation's greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 to 2017, according to Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).


title: Oil sands

text: The exploitation of bituminous deposits and seeps dates back to Paleolithic times. The earliest known use of bitumen was by Neanderthals, some 40,000 years ago. Bitumen has been found adhering to stone tools used by Neanderthals at sites in Syria. After the arrival of Homo sapiens, humans used bitumen for construction of buildings and waterproofing of reed boats, among other uses. In ancient Egypt, the use of bitumen was important in preparing mummies.


title: Oil sands

text: In ancient times, bitumen was primarily a Mesopotamian commodity used by the Sumerians and Babylonians, although it was also found in the Levant and Persia. The area along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers was littered with hundreds of pure bitumen seepages. The Mesopotamians used the bitumen for waterproofing boats and buildings. In Europe, they were extensively mined near the French city of Pechelbronn, where the vapour separation process was in use in 1742.


title: Oil sands

text: In Canada, the First Nation peoples had used bitumen from seeps along the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers to waterproof their birch bark canoes from early prehistoric times. The Canadian oil sands first became known to Europeans in 1719 when a Cree native named Wa-Pa-Su brought a sample to Hudsons Bay Company fur trader Henry Kelsey, who commented on it in his journals. Fur trader Peter Pond paddled down the Clearwater River to Athabasca in 1778, saw the deposits and wrote of "springs of bitumen that flow along the ground". In 1787, fur trader and explorer Alexander MacKenzie on his way to the Arctic Ocean saw the Athabasca oil sands, and commented, "At about 24 miles from the fork (of the Athabasca and Clearwater Rivers) are some bituminous fountains into which a pole of 20 feet long may be inserted without the least resistance."


title: Oil sands

text: In their May 2019 comparison of the "cost of supply curve update" in which the Norway-based Rystad Energy—an "independent energy research and consultancy"—ranked the "worlds total recoverable liquid resources by their breakeven price", Rystad reported that the average breakeven price for oil from the oil sands was US$83 in 2019, making it the most expensive to produce, compared to all other "significant oil producing regions" in the world. The International Energy Agency made similar comparisons.


title: Oil sands

text: The price per barrel of heavier, sour crude oils lacking in tidewater access—such as Western Canadian Select (WCS) from the Athabaska oil sands, are priced at a differential to the lighter, sweeter oil—such as West Texas Intermediate (WTI). The price is based on its grade—determined by factors such as its specific gravity or API and its sulfur content—and its location—for example, its proximity to tidewater and/or refineries.


title: Oil sands

text: Because the cost of production is so much higher at oil sands petroleum-mining operations, the breakeven point is much higher than for sweeter lighter oils like that produced by Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, and, the United States. Oil sands productions expand and prosper as the global price of oil increased to peak highs because of the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the 1990 Persian Gulf crisis and war, the 11 September 2001 attacks, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The boom periods were followed by the bust, as the global price of oil dropped during the 1980s and again in the 1990s, during a period of global recessions, and again in 2003.


title: Oil sands

text: The name "tar sands" was applied to bituminous sands in the late 19th and early 20th century. People who saw the bituminous sands during this period were familiar with the large amounts of tar residue produced in urban areas as a by-product of the manufacture of coal gas for urban heating and lighting. The word "tar" to describe these natural bitumen deposits is really a misnomer, since, chemically speaking, tar is a human-made substance produced by the destructive distillation of organic material, usually coal.


title: Oil sands

text: Since then, coal gas has almost completely been replaced by natural gas as a fuel, and coal tar as a material for paving roads has been replaced by the petroleum product asphalt. Naturally occurring bitumen is chemically more similar to asphalt than to coal tar, and the term "oil sands" (or oilsands) is more commonly used by industry in the producing areas than "tar sands" because synthetic oil is manufactured from the bitumen, and due to the feeling that the terminology of "tar sands" is less politically acceptable to the public. Oil sands are now an alternative to conventional crude oil.


title: Oil sands

text: The world's largest deposits of oil sands are in Venezuela and Canada. The geology of the deposits in the two countries is generally rather similar. They are vast heavy oil, extra-heavy oil, and/or bitumen deposits with oil heavier than 20°API, found largely in unconsolidated sandstones with similar properties. "Unconsolidated" in this context means that the sands have high porosity, no significant cohesion, and a tensile strength close to zero. The sands are saturated with oil which has prevented them from consolidating into hard sandstone.


title: Oil sands

text: The magnitude of the resources in the two countries is on the order of 3.5 to 4 trillion barrels (550 to 650 billion cubic metres) of original oil in place (OOIP). Oil in place is not necessarily oil reserves, and the amount that can be produced depends on technological evolution. Rapid technological developments in Canada in the 1985–2000 period resulted in techniques such as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) that can recover a much greater percentage of the OOIP than conventional methods. The Alberta government estimates that with current technology, 10% of its bitumen and heavy oil can be recovered, which would give it about 200 billion barrels (32 billion m) of recoverable oil reserves. Venezuela estimates its recoverable oil at 267 billion barrels (42 billion m). This places Canada and Venezuela in the same league as Saudi Arabia, having the three largest oil reserves in the world.


title: Oil sands

text: There are numerous deposits of oil sands in the world, but the biggest and most important are in Canada and Venezuela, with lesser deposits in Kazakhstan and Russia. The total volume of non-conventional oil in the oil sands of these countries exceeds the reserves of conventional oil in all other countries combined. Vast deposits of bitumen – over 350 billion cubic metres (2.2 trillion barrels) of oil in place – exist in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. If only 30% of this oil could be extracted, it could supply the entire needs of North America for over 100 years at 2002 consumption levels. These deposits represent plentiful oil, but not cheap oil. They require advanced technology to extract the oil and transport it to oil refineries.


title: Oil sands

text: The oil sands of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) are a result of the formation of the Canadian Rocky Mountains by the Pacific Plate overthrusting the North American Plate as it pushed in from the west, carrying the formerly large island chains which now compose most of British Columbia. The collision compressed the Alberta plains and raised the Rockies above the plains, forming mountain ranges. This mountain building process buried the sedimentary rock layers which underlie most of Alberta to a great depth, creating high subsurface temperatures, and producing a giant pressure cooker effect that converted the kerogen in the deeply buried organic-rich shales to light oil and natural gas. These source rocks were similar to the American so-called oil shales, except the latter have never been buried deep enough to convert the kerogen in them into liquid oil.


title: Oil sands

text: This overthrusting also tilted the pre-Cretaceous sedimentary rock formations underlying most of the sub-surface of Alberta, depressing the rock formations in southwest Alberta up to deep near the Rockies, but to zero depth in the northeast, where they pinched out against the igneous rocks of the Canadian Shield, which outcrop on the surface. This tilting is not apparent on the surface because the resulting trench has been filled in by eroded material from the mountains. The light oil migrated up-dip through hydro-dynamic transport from the Rockies in the southwest toward the Canadian Shield in the northeast following a complex pre-Cretaceous unconformity that exists in the formations under Alberta. The total distance of oil migration southwest to northeast was about . At the shallow depths of sedimentary formations in the northeast, massive microbial biodegradation as the oil approached the surface caused the oil to become highly viscous and immobile. Almost all of the remaining oil is found in the far north of Alberta, in Middle Cretaceous (115 million-year old) sand-silt-shale deposits overlain by thick shales, although large amounts of heavy oil lighter than bitumen are found in the Heavy Oil Belt along the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, extending into Saskatchewan and approaching the Montana border. Note that, although adjacent to Alberta, Saskatchewan has no massive deposits of bitumen, only large reservoirs of heavy oil >10°API.


title: Oil sands

text: Most of the Canadian oil sands are in three major deposits in northern Alberta. They are the Athabasca-Wabiskaw oil sands of north northeastern Alberta, the Cold Lake deposits of east northeastern Alberta, and the Peace River deposits of northwestern Alberta. Between them, they cover over —an area larger than England—and contain approximately of crude bitumen in them. About 10% of the oil in place, or , is estimated by the government of Alberta to be recoverable at current prices, using current technology, which amounts to 97% of Canadian oil reserves and 75% of total North American petroleum reserves. Although the Athabasca deposit is the only one in the world which has areas shallow enough to mine from the surface, all three Alberta areas are suitable for production using "in-situ" methods, such as cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) and steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD).


title: Oil sands

text: The largest Canadian oil sands deposit, the Athabasca oil sands is in the McMurray Formation, centered on the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta. It outcrops on the surface (zero burial depth) about north of Fort McMurray, where enormous oil sands mines have been established, but is deep southeast of Fort McMurray. Only 3% of the oil sands area containing about 20% of the recoverable oil can be produced by surface mining, so the remaining 80% will have to be produced using in-situ wells. The other Canadian deposits are between deep and will require in-situ production.


title: Oil sands

text: The Cold Lake oil sands are northeast of Alberta's capital, Edmonton, near the border with Saskatchewan. A small portion of the Cold Lake deposit lies in Saskatchewan. Although smaller than the Athabasca oil sands, the Cold Lake oil sands are important because some of the oil is fluid enough to be extracted by conventional methods. The Cold Lake bitumen contains more alkanes and less asphaltenes than the other major Alberta oil sands and the oil is more fluid. As a result, cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) is commonly used for production.


title: Oil sands

text: The Cold Lake oil sands are of a roughly circular shape, centered around Bonnyville, Alberta. They probably contain over 60 billion cubic metres (370 billion barrels) of extra-heavy oil-in-place. The oil is highly viscous, but considerably less so than the Athabasca oil sands, and is somewhat less sulfurous. The depth of the deposits is and they are from thick. They are too deep to surface mine.


title: Oil sands

text: Much of the oil sands are on Canadian Forces Base Cold Lake. CFB Cold Lake's CF-18 Hornet jet fighters defend the western half of Canadian air space and cover Canada's Arctic territory. Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR) is one of the largest live-drop bombing ranges in the world, including testing of cruise missiles. As oil sands production continues to grow, various sectors vie for access to airspace, land, and resources, and this complicates oil well drilling and production significantly.


title: Oil sands

text: The Eastern Venezuelan Basin has a structure similar to the WCSB, but on a shorter scale. The distance the oil has migrated up-dip from the Sierra Oriental mountain front to the Orinoco oil sands where it pinches out against the igneous rocks of the Guyana Shield is only about . The hydrodynamic conditions of oil transport were similar, source rocks buried deep by the rise of the mountains of the Sierra Orientale produced light oil that moved up-dip toward the south until it was gradually immobilized by the viscosity increase caused by biodgradation near the surface. The Orinoco deposits are early Tertiary (50 to 60 million years old) sand-silt-shale sequences overlain by continuous thick shales, much like the Canadian deposits.


title: Oil sands

text: In Venezuela, the Orinoco Belt oil sands range from deep and no surface outcrops exist. The deposit is about long east-to-west and wide north-to-south, much less than the combined area covered by the Canadian deposits. In general, the Canadian deposits are found over a much wider area, have a broader range of properties, and have a broader range of reservoir types than the Venezuelan ones, but the geological structures and mechanisms involved are similar. The main differences is that the oil in the sands in Venezuela is less viscous than in Canada, allowing some of it to be produced by conventional drilling techniques, but none of it approaches the surface as in Canada, meaning none of it can be produced using surface mining. The Canadian deposits will almost all have to be produced by mining or using new non-conventional techniques.


title: Oil sands

text: The Orinoco Belt is a territory in the southern strip of the eastern Orinoco River Basin in Venezuela which overlies one of the world's largest deposits of petroleum. The Orinoco Belt follows the line of the river. It is approximately from east to west, and from north to south, with an area about .


title: Oil sands

text: The oil sands consist of large deposits of extra heavy crude. Venezuela's heavy oil deposits of about of oil in place are estimated to approximately equal the world's reserves of lighter oil. In 2006, Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA), Venezuela's national oil company, estimated that the producible reserves of the Orinoco Belt are up to which would make it the largest petroleum reserve in the world.


title: Oil sands

text: In 2009, the US Geological Survey (USGS) increased its estimates of the reserves to of oil which is "technically recoverable (producible using currently available technology and industry practices)." No estimate of how much of the oil is economically recoverable was made.


title: Oil sands

text: In addition to the three major Canadian oil sands in Alberta, there is a fourth major oil sands deposit in Canada, the Melville Island oil sands in the Canadian Arctic islands, which are too remote to expect commercial production in the foreseeable future.


title: Oil sands

text: Apart from the megagiant oil sands deposits in Canada and Venezuela, numerous other countries hold smaller oil sands deposits. In the United States, there are supergiant oil sands resources primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, with a total of of oil (known and potential) in eight major deposits in Carbon, Garfield, Grand, Uintah, and Wayne counties. In addition to being much smaller than the Canadian oil sands deposits, the US oil sands are hydrocarbon-wet, whereas the Canadian oil sands are water-wet. This requires somewhat different extraction techniques for the Utah oil sands from those used for the Alberta oil sands.


title: Oil sands

text: Russia holds oil sands in two main regions. Large resources are present in the Tunguska Basin, East Siberia, with the largest deposits being Olenyok and Siligir. Other deposits are located in the Timan-Pechora and Volga-Urals basins (in and around Tatarstan), which is an important but very mature province in terms of conventional oil, holds large amounts of oil sands in a shallow permian formation. In Kazakhstan, large bitumen deposits are located in the North Caspian Basin.


title: Oil sands

text: In Madagascar, Tsimiroro and Bemolanga are two heavy oil sands deposits, with a pilot well already producing small amounts of oil in Tsimiroro. and larger scale exploitation in the early planning phase. In the Republic of the Congo reserves are estimated between .


title: Oil sands

text: Bituminous sands are a major source of unconventional oil, although only Canada has a large-scale commercial oil sands industry. In 2006, bitumen production in Canada averaged through 81 oil sands projects. 44% of Canadian oil production in 2007 was from oil sands. This proportion was (as of 2008) expected to increase in coming decades as bitumen production grows while conventional oil production declines, although due to the 2008 economic downturn work on new projects has been deferred. Petroleum is not produced from oil sands on a significant level in other countries.


title: Oil sands

text: The Alberta oil sands have been in commercial production since the original Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor Energy) mine began operation in 1967. Syncrude's second mine began operation in 1978 and is the biggest mine of any type in the world. The third mine in the Athabasca Oil Sands, the Albian Sands consortium of Shell Canada, Chevron Corporation, and Western Oil Sands Inc. (purchased by Marathon Oil Corporation in 2007) began operation in 2003. Petro-Canada was also developing a $33 billion Fort Hills Project, in partnership with UTS Energy Corporation and Teck Cominco, which lost momentum after the 2009 merger of Petro-Canada into Suncor.


title: Oil sands

text: By 2013 there were nine oil sands mining projects in the Athabasca oil sands deposit: Suncor Energy Inc. (Suncor), Syncrude Canada Limited (Syncrude)'s Mildred Lake and Aurora North, Shell Canada Limited (Shell)'s Muskeg River and Jackpine, Canadian Natural Resources Limited (CNRL)'s Horizon, Imperial Oil Resources Ventures Limited (Imperial), Kearl Oil Sands Project (KOSP), Total E&P Canada Ltd. Joslyn North Mine and Fort Hills Energy Corporation (FHEC). In 2011 alone they produced over 52 million cubic metres of bitumen.


title: Oil sands

text: No significant development of Venezuela's extra-heavy oil deposits was undertaken before 2000, except for the BITOR operation which produced somewhat less than 100,000 barrels of oil per day (16,000 m/d) of 9°API oil by primary production. This was mostly shipped as an emulsion (Orimulsion) of 70% oil and 30% water with similar characteristics as heavy fuel oil for burning in thermal power plants. However, when a major strike hit the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, most of the engineers were fired as punishment. Orimulsion had been the pride of the PDVSA engineers, so Orimulsion fell out of favor with the key political leaders. As a result, the government has been trying to "Wind Down" the Orimulsion program.


title: Oil sands

text: Despite the fact that the Orinoco oil sands contain extra-heavy oil which is easier to produce than Canada's similarly sized reserves of bitumen, Venezuela's oil production has been declining in recent years because of the country's political and economic problems, while Canada's has been increasing. As a result, Canadian heavy oil and bitumen exports have been backing Venezuelan heavy and extra-heavy oil out of the US market, and Canada's total exports of oil to the US have become several times as great as Venezuela's.


title: Oil sands

text: By 2016, with the economy of Venezuela in a tailspin and the country experiencing widespread shortages of food, rolling power blackouts, rioting, and anti-government protests, it was unclear how much new oil sands production would occur in the near future.


title: Oil sands

text: In May 2008, the Italian oil company Eni announced a project to develop a small oil sands deposit in the Republic of the Congo. Production is scheduled to commence in 2014 and is estimated to eventually yield a total of .


title: Oil sands

text: Except for a fraction of the extra-heavy oil or bitumen which can be extracted by conventional oil well technology, oil sands must be produced by strip mining or the oil made to flow into wells using sophisticated "in-situ" techniques. These methods usually use more water and require larger amounts of energy than conventional oil extraction. While much of Canada's oil sands are being produced using open-pit mining, approximately 90% of Canadian oil sands and all of Venezuela's oil sands are too far below the surface to use surface mining.


title: Oil sands

text: Conventional crude oil is normally extracted from the ground by drilling oil wells into a petroleum reservoir, allowing oil to flow into them under natural reservoir pressures, although artificial lift and techniques such as horizontal drilling, water flooding and gas injection are often required to maintain production. When primary production is used in the Venezuelan oil sands, where the extra-heavy oil is about 50 degrees Celsius, the typical oil recovery rates are about 8–12%. Canadian oil sands are much colder and more biodegraded, so bitumen recovery rates are usually only about 5–6%. Historically, primary recovery was used in the more fluid areas of Canadian oil sands. However, it recovered only a small fraction of the oil in place, so it is not often used today.


title: Oil sands

text: The Athabasca oil sands are the only major oil sands deposits which are shallow enough to surface mine. In the Athabasca sands there are very large amounts of bitumen covered by little overburden, making surface mining the most efficient method of extracting it. The overburden consists of water-laden muskeg (peat bog) over top of clay and barren sand. The oil sands themselves are typically thick deposits of crude bitumen embedded in unconsolidated sandstone, sitting on top of flat limestone rock. Since Great Canadian Oil Sands (now Suncor Energy) started operation of the first large-scale oil sands mine in 1967, bitumen has been extracted on a commercial scale and the volume has grown at a steady rate ever since.


title: Oil sands

text: A large number of oil sands mines are currently in operation and more are in the stages of approval or development. The Syncrude Canada mine was the second to open in 1978, Shell Canada opened its Muskeg River mine (Albian Sands) in 2003 and Canadian Natural Resources Ltd (CNRL) opened its Horizon Oil Sands project in 2009. Newer mines include Shell Canada's Jackpine mine, Imperial Oil's Kearl Oil Sands Project, the Synenco Energy (now owned by TotalEnergies) Northern Lights mine, and Suncor's Fort Hills mine.


title: Oil sands

text: Oil sands tailings ponds are engineered dam and dyke systems that contain salts, suspended solids and other dissolvable chemical compounds such as naphthenic acids, benzene, hydrocarbons residual bitumen, fine silts (mature fine tails MFT), and water. Large volumes of tailings are a byproduct of surface mining of the oil sands and managing these tailings is one of the most difficult environmental challenges facing the oil sands industry. The Government of Alberta reported in 2013 that tailings ponds in the Alberta oil sands covered an area of about . The Syncrude Tailings Dam or Mildred Lake Settling Basin (MLSB) is an embankment dam that is, by volume of construction material, the largest earth structure in the world in 2001.


title: Oil sands

text: Some years ago Canadian oil companies discovered that if they removed the sand filters from heavy oil wells and produced as much sand as possible with the oil, production rates improved significantly. This technique became known as Cold Heavy Oil Production with Sand (CHOPS). Further research disclosed that pumping out sand opened "wormholes" in the sand formation which allowed more oil to reach the wellbore. The advantage of this method is better production rates and recovery (around 10% versus 5–6% with sand filters in place) and the disadvantage that disposing of the produced sand is a problem. A novel way to do this was spreading it on rural roads, which rural governments liked because the oily sand reduced dust and the oil companies did their road maintenance for them. However, governments have become concerned about the large volume and composition of oil spread on roads. so in recent years disposing of oily sand in underground salt caverns has become more common.


title: Oil sands

text: The use of steam injection to recover heavy oil has been in use in the oil fields of California since the 1950s. The cyclic steam stimulation (CSS) "huff-and-puff" method is now widely used in heavy oil production worldwide due to its quick early production rates; however recovery factors are relatively low (10–40% of oil in place) compared to SAGD (60–70% of OIP).


title: Oil sands

text: CSS has been in use by Imperial Oil at Cold Lake since 1985 and is also used by Canadian Natural Resources at Primrose and Wolf Lake and by Shell Canada at Peace River. In this method, the well is put through cycles of steam injection, soak, and oil production. First, steam is injected into a well at a temperature of 300 to 340 degrees Celsius for a period of weeks to months; then, the well is allowed to sit for days to weeks to allow heat to soak into the formation; and, later, the hot oil is pumped out of the well for a period of weeks or months. Once the production rate falls off, the well is put through another cycle of injection, soak and production. This process is repeated until the cost of injecting steam becomes higher than the money made from producing oil.


title: Oil sands

text: Steam-assisted gravity drainage was developed in the 1980s by the Alberta Oil Sands Technology and Research Authority and fortuitously coincided with improvements in directional drilling technology that made it quick and inexpensive to do by the mid 1990s. In SAGD, two horizontal wells are drilled in the oil sands, one at the bottom of the formation and another about 5 metres above it. These wells are typically drilled in groups off central pads and can extend for miles in all directions. In each well pair, steam is injected into the upper well, the heat melts the bitumen, which allows it to flow into the lower well, where it is pumped to the surface.


title: Oil sands

text: SAGD has proved to be a major breakthrough in production technology since it is cheaper than CSS, allows very high oil production rates, and recovers up to 60% of the oil in place. Because of its economic feasibility and applicability to a vast area of oil sands, this method alone quadrupled North American oil reserves and allowed Canada to move to second place in world oil reserves after Saudi Arabia. Most major Canadian oil companies now have SAGD projects in production or under construction in Alberta's oil sands areas and in Wyoming. Examples include Japan Canada Oil Sands Ltd's (JACOS) project, Suncor's Firebag project, Nexen's Long Lake project, Suncor's (formerly Petro-Canada's) MacKay River project, Husky Energy's Tucker Lake and Sunrise projects, Shell Canada's Peace River project, Cenovus Energy's Foster Creek and Christina Lake developments, ConocoPhillips' Surmont project, Devon Canada's Jackfish project, and Derek Oil & Gas's LAK Ranch project. Alberta's OSUM Corp has combined proven underground mining technology with SAGD to enable higher recovery rates by running wells underground from within the oil sands deposit, thus also reducing energy requirements compared to traditional SAGD. This particular technology application is in its testing phase.


title: Oil sands

text: Several methods use solvents, instead of steam, to separate bitumen from sand. Some solvent extraction methods may work better in "in situ" production and other in mining. Solvent can be beneficial if it produces more oil while requiring less energy to produce steam.


title: Oil sands

text: Vapor Extraction Process (VAPEX) is an "in situ" technology, similar to SAGD. Instead of steam, hydrocarbon solvents are injected into an upper well to dilute bitumen and enables the diluted bitumen to flow into a lower well. It has the advantage of much better energy efficiency over steam injection, and it does some partial upgrading of bitumen to oil right in the formation. The process has attracted attention from oil companies, who are experimenting with it.


title: Oil sands

text: The above methods are not mutually exclusive. It is becoming common for wells to be put through one CSS injection-soak-production cycle to condition the formation prior to going to SAGD production, and companies are experimenting with combining VAPEX with SAGD to improve recovery rates and lower energy costs.