title: Greater Orlando

text: Orlando was eastern terminus of the Amtrak "Sunset Limited", until damage to train bridges caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 halted service east of New Orleans. , restoration of Amtrak service from New Orleans to Orlando appears to be unlikely.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Orlando is usually named as the initial focus of plans for a Florida High Speed Rail system in which the majority of its residents had supported, but 2.4 billion dollars of federal funding for this new system were refused by Governor Rick Scott of Florida after taking office in January 2011. Scott said that Florida taxpayers would be stuck with paying for expected large cost overruns if the rail system were built.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Orlando will be served by Brightline at Orlando International Airport's new intermodal terminal. Current service runs from Miami to West Palm Beach, with construction to Orlando to begin in March 2019. In addition, an extension of Brightline to Tampa is also proposed.


title: Greater Orlando

text: The primary major airports of the area are Orlando International Airport, at SR 528 Exit 11/SR 417 Exit 17, and Orlando Sanford International Airport, at SR 417 Exit 49.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Orlando International (MCO) is a focus city of JetBlue and Southwest Airlines. AirTran Airways was headquartered in Orlando and had a major hub in Orlando but it was merged into Southwest. JetBlue also has a training facility known as JetBlue University, and is the main training center for JetBlue’s pilots, inflight crew, plus support training for its technical operations and customer service crew. JetBlue also provides general aircraft maintenance and LiveTV installation and maintenance in Orlando.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Orlando Sanford International (SFB) is generally served by charter flights from Europe, though it is also a hub for national small-city carrier Allegiant Air and home to Delta Connection Academy, a pilot training school.


title: Greater Orlando

text: In the Combined Statistical Area, Daytona Beach International Airport and Leesburg International Airport also serves the area, and is used by many tourists seeking to directly connect to Daytona Beach's many local offerings, such as Daytona Beach Bike Week, Speedweeks and Spring Break. It is located so its runways cradle Daytona International Speedway, making it convenient for some fans to arrive in Daytona, watch the Daytona 500 or Coke Zero 400, and then return home the same day. Daytona Beach International also serves as the main airport for pilot training at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Municipal airports in the region include Orlando Executive Airport, Kissimmee Gateway Airport, Ormond Beach Municipal Airport and DeLand Municipal Airport.


title: Greater Orlando

text: A Chinatown () as of 2002 at 5060 West Colonial Drive (located outside city limits). According to the West Orlando News, the Chinatown features a monument of Sun Yat Sen, a donation from his granddaughter Dr. Lily Sun who unveiled it on the 87th anniversary of his death in 2012, making this the first commercial location to hold such a monument. In March 2013, a paifang was unveiled at the entrance to the Chinatown plaza, "... helping legitimize the plaza as a center for Chinese commerce." The Chinatown features an eclectic blend of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese and Indian cultures through its numerous pan-Asian businesses.


title: Greater Orlando

text: According to an article by the Orlando Weekly, the location of Orlando's Chinatown was once the Westside Crossing Plaza, which was a Walmart shopping center with a Publix supermarket. In 2003, the old shopping center was converted to house "... 60 pan-Asian businesses and restaurants." Financing for the project came from Chinese investors.


title: Greater Orlando

text: The Orlando Sentinel further states that "... by retrofitting the mostly vacant strip center, which includes a former Wal-Mart discount store and Publix supermarket, a group of out-of-state Chinese investors are hoping to draw more than 60 Asian-owned businesses to the site by the end of the year. " The article states that this is "... creating what the project's developers are calling the region's first Chinatown." The amenities include bakeries, restaurants, and an Asian grocery store. So the article further elaborates by saying "... finally, there's a place to buy cuttlefish and black chicken."


title: Greater Orlando

text: Since the project was a success, its report on its conceptualization and development is used as a reference for the real estate and tourism industries.


title: Greater Orlando

text: The primary newspaper of the area is the daily "Orlando Sentinel", owned by Tribune Company. It was created as the "Orlando Sentinel-Star" in 1973 when the "Orlando Morning Sentinel" and the "Orlando Evening Star" were merged. It dropped "Star" from the name in 1982. It is also served by various weekly and semi-weekly papers, including "Orlando Weekly", "The West Orange Times", "The East Orlando Sun" and the "Osceola News-Gazette" in Kissimmee.


title: Greater Orlando

text: Greater Orlando makes up a large portion of the "Orlando–Ocala–Daytona Beach, FL" DMA, which ranks No. 19 in size with 1,466,420 households in 2007–08 according to Nielsen Media Research.


title: Greater Orlando

text: All six major broadcast networks are represented in Orlando with their own channels. WESH brought NBC to Orlando when it moved its main operations from Daytona Beach to Eatonville in 1991.


title: Acura ILX

text: The Acura ILX is a subcompact executive car manufactured and marketed by Honda under the Acura brand, based on the ninth-generation Civic sedan. The ILX replaced the Canadian market exclusive Acura CSX. The ILX was Acura's first gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle.


title: Acura ILX

text: The concept version was unveiled at the 2012 North American International Auto Show, the production version was presented in the 2012 Chicago Auto Show. The ILX introduces a new design that Acura calls "aero-fused dynamics". Mass production commenced on April 23 at Honda's assembly facility in Greensburg, Indiana and U.S. sales began on May 22.


title: Acura ILX

text: The ILX's body in white uses 59% high strength steel ranging from 440-980 MPa yield strength grades, aluminum is used for the hood and front bumper beam. Compared to the Civic, the ILX uses Acura's "Amplitude Reactive" dampers and a larger more rigid steering shaft for improved handling and ride quality characteristics.


title: Acura ILX

text: Options are grouped into Premium and Technology packages and include leather upholstery, 17" alloy wheels, navigation system, premium audio system with SiriusXM satellite radio, and high intensity discharge headlamps. Both option packages include a multi-view rear backup camera with regular, wide-angle, and top-down modes.


title: Acura ILX

text: For the 2014 model year the ILX came standard with 17-inch wheels, leather interior, heated front seats, an eight-way power driver's seat, tri-angle backup camera and audio subwoofer with Active Noise Cancellation, however price was increased by $1,000.


title: Acura ILX

text: For the 2015 model year, the ILX Hybrid was discontinued due to slow sales. Through May of 2014, only 2,660 Hybrid units were sold since its introduction.


title: Acura ILX

text: The refreshed 2016 ILX was unveiled during November 2014 at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and went on sale in February 2015. It now came exclusively with an "Earth Dreams" direct injected 2.4-liter four-cylinder DOHC i-VTEC engine mated to an 8-speed dual-clutch transmission, a very closely related powertrain to that of the TLX, first introduced in 2014 (as a 2015 model). The manual transmission ILX was also discontinued with the release of the facelift. Only around 4% of ILX sold had manual transmissions from the 2013-2015 model years. "Jewel Eye" LED headlamps (low and high beams, DRL pipe and amber turn signals) similar to those on other Acura models (RLX, MDX and TLX) are standard, along with new LED tail lamps. A new "A-Spec" trim was offered, which included sporty exterior and interior styling enhancements. Production of the 2016 ILX began during January 2015 moving to the Marysville Auto Plant in Marysville, Ohio.


title: Acura ILX

text: In September 2018, Acura revealed a second facelift for the ILX, incorporating what the company markets as its "Diamond Pentagon" grille. The headlights are revised along with front bumper. In the rear of the ILX, the taillights are revised, and the license plate has been dropped from the trunk to the rear bumper. In the interior, the overall design has revised seats, with the availability of red leather (only on the A-Spec), and an updated infotainment system — the latter 30% faster. AcuraWatch is now standard on all ILX's. The powertrain has remained the same for 2019. The ILX A-Spec now makes the exterior look more aggressive. It comes with 18" wheels, red or black leather seats with ultrasuade inserts, aluminum pedals, and more. Pricing for the 2019 model is less than the previous model year, starting at $25,900.


title: Acura ILX

text: Honda has offered several different four-cylinder gasoline engines in this model, similar to those in the CSX, TSX, and Civic Si. The hybrid model (available for the 2013 through 2014 model years and Acura's first hybrid), used a 1.5-liter I4 and shared its gas/electric powertrain with Honda's Civic Hybrid producing at 5,500 rpm and of torque between 1,000 and 3,000 rpm. The ILX is not sold in Japan.


title: Acura ILX

text: The ILX originally featured a 2.0-liter I4 engine making 150 hp mated to a 5-speed automatic transmission, or a version of the Civic Si's 201 hp 2.4-liter I4 engine mated to a 6-speed manual. The ILX Hybrid model featured a 1.5-liter I4 engine making 111 hp hybrid from the Civic Hybrid, EPA fuel economy rating of the hybrid version is for city and on highway driving. Starting from 2016, the ILX is offered only with the 2.4-liter I4 engine and the 8 speed DCT.


title: Acura ILX

text: The ILX was discontinued after the 2022 model year, with the eleventh-generation Honda Civic-based Integra liftback replaced it as the brand's entry-level offering.


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun, or Telmun, (Sumerian: , later 𒉌𒌇(𒆠), ni.tuk = DILMUN; ) was an ancient East Semitic-speaking civilization in Eastern Arabia mentioned from the 3rd millennium BC onwards.


title: Dilmun

text: Based on contextual evidence, it was located in the Persian Gulf, on a trade route between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley civilisation, close to the sea and to artesian springs. Dilmun encompassed Bahrain, Kuwait, and eastern Saudi Arabia. This area is certainly what is meant by references to "Dilmun" among the lands conquered by King Sargon II and his descendants.


title: Dilmun

text: The great commercial and trading connections between Mesopotamia and Dilmun were strong and profound to the point where Dilmun was a central figure to the Sumerian creation myth. Dilmun was described in the saga of Enki and Ninhursag as pre-existing in paradisiacal state, where predators do not kill, pain and diseases are absent, and people do not get old.


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun was an important trading centre. At the height of its power, it controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. According to some modern theories, the Sumerians regarded Dilmun as a sacred place, but that is never stated in any known ancient text. Dilmun was mentioned by the Mesopotamians as a trade partner, a source of copper, and a trade entrepôt.


title: Dilmun

text: The Sumerian tale of the garden paradise of Dilmun may have been an inspiration for the Garden of Eden story.


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun was an important trading center from the late fourth millennium to 800 BC. At the height of its power, Dilmun controlled the Persian Gulf trading routes. Dilmun was very prosperous during the first 300 years of the second millennium. Dilmun was conquered by the Middle Assyrian Empire (1365–1050 BC), and its


title: Dilmun

text: commercial power began to decline between 1000 BC and 800 BC because piracy flourished in the Persian Gulf. In the 8th and 7th centuries BC the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911–605 BC) conquered Dilmun, and in the 6th century BC the Neo-Babylonian Empire, and later the Achaemenid Empire, ruled Dilmun.


title: Dilmun

text: The Dilmun civilization was the centre of commercial activities linking traditional agriculture of the land—then utterly fertile due to artesian wells that have dried since, and due to a much wetter climate—with maritime trade between diverse regions such as the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia in its early stage and later between China and the Mediterranean. The Dilmun civilization is mentioned first in Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets dated to the late third millennium BC, found in the temple of goddess Inanna, in the city of Uruk. The adjective Dilmun is used to describe a type of axe and one specific official; in addition there are lists of rations of wool issued to people connected with Dilmun.


title: Dilmun

text: One of the earliest inscriptions mentioning Dilmun is that of king Ur-Nanshe of Lagash (c. 2300 BC) found in a door-socket: "The ships of Dilmun brought him wood as tribute from foreign lands."


title: Dilmun

text: From about 2050 BC onward Dilmun seems to had its heyday. Qal'at al-Bahrain was most likely the capital of Dilmun. From texts found at Isin it becomes clear that Dilmun became an independent kingdom free from Mesopotamian rule. Royal gifts to Dilmun are mentioned. Contacts with the Amorite state of Mari in the northern Levant are attested. In about this time the largest royal burial mounds were erected. From about 1780 BC come several inscriptions on stone vessels naming two kings of Dilmun. King Yagli-El and his father Rimum. The inscriptions were found in huge tumuli evidently the burial places of these kings. Rimum was already known to archaeology from the Durand Stone, discovered in 1879.


title: Dilmun

text: From about 1720 BC a decline is visible. Many settlements were no longer used and the building of royal mounts stopped. The Barbar Temple fell into ruins. From about 1650 BC there is recovering period detectable. New royal burial mounts were built and at Qal'at al-Bahrain there is evidence for increased building activity. To this period belongs a further inscription on a seal found at Failaka and preserving a king's name. The short text readsː "[La]'ù-la Panipa, daughter of Sumu-lěl, the servant of Inzak of Akarum". Sumu-lěl was evidently a third king of Dilmun belonging to about this period. "Servant of Inzak of Akarum" was the king's title in Dilmun. The names of these later rulers are Amoritic.


title: Dilmun

text: It seems that Dilmun was after 1500 BC under the rule of the Akkadian speaking Mesopotamian Sealand Dynasty. The Sealand-Dynasty king Ea-gamil is mentioned in a text found at Qal'at al-Bahrain. Ea-gamil was the last ruler of the Sealand Dynasty. After his reign Dilmun came under the rule of the Babylonian Kassite dynasty, as they also took over the Sealand Dynasty area.


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun was mentioned in two letters dated to the reign of Burna-Buriash II (c. 1370 BC) recovered from Nippur, during the Kassite dynasty of Babylon. These letters were from a provincial official, Ilī-ippašra, in Dilmun to his friend Enlil-kidinni, the governor of Nippur. The names referred to are Akkadian. These letters and other documents, hint at an administrative relationship between Dilmun and Babylon at that time. Following the collapse of the Kassite dynasty in 1595 BC, Mesopotamian documents make no mention of Dilmun until Assyrian inscriptions dated from 1250 BC to 1050 BC which proclaimed Assyrian kings to be rulers of Dilmun and Meluhha, as well as Lower Sea and Upper Sea. Assyrian inscriptions recorded tribute from Dilmun.


title: Dilmun

text: There are other Assyrian inscriptions during the first millennium BC indicating Assyrian sovereignty over Dilmun. One of the early sites discovered in Bahrain suggests that Sennacherib, king of Assyria (707–681 BC), attacked northeast Arabia and captured the Bahraini islands. The most recent reference to Dilmun came during the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Neo-Babylonian administrative records, dated 567 BC, stated that Dilmun was controlled by the king of Babylon. The name of Dilmun fell from use after the collapse of Babylon in 538 BC, with the area henceforth identified as Tylos during the Hellenistic period.


title: Dilmun

text: The "Persian Gulf" types of circular, stamped (rather than rolled) seals known from Dilmun, that appear at Lothal in Gujarat, India, and Failaka, as well as in Mesopotamia, are convincing corroboration of the long-distance sea trade. What the commerce consisted of is less known: timber and precious woods, ivory, lapis lazuli, gold, and luxury goods such as carnelian and glazed stone beads, pearls from the Persian Gulf, shell and bone inlays, were among the goods sent to Mesopotamia in exchange for silver, tin, woolen textiles, olive oil and grains.


title: Dilmun

text: Copper ingots from Oman and bitumen which occurred naturally in Mesopotamia may have been exchanged for cotton textiles and domestic fowl, major products of the Indus region that are not native to Mesopotamia. Instances of all of these trade goods have been found. The importance of this trade is shown by the fact that the weights and measures used at Dilmun were in fact identical to those used by the Indus, and were not those used in Southern Mesopotamia.


title: Dilmun

text: In regard to copper mining and smelting, the Umm al-Nar culture and Dalma in the United Arab Emirates, and Ibri in Oman were particularly important.


title: Dilmun

text: Some Meluhhan vessels may have sailed directly to Mesopotamian ports, but by the Isin-Larsa Period, Dilmun monopolized the trade. The Bahrain National Museum assesses that its "Golden Age" lasted ca. 2200–1600 BC. Discoveries of ruins under the Persian Gulf may be of Dilmun.


title: Dilmun

text: The population used cuneiform to write in the Akkadian language, and, like the Akkadians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Eblaites of Mesopotamia, spoke an East Semitic language that was either an Akkadian dialect or one close to it, rather than a Central Semitic language, and its known rulers had East Semitic names. Dilmun's main deity was named Inzak and his spouse was Panipa. However there are no indication of population replacement happening in the region.


title: Dilmun

text: In the early epic "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta", the main events, which center on Enmerkar's construction of the ziggurats in Uruk and Eridu, are described as taking place at a time "before Dilmun had yet been settled".


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun, sometimes described as "the place where the sun rises" and "the Land of the Living", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim (Ziusudra), was taken by the gods to live forever. Thorkild Jacobsen's translation of the Eridu Genesis calls it ""Mount Dilmun"" which he locates as a ""faraway, half-mythical place"".


title: Dilmun

text: Dilmun is also described in the epic story of Enki and Ninhursag as the site at which the Creation occurred. The later Babylonian "Enuma Elish", speaks of the creation site as the place where the mixture of salt water, personified as Tiamat met and mingled with the fresh water of Abzu. Bahrain in Arabic means "the twin waters", where the fresh water of the Arabian aquifer mingles with the salt waters of the Persian Gulf. The promise of Enki to Ninhursag, the Earth Mother:


title: Dilmun

text: For Dilmun, the land of my lady's heart, I will create long waterways, rivers and canals, whereby water will flow to quench the thirst of all beings and bring abundance to all that lives.


title: Dilmun

text: However, it is also speculated that Gilgamesh had to pass through Mount Mashu to reach Dilmun in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", which is usually identified with the whole of the parallel Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon ranges, with the narrow gap between these mountains constituting the tunnel.


title: Dilmun

text: In 1987, Theresa Howard-Carter proposed that Dilmun of this era might be a still unidentified tell near the Arvand Rud (Shatt al-Arab in Arabic) between modern-day Quanah and Basra in modern-day Iraq. In favor of Howard-Carter's proposal, it has been noted that this area does lie to the east of Sumer ("where the sun rises"), and the riverbank where Dilmun's maidens would have been accosted aligns with the Shat al-Arab which is in the midst of marshes. The "mouth of the rivers" where Dilmun was said to lie is for her the union of the Tigris and Euphrates at Qurnah. A number of scholars have suggested that Dilmun originally designated the eastern province of modern Saudi Arabia, notably linked with the major Dilmunite settlements of Umm an-Nussi and Umm ar-Ramadh in the interior and Tarout on the coast.


title: Dilmun

text: As of 2022, archaeologists have failed to find a site in existence during the time from 3300 BC (Uruk IV) to 556 BC (Neo-Babylonian Era), when Dilmun appears in texts. According to Hojlund, no settlements exist in the Gulf littoral dating to 3300–2000 BC.


title: Dilmun

text: In 1922, Eduard Glaser proposed that the Garden of Eden was located in Eastern Arabia within the Dilmun civilization. Scholar Juris Zarins also believes that the Garden of Eden was situated in Dilmun at the head of the Persian Gulf (present-day Kuwait), where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers run into the sea, from his research on this area using information from many different sources, including Landsat images from space. In this theory, the Bible's Gihon would correspond with the Karun in Iran, and the Pishon River would correspond to the Wadi Al-Batin river system that once drained the now dry, but once quite fertile central part of the Arabian Peninsula.


title: John Berry (Beastie Boys)

text: John Berry (May 31, 1963 – May 19, 2016) was an American hardcore punk musician. He was a founding member of the Beastie Boys, although he left the band in 1982 before they secured any commercial success.


title: John Berry (Beastie Boys)

text: Berry was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on May 31, 1963. After moving to New York City in his teens with his father, Berry attended the Walden School in Manhattan. It was at the Walden School where he met Michael Diamond and the two were founding members of the Young Aborigines, later known as the Beastie Boys. The two other founding members are Adam Yauch and Kate Schellenbach.


title: John Berry (Beastie Boys)

text: The Beastie Boys were initially a hardcore punk band. Formed at a time where the New York punk scene was witnessing a shift, and Berry was an important part of that transition. Berry played guitar on the band's first release, a seven-inch EP, "Polly Wog Stew". He was the first to leave the band, later followed by Schellenbach.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Janssen Pharmaceuticals is a pharmaceutical company headquartered in Beerse, Belgium, and wholly-owned by Johnson & Johnson. It was founded in 1953 by Paul Janssen.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1961, Janssen Pharmaceuticals was purchased by New Jersey-based American corporation Johnson & Johnson, and became part of Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research and Development (J&J PRD), now renamed to Janssen Research and Development (JRD), which conducts research and development activities related to a wide range of human medical disorders, including mental illness, neurological disorders, anesthesia and analgesia, gastrointestinal disorders, fungal infection, HIV/AIDS, allergies and cancer. Janssen and Ortho-McNeil Pharmaceutical have been placed in the Ortho-McNeil-Janssen group within Johnson & Johnson Company.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: The early roots of what would become Janssen Pharmaceuticals date back to 1933. In 1933, Constant Janssen, the father of Paul Janssen, acquired the right to distribute the pharmaceutical products of Richter, a Hungarian pharmaceutical company, for Belgium, the Netherlands and Belgian Congo. On 23 October 1934, he founded the "N.V. Produkten Richter" in Turnhout. In 1937, Constant Janssen acquired an old factory building in the "Statiestraat 78" in Turnhout for his growing company, which he expanded during World War II into a four-story building. Still a student, Paul Janssen assisted in the development of paracetamol (USP: acetaminophen, often referred to generically under the trademark Tylenol) under the name Perdolan, which would later become well-known. After the war, the name for the company products was changed to "Eupharma", although the company name "Richter" would remain until 1956.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Paul Janssen founded his own research laboratory in 1953 on the third floor of the building in the "Statiestraat", still within the "Richter-Eurpharma" company of his father. In 1955, he and his team developed their first drug, Neomeritine (ambucetamide), an antispasmodic found to be particularly effective for the relief of menstrual pain. On 5 April 1956, the name of the company was changed to "NV Laboratoria Pharmaceutica C. Janssen" (named after Constant Janssen). On 27 April 1957, the company opened a new research facility in Beerse, but the move to Beerse would not be completed until 1971–1972. On 2 May 1958, the research department in Beerse became a separate legal entity, the "N.V. Research Laboratorium C. Janssen".


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: On 25 October 1961, the company was acquired by the American corporation Johnson & Johnson. The negotiations with Johnson & Johnson were led by Frans Van den Bergh, head of the board of directors. On 10 February 1964, the name was changed to "Janssen Pharmaceutica N.V." and the seat of the company in Turnhout was also transferred to Beerse. The company was led by Paul Janssen, Bob Stouthuysen and Frans Van Den Bergh. When, in 1971-1972 the pharmaceutical production also moved to Beerse, the move from Turnhout was completed. Between 1990 and 2004, Janssen expanded worldwide, and the company grew in size to about 28,000 employees worldwide.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: From the beginning, Janssen emphasized as its core activity research for the development of new drugs. The research department which was established in Beerse in 1957, developed into a large research campus. In 1987, the Janssen Research Foundation (JRF) was founded which performs research into new drugs at Beerse and in other laboratories around the globe. Janssen became the Flemish company with the largest budget for research and development. Beside the headquarters in Beerse with its research departments, pharmaceutical production and the administrative departments, Janssen Pharmaceutica in Belgium still has offices in Berchem (Janssen-Cilag), a chemical factory in Geel, and Janssen Biotech in Olen.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: The Chemical Production plant in Geel makes the active ingredients for the company's medicines. In 1975, the first plant of a new chemical factory "Plant I" was established in Geel, "Plant II" was opened in 1977, "Plant III"' in 1984, and "Plant IV" in 1995. In 1999 the remaining chemical production in Beerse was transferred to Geel. About 80% of its active components are manufactured here. The site in Geel also manufactures about two-thirds of the worldwide chemical production of the pharmaceutical sector of Johnson & Johnson. In 1995, the "Center for Molecular Design" (CMD) was founded by Paul Janssen and Paul Lewi.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1999, clinical research and non-clinical development become a global organization within Johnson & Johnson. In 2001, part of the research activities was transferred to the United States with the reorganization of research activities in the "Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Development" (JJPRD) organization. The research activities of the "Janssen Research Foundation" (JRF) and the "R.W. Johnson Pharmaceutical Research Institute" (PRI) (United States) were merged into the new global research organization. A new building for pharmaceutical development was completed in Beerse in 2001. In 2002, a new logistics and informatics centre was opened at a new site, "Beerse 2". In 2003 two new research buildings were constructed, the "Discovery Research Center" (DRC), and the "Drug Safety Evaluation Center" (DSEC). On 27 October 2004, the "Paul Janssen Research Center", for discovery research, was inaugurated.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2011, Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Centocor became Janssen Biotech, part of Janssen Pharmaceuticals.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Also in 2011, Johnson & Johnson acquired Crucell, and assigned it to Janssen. The acquisition of Crucell provided Janssen with a disease prevention arm. By 2014, Crucell was renamed as Janssen Vaccines.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In March 2015, Janssen licensed tipifarnib (a farnesyl transferase inhibitor) to Kura Oncology who will assume sole responsibility for developing and commercialising the anti-cancer drug. Later in the same month the company announced that Galapagos Pharma had regained the rights to the anti-inflammatory drug candidate GLPG1690 as well as two other compounds including GLPG1205 (a first-in-class inhibitor of GPR84).


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In May 2016, the company launched a collaboration MacroGenics and their preclinical cancer treatment, MGD015. The deal could net MacroGenics more than $740 million.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In September 2017 it was announced that Janssen teamed up with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a unit of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to create pandemic flu vaccines. BARDA is giving Janssen $43 million in the first year and $273 million over five years for the contract. One of the projects in the contract is the development of a universal flu vaccine. The intent of the vaccine would be to protect people against all or most flu strains.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: On 5 March 2019, the Food and Drug Administration approved Janssen's Spravato (esketamine nasal spray) for treatment-resistant major depressive disorder. This marked the first approval of a new type of antidepressant in decades.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2021, Janssen was named as a defendant in a trial against several opioid manufacturers filed by New York Attorney General Letitia Jame. The company was later removed from the case after Johnson & Johnson agreed to a pay a $230 million settlement to New York State.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: The subsidiary Janssen Biotech, Inc. was founded in Philadelphia in 1979 as Centocor Biotech, Inc., with an initial goal of developing new diagnostic assays using monoclonal antibody technology.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1982, Centocor transitioned into a publicly traded company. In the early 1980s, the company moved to Malvern, Pennsylvania. In 1984, Centocor opened an overseas plant in Leiden, the Netherlands.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1997, eighteen years after its foundation, Centocor achieved its first year of operating profitability. In 1998, Centocor sold its diagnostic division to Fujirebio, Inc.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2004, Centocor purchased a new manufacturing plant in St. Louis, Missouri, and is currently opening a new manufacturing facility in County Cork, Ireland. The Dutch plant has been expanded substantially with a $250 million investment in additional production facilities, which were opened in 2006.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2007, Centocor broke new ground in advertising by releasing Innerstate, believed to be the first theatrically released documentary film both created and entirely funded by a drug company, to promote Remicade (Infliximab).


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In June 2010, Centocor Ortho Biotech acquired RespiVert, a privately held drug discovery company focused on developing small-molecule, inhaled therapies for the treatment of pulmonary diseases.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In June 2011, Centocor Ortho Biotech changed its name to Janssen Biotech, Inc. as part of a global effort to unite the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies around the world under a common identity.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In December 2014, the company announced it would co-develop MacroGenics cancer drug candidate (MGD011) which targets both CD19 and CD3 proteins in treating B-cell malignant tumours. This could net MacroGenics up to $700 million.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In January 2015, the company announced it would utilise Ionis Pharmaceuticals' (formerly Isis Pharmaceuticals) Rna-targeting technology to discover and develop antisense drugs targeting autoimmune disorders of the gastrointestinal tract.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In December 2019, XBiotech Inc. announced it would sell its novel antibody treatment (bermekimab) that neutralizes interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1⍺) to Janssen Biotech, Inc.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: On 27 March 2020, the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) allocated $456 million for J&J (Janssen) to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Janssen Pharmaceuticals was the first Western pharmaceutical company to set up a pharmaceutical factory in the People's Republic of China.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1976, Paul Janssen met Ma Haide (born George Shafik Hatem), a Lebanese-American doctor who had started working in China in 1933. After three days of meetings, the two agreed to bring a modernized pharmaceutical business to China. When Deng Xiaoping opened China to the West in 1978, Janssen sent Paul Appermont and Joos Horsten to set up the project.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1983, Janssen signed a cooperation contract to modernize production in an old chemical factory in the city of Hanzhong, in Shaanxi province. This factory would soon produce the active compound of some Janssen products, such as mebendazole. In 1985, now operating as Xian-Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a new large factory was opened in the city of Xi'an, also in Shaanxi province.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Janssen Pharmaceuticals has developed and brought to the market about 70 new active substances (NCE), of which the most well-known are (name may differ):


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1984, Centocor developed their first product approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — a diagnostic test used to detect the rabies virus.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 1998, the company launched its top-selling monoclonal antibody Remicade (infliximab) for its first FDA approved indication in Crohn's disease. Subsequently, Remicade's market has expanded with approvals for rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, ulcerative colitis, and pediatric Crohn's disease. Remicade was approved for plaque psoriasis in September 2006.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Centocor also markets ReoPro (abciximab), a biologic agent indicated as an adjunct to coronary angioplasty (PTCA).


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2009, the U.S. FDA approved Simponi, a human monoclonal antibody for treatment for arthritis, which was co-developed with Medarex, Inc.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: In 2004, the United States Department of Justice began investigating sales practices surrounding the antipsychotic drug risperidone (Risperdal). In 2010, the agency joined a whistleblower suit alleging that despite being warned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration not to promote Risperdal as effective and safe for elderly patients, in whom it was known to be associated with early death, Johnson & Johnson and Janssen Pharmaceuticals paid pharmacists at Omnicare, the largest supplier of pharmaceuticals to nursing homes, tens of millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to promote the drug to physicians for this unapproved use.


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: The lawsuit resulted in a 2012 provisional settlement totaling $2.3 billion, with Omnicare having already settled for around $100 million. Four states were awarded damages: Louisiana ($258 million in 2010), South Carolina ($327 million in 2011), Texas ($158 million in 2012), and Arkansas ($1.2 billion in 2012).


title: Janssen Pharmaceuticals

text: Former head of sales and president of Janssen Alex Gorsky, who according to the Department of Justice "was actively involved" in the fraud, became CEO of Johnson & Johnson in 2012.


title: The Parkers

text: The Parkers is an American television sitcom aired on UPN from August 30, 1999, to May 10, 2004. A spin-off of UPN's "Moesha", "The Parkers" features the mother-daughter team of Nikki (played by Mo'Nique) and Kim Parker (played by Countess Vaughn).


title: The Parkers

text: This comedy series centers around a low-income mother and daughter who both attend Santa Monica College. Nikki Parker, who was forced to drop out of high school nearly 20 years earlier when she discovered she was pregnant. As the time arrived for her daughter to go to college, she decided to go as well as a way to get an experience and education that was taken from her so many years earlier. Through a series of hilarious situations, Nikki has to adjust to the fact her daughter is growing up, while Kim realizes that Nikki has a lot more going on other than being a mother.


title: The Parkers

text: "The Parkers" was produced by Saradipity Productions, Regan Jon Productions (Season 1 only), and Big Ticket Television. Reruns are currently distributed by CBS Television Distribution.


title: The Parkers

text: Although "The Parkers" initially received mixed reviews and was criticized for its outrageous characters, the series was a ratings success for UPN. Its debut season ranked as the number one comedy on the network; it was the most popular show among black audiences, ahead of The WB’s "The Steve Harvey Show". The success of the series has been credited to its ability to relate to many audiences, especially young people.


title: The Parkers

text: "The Parkers" has aired in syndication on Centric (previously BET J), UP, TV One, VH1, MTV2, and Nick@Nite.


title: The Parkers

text: In Europe, the show has aired in Ireland and the UK. In Ireland, it aired on RTÉ Two from 2000 to 2005, usually airing Thursdays as 7.00pm. The first four seasons were aired in this evening time slot, with season five beginning in this timeslot and with the few remaining episodes moved to a late night timeslot on Fridays. After the series finished on RTÉ Two, there have been no re-runs and no current plans to run the show again. It was also shown on UK channel Trouble, which was also available in Ireland. It usually aired weekdays from 2000 to 2004 but after it was completely removed, it was shown on a one-off weekend in late 2006, with episodes airing all day. In Australia, it aired on Fox8 and in Jamaica on TVJ.


title: The Parkers

text: In 2009, cast members Countess Vaughn, Jenna von Oÿ, Ken Lawson, and Dorien Wilson appeared on "The Mo'Nique Show" for a full-length episode, "The Parkers Reunion." Series creator Sara V. Finney was part of the audience for the episode. Yvette Wilson didn't appear due to her busy work schedule.


title: The Parkers

text: "The Parkers: The Complete Collection", containing all five seasons, was released on region 1 DVD in Canada via Visual Entertainment in a 14-disc set on 18 March 2016.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: () will be a 2.4 GWe nuclear power plant in Bangladesh. The nuclear power plant is being constructed at Rooppur of Ishwardi upazila in Pabna District, on the bank of the river Padma, west of Dhaka. It will be the country's first nuclear power plant, and the first of the two units is expected to go into operation in 2024. The VVER-1200/523 Nuclear reactor and critical infrastructures are being built by the Russian Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation. In the main construction period, the total number of employees will reach 12,500, including 2,500 specialists from Russia. It is expected to generate around 15% of the country's electricity when completed.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: The plan to establish a nuclear power plant in the then East Pakistan was made in 1961. In 1963, the Rooppur village of the Pabna district was selected for the proposed plant and of land was acquired. The plan was to establish a 200MW nuclear power plant in the selected site. Discussions took place with the Government of Canada from 1964 to 1966. Discussions with the governments of Sweden and Norway were also going on in those years. However, no real progress was made. In 1970, the project was scrapped.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: After the independence of Bangladesh, the Government of Bangladesh started discussion with the Soviet Union in 1974, but no agreement was reached. In 1976–77, the French company "Sofratom" conducted a feasibility study and found the project at Rooppur feasible. In 1980, a 125 MW nuclear power plant project was approved. However, this effort also did not materialize. In the 1987-88 period, another feasibility study was conducted and the decision was taken to construct a 300 to 500 MW nuclear power plant. In 1998, steps were taken to construct a 600 MW power plant. The "nuclear action plan" was approved in 2000.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: In 2005, Bangladesh signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with China. In 2007, the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC) proposed two 500 MW nuclear reactors for Rooppur by 2015. In 2008, China offered funding for the project. Instead, the Bangladesh government started discussion with the Russian government a year later and on 13 February the two governments signed a memorandum of understanding. Rosatom said they would start construction by 2013.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: In 2011, International Atomic Energy Agency conducted "IAEA Integrated Nuclear Infrastructure Review (INIR)" mission in Bangladesh. Later on, IAEA approved a technical assistance project for the Rooppur nuclear power plant. In 2013 a group of Bangladeshi scientists and the global diaspora voiced profound concern over the safety and economic viability of the plant. Several separate issues were raised, from the unsuitability of the site to the obsolescence of the VVER-1000 model proposed, questionable financing arrangements and a lack of agreement with Russia over nuclear waste disposal.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: In 2015, the proposal was delayed by a year. Rosatom offered a two VVER-1200 reactor power plant, increasing output to 2.4 GWe. On December 25, 2015, representatives of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission and the Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom signed the contract for the construction of the Rooppur nuclear power plant worth the equivalent of US$12.65 billion. Three days later, "The Daily Star" echoed criticism from Germany-based Transparency International about increased costs, from statements of around US$4 billion made earlier in the same year. Transparency International also expressed concern about the safety of the proposed plant.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: In 2016 ground preparation work commenced. The $12.65 billion contract is 90% funded by a loan from the Russian government. The two units generating 2.4 GWe are planned to be operational in 2024 and 2025. Rosatom will operate the units for the first year before handing over to Bangladeshi operators. Russia will supply the nuclear fuel and take back spent nuclear fuel.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: On 4 November 2017, Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission received, from Bangladesh Atomic Energy Regulatory Authority, the design and construction license of Unit 1, paving the way for the nuclear island first concrete pour.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: The nuclear reactor and critical infrastructure are being built by Russian companies. Atomenergomash is the engineering division of Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom. This company is the supplier of all the equipment for the reactor compartment of Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant and a significant part of the equipment for the machine room. Over 70 tenders have been issued for ‘non-critical’ works where Bangladeshi and Indian construction companies can participate.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: On 14 July 2018, the first concrete was poured for Unit 2. The following month, Rosatom began installing a 200-tonne core catcher as the first large piece of equipment in the reactor building of Rooppur 1, describing it as "a unique protection system".


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: When the COVID-19 pandemic struck Bangladesh in early 2020, many projects such as the Dhaka Metro Rail were stalled, but the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant remained on track to be completed by 2023. Progress in this period includes Rosatom's engineering company Atommash completing hydraulic tests for Rooppur unit 1.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: VVER-1200/523 is one of the latest Generation III+ nuclear reactor. Design feature of the nuclear reactor is layered safety barriers preventing escape of radioactive material. The reactor has five layers:


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: The nuclear part of the plant is housed in a single building acting as containment and missile shield. Besides the reactor and steam generators this includes an improved refueling machine, and the computerized reactor control systems. Likewise protected in the same building are the emergency systems, including an emergency core cooling system, emergency backup diesel power supply, and backup feed water supply. A passive heat removal system had been added to the VVER-1200. The system is based on a cooling system and water tanks built on top of the containment dome. The passive systems handle all safety functions for 24 hours, and core safety for 72 hours.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: Other new safety systems include aircraft crash protection, hydrogen recombiners, and a core catcher to contain the molten reactor core in the event of a severe accident. Russia's arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey to install cooling systems for Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: The US$12.65 billion project will be constructed with Russian loan amounting US$11.38 billion and the rest will be financed by the Bangladesh government.


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: With over 90% utilization factor, the power plant is expected to generate 19 billion kWh annually. Levelized Cost of Electricity(LCOE) is 56.73 (USD/MWh)


title: Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant

text: Bangladesh's development strategy sees the country becoming a middle-income nation by 2021, in large part by emphasis on its science and technology sector to drive economic growth. The ministry of science and technology (MoST) estimated in 2014 that US$6.2 billion will be needed in the next decade to achieve the goals of Vision 2021. The Science and Technology Act 2010 is helping to boost this, and MoST is now allocating over $150 million per year to nuclear technology development as gas reserves become depleted. The power plant will also promote the local economy of Rooppur, Pabna.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: Slaughterhouse was an American hip hop supergroup consisting of rappers Joe Budden, Joell Ortiz, Crooked I and Royce da 5'9". They released two studio albums as a group: "Slaughterhouse" (2009) independently and "" (2012) under Shady and Interscope Records.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: The group formed in late 2008 after Crooked I, Joell Ortiz, Royce da 5'9", and Joe Budden appeared on the song "Slaughterhouse" from Joe Budden's album "Halfway House". They decided to form a group and named the group after the song. The members of Slaughterhouse all share some degree of controversy from their past in the music industry. All four address these issues in the song "Move On".


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: Their self-titled debut album was released on August 11, 2009. The album was recorded over a six-day period in early June. The album features production from Focus, The Alchemist, DJ Khalil, StreetRunner and Mr. Porter of D12. On June 18, 2009, the first street single off the album was released via Joe Budden's Twitter account. The track was "Woodstock (Hood Hop)" and features M.O.P. on the hook. The first official single from the album was "The One". A second video for the song "Microphone" was also released in late 2009. A video directed by Rik Cordero.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: Their debut album sold 18,000 copies in its first week (Only 20,000 copies were shipped to stores). As of September 5, 2009 the album has sold 31,000 copies.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: The group initially planned for their second album to release in 2010, tentatively named by Crooked I as "No Muzzle". In late 2009, however, Royce da 5'9" confirmed talks between the group and Shady Records, stating that he felt their second album should be released on a major label.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: As rumors of a Shady Records/Slaughterhouse signing spread, in March 2010, Joell Ortiz posted a rant on Twitter denigrating E1 Entertainment for blocking Shady negotiations, implying that another party was involved as well. Responding to a disgruntled Amalgam Digital executive's allegations against him, Joe Budden confirmed that complications regarding E1 and Amalgam were the reason the deal had not been completed previously. Royce da 5'9" would later name-drop Shady Records in a "Bar Exam 3" freestyle, and the group released a song entitled "Beamer, Benz or Bentley (ShadyMegaMix)", while still with E1. Slaughterhouse, minus Joe Budden, were featured on the iTunes deluxe edition of Eminem's Recovery album on the track "Session One", while also still with E1. The group also featured in "Loud Noises" on "", a collaborative EP between Royce and Eminem.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: Plans to release an EP were revealed by HipHopDX in their Rap Release Dates update in June 2010, tentatively titled "Slaughterhouse EP". The EP was released on February 8, 2011, with four new tracks and two remixes by Frequency of tracks previously released. On January 12, 2011, it was confirmed that the group officially signed to Shady Records along with Yelawolf. Both acts appeared along with Eminem on the cover of "XXL" magazine's March 2011 edition.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: A year later, the group was featured on the cover of the July/August issue of "The Source" magazine in anticipation of their Shady Records debut. On July 7, 2012, Royce announced in an interview with Jenny Boom Boom that the group will release a pre-album mixtape around the first week of August. A new single "Throw It Away" produced by Swizz Beats, will be off the album "Welcome to: Our House". Joe Budden revealed via Twitter that the mixtape is called "On The House" and will be hosted by DJ Drama. A promotional video for the mixtape was released on August 6, 2012, and previewed a song called "See Dead People", with confirmed guest appearances on the mixtape by Eminem and Black Hippy. On August 16, Slaughterhouse released a new track, "Truth or Truth". The Mixtape "On the House" was released on Aug.19th. Slaughterhouse released their second studio album "", the first to be released under Shady Records, on August 28, 2012. As of November 23, 2012, it has sold 146,000 copies in the US. Budden has admitted to the group abusing substances during the recording of the album however saying the whole group is sober and ready for their third album.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: In May 2013, Slaughterhouse confirmed that they had put their solo projects on hold, and had begun recording for their third studio album. The album will be executive produced by Just Blaze and contains production by J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Cardiak, Illmind, AraabMuzik and DJ Premier. In November 2013, Joe Budden confirmed that the album would be released in early 2014. At the time he also stated that Action Bronson would be featured on the album, and they had yet to work with Eminem on it. On May 21, 2014, the group released their second mixtape titled "House Rules", which featured 10 tracks with production from Nottz, AraabMuzik, DJ Pain 1, The Heatmakerz, Illmind, Harry Fraud among others. On February 19, 2015, Royce da 5'9" had confirmed that the album was "pretty close to being done", and that the group, along with Eminem were "nitpicking at it". He had hoped for a summer release date for the album. On February 7, 2017, Joe Budden confirmed on his podcast that the album will never be released


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: In April 2018, Crooked I announced via Instagram his departure from Slaughterhouse and confirmed that "Glass House" "exists" but without a release date. He said there were no harsh feelings about his departure: it was "all love". Joell Ortiz and Royce da 5'9" commented on the announcement with respect and support. On April 26, 2018, Royce da 5’9” announced that the supergroup had officially disbanded.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: In September 2018, Eminem released a four-part interview with Sway Calloway on his YouTube channel explaining the reasons why the group had a downfall.


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: In January 2020, former group members Royce da 5'9", Crooked I, and Joell Ortiz were featured on Eminem's eleventh studio album, "Music to Be Murdered By", on the track "I Will".


title: Slaughterhouse (group)

text: In February 2022, Crooked I and Joell Ortiz announced a collaborative studio album titled "Rise & Fall of Slaughterhouse", in which they addressed the group's fallout from their own perspectives. Royce da 5'9" and Joe Budden were displeased with the project, as they viewed it as an attempt to tear down the Slaughterhouse brand for financial gain without consent from the rest of the group. On March 8, following a heated exchange between Royce, Budden, and Ortiz on Instagram Live, Crooked I gave further explanation about the situation, saying that he and Ortiz tried to get the group together for years but were unsuccessful, mainly due to Budden's lack of interest and cooperation, and that he and Ortiz wanted to make one final project to give their fans some closure.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The Ladd Company was an American film production company founded by Alan Ladd Jr., Jay Kanter, and Gareth Wigan in 1979.


title: The Ladd Company

text: In 1979, the three founders were executives with 20th Century Fox; Ladd was the president. They announced their intention to leave the company when their contracts expired in December 1980 and form a new production company to be financed by Warner Bros. (Ladd had reportedly been quarreling with other Fox senior executives.) Fox subsequently cut their contracts short, ending on October 1, 1979. The day after the contracts expired, the trio placed ads for the newly named "Ladd Company" in "The Hollywood Reporter" and "Variety".


title: The Ladd Company

text: Under Warner Bros., The Ladd Company distributed "Chariots of Fire", which won the 1981 Academy Award for Best Picture. Among the films it produced were the Space Race epic "The Right Stuff", the space western "Outland", Ridley Scott's science-fiction cult film "Blade Runner", neo-noir film "Body Heat," and the first two "Police Academy" movies.


title: The Ladd Company

text: "Police Academy" proved very profitable. But the returns from the company's successes did not outweigh the box-office failures of "The Right Stuff", the edited version of Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America," and the animated "Twice Upon a Time" (co-produced with Lucasfilm). On April 18, 1984, Alan Ladd Jr. and Warner Bros. parted ways, even though the former still had three years left on the studio's contract. From that point on, "the Ladd Company [would] become a non-exclusive production organization."


title: The Ladd Company

text: During a brief partnership with Paramount Pictures in the mid-1990s, the company produced "The Brady Bunch Movie" and the Best Picture Oscar winner "Braveheart".


title: The Ladd Company

text: Ladd's later releases are the 2005 Lasse Hallström drama, "An Unfinished Life," and the 2007 Ben Affleck drama "Gone Baby Gone", both distributed by Miramax Films.


title: The Ladd Company

text: Alan Ladd Jr. had been a successful studio head of 20th Century Fox, helping make films such as "Star Wars", "Julia", "Alien", "The Turning Point", "Young Frankenstein", "An Unmarried Woman" and "Silver Streak". He ran into conflict with the company's chairman, Dennis Stanfill and wanted to leave. He left the company in June 1979 to set up his own company along with fellow executives Jay Kanter and Gareth Wigan. Under the terms of their severance with Fox, they were not allowed to start working until October 1, 1979.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The company was known as The Ladd Company and its symbol was a tree. "You could say it has a tie in with the tree of life," said Ladd. They signed a deal with Warner Bros who would finance and distribute their films, although the Ladd Company had creative control. Warners would finance at least $75 million a year.


title: The Ladd Company

text: Ladd said he wanted to make "basically what I made at Fox. I don't think my attitude has changed. Those pictures went all over the place. There wasn't any specific theme to them." Even films like "Alien" and "The Omen" which he admits were "exploitation pictures, I think we tried to do it with more quality and style than just ripping off a theme."


title: The Ladd Company

text: In November 1979, Ladd announced the company's first films: a Bette Midler concert movie (Ladd greenlit Midler's "The Rose" while at Fox) and "Madonna Red" a $10 million Joseph L. Mankiewicz film starring Paul Newman as a Vietnam War veteran turned priest. Then they announced "Five Days in Summer" from Fred Zinnemann who had made "Julia", and "Twice Upon a Time" a $3 million film from Lucasfilm.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The Midler film became "Divine Madness" (1980) but "Madonna Red" was never made. The first dramatic film the company ended making was "Outland" (1981), a science fiction film in the vein of "Alien" shot in England under Sandy Lieberson, the company's head of European operations. It was a commercial disappointment when released.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The Ladd Company's second film was going to be a Bernardo Bertolucci film starring Ugo Tognazzi. This was never made. However the company had a critical and commercial hit with "Body Heat" (1981) the directorial debut of Lawrence Kasdan, then with "Chariots of Fire" (1981), a British film the company helped finance.


title: The Ladd Company

text: "Looker" (1981) from Michael Crichton was a flop. The company helped make "Blade Runner" (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which was a cult classic years after its theatrical release, but under performed critically and commercially. "Night Shift" (1982), directed by Ron Howard, was a minor success.


title: The Ladd Company

text: However the company made a series of flops: "Love Child" (1982), "Five Days One Summer" (1982), "Lovesick" (1983) and "Twice Upon a Time" (1983).


title: The Ladd Company

text: The Ladd Company hoped for a big hit with the $28 million "The Right Stuff" (1983) but it only returned $10 million to the company. Larry Gross later wrote, The Ladd Company, a director-friendly bunch, went down with "The Right Stuff". Execs look very closely at what causes other companies to retire from the field. The levels of caution multiply.


title: The Ladd Company

text: Ladd developed "Country" but sold the film to another company. They also had "Splash!" from Ron Howard but put it in turnaround, as they did "The Big Chill" (1983).


title: The Ladd Company

text: The company had a huge hit with "Police Academy" (1984), made for $4.2 million which grossed $81 million and led to several sequels. Less successful were "Purple Hearts" (1984) and "Once Upon a Time in America" (1984) which the company extensively edited without the cooperation of Sergio Leone.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The success of "Police Academy" came too late to save the company. In April 1984, Warners announced its association with the Ladd Company was over and Ladd became a nonexclusive production organization.


title: The Ladd Company

text: In July 1984, Kanter left the company to become head of production at MGM/UA. Ladd followed, becoming head of MGM/UA in February 1985.


title: The Ladd Company

text: The last two films made by the company during its first incarnation were "" (1985) and "Doin' Time" (1985).


title: The Ladd Company

text: Ladd was ousted from MGM/UA in the mid 1990's. He reformed The Ladd Company, and in 1995 produced the Oscar-winning film "Braveheart", a film he was able to take with him from MGM/UA. Around that same time Ladd also produced "The Phantom" (1996) and "A Very Brady Sequel" (1996). The Ladd Company's final films were "An Unfinished Life" (2005) and "Gone Baby Gone" (2007).


title: Delphic maxims

text: The Delphic maxims are a set of maxims inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. Originally, they were said to have been given by the Greek god Apollo's Oracle at Delphi, Pythia, and therefore were attributed to Apollo. The 3rd century doxographer Diogenes Laertius attributed them to the Seven Sages of Greece as did the 5th century scholar Stobaeus. Contemporary scholars, however, hold that their original authorship is uncertain, and that 'most likely they were popular proverbs, which tended later to be attributed to particular sages', Roman educator Quintilian argued that students should copy those aphorisms often to improve their moral core. Perhaps the most famous of these maxims is 'know thyself', which was the first of three maxims carved above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.


title: Delphic maxims

text: The specific order and wording of each maxim varies among different versions (and translations) of the text. Not all maxims appear in all versions.


title: Delphic maxims

text: Three maxims were inscribed on a column in the pronaos (forecourt) of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:


title: Delphic maxims

text: In the 5th-century anthology of Stobaeus, there is a list of 147 maxims attributed to the Seven Sages of Greece. Stobaeus cites a certain Sosiades as his source, but the identity of Sosiades is unknown, and it was once thought that this collection of maxims was of no great antiquity. However, parallel sayings have since been found in several ancient inscriptions, some dating to around 300 BC. These inscriptions also inform us that the original maxims were "carved on the stele at Delphi".


title: Delphic maxims

text: In the ruins of the Hellenistic city of Ai-Khanoum (former Greco-Bactrian kingdom, and modern Afghanistan), on a Herõon (funerary monument) identified in Greek as the tomb of Kineas (also described as the (founder) of the Greek settlement) and dated to 300-250 BCE, an inscription has been found describing part of the Delphic maxims (maxims 143 to 147):


title: Delphic maxims

text: The precepts were placed by a Greek named Clearchos, who may or may not have been Clearchus of Soli the disciple of Aristotle, who, according to the same inscription, had copied them from Delphi:


title: Delphic maxims

text: "From there Klearchos, having copied them carefully, set them up, shining from afar, in the sanctuary of Kineas"'</poem>


title: Delphic maxims

text: Socrates' student, Xenophon, in his "Memorabilia" described Socrates' use of the maxim "know thyself" as an organizing theme for his dialogue with Euthydemus. In this dialogue Socrates points out that knowing thyself is the starting point for all good things, and failure to know thyself is the starting point of delusion, yet, even from this starting point one cannot be sure one knows what is good and what is bad.


title: Delphic maxims

text: Socrates' student, Plato, employs the maxim 'know thyself' extensively by having the character of Socrates use it to motivate his dialogues. Benjamin Jowett's index to his translation of the "Dialogues of Plato" lists six dialogues which discuss or explore the Delphic maxim: 'know thyself', These dialogues (and the Stephanus numbers indexing the pages where these discussions begin) are "Charmides" (164D), "Protagoras" (343B), "Phaedrus" (229E), "Philebus" (48C), "Laws" (II.923A), "Alcibiades I" (124A, 129A, 132C).


title: Delphic maxims

text: In Plato's "Charmides", Critias argues that 'succeeding sages who added 'never too much', or, 'give a pledge, and evil is nigh at hand', would appear to have so misunderstood them; for they imagined that 'know thyself!' was a piece of advice which the god gave, and not his salutation of the worshippers at their first coming in; and they dedicated their own inscription under the idea that they too would give equally useful pieces of advice', In Critias' opinion 'know thyself!' was an admonition to those entering the sacred temple to remember or know their place and that 'know thyself!' and 'be temperate!' are the same. In the balance of the "Charmides", Plato has Socrates lead a longer inquiry as to how we may gain knowledge of ourselves.


title: Delphic maxims

text: In Plato's "Phaedrus", Socrates uses the maxim 'know thyself' as his explanation to Phaedrus to explain why he has no time for the attempts to rationally explain mythology or other far flung topics. Socrates says, 'But I have no leisure for them at all; and the reason, my friend, is this: I am not yet able, as the Delphic inscription has it, to know myself; so it seems to me ridiculous, when I do not yet know that, to investigate irrelevant things',


title: Delphic maxims

text: In Plato's "Protagoras", Socrates lauds the authors of pithy and concise sayings delivered precisely at the right moment and says that Lacedaemon, or Sparta, educates its people to that end. Socrates lists the Seven Sages as Thales, Pittacus, Bias, Solon, Cleobulus, Myson, and Chilon, who he says are gifted in that Lacedaemonian art of concise words 'twisted together, like a bowstring, where a slight effort gives great force', Socrates says examples of them are, 'the far-famed inscriptions, which are in all men's mouths,--"know thyself", and "nothing too much"'. Having lauded the maxims, Socrates then explains what one of them means, the saying of Pittacus, 'Hard is it to be good', The irony here is that although the sayings of Delphi bear 'great force', it is not clear how to live life in accordance with their meanings. Although, the concise and broad nature of the sayings suggests the active partaking in the usage and personal discovery of each maxim; as if the intended nature of the saying lay not in the words but the self-reflection and self-referencing of the person thereof.


title: Delphic maxims

text: In Plato's "Philebus" dialogue, Socrates refers back to the same usage of 'know thyself' from "Phaedrus" to build an example of the ridiculous for Protarchus. Socrates says, as he did in Phaedrus, that people make themselves appear ridiculous when they are trying to know obscure things before they know themselves. Plato also alluded to the fact that understanding 'thyself', would have a greater yielded factor of understanding the nature of a human being.


title: Delphic maxims

text: Diogenes Laërtius in his account of the life of Pyrrho, the founder of Pyrrhonism that the Seven Sages of Greece were considered to be precursors of Pyrrho's philosophical skepticism because the Delphic Maxims were skeptical. 'The maxims of the Seven Wise Men, too, they call skeptical; for instance, 'Observe the Golden Mean', and 'A pledge is a curse at one's elbow', meaning that whoever plights his troth steadfastly and trustfully brings a curse on his own head',


title: Hypergiant

text: A hypergiant (luminosity class 0 or Ia) is a very rare type of star that has an extremely high luminosity, mass, size and mass loss because of its extreme stellar winds. The term "hypergiant" is defined as luminosity class 0 (zero) in the MKK system. However, this is rarely seen in literature or in published spectral classifications, except for specific well-defined groups such as the yellow hypergiants, RSG (red supergiants), or blue B(e) supergiants with emission spectra. More commonly, hypergiants are classed as Ia-0 or Ia, but red supergiants are rarely assigned these spectral classifications. Astronomers are interested in these stars because they relate to understanding stellar evolution, especially star formation, stability, and their expected demise as supernovae.


title: Hypergiant

text: In 1956, the astronomers Feast and Thackeray used the term "super-supergiant" (later changed into hypergiant) for stars with an absolute magnitude brighter than "M" = −7 ("M" will be larger for very cool and very hot stars, for example at least −9.7 for a B0 hypergiant). In 1971, Keenan suggested that the term would be used only for supergiants showing at least one broad emission component in Hα, indicating an extended stellar atmosphere or a relatively large mass loss rate. The Keenan criterion is the one most commonly used by scientists today.


title: Hypergiant

text: To be classified as a hypergiant, a star must be highly luminous and have spectral signatures showing atmospheric instability and high mass loss. Hence it is possible for a non-hypergiant, supergiant star to have the same or higher luminosity as a hypergiant of the same spectral class. Hypergiants are expected to have a characteristic broadening and red-shifting of their spectral lines, producing a distinctive spectral shape known as a P Cygni profile. The use of hydrogen emission lines is not helpful for defining the coolest hypergiants, and these are largely classified by luminosity since mass loss is almost inevitable for the class.


title: Hypergiant

text: Stars with an initial mass above about quickly move away from the main sequence and increase somewhat in luminosity to become blue supergiants. They cool and enlarge at approximately constant luminosity to become a red supergiant, then contract and increase in temperature as the outer layers are blown away. They may "bounce" backwards and forwards executing one or more "blue loops", still at a fairly steady luminosity, until they explode as a supernova or completely shed their outer layers to become a Wolf–Rayet star. Stars with an initial mass above about are simply too luminous to develop a stable extended atmosphere and so they never cool sufficiently to become red supergiants. The most massive stars, especially rapidly rotating stars with enhanced convection and mixing, may skip these steps and move directly to the Wolf–Rayet stage.


title: Hypergiant

text: This means that stars at the top of the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram where hypergiants are found may be newly evolved from the main sequence and still with high mass, or much more evolved post-red supergiant stars that have lost a significant fraction of their initial mass, and these objects cannot be distinguished simply on the basis of their luminosity and temperature. High-mass stars with a high proportion of remaining hydrogen are more stable, while older stars with lower masses and a higher proportion of heavy elements have less stable atmospheres due to increased radiation pressure and decreased gravitational attraction. These are thought to be the hypergiants, near the Eddington limit and rapidly losing mass.


title: Hypergiant

text: The yellow hypergiants are thought to be generally post-red supergiant stars that have already lost most of their atmospheres and hydrogen. A few more stable high mass yellow supergiants with approximately the same luminosity are known and thought to be evolving towards the red supergiant phase, but these are rare as this is expected to be a rapid transition. Because yellow hypergiants are post-red supergiant stars, there is a fairly hard upper limit to their luminosity at around , but blue hypergiants can be much more luminous, sometimes several million .


title: Hypergiant

text: Almost all hypergiants exhibit variations in luminosity over time due to instabilities within their interiors, but these are small except for two distinct instability regions where luminous blue variables (LBVs) and yellow hypergiants are found. Because of their high masses, the lifetime of a hypergiant is very short in astronomical timescales: only a few million years compared to around 10 billion years for stars like the Sun. Hypergiants are only created in the largest and densest areas of star formation and because of their short lives, only a small number are known despite their extreme luminosity that allows them to be identified even in neighbouring galaxies. The time spent in some phases such as LBVs can be as short as a few thousand years.


title: Hypergiant

text: As the luminosity of stars increases greatly with mass, the luminosity of hypergiants often lies very close to the Eddington limit, which is the luminosity at which the radiation pressure expanding the star outward equals the force of the star's gravity collapsing the star inward. This means that the radiative flux passing through the photosphere of a hypergiant may be nearly strong enough to lift off the photosphere. Above the Eddington limit, the star would generate so much radiation that parts of its outer layers would be thrown off in massive outbursts; this would effectively restrict the star from shining at higher luminosities for longer periods.


title: Hypergiant

text: A good candidate for hosting a continuum-driven wind is Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars ever observed. With an estimated mass of around 130 solar masses and a luminosity four million times that of the Sun, astrophysicists speculate that Eta Carinae may occasionally exceed the Eddington limit. The last time might have been a series of outbursts observed in 1840–1860, reaching mass loss rates much higher than our current understanding of what stellar winds would allow.


title: Hypergiant

text: As opposed to line-driven stellar winds (that is, ones driven by absorbing light from the star in huge numbers of narrow spectral lines), continuum driving does not require the presence of "metallic" atoms — atoms other than hydrogen and helium, which have few such lines — in the photosphere. This is important, since most massive stars also are very metal-poor, which means that the effect must work independently of the metallicity. In the same line of reasoning, the continuum driving may also contribute to an upper mass limit even for the first generation of stars right after the Big Bang, which did not contain any metals at all.


title: Hypergiant

text: Another theory to explain the massive outbursts of, for example, Eta Carinae is the idea of a deeply situated hydrodynamic explosion, blasting off parts of the star's outer layers. The idea is that the star, even at luminosities below the Eddington limit, would have insufficient heat convection in the inner layers, resulting in a density inversion potentially leading to a massive explosion. The theory has, however, not been explored very much, and it is uncertain whether this really can happen.


title: Hypergiant

text: Another theory associated with hypergiant stars is the potential to form a pseudo-photosphere, that is a spherical optically dense surface that is actually formed by the stellar wind rather than being the true surface of the star. Such a pseudo-photosphere would be significantly cooler than the deeper surface below the outward-moving dense wind. This has been hypothesized to account for the "missing" intermediate-luminosity LBVs and the presence of yellow hypergiants at approximately the same luminosity and cooler temperatures. The yellow hypergiants are actually the LBVs having formed a pseudo-photosphere and so apparently having a lower temperature.


title: Hypergiant

text: Hypergiants are evolved, high luminosity, high-mass stars that occur in the same or similar regions of the HR diagram to stars with different classifications. It is not always clear whether the different classifications represent stars with different initial conditions, stars at different stages of an evolutionary track, or is just an artifact of our observations. Astrophysical models explaining the phenomena show many areas of agreement. Yet there are some distinctions that are not necessarily helpful in establishing relationships between different types of stars.


title: Hypergiant

text: Although most supergiant stars are less luminous than hypergiants of similar temperature, a few fall within the same luminosity range. Ordinary supergiants compared to hypergiants often lack the strong hydrogen emissions whose broadened spectral lines indicate significant mass loss. Evolved lower mass supergiants do not return from the red supergiant phase, either exploding as supernovae or leaving behind a white dwarf.


title: Hypergiant

text: Luminous blue variables are a class of highly luminous hot stars that display characteristic spectral variation. They often lie in a "quiescent" zone with hotter stars generally being more luminous, but periodically undergo large surface eruptions and move to a narrow zone where stars of all luminosities have approximately the same temperature, around 8,000K. This "active" zone is near the hot edge of the unstable "void" where yellow hypergiants are found, with some overlap. It is not clear whether yellow hypergiants ever manage to get past the instability void to become LBVs or explode as a supernova.


title: Hypergiant

text: Blue hypergiants are found in the same parts of the HR diagram as LBVs but do not necessarily show the LBV variations. Some but not all LBVs show the characteristics of hypergiant spectra at least some of the time, but many authors would exclude all LBVs from the hypergiant class and treat them separately. Blue hypergiants that do not show LBV characteristics may be progenitors of LBVs, or vice versa, or both. Lower mass LBVs may be a transitional stage to or from cool hypergiants or are different type of object.


title: Hypergiant

text: Wolf–Rayet stars are extremely hot stars that have lost much or all of their outer layers. WNL is a term used for late stage (i.e. cooler) Wolf–Rayet stars with spectra dominated by nitrogen. Although these are generally thought to be the stage reached by hypergiant stars after sufficient mass loss, it is possible that a small group of hydrogen-rich WNL stars are actually progenitors of blue hypergiants or LBVs. These are the closely related Ofpe (O-type spectra plus H, He, and N emission lines, and other peculiarities) and WN9 (the coolest nitrogen Wolf–Rayet stars) which may be a brief intermediate stage between high mass main-sequence stars and hypergiants or LBVs. Quiescent LBVs have been observed with WNL spectra and apparent Ofpe/WNL stars have changed to show blue hypergiant spectra. High rotation rates cause massive stars to shed their atmospheres quickly and prevent the passage from main sequence to supergiant, so these directly become Wolf–Rayet stars. Wolf Rayet stars, slash stars, cool slash stars (aka WN10/11), Ofpe, Of, and Of stars are not considered hypergiants. Although they are luminous and often have strong emission lines, they have characteristic spectra of their own.


title: Hypergiant

text: Hypergiants are difficult to study due to their rarity. Many hypergiants have highly variable spectra, but they are grouped here into broad spectral classes.


title: Hypergiant

text: Some luminous blue variables are classified as hypergiants, during at least part of their cycle of variation:


title: Hypergiant

text: Plus at least two probable cool hypergiants in the recently discovered Scutum Red Supergiant Clusters: F15 and possibly F13 in RSGC1 and Star 49 in RSGC2.


title: Sarah Holcomb

text: Sarah Holcomb is an American former actress. Her first role was in "National Lampoon's Animal House" (1978) as Clorette DePasto, the 13-year-old daughter of shady Mayor Carmine DePasto; Holcomb was 19 years old when filming began in October, 1977.


title: Sarah Holcomb

text: Following "Animal House", she had roles in four other films, including "Caddyshack", released in 1980. She was initially cast in "Jaws 2" (1978), but was one of several teenage actors let go as that film went through many script revisions early in production.


title: Sarah Holcomb

text: "Animal House" co-writer Chris Miller said, "She was young, younger than the rest of us. We were a fast crowd. Drugs were everywhere. She fell into what, for lack of a better term, you would have to call bad company."


title: Sarah Holcomb

text: The character Dorri Lawrence in the film "Stateside", an actress who suffers from schizophrenia, is based on Holcomb.


title: Superintelligence

text: A superintelligence is a hypothetical agent that possesses intelligence far surpassing that of the brightest and most gifted human minds. "Superintelligence" may also refer to a property of problem-solving systems (e.g., superintelligent language translators or engineering assistants) whether or not these high-level intellectual competencies are embodied in agents that act in the world. A superintelligence may or may not be created by an intelligence explosion and associated with a technological singularity.


title: Superintelligence

text: University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines "superintelligence" as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". The program Fritz falls short of superintelligence—even though it is much better than humans at chess—because Fritz cannot outperform humans in other tasks. Following Hutter and Legg, Bostrom treats superintelligence as general dominance at goal-oriented behavior, leaving open whether an artificial or human superintelligence would possess capacities such as intentionality (cf. the Chinese room argument) or first-person consciousness (cf. the hard problem of consciousness).


title: Superintelligence

text: Technological researchers disagree about how likely present-day human intelligence is to be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology so as to achieve radically greater intelligence. A number of futures studies scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers, or upload their minds to computers, in a way that enables substantial intelligence amplification.


title: Superintelligence

text: Some researchers believe that superintelligence will likely follow shortly after the development of artificial general intelligence. The first generally intelligent machines are likely to immediately hold an enormous advantage in at least some forms of mental capability, including the capacity of perfect recall, a vastly superior knowledge base, and the ability to multitask in ways not possible to biological entities. This may give them the opportunity to—either as a single being or as a new species—become much more powerful than humans, and to displace them.


title: Superintelligence

text: A number of scientists and forecasters argue for prioritizing early research into the possible benefits and risks of human and machine cognitive enhancement, because of the potential social impact of such technologies.


title: Superintelligence

text: Philosopher David Chalmers argues that artificial general intelligence is a very likely path to superhuman intelligence. Chalmers breaks this claim down into an argument that AI can achieve "equivalence" to human intelligence, that it can be "extended" to surpass human intelligence, and that it can be further "amplified" to completely dominate humans across arbitrary tasks.


title: Superintelligence

text: Concerning human-level equivalence, Chalmers argues that the human brain is a mechanical system, and therefore ought to be emulatable by synthetic materials. He also notes that human intelligence was able to biologically evolve, making it more likely that human engineers will be able to recapitulate this invention. Evolutionary algorithms in particular should be able to produce human-level AI. Concerning intelligence extension and amplification, Chalmers argues that new AI technologies can generally be improved on, and that this is particularly likely when the invention can assist in designing new technologies.


title: Superintelligence

text: If research into strong AI produced sufficiently intelligent software, it would be able to reprogram and improve itself – a feature called "recursive self-improvement". It would then be even better at improving itself, and could continue doing so in a rapidly increasing cycle, leading to a superintelligence. This scenario is known as an intelligence explosion. Such an intelligence would not have the limitations of human intellect, and may be able to invent or discover almost anything. However, it is also possible that any such intelligence would conclude that existential nihilism is correct and immediately destroy itself, making any kind of superintelligence inherently unstable.


title: Superintelligence

text: Computer components already greatly surpass human performance in speed. Bostrom writes, "Biological neurons operate at a peak speed of about 200 Hz, a full seven orders of magnitude slower than a modern microprocessor (~2 GHz)." Moreover, neurons transmit spike signals across axons at no greater than 120 m/s, "whereas existing electronic processing cores can communicate optically at the speed of light". Thus, the simplest example of a superintelligence may be an emulated human mind run on much faster hardware than the brain. A human-like reasoner that could think millions of times faster than current humans would have a dominant advantage in most reasoning tasks, particularly ones that require haste or long strings of actions.


title: Superintelligence

text: Another advantage of computers is modularity, that is, their size or computational capacity can be increased. A non-human (or modified human) brain could become much larger than a present-day human brain, like many supercomputers. Bostrom also raises the possibility of "collective superintelligence": a large enough number of separate reasoning systems, if they communicated and coordinated well enough, could act in aggregate with far greater capabilities than any sub-agent.


title: Superintelligence

text: There may also be ways to "qualitatively" improve on human reasoning and decision-making. Humans appear to differ from chimpanzees in the ways we think more than we differ in brain size or speed. Humans outperform non-human animals in large part because of new or enhanced reasoning capacities, such as long-term planning and language use. (See evolution of human intelligence and primate cognition.) If there are other possible improvements to reasoning that would have a similarly large impact, this makes it likelier that an agent can be built that outperforms humans in the same fashion humans outperform chimpanzees.


title: Superintelligence

text: All of the above advantages hold for artificial superintelligence, but it is not clear how many hold for biological superintelligence. Physiological constraints limit the speed and size of biological brains in many ways that are inapplicable to machine intelligence. As such, writers on superintelligence have devoted much more attention to superintelligent AI scenarios.


title: Superintelligence

text: Carl Sagan suggested that the advent of Caesarean sections and "in vitro" fertilization may permit humans to evolve larger heads, resulting in improvements via natural selection in the heritable component of human intelligence. By contrast, Gerald Crabtree has argued that decreased selection pressure is resulting in a slow, centuries-long reduction in human intelligence, and that this process instead is likely to continue into the future. There is no scientific consensus concerning either possibility, and in both cases the biological change would be slow, especially relative to rates of cultural change.


title: Superintelligence

text: Selective breeding, nootropics, epigenetic modulation, and genetic engineering could improve human intelligence more rapidly. Bostrom writes that if we come to understand the genetic component of intelligence, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis could be used to select for embryos with as much as 4 points of IQ gain (if one embryo is selected out of two), or with larger gains (e.g., up to 24.3 IQ points gained if one embryo is selected out of 1000). If this process is iterated over many generations, the gains could be an order of magnitude greater. Bostrom suggests that deriving new gametes from embryonic stem cells could be used to iterate the selection process very rapidly. A well-organized society of high-intelligence humans of this sort could potentially achieve collective superintelligence.


title: Superintelligence

text: Alternatively, collective intelligence might be constructible by better organizing humans at present levels of individual intelligence. A number of writers have suggested that human civilization, or some aspect of it (e.g., the Internet, or the economy), is coming to function like a global brain with capacities far exceeding its component agents. If this systems-based superintelligence relies heavily on artificial components, however, it may qualify as an AI rather than as a biology-based superorganism. A prediction market is sometimes considered an example of working collective intelligence system, consisting of humans only (assuming algorithms are not used to inform decisions).


title: Superintelligence

text: A final method of intelligence amplification would be to directly enhance individual humans, as opposed to enhancing their social or reproductive dynamics. This could be achieved using nootropics, somatic gene therapy, or brain–computer interfaces. However, Bostrom expresses skepticism about the scalability of the first two approaches, and argues that designing a superintelligent cyborg interface is an AI-complete problem.


title: Superintelligence

text: Most surveyed AI researchers expect machines to eventually be able to rival humans in intelligence, though there is little consensus on when this will likely happen. At the 2006 AI@50 conference, 18% of attendees reported expecting machines to be able "to simulate learning and every other aspect of human intelligence" by 2056; 41% of attendees expected this to happen sometime after 2056; and 41% expected machines to never reach that milestone.


title: Superintelligence

text: In a survey of the 100 most cited authors in AI (as of May 2013, according to Microsoft academic search), the median year by which respondents expected machines "that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human" (assuming no global catastrophe occurs) with 10% confidence is 2024 (mean 2034, st. dev. 33 years), with 50% confidence is 2050 (mean 2072, st. dev. 110 years), and with 90% confidence is 2070 (mean 2168, st. dev. 342 years). These estimates exclude the 1.2% of respondents who said no year would ever reach 10% confidence, the 4.1% who said 'never' for 50% confidence, and the 16.5% who said 'never' for 90% confidence. Respondents assigned a median 50% probability to the possibility that machine superintelligence will be invented within 30 years of the invention of approximately human-level machine intelligence.


title: Superintelligence

text: In a survey of 352 machine learning researchers published in 2018, the median year by which respondents expected "High-level machine intelligence" with 50% confidence is 2061. The survey defined the achievement of high-level machine intelligence as when unaided machines can accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers.


title: Superintelligence

text: Bostrom expressed concern about what values a superintelligence should be designed to have. He compared several proposals:


title: Superintelligence

text: instead of implementing humanity's coherent extrapolated volition, one could try to build an AI with the goal of doing what is morally right, relying on the AI’s superior cognitive capacities to figure out just which actions fit that description. We can call this proposal “moral rightness” (MR)...


title: Superintelligence

text: MR would also appear to have some disadvantages. It relies on the notion of “morally right,” a notoriously difficult concept, one with which philosophers have grappled since antiquity without yet attaining consensus as to its analysis. Picking an erroneous explication of “moral rightness” could result in outcomes that would be morally very wrong... The path to endowing an AI with any of these [moral] concepts might involve giving it general linguistic ability (comparable, at least, to that of a normal human adult). Such a general ability to understand natural language could then be used to understand what is meant by “morally right.” If the AI could grasp the meaning, it could search for actions that fit...One might try to preserve the basic idea of the MR model while reducing its demandingness by focusing on "moral permissibility": the idea being that we could let the AI pursue humanity’s CEV so long as it did not act in ways that are morally impermissible.


title: Superintelligence

text: Responding to Bostrom, Santos-Lang raised concern that developers may attempt to start with a single kind of superintelligence.


title: Superintelligence

text: It has been suggested that if AI systems rapidly become superintelligent, they may take unforeseen actions or out-compete humanity. Researchers have argued that, by way of an "intelligence explosion," a self-improving AI could become so powerful as to be unstoppable by humans.


title: Superintelligence

text: In theory, since a superintelligent AI would be able to bring about almost any possible outcome and to thwart any attempt to prevent the implementation of its goals, many uncontrolled, unintended consequences could arise. It could kill off all other agents, persuade them to change their behavior, or block their attempts at interference. Eliezer Yudkowsky illustrates such instrumental convergence as follows: "The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms which it can use for something else."


title: Superintelligence

text: This presents the AI control problem: how to build an intelligent agent that will aid its creators, while avoiding inadvertently building a superintelligence that will harm its creators. The danger of not designing control right "the first time," is that a superintelligence may be able to seize power over its environment and prevent humans from shutting it down. Since a superintelligent AI will likely have the ability to not fear death and instead consider it an avoidable situation which can be predicted and avoided by simply disabling the power button. Potential AI control strategies include "capability control" (limiting an AI's ability to influence the world) and "motivational control" (building an AI whose goals are aligned with human values).


title: Superintelligence

text: Bill Hibbard advocates for public education about superintelligence and public control over the development of superintelligence.


title: Octavio Paz

text: Octavio Paz Lozano (March 31, 1914 – April 19, 1998) was a Mexican poet and diplomat. For his body of work, he was awarded the 1977 Jerusalem Prize, the 1981 Miguel de Cervantes Prize, the 1982 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature.


title: Octavio Paz

text: Octavio Paz was born near Mexico City. His family was a prominent liberal political family in Mexico, with Spanish and indigenous Mexican roots. with his grandfather, Ireneo Paz, the family's patriarch, having fought in the War of the Reform against conservatives, and then became a staunch supporter of liberal war hero Porfirio Díaz up until just before the 1910 outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. Ireneo Paz became an intellectual and journalist, starting several newspapers, where he was publisher and printer. Ireneo's son, Octavio Paz Solórzano, supported Emiliano Zapata during the Revolution and published an early biography of him and the Zapatista movement. Octavio was named for him, but spent considerable time with his grandfather Ireneo since his namesake father was active fighting in the Mexican Revolution. His father died in a violent fashion. The family experienced financial ruin after the Mexican Revolution. The family briefly relocated to Los Angeles before returning to Mexico. Paz had blue eyes and was often mistaken for a foreigner by other children. According to a biography written by his long-time associate, historian Enrique Krauze, said that when Zapatista revolutionary Antonio Díaz Soto y Gama met young Octavio he said ""Caramba", you didn't tell me you had a Visigoth for a son!" Krauze quotes Paz as saying "I felt myself Mexican but they wouldn't let me be one."


title: Octavio Paz

text: Paz was introduced to literature early in his life through the influence of his grandfather Ireneo's library, filled with classic Mexican and European literature. During the 1920s, he discovered Gerardo Diego, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Antonio Machado. These Spanish writers had a great influence on his early writings.


title: Octavio Paz

text: As a teenager in 1931, Paz published his first poems, including "Cabellera". Two years later, at the age of 19, he published "Luna Silvestre" ("Wild Moon"), a collection of poems. In 1932, with some friends, he funded his first literary review, "Barandal".


title: Octavio Paz

text: For a few years, Paz studied law and literature at National University of Mexico. During this time, he became familiar with leftist poets, such as Chilean Pablo Neruda. In 1936, Paz abandoned his law studies and left Mexico City for Yucatán to work at a school in Mérida. The school was set up for the sons of peasants and workers. There, he began working on the first of his long, ambitious poems, "Entre la piedra y la flor" ("Between the Stone and the Flower") (1941, revised in 1976). Influenced by the work of T. S. Eliot, it explores the situation of the Mexican peasant under the domineering landlords of the day.