title: Arrow

text: Artisans who make arrows by hand are known as "fletchers," a word related to the French word for arrow, "flèche." This is the same derivation as the verb "fletch," meaning to provide an arrow with its feathers. Glue and thread are the traditional methods of attaching fletchings. A "fletching jig" is often used in modern times, to hold the fletchings in exactly the right orientation on the shaft while the glue hardens.


title: Arrow

text: Whenever natural fletching is used, the feathers on any one arrow must come from the same wing of the bird. The most common being the right-wing flight feathers of turkeys. The slight cupping of natural feathers requires them to be fletched with a right-twist for right wing, a left-twist for left wing. This rotation, through a combination of gyroscopic stabilization and increased drag on the rear of the arrow, helps the arrow to fly straight away. Artificial "helical" fletchings have the same effect. Most arrows will have three fletches, but some have four or even more. Fletchings generally range from in length; flight arrows intended to travel the maximum possible distance typically have very low fletching, while hunting arrows with broadheads require long and high fletching to stabilize them against the aerodynamic effect of the head. Fletchings may also be cut in different ways, the two most common being "parabolic" (i.e. a smooth curved shape) and "shield" (i.e. shaped as one-half of a very narrow shield) cut.


title: Arrow

text: In modern archery with screw-in points, right-hand rotation is generally preferred as it makes the points self-tighten. In traditional archery, some archers prefer a left rotation because it gets the hard (and sharp) quill of the feather farther away from the arrow-shelf and the shooter's hand.


title: Arrow

text: A flu-flu is a form of fletching, normally made by using long sections of full length feathers taken from a turkey, in most cases six or more sections are used rather than the traditional three. Alternatively two long feathers can be spiraled around the end of the arrow shaft. The extra fletching generates more drag and slows the arrow down rapidly after a short distance, about or so.


title: Arrow

text: Flu-Flu arrows are often used for hunting birds, or for children's archery, and can also be used to play Flu-Flu Golf.


title: Arrow

text: Wraps are thin pre-cut sheets of material, often vinyl or plastic, used to wrap the nock end of an arrow, primarily as an aid in bonding vanes and feather fletchings to the shaft. Wraps can also make the eventual removal of vanes and vane-glue easier. Additionally, they add a decorative aspect to arrow building, which can provide archers an opportunity to personalize their arrows. Brightly colored wraps can also make arrows much easier to find in the brush, and to see in downrange targets.


title: Arrow

text: In English it is common to say "nock an arrow" when one readies a shot. A nock is a notch in the rearmost end of an arrow. It helps keep the arrow correctly rotated, keeps the arrow from slipping sideways during the draw or after the release, and helps maximize the arrow's energy (i.e. its range and lethality) by helping an archer place the arrow at the fastest-moving place on the bowstring. Some archers mark the nock position with beads, knots or wrappings of thread. Most compound bow shooters use a D-loop, a length of string material (or sometimes a metal bracket) attached to the string above and below the nocking point. A release aid is typically attached to the D-loop in preparation for a shot.


title: Arrow

text: The main purpose of a nock is to control the rotation of the arrow. Arrows bend when released. If the bend hits the bowstave, the arrow's aim will be thrown off. Wooden arrows have a preferred bending-plane. Synthetic arrows have a designed bending plane. Usually this plane is determined by the grain of the wood of the arrow, or the structure of a synthetic arrow. The nock's slot should be rotated at an angle chosen so that when the arrow bends, it avoids or slides on the bowstave. Almost always this means that the slot of the nock must be perpendicular to the wood's grain, viewed from behind.


title: Arrow

text: "Self nocks" are slots cut in the back of the arrow. These are simple, but can break at the base of the slot. Self nocks are often reinforced with glued servings of fiber near the base of the slot. The sturdiest nocks are separate pieces made from wood, plastic, or horn that are then attached to the end of the arrow.


title: Arrow

text: Modern nocks, and traditional Turkish nocks, are often constructed so as to curve around the string or even pinch it slightly, so that the arrow is unlikely to slip off.


title: Arrow

text: Ancient Arab archery sometimes used "nockless arrows". In shooting at enemies, Arabs saw them pick up Arab arrows and shoot them back. So Arabs developed bowstrings with a small ring tied where the nock would normally be placed. The rear end of the arrow would be sharpened to a point, rather than slit for a nock. The rear end of the arrow would slip into the ring. The arrow could be drawn and released as usual. Then the enemy could collect the arrows, yet not shoot them back with a conventional bow. Also, since there was no nock, the nock could not break, and the arrow was less expensive. A piece of battle advice was to have several rings tied to the bowstring in case one broke. A practical disadvantage compared to a nock would be preserving the optimal rotation of the arrow, so that when it flexes, it does not hit the bowstave. The bend direction of the arrow might have been indicated by its fletching.


title: Arrow

text: "Some arrow materials like hollow cane/bamboo/reed shafting lend themselves to nock inserts. Softer woods like pine or cedar also required some sort of reinforcement of hardwood, bone or horn which kept the string from splitting their shaft upon release. Hardwood such as oak and ash did not need additional reinforcement. To reinforce a nock, most often a slit was cut into the end of the shaft, and a sliver of harder material, the same width as the shaft, was glued into the slot. The arrow was then rotated 90 degrees, and a shallower slot was cut for the string. When made in this manner, the string actually pushed the wood or bone insert rather than the soft wood itself, preventing the shaft from splitting. Another method of preventing nocks from splitting was to bind the arrow between the nock and the back of the fletch with sinew and hide glue or a rough cord such as silk attached with adhesive, whether it be fish glue or birch tar."


title: Arrow

text: Arrows are usually finished so that they are not softened by rain, fog or condensation. Traditional finishes are varnishes or lacquers. Arrows sometimes need to be repaired, so it's important that the paints be compatible with glues used to attach arrowheads, fletchings and nocks. For this reason, arrows are rarely protected by waxing.


title: Arrow

text: Crests are rings or bands of paint, often brightly colored, applied to arrows on a lathe-like tool called a cresting machine, usually for the purpose of personalization. Like wraps, cresting may also be done to make arrows easier to see.


title: Image editing

text: Image editing encompasses the processes of altering images, whether they are digital photographs, traditional photo-chemical photographs, or illustrations. Traditional analog image editing is known as photo retouching, using tools such as an airbrush to modify photographs or editing illustrations with any traditional art medium. Graphic software programs, which can be broadly grouped into vector graphics editors, raster graphics editors, and 3D modelers, are the primary tools with which a user may manipulate, enhance, and transform images. Many image editing programs are also used to render or create computer art from scratch. The term “image editing” usually refers only to the editing of 2D images, not 3D ones.


title: Image editing

text: Raster images are stored in a computer in the form of a grid of picture elements, or pixels. These pixels contain the image's color and brightness information. Image editors can change the pixels to enhance the image in many ways. The pixels can be changed as a group, or individually, by the sophisticated algorithms within the image editors. This article mostly refers to bitmap graphics editors, which are often used to alter photographs and other raster graphics. However, vector graphics software, such as Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, Xara Designer Pro or Inkscape, are used to create and modify vector images, which are stored as descriptions of lines, Bézier curves, and text instead of pixels. It is easier to rasterize a vector image than to vectorize a raster image; how to go about vectorizing a raster image is the focus of much research in the field of computer vision. Vector images can be modified more easily because they contain descriptions of the shapes for easy rearrangement. They are also scalable, being rasterizable at any resolution.


title: Image editing

text: Camera or computer image editing programs often offer basic automatic image enhancement features that correct color hue and brightness imbalances as well as other image editing features, such as red eye removal, sharpness adjustments, zoom features and automatic cropping. These are called automatic because generally they happen without user interaction or are offered with one click of a button or mouse button or by selecting an option from a menu. Additionally, some automatic editing features offer a combination of editing actions with little or no user interaction.


title: Image editing

text: Many image file formats use data compression to reduce file size and save storage space. Digital compression of images may take place in the camera, or can be done in the computer with the image editor. When images are stored in JPEG format, compression has already taken place. Both cameras and computer programs allow the user to set the level of compression.


title: Image editing

text: Some compression algorithms, such as those used in PNG file format, are lossless, which means no information is lost when the file is saved. By contrast, the more popular JPEG file format uses a lossy compression algorithm (based on discrete cosine transform coding) by which the greater the compression, the more information is lost, ultimately reducing image quality or detail that can not be restored. JPEG uses knowledge of the way the human brain and eyes perceive color to make this loss of detail less noticeable.


title: Image editing

text: Listed below are some of the most used capabilities of the better graphics manipulation programs. The list is by no means all-inclusive. There are a myriad of choices associated with the application of most of these features.


title: Image editing

text: One of the prerequisites for many of the applications mentioned below is a method of selecting part(s) of an image, thus applying a change selectively without affecting the entire picture. Most graphics programs have several means of accomplishing this, such as:


title: Image editing

text: as well as more advanced facilities such as edge detection, masking, alpha compositing, and color and channel-based extraction. The border of a selected area in an image is often animated with the marching ants effect to help the user to distinguish the selection border from the image background.


title: Image editing

text: Another feature common to many graphics applications is that of Layers, which are analogous to sheets of transparent acetate (each containing separate elements that make up a combined picture), stacked on top of each other, each capable of being individually positioned, altered and blended with the layers below, without affecting any of the elements on the other layers. This is a fundamental workflow which has become the norm for the majority of programs on the market today, and enables maximum flexibility for the user while maintaining non-destructive editing principles and ease of use.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors can resize images in a process often called image scaling, making them larger, or smaller. High image resolution cameras can produce large images which are often reduced in size for Internet use. Image editor programs use a mathematical process called resampling to calculate new pixel values whose spacing is larger or smaller than the original pixel values. Images for Internet use are kept small, say 640 x 480 pixels which would equal 0.3 megapixels.


title: Image editing

text: Digital editors are used to crop images. Cropping creates a new image by selecting a desired rectangular portion from the image being cropped. The unwanted part of the image is discarded. Image cropping does not reduce the resolution of the area cropped. Best results are obtained when the original image has a high resolution. A primary reason for cropping is to improve the image composition in the new image.


title: Image editing

text: Using a selection tool, the outline of the figure or element in the picture is traced/selected, and then the background is removed. Depending on how intricate the "edge" is this may be more or less difficult to do cleanly. For example, individual hairs can require a lot of work. Hence the use of the "green screen" technique (chroma key) which allows one to easily remove the background.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors have provisions to create an image histogram of the image being edited. The histogram plots the number of pixels in the image (vertical axis) with a particular brightness value (horizontal axis). Algorithms in the digital editor allow the user to visually adjust the brightness value of each pixel and to dynamically display the results as adjustments are made. Improvements in picture brightness and contrast can thus be obtained.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors may feature a number of algorithms which can add or remove noise in an image. Some JPEG artifacts can be removed; dust and scratches can be removed and an image can be de-speckled. Noise reduction merely estimates the state of the scene without the noise and is not a substitute for obtaining a "cleaner" image. Excessive noise reduction leads to a loss of detail, and its application is hence subject to a trade-off between the undesirability of the noise itself and that of the reduction artifacts.


title: Image editing

text: Noise tends to invade images when pictures are taken in low light settings. A new picture can be given an 'antiqued' effect by adding uniform monochrome noise.


title: Image editing

text: Most image editors can be used to remove unwanted branches, etc., using a "clone" tool. Removing these distracting elements draws focus to the subject, improving overall composition.


title: Image editing

text: Some image editors have color swapping abilities to selectively change the color of specific items in an image, given that the selected items are within a specific color range.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors are capable of altering an image to be rotated in any direction and to any degree. Mirror images can be created and images can be horizontally flipped or vertically flopped. A small rotation of several degrees is often enough to level the horizon, correct verticality (of a building, for example), or both. Rotated images usually require cropping afterwards, in order to remove the resulting gaps at the image edges.


title: Image editing

text: Some image editors allow the user to distort (or "transform") the shape of an image. While this might also be useful for special effects, it is the preferred method of correcting the typical perspective distortion which results from photographs being taken at an oblique angle to a rectilinear subject. Care is needed while performing this task, as the image is reprocessed using interpolation of adjacent pixels, which may reduce overall image definition. The effect mimics the use of a perspective control lens, which achieves a similar correction in-camera without loss of definition.


title: Image editing

text: Photo manipulation packages have functions to correct images for various lens distortions including pincushion, fisheye and barrel distortions. The corrections are in most cases subtle, but can improve the appearance of some photographs.


title: Image editing

text: In computer graphics, the enhancement of an image is the process of improving the quality of a digitally stored image by manipulating the image with software. It is quite easy, for example, to make an image lighter or darker, or to increase or decrease contrast. Advanced photo enhancement software also supports many filters for altering images in various ways. Programs specialized for image enhancement are sometimes called image editors.


title: Image editing

text: Graphics programs can be used to both sharpen and blur images in a number of ways, such as unsharp masking or deconvolution. Portraits often appear more pleasing when selectively softened (particularly the skin and the background) to better make the subject stand out. This can be achieved with a camera by using a large aperture, or in the image editor by making a selection and then blurring it. Edge enhancement is an extremely common technique used to make images appear sharper, although purists frown on the result as appearing unnatural.


title: Image editing

text: Another form of image sharpening involves a form of contrast. This is done by finding the average color of the pixels around each pixel in a specified radius, and then contrasting that pixel from that average color. This effect makes the image seem clearer, seemingly adding details. An example of this effect can be seen to the right. It is widely used in the printing and photographic industries for increasing the local contrasts and sharpening the images.


title: Image editing

text: Many graphics applications are capable of merging one or more individual images into a single file. The orientation and placement of each image can be controlled.


title: Image editing

text: When selecting a raster image that is not rectangular, it requires separating the edges from the background, also known as silhouetting. This is the digital-analog of cutting out the image from a physical picture. Clipping paths may be used to add silhouetted images to vector graphics or page layout files that retain vector data. Alpha compositing, allows for soft translucent edges when selecting images. There are a number of ways to silhouette an image with soft edges, including selecting the image or its background by sampling similar colors, selecting the edges by raster tracing, or converting a clipping path to a raster selection. Once the image is selected, it may be copied and pasted into another section of the same file, or into a separate file. The selection may also be saved in what is known as an alpha channel.


title: Image editing

text: A popular way to create a composite image is to use transparent layers. The background image is used as the bottom layer, and the image with parts to be added are placed in a layer above that. Using an image layer mask, all but the parts to be merged are hidden from the layer, giving the impression that these parts have been added to the background layer. Performing a merge in this manner preserves all of the pixel data on both layers to more easily enable future changes in the new merged image.


title: Image editing

text: A more recent tool in digital image editing software is the image slicer. Parts of images for graphical user interfaces or web pages are easily sliced, labeled and saved separately from whole images so the parts can be handled individually by the display medium. This is useful to allow dynamic swapping via interactivity or animating parts of an image in the final presentation.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors usually have a list of special effects that can create unusual results. Images may be skewed and distorted in various ways. Scores of special effects can be applied to an image which include various forms of distortion, artistic effects, geometric transforms and texture effects, or combinations thereof. <br>Using custom Curves settings in Image editors such as Photoshop, one can mimic the "pseudo-solarisation" effect, better known in photographic circles as the "Sabattier-effect".


title: Image editing

text: The Clone Stamp tool selects and samples an area of your picture and then uses these pixels to paint over any marks. The Clone Stamp tool acts like a brush so you can change the size, allowing cloning from just one pixel wide to hundreds. You can change the opacity to produce a subtle clone effect. Also, there is a choice between Clone align or Clone non-align the sample area. In Photoshop this tool is called Clone Stamp, but it may also be called a Rubber Stamp tool.


title: Image editing

text: It is possible, using the software, to change the color depth of images. Common color depths are 2, 4, 16, 256, 65,536 and 16.7 million colors. The JPEG and PNG image formats are capable of storing 16.7 million colors (equal to 256 luminance values per color channel). In addition, grayscale images of 8 bits or less can be created, usually via conversion and down-sampling from a full-color image. Grayscale conversion is useful for reducing the file size dramatically when the original photographic print was monochrome, but a color tint has been introduced due to aging effects.


title: Image editing

text: Image editors have provisions to simultaneously change the contrast of images and brighten or darken the image. Underexposed images can often be improved by using this feature. Recent advances have allowed more intelligent exposure correction whereby only pixels below a particular luminosity threshold are brightened, thereby brightening underexposed shadows without affecting the rest of the image.


title: Image editing

text: The exact transformation that is applied to each color channel can vary from editor to editor. GIMP applies the following formula:<br>


title: Image editing

text: where value is the input color value in the 0..1 range and brightness and contrast are in the −1..1 range.


title: Image editing

text: In addition to the capability of changing the images' brightness and/or contrast in a non-linear fashion, most current image editors provide an opportunity to manipulate the images' gamma value.


title: Image editing

text: Gamma correction is particularly useful for bringing details that would be hard to see on most computer monitors out of shadows. In some image editing software, this is called "curves", usually, a tool found in the color menu, and no reference to "gamma" is used anywhere in the program or the program documentation. Strictly speaking, the curves tool usually does more than simple gamma correction, since one can construct complex curves with multiple inflection points, but when no dedicated gamma correction tool is provided, it can achieve the same effect.


title: Image editing

text: The color of images can be altered in a variety of ways. Colors can be faded in and out, and tones can be changed using curves or other tools. The color balance can be improved, which is important if the picture was shot indoors with daylight film, or shot on a camera with the white balance incorrectly set. Special effects, like sepia tone and grayscale, can be added to an image. In addition, more complicated procedures such as the mixing of color channels are possible using more advanced graphics editors.


title: Image editing

text: The red-eye effect, which occurs when flash photos are taken when the pupil is too widely open (so that light from the flash that passes into the eye through the pupil reflects off the fundus at the back of the eyeball), can also be eliminated at this stage.


title: Image editing

text: Advanced Dynamic Blending is a concept introduced by photographer Elia Locardi in his blog Blame The Monkey to describe the photographic process of capturing multiple bracketed exposures of a land or cityscape over a specific span of time in a changing natural or artificial lighting environment. Once captured, the exposure brackets are manually blended together into a single High Dynamic Range image using post-processing software.


title: Image editing

text: Dynamic Blending images serve to display a consolidated moment. This means that while the final image may be a blend of a span of time, it visually appears to represent a single instant.


title: Image editing

text: Controlling the print size and quality of digital images requires an understanding of the pixels-per-inch (ppi) variable that is stored in the image file and sometimes used to control the size of the printed image. Within Adobe Photoshop's Image Size dialog, the image editor allows the user to manipulate both pixel dimensions and the size of the image on the printed document. These parameters work together to produce a printed image of the desired size and quality. Pixels per inch of the image, pixel per inch of the computer monitor, and dots per inch on the printed document are related, but in use are very different. The Image Size dialog can be used as an image calculator of sorts. For example, a 1600 × 1200 image with a resolution of 200 ppi will produce a printed image of 8 × 6 inches. The same image with 400 ppi will produce a printed image of 4 × 3 inches. Change the resolution to 800 ppi, and the same image now prints out at 2 × 1.5 inches. All three printed images contain the same data (1600 × 1200 pixels), but the pixels are closer together on the smaller prints, so the smaller images will potentially look sharp when the larger ones do not. The quality of the image will also depend on the capability of the printer.


title: Penne

text: Penne () is an extruded type of pasta with cylinder-shaped pieces, their ends cut at an angle. "Penne" is the plural form of the Italian "penna" (meaning "feather" but "pen" as well), deriving from Latin "penna" (meaning "feather" or "quill"), and is a cognate of the English word "pen". When this format was created, it was intended to imitate the then-ubiquitous steel nib of fountain and dip pens.


title: Penne

text: "Penne" is one of the few pasta shapes with a certain date of birth: in 1865, Giovanni Battista Capurro, a pasta maker from San Martino d'Albaro (Genoa), obtained a patent for a diagonal cutting machine. His invention cut the fresh pasta into a pen shape without crushing it, in a size varying between "mezze penne" (half pens) and "penne" (pens).


title: Penne

text: In Italy, "penne" are produced in two main variants: "penne lisce" (smooth) and "penne rigate" (furrowed), the latter having ridges on each penna. Pennoni ("big quills") is a wider version of penne. In English-language contexts, a version is called mostaccioli by various manufacturers, which may be either smooth or ridged in texture.


title: Penne

text: Penne is traditionally cooked al dente and its shape makes it particularly adapted for sauces, such as pesto, marinara, or arrabbiata. The latter has been celebrated several times in Italian movies, notably in Marco Ferrari's "La Grande Bouffe" and Federico Fellini's "Roma".


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages are a closely related group of indigenous American languages traditionally spoken across the North American Arctic and adjacent subarctic, reaching farthest south in Labrador. The related Yupik languages (spoken in western and southern Alaska, as well as in nearby Russia's farthest east, though severely endangered there) are the two main branches of Eskaleut, a primary language family. The Inuit live primarily in three countries: Greenland (Kingdom of Denmark), Canada (specifically in Nunavut, Northwest Territories, the Nunavik region of Quebec, and the Nunatsiavut and Nunatuĸavut regions of Labrador), and the United States (specifically the coast of Alaska).


title: Inuit languages

text: The total population of Inuit speaking their traditional languages is difficult to assess with precision, since most counts rely on self-reported census data that may not accurately reflect usage or competence. Greenland census estimates place the number of speakers of varieties of Inuit languages there at roughly 50,000. As of the 2016 Canadian Census, the Indigenous population is 1,673,785 or 4.9% and 65,030 (0.2%) are Inuit (Inuk) of which 36,545 report Inuit as their mother tongue. These two countries count the bulk of speakers of Inuit language variants, although about 7,500 Alaskans speak varieties of Inuit out of a population of over 13,000 Inuit. An estimated 7,000 Greenlandic Inuit live in Denmark, the largest group outside Greenland, Canada and Alaska. Thus, the global population of speakers of varieties of Inuit is on the order of nearly 100,000 people.


title: Inuit languages

text: The traditional language of the Inuit is a system of closely interrelated dialects that are not readily comprehensible from one end of the Inuit world to the other; some people do not think of it as a single language but rather a group of languages. However, there are no clear criteria for breaking the Inuit language into specific member languages since it forms a dialect continuum. Each band of Inuit understands its neighbours, and most likely its neighbours' neighbours; but at some remove, comprehensibility drops to a very low level.


title: Inuit languages

text: As a result, Inuit in different places use different words for its own variants and for the entire group of languages, and this ambiguity has been carried into other languages, creating a great deal of confusion over what labels should be applied to it.


title: Inuit languages

text: In Greenland the official form of Inuit language, and the official language of the state, is called "Kalaallisut". In other languages, it is often called "Greenlandic" or some cognate term. The Inuit languages of Alaska are called "Inupiatun", but the variants of the Seward Peninsula are distinguished from the other Alaskan variants by calling them "Qawiaraq", or for some dialects, "Bering Strait Inupiatun".


title: Inuit languages

text: In Canada, the word "Inuktitut" is routinely used to refer to all Canadian variants of the Inuit traditional language, and it is under that name that it is recognised as one of the official languages of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. However, one of the variants of western Nunavut, and the eastern Northwest Territories, is called "Inuinnaqtun" to distinguish itself from the dialects of eastern Canada, while the variants of the Northwest Territories are sometimes called "Inuvialuktun" and have in the past sometimes been called "Inuktun". In those dialects, the name is sometimes rendered as "Inuktitun" to reflect dialectal differences in pronunciation. The Inuit language of Quebec is called "Inuttitut" by its speakers, and often by other people, but this is a minor variation in pronunciation. In Labrador, the language is called "Inuttut" or, often in official documents, by the more descriptive name "Labradorimiutut". Furthermore, Canadians – both Inuit and non-Inuit – sometimes use the word "Inuktitut" to refer to "all" Inuit language variants, including those of Alaska and Greenland.


title: Inuit languages

text: The phrase ""Inuit language"" is largely limited to professional discourse, since in each area, there is one or more conventional terms that cover all the local variants; or it is used as a descriptive term in publications where readers can't necessarily be expected to know the locally used words. In Nunavut the government groups all dialects of Inuktitut and Inuinnaqtun under the term "Inuktut".


title: Inuit languages

text: Although many people refer to the Inuit language as "Eskimo language", this is a broad term that also includes the Yupik languages, and is in addition strongly discouraged in Canada and diminishing in usage elsewhere. See the article on "Eskimo" for more information on this word.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages constitute a branch of the Eskimo–Aleut language family. They are closely related to the Yupik languages and more remotely to Aleut. These other languages are all spoken in Western Alaska and Eastern Chukotka, Russia. They are not discernibly related to other indigenous languages of the Americas or northeast Asia, although there have been some unsubstantiated proposals that they are distantly related to the Uralic languages western Siberia and northern Europe, in a proposed "Uralo-Siberian" grouping, or even to the Indo-European languages as part of a "Nostratic" superphylum. Some had previously lumped them in with the Paleosiberian languages, though that is a geographic rather than a linguistic grouping.


title: Inuit languages

text: Early forms of the Inuit language are believed to have been spoken by the Thule people, who migrated east from Beringia towards the Arctic Archipelago, which had been occupied by people of the Dorset culture since the beginning of the 2nd millennium. By 1300, the Inuit and their language had reached western Greenland, and finally east Greenland roughly at the same time the Viking colonies in southern Greenland disappeared. It is generally believed that it was during this centuries-long eastward migration that the Inuit language became distinct from the Yupik languages spoken in Western Alaska and Chukotka.


title: Inuit languages

text: Until 1902, a possible enclave of the Dorset, the "Sadlermiut" (in modern Inuktitut spelling "Sallirmiut"), existed on Southampton Island. Almost nothing is known about their language, but the few eyewitness accounts tell of them speaking a "strange dialect". This suggests that they also spoke an Inuit language, but one quite distinct from the forms spoken in Canada today.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Yupik and Inuit languages are very similar syntactically and morphologically. Their common origin can be seen in a number of cognates:


title: Inuit languages

text: The western Alaskan variants retain a large number of features present in proto-Inuit language and in Yup'ik, enough so that they might be classed as Yup'ik languages if they were viewed in isolation from the larger Inuit world.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages are a fairly closely linked set of languages which can be broken up using a number of different criteria. Traditionally, Inuit describe dialect differences by means of place names to describe local idiosyncrasies in language: The dialect of Igloolik versus the dialect of Iqaluit, for example. However, political and sociological divisions are increasingly the principal criteria for describing different variants of the Inuit languages because of their links to different writing systems, literary traditions, schools, media sources and borrowed vocabulary. This makes any partition of the Inuit language somewhat problematic. This article will use labels that try to synthesise linguistic, sociolinguistic and political considerations in splitting up the Inuit dialect spectrum. This scheme is not the only one used or necessarily one used by Inuit themselves, but its labels do try to reflect the usages most seen in popular and technical literature.


title: Inuit languages

text: In addition to the territories listed below, some 7,000 Greenlandic speakers are reported to live in mainland Denmark, and according to the 2001 census roughly 200 self-reported Inuktitut native speakers regularly live in parts of Canada which are outside traditional Inuit lands.


title: Inuit languages

text: Of the roughly 13,000 Alaskan Iñupiat, as few as 3000 may still be able to speak the Iñupiaq, with most of them over the age of 40. Alaskan Inupiat speak three distinct dialects, which have difficult mutual intelligibility:


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages are official in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut (the dominant language in the latter); have a high level of official support in Nunavik, a semi-autonomous portion of Quebec; and are still spoken in some parts of Labrador. Generally, Canadians refer to all dialects spoken in Canada as "Inuktitut", but the terms "Inuvialuktun", "Inuinnaqtun", and "Inuttut" (also called "Nunatsiavummiutut" or "Labradorimiutut") have some currency in referring to the variants of specific areas.


title: Inuit languages

text: Greenland counts approximately 50,000 speakers of the Inuit languages, over 90% of whom speak west Greenlandic dialects at home.


title: Inuit languages

text: Greenlandic was strongly supported by the Danish Christian mission (conducted by the Danish state church) in Greenland. Several major dictionaries were created, beginning with Poul Egedes's "Dictionarium Grönlandico-danico-latinum" (1750) and culminating with Samuel Kleinschmidt's (1871) "Den grønlandske ordbog" (Transl. "The Greenlandic Dictionary"), which contained a Greenlandic grammatical system that has formed the basis of modern Greenlandic grammar. Together with the fact that until 1925 Danish was not taught in the public schools, these policies had the consequence that Greenlandic has always and continues to enjoy a very strong position in Greenland, both as a spoken as well as written language.


title: Inuit languages

text: Eastern Canadian Inuit language variants have fifteen consonants and three vowels (which can be long or short).


title: Inuit languages

text: Consonants are arranged with five places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar and uvular; and three manners of articulation: voiceless stops, voiced continuants, and nasals, as well as two additional sounds—voiceless fricatives. The Alaskan dialects have an additional manner of articulation, the "retroflex", which was present in proto-Inuit language. Retroflexes have disappeared in all the Canadian and Greenlandic dialects. In Natsilingmiutut, the voiced palatal stop derives from a former retroflex.


title: Inuit languages

text: Almost all Inuit language variants have only three basic vowels and make a phonological distinction between short and long forms of all vowels. The only exceptions are at the extreme edges of the Inuit world: parts of Greenland, and in western Alaska.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages, like other Eskimo–Aleut languages, have very rich morphological system, in which a succession of different morphemes are added to root words (like verb endings in European languages) to indicate things that, in languages like English, would require several words to express. (See also: Agglutinative language and Polysynthetic language) All Inuit words begin with a root morpheme to which other morphemes are suffixed. The language has hundreds of distinct suffixes, in some dialects as many as 700. Fortunately for learners, the language has a highly regular morphology. Although the rules are sometimes very complicated, they do not have exceptions in the sense that English and other Indo-European languages do.


title: Inuit languages

text: This system makes words very long, and potentially unique. For example, in central Nunavut Inuktitut:


title: Inuit languages

text: This sort of word construction is pervasive in the Inuit languages and makes them very unlike English. In one large Canadian corpus – the "Nunavut Hansard" – 92% of all words appear only once, in contrast to a small percentage in most English corpora of similar size. This makes the application of Zipf's law quite difficult in the Inuit language. Furthermore, the notion of a part of speech can be somewhat complicated in the Inuit languages. Fully inflected verbs can be interpreted as nouns. The word ilisaijuq can be interpreted as a fully inflected verb: "he studies", but can also be interpreted as a noun: "student". That said, the meaning is probably obvious to a fluent speaker, when put in context.


title: Inuit languages

text: The morphology and syntax of the Inuit languages vary to some degree between dialects, and the article "Inuit grammar" describes primarily central Nunavut dialects, but the basic principles will generally apply to all of them and to some degree to Yupik languages as well.


title: Inuit languages

text: Both the names of places and people tend to be highly prosaic when translated. "Iqaluit", for example, is simply the plural of the noun "iqaluk" "fish" ("Arctic char", "salmon" or "trout" depending on dialect). "Igloolik" ("Iglulik") means "place with houses", a word that could be interpreted as simply "town"; "Inuvik" is "place of people"; "Baffin Island", "Qikiqtaaluk" in Inuktitut, translates approximately to "big island".


title: Inuit languages

text: Although practically all Inuit have legal names based on southern naming traditions, at home and among themselves they still use native naming traditions. There too, names tend to consist of highly prosaic words. The Inuit traditionally believed that by adopting the name of a dead person or a class of things, they could take some of their characteristics or powers, and enjoy a part of their identity. (This is why they were always very willing to accept European names: they believed that this made them equal to the Europeans.)


title: Inuit languages

text: Common native names in Canada include "Ujarak" (rock), "Nuvuk" (headland), "Nasak" (hat, or hood), "Tupiq" or "Tupeq" in Kalaallisut (tent), and "Qajaq" (kayak). Inuit also use animal names, traditionally believing that by using those names, they took on some of the characteristics of that animal: "Nanuq" or "Nanoq" in Kalaallisut (polar-bear), "Uqalik" or "Ukaleq" in Kalaallisut (Arctic hare), and "Tiriaq" or "Teriaq" in Kalaallisut (mouse) are favourites. In other cases, Inuit are named after dead people or people in traditional tales, by naming them after anatomical traits those people are believed to have had. Examples include "Itigaituk" (has no feet), "Anana" or "Anaana" (mother), "Piujuq" (beautiful) and "Tulimak" (rib). Inuit may have any number of names, given by parents and other community members.


title: Inuit languages

text: In the 1920s, changes in lifestyle and serious epidemics like tuberculosis made the government of Canada interested in tracking the Inuit of Canada's Arctic. Traditionally Inuit names reflect what is important in Inuit culture: environment, landscape, seascape, family, animals, birds, spirits. However these traditional names were difficult for non-Inuit to parse. Also, the agglutinative nature of Inuit language meant that names seemed long and were difficult for southern bureaucrats and missionaries to pronounce.


title: Inuit languages

text: Thus, in the 1940s, the Inuit were given disc numbers, recorded on a special leather ID tag, like a dog tag. They were required to keep the tag with them always. (Some tags are now so old and worn that the number is polished out.) The numbers were assigned with a letter prefix that indicated location (E = east), community, and then the order in which the census-taker saw the individual. In some ways this state renaming was abetted by the churches and missionaries, who viewed the traditional names and their calls to power as related to shamanism and paganism.


title: Inuit languages

text: They encouraged people to take Christian names. So a young woman who was known to her relatives as "Lutaaq, Pilitaq, Palluq, or Inusiq" and had been baptised as "Annie" was under this system to become Annie E7-121. People adopted the number-names, their family members' numbers, etc., and learned all the region codes (like knowing a telephone area code).


title: Inuit languages

text: Until Inuit began studying in the south, many did not know that numbers were not normal parts of Christian and English naming systems. Then in 1969, the government started Project Surname, headed by Abe Okpik, to replace number-names with patrilineal "family surnames".


title: Inuit languages

text: A popular belief exists that the Inuit have an unusually large number of words for snow. This is not accurate, and results from a misunderstanding of the nature of polysynthetic languages. In fact, the Inuit have only a few base roots for snow: 'qanniq-' ('qanik-' in some dialects), which is used most often like the verb "to snow", and 'aput', which means "snow" as a substance. Parts of speech work very differently in the Inuit language than in English, so these definitions are somewhat misleading.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Inuit languages can form very long words by adding more and more descriptive affixes to words. Those affixes may modify the syntactic and semantic properties of the base word, or may add qualifiers to it in much the same way that English uses adjectives or prepositional phrases to qualify nouns (e.g. "falling snow", "blowing snow", "snow on the ground", "snow drift", etc.)


title: Inuit languages

text: The "fact" that there are many Inuit words for snow has been put forward so often that it has become a journalistic cliché.


title: Inuit languages

text: Because the Inuit languages are spread over such a large area, divided between different nations and political units and originally reached by Europeans of different origins at different times, there is no uniform way of writing the Inuit language.


title: Inuit languages

text: Though all except the syllabics use the Latin alphabet, all of them are a bit different from each other.


title: Inuit languages

text: The Canadian national organization Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami adopted Inuktut Qaliujaaqpait, a unified orthography for all varieties of Inuktitut, in September 2019. It is based on the Latin alphabet without diacritics.


title: Inuit languages

text: Most Inuktitut in Nunavut and Nunavik is written using a script called Inuktitut syllabics, based on Canadian Aboriginal syllabics. The western part of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories use Latin alphabet usually identified as Inuinnaqtun. In Alaska, another Latin alphabet is used, with some characters using diacritics. Nunatsiavut uses an alphabet devised by German-speaking Moravian missionaries, which included the letter "kra". Greenland's Latin alphabet was originally much like the one used in Nunatsiavut, but underwent a spelling reform in 1973 to bring the orthography in line with changes in pronunciation and better reflect the phonemic inventory of the language.


title: Inuit languages

text: Inuktitut syllabics, used in Canada, is based on Cree syllabics, which was devised by the missionary James Evans based on Devanagari a Brahmi script. The present form of Canadian Inuktitut syllabics was adopted by the Inuit Cultural Institute in Canada in the 1970s. The Inuit in Alaska, the Inuvialuit, Inuinnaqtun speakers, and Inuit in Greenland and Labrador use Latin alphabets.


title: Inuit languages

text: Though presented in syllabic form, syllabics is not a true syllabary, but an abugida, since syllables starting with the same consonant are written with graphically similar letters.


title: Inuit languages

text: All of the characters needed for Inuktitut syllabics are available in the Unicode character repertoire, in the blocks Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.


title: L0 Series

text: The is a high-speed maglev train that the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central) is developing and testing. JR Central plans to use the L0 series on the Chūō Shinkansen railway line between Tokyo and Osaka, which is under construction.


title: L0 Series

text: The L0 series uses the Japanese-designed SCMaglev system. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Nippon Sharyo, a subsidiary of JR Central, are building fourteen pre-production vehicles.


title: L0 Series

text: A seven-car train set a land speed record for rail vehicles of on 21 April 2015. The trains are planned to run at a maximum speed of , offering journey times of 40 minutes between Tokyo (Shinagawa Station) and , and 1 hour 7 minutes between Tokyo and Osaka.


title: L0 Series

text: The end cars of L0 series trainsets are long and carry 24 passengers. The nose extends for better aerodynamics and reduced noise in tunnels. Intermediate cars are long and carry 68 passengers each, which totals a 299 m long and 728 passengers train. Each row is four seats wide, one less than JR Central shinkansen trains. The cars are more box-shaped than earlier models to allow for more interior space. Cars are painted white and blue. During normal operation, the train is expected to operate at a maximum speed of .


title: L0 Series

text: The train does not require a driver, but does have a camera at the front of both end cars in order to allow for remote operation, in case the automated systems fail. The camera is more apparent on the revised end cars, introduced in 2020. It is moved to a higher position, and increased in size.


title: L0 Series

text: The superconducting magnets in the bogies are built by Toshiba and Mitsubishi Electric. The cars are built by Nippon Sharyo, with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also having built some in the past. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries stopped producing cars in 2017 after car manufacturing cost disagreements with JR central and the Mitsubishi SpaceJet's spiralling development costs. The bogies are arranged in a Jacobs bogie configuration.


title: L0 Series

text: Construction on the Chuo Shinkansen line on which the train is intended to run began in December 2014. The first section to Nagoya is expected to be completed in 2027. That section will be approximately 85% tunnels with an estimated cost of ¥5.5trillion (US$46.5billion). The relatively high cost is in large part due to the many tunnels.


title: L0 Series

text: The complete line to Osaka is estimated to cost ¥9trillion ($74.7billion), and was expected to be completed by 2045, after an eight-year pause in construction to recuperate costs. However, after receiving a ¥3trillion ($28billion) loan from the Japanese government, JR Central moved the project forward. It now expects to be able to open the full line as early as 2037, with construction beginning immediately after completion of the Tokyo–Nagoya section.


title: L0 Series

text: A route from Washington, D.C. to Baltimore, eventually extending all the way to New York City has received political support in the United States. JR Central chairman Yoshiyuki Kasai spoke with U.S. President Barack Obama about the L0 series during Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's 28 April 2015 visit.


title: L0 Series

text: In August 2017, development partner Mitsubishi announced that talks had "stalled" because of "a lack of clarity on the Trump administration's stance on high-speed rail".


title: L0 Series

text: In March 2019, Northeast Maglev project director David Henley stated in an interview that they expect to have a Record of Decision for the D.C.–Baltimore section by August 2020, and to begin construction later that same year, or in early 2021. According to Henley, this would allow operations to begin in 2027–28, allowing for a construction period of 7 years.


title: L0 Series

text: The first L0 series vehicle was delivered to the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line and unveiled to the press in November 2012. The first five vehicles were linked up and placed on the guideway in June 2013.


title: L0 Series

text: The first five-car train began test-running at the Yamanashi Maglev Test Line in June 2013, following completion of extension and upgrade work at the facility, earlier than the originally scheduled September date. The maximum speed of test runs was gradually increased, reaching 500 km/h by the end of July 2013.


title: L0 Series

text: The five-car train was lengthened to seven cars in September 2013, and test-running as a 12-car formation commenced on 25 June 2014. The train was reverted to a 7-car formation later in 2014, and used for public preview rides starting in November.


title: L0 Series

text: A series of endurance and speed tests was carried out on the test rail in April 2015 to examine the reliability and durability of the L0 after repeated high speed usage. Several speed and distance records were set in the process.


title: L0 Series

text: The L0 series are planned to be replaced with a revised model starting May 2020 (named the "Improved L0 series"). This will be the first L0 series to receive power from the guideway through induction. Currently, on-board power is provided by a small gas generator in each end car. The new end cars also feature a relocated and enlarged camera, and are more aerodynamic thanks to the removal of the exhaust vent necessary for the generator. Only one end car will be replaced by 2020, as well as one intermediate car. This means that the train will consist of a combination of revised and original cars for a period of time, and will be able to generate electricity with its onboard generator while testing the new induction system.


title: L0 Series

text: The new cars were completed in March 2020. While presenting the new end car to the press, lead designer Motoaki Terai stated that this model represents the completion of around 80–90% of the design goals for the final train.


title: L0 Series

text: L0 Series: 1 × 12-car set owned by JR Central, introduced in 2011 and planned to be converted to the Improved L0 series starting in June 2020.


title: L0 Series

text: Improved L0 Series: 1 × 12-car set planned to be gradually upgraded from L0 series starting June 2020. Two replacement cars have been completed as of April 2020.


title: L0 Series

text: On 16 April 2015, a manned seven-car L0 series trainset reached a speed of , breaking the previous world record of set by a Japanese MLX01 maglev trainset in December 2003. The speed of 590 km/h was sustained for a period of 19 seconds. This speed record was broken again on 21 April 2015, when a manned seven-car set recorded a top speed of . The train hit its top speed at 10:48 am, about 4 minutes into the run. With 49 JR Central employees on board, the train sustained the speed for 10.8 seconds, travelling during that time.


title: Agrigento

text: Agrigento (; or ; ; or ; , or "Jirjant") is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy and capital of the province of Agrigento. It was one of the leading cities of Magna Graecia during the golden age of Ancient Greece with population estimates in the range of 200,000 to 800,000 before 406 BC.


title: Agrigento

text: Akragas was founded on a plateau overlooking the sea, with two nearby rivers, the Hypsas and the Acragas, after which the settlement was originally named. A ridge, which offered a degree of natural fortification, links a hill to the north called Colle di Girgenti with another, called Rupe Atenea, to the east. According to Thucydides, it was founded around 582-580 BC by Greek colonists from Gela in eastern Sicily, with further colonists from Crete and Rhodes. The founders ("oikistai") of the new city were Aristonous and Pystilus. It was the last of the major Greek colonies in Sicily to be founded.


title: Agrigento

text: The territory under Akragas's control expanded to comprise the whole area between the Platani and the Salso, and reached deep into the Sicilian interior. Greek literary sources connect this expansion with military campaigns, but archaeological evidence indicates that this was a much longer term process which reached its peak only in the early fifth century BC. Most other Greek settlements in Sicily experienced similar territorial expansion in this period. Excavations at a range of sites in this region inhabited by the indigenous Sican people, such as Monte Sabbucina, Gibil-Gabil, Vasallaggi, San Angelo Muxano, and Mussomeli, show signs of the adoption of Greek culture. It is disputed how much of this expansion was carried out by violence and how much by commerce and acculturation. The territorial expansion provided land for the Greek settlers to farm, native slaves to work these farms, and control of the overland route from Acragas to the city of Himera on the northern coast of Sicily. This was the main land route from the Straits of Sicily to the Tyrrhenian Sea and Acragas' control of it was a key factor in its economic prosperity in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, which became proverbial. Famously, Plato, upon seeing the living standard of the inhabitants, was said to have remarked that "they build like they intend to live forever, yet eat like this is their last day." Perhaps as a result of this wealth, Acragas was one of the first communities in Sicily to begin minting its own coinage, around 520 BC.


title: Agrigento

text: Around 570 BC, the city came under the control of Phalaris, a semi-legendary figure, who was remembered as the archetypal tyrant, said to have killed his enemies by burning them alive inside a bronze bull. In the ancient literary sources, he is linked with the military campaigns of territorial expansion, but this is probably anachronistic. He ruled until around 550 BC. The political history of Acragas in the second half of the sixth century is unknown, except for the names of two leaders, Alcamenes and Alcander. Acragas also expanded westwards over the course of the sixth century BC, leading to a rivalry with Selinus, the next Greek city to the west. The Selinuntines founded the city of Heraclea Minoa at the mouth of the Platani river, halfway between the two settlements, in the mid-sixth century BC, but the Acragantines conquered it around 500 BC.


title: Agrigento

text: Theron, a member of the Emmenid family, made himself tyrant of Acragas around 488 BC. He formed an alliance with Gelon, tyrant of Gela and Syracuse. Around 483 BC, Theron invaded and conquered Himera, Acragas’ neighbour to the north. The tyrant of Himera, Terillus joined his son-in-law, Anaxilas of Rhegium, and the Selinuntines in calling on the Carthaginians to come and restore Terillus to power. The Carthaginians did invade in 480 BC, the first of the Greco-Punic Wars, but they were defeated by the combined forces of Theron and Gelon at the Battle of Himera. As a result, Acragas was affirmed in its control of the central portion of Sicily, an area of around 3,500 km. A number of enormous construction projects were carried out in the Valle dei Templi at this time, including the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which was one of the largest Greek temples ever built, and the construction of a massive Kolymbethra reservoir. According to Diodorus Siculus, they were built in commemoration of the Battle of Himera, using the prisoners captured in the war as slave labour. Archaeological evidence indicates that the boom in monumental construction actually began before the battle, but continued in the period after it. A major reconstruction of the city walls on a monumental scale also took place in this period. Theron sent teams to compete in the Olympic games and other Panhellenic competitions in mainland Greece. Several poems by Pindar and Simonides commemorated victories by Theron and other Acragantines, which provide insights into Acragantine identity and ideology at this time. Greek literary sources generally praise Theron as a good tyrant, but accuse his son Thrasydaeus, who succeeded him in 472 BC, of violence and oppression. Shortly after Theron's death, Hiero I of Syracuse (brother and successor of Gelon) invaded Acragas and overthrew Thrasydaeus. The literary sources say that Acragas then became a democracy, but in practice it seems to have been dominated by the civic aristocracy.


title: Agrigento

text: The period after the fall of the Emmenids is not well-known. An oligarchic group called "the thousand" was in power for a few years in the mid-fifth century BC, but was overthrown - the literary tradition gives the philosopher Empedocles a decisive role in this revolution, but some modern scholars have doubted this. In 451 BC, Ducetius, leader of a Sicel state opposed to the expansion of Syracuse and other Greeks into the interior of Sicily invaded Acragantine territory, conquering an outpost called Motyum. Ducetius was defeated in 450, but the Syracusan decision to let Ducetius go outraged the Acragantines and they went to war with Syracuse. They were defeated in a battle on the Salso river, which left Syracuse the pre-eminent power in eastern Sicily. The defeat was serious enough that Acragas ceased to mint coinage for a number of years.


title: Agrigento

text: Ancient sources considered Acragas to be a very large city at this time. Diodorus Siculus says that the population was 200,000 people, of which 20,000 were citizens. Diogenes Laertius put the population at an incredible 800,000. Some modern scholars have accepted Diodorus' numbers, but they seem to be far too high. Jos de Waele suggests a population of 16,000-18,000 citizens, while Franco de Angelis estimates a total population of around 30,000-40,000.


title: Agrigento

text: When Athens undertook the Sicilian Expedition against Syracuse from 415-413 BC, Acragas remained neutral. However, it was sacked by the Carthaginians in 406 BC. Acragas never fully recovered its former status, though it revived following the invasion of Timoleon in the late fourth century onwards and large-scale construction took place in the Hellenistic period. During the early 3rd century BC, a tyrant called Phintias declared himself king in Akragas, also controlling a variety of other cities. His kingdom was however not long-lived.


title: Agrigento

text: The city was disputed between the Romans and the Carthaginians during the First Punic War. The Romans laid siege to the city in 262 BC and captured it after defeating a Carthaginian relief force in 261 BC and sold the population into slavery. Although the Carthaginians recaptured the city in 255 BC the final peace settlement gave Punic Sicily and with it Akragas to Rome. It suffered badly during the Second Punic War (218–201 BC) when both Rome and Carthage fought to control it. The Romans eventually captured Akragas in 210 BC and renamed it "Agrigentum", although it remained a largely Greek-speaking community for centuries thereafter. It became prosperous again under Roman rule and its inhabitants received full Roman citizenship following the death of Julius Caesar in 44 BC.


title: Agrigento

text: After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city successively passed into the hands of the Vandalic Kingdom, the Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy and then the Byzantine Empire. During this period the inhabitants of Agrigentum largely abandoned the lower parts of the city and moved to the former acropolis, at the top of the hill. The reasons for this move are unclear but were probably related to the destructive coastal raids of the Saracens and other peoples around this time. In 828 AD the Saracens captured the diminished remnant of the city; the Arabic form of its name became () or ().


title: Agrigento

text: Following the Norman conquest of Sicily, the city changed its name to the Norman version "Girgenti". In 1087, Norman Count Roger I established a Latin bishopric in the city. Normans built the Castello di Agrigento to control the area. The population declined during much of the medieval period but revived somewhat after the 18th century.


title: Agrigento

text: In 1860, as in the rest of Sicily, the inhabitants supported the arrival of Giuseppe Garibaldi during the Expedition of the Thousand (one of the most dramatic events of the Unification of Italy) which marked the end of Bourbon rule. In 1927, Benito Mussolini through the "Decree Law n. 159, July 12, 1927" introduced the current Italianized version of the Latin name. The decision remains controversial as a symbol of Fascism and the eradication of local history. Following the suggestion of Andrea Camilleri, a Sicilian writer of Agrigentine origin, the historic city centre was renamed to the Sicilian name "Girgenti" in 2016. The city suffered a number of destructive bombing raids during World War II.


title: Agrigento

text: Agrigento is a major tourist centre due to its extraordinarily rich archaeological legacy. It also serves as an agricultural centre for the surrounding region. Sulphur and potash were mined locally from Minoan times until the 1970s, and were exported worldwide from the nearby harbour of Porto Empedocle (named after the philosopher Empedocles, who lived in ancient Akragas). In 2010, the unemployment rate in Agrigento was 19.2%, almost twice the national average.


title: Agrigento

text: Ancient Akragas covers a huge area—much of which is still unexcavated today—but is exemplified by the famous "Valle dei Templi" ("Valley of the Temples", a misnomer, as it is a ridge, rather than a valley). This comprises a large sacred area on the south side of the ancient city where seven monumental Greek temples in the Doric style were constructed during the 6th and 5th centuries BC. Now excavated and partially restored, they constitute some of the largest and best-preserved ancient Greek buildings outside of Greece itself. They are listed as a World Heritage Site.


title: Agrigento

text: The best-preserved of the temples are two very similar buildings traditionally attributed to the goddesses Hera Lacinia and Concordia (though archaeologists believe this attribution to be incorrect). The latter temple is remarkably intact, due to its having been converted into a Christian church in 597 AD. Both were constructed to a peripteral hexastyle design. The area around the Temple of Concordia was later re-used by early Christians as a catacomb, with tombs hewn out of the rocky cliffs and outcrops.


title: Agrigento

text: The other temples are much more fragmentary, having been toppled by earthquakes long ago and quarried for their stones. The largest by far is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, built to commemorate the Battle of Himera in 480 BC: it is believed to have been the largest Doric temple ever built. Although it was apparently used, it appears never to have been completed; construction was abandoned after the Carthaginian invasion of 406 BC.


title: Agrigento

text: The remains of the temple were extensively quarried in the 18th century to build the jetties of Porto Empedocle. Temples dedicated to Hephaestus, Heracles and Asclepius were also constructed in the sacred area, which includes a sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone (formerly known as the Temple of Castor and Pollux); the marks of the fires set by the Carthaginians in 406 BC can still be seen on the sanctuary's stones.


title: Agrigento

text: Many other Hellenistic and Roman sites can be found in and around the town. These include a pre-Hellenic cave sanctuary near a Temple of Demeter, over which the Church of San Biagio was built. A late Hellenistic funerary monument erroneously labelled the "Tomb of Theron" is situated just outside the sacred area, and a 1st-century AD "heroon" (heroic shrine) adjoins the 13th century Church of San Nicola a short distance to the north. A sizeable area of the Greco-Roman city has also been excavated, and several classical necropoleis and quarries are still extant.


title: Agrigento

text: Much of present-day Agrigento is modern but it still retains a number of medieval and Baroque buildings. These include the 14th century cathedral and the 13th century Church of Santa Maria dei Greci ("St. Mary of the Greeks"), again standing on the site of an ancient Greek temple (hence the name). The town also has a notable archaeological museum displaying finds from the ancient city.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Tremors 2: Aftershocks is a 1996 direct-to-video sequel to "Tremors", in which the character of Earl Bassett, returning from the first film, is hired to deal with a subterranean "graboid" infestation at a Mexican oilfield. It was directed by S. S. Wilson, and stars Fred Ward, Christopher Gartin, Michael Gross, and Helen Shaver.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: After spending all the reward money from his first encounter with Graboids, Earl Bassett agrees to hunt more of the deadly creatures at a Mexican oil refinery for $50,000 each. Knowing that he cannot face the monsters alone, Earl recruits Burt Gummer, another veteran of the incident in Nevada, to supply the firepower. There is only one problem: the Graboids have now evolved into creatures able to attack above ground.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Reviews for the film were mostly positive, with some critics labeling it one of the best direct-to-video sequels ever made.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Years after the events of the first film, Val McKee has moved away and married Rhonda LeBeck, while Earl Basset has squandered his fortune on a failing ostrich ranch. He is approached by Carlos Ortega, who informs him that Graboids are killing his workers at his oil field in Chiapas, Mexico, and hires him to hunt them down. Earl initially declines, but Ortega's taxi driver, Grady Hoover, convinces Earl to change his mind after mentioning that Ortega will pay $50,000 for each Graboid killed; both join the hunt. Upon arrival, Earl learns that the company would pay him double if he caught one of the creatures alive. He also meets geologist Kate Reilly, her assistant Julio, and a mechanic named Pedro, all of whom are scientifically investigating the Graboids.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Earl and Grady begin systematically killing the Graboids by using remote-controlled cars rigged with explosives. Though their strategy seems to work, the vast number of Graboids overwhelms them and Earl enlists the help of Burt Gummer, who arrives with a "deuce-and-a-half" truck loaded with firearms and explosives. The next day, Earl and Grady are surprised by one of the Graboids, causing them to drive backwards in a panic and crash the truck into an inclined ditch. Returning to where they saw the Graboid, Earl and Grady find that the creature looks sick and non-aggressive with all of its tentacles mysteriously dead. Realizing they have one of the creatures alive (which Ortega offered $100,000 if accomplished), they call Pedro to come and pick them up along with the Graboid. However, the Graboid later begins making horrific and painful sounds and is soon found dead with a huge hole torn open into its body. They see Pedro's truck approach from the distance but it suddenly stops, prompting Grady and Earl to investigate and discover the truck’s destroyed engine as well as Pedro’s remains. They make their way to a nearby radio broadcasting building which has similarly been destroyed, only to be met by strange bipedal graboid-like creatures. Earl successfully kills one as it charges him, but the two flee in a car they had found as more of the creatures arrive. Meanwhile, Burt's truck is ambushed by a pack of these new creatures while returning to base.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: The following morning, the creatures have made their way to the oil refinery, where Julio is violently killed by one. Grady and Earl arrive before it can attack Kate, with Burt shortly arriving thereafter following a near-fatal firefight that has left him drained of ammunition. Through experimentation, the group discovers that these creatures (now dubbed 'Shriekers') are hermaphrodites that can replicate at an incredible rate after eating enough food. They also learn that the creatures cannot hear unlike their predecessors, but rather see heat through special infrared receptors on their heads. However, they are attacked by the Shriekers, who have discovered Burt's MRE food supply and have rapidly doubled their numbers in a matter of minutes. They run for Julio's car, but Burt accidentally disables it while killing a Shrieker.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Hiding from the Shriekers, Burt is trapped in a bulldozer bucket while Grady, Kate, and Earl are on top of an oil tower. The Shriekers work together in an attempt to climb the tower before Burt traps them in the storage shed with the truck. However, they discover rice flour is stored inside as well, enabling the Shriekers to continue eating and multiplying inside. Earl douses himself in CO from a fire extinguisher to hide his body heat, and tries to find Burt's explosives amongst the Shriekers, who have multiplied into dozens of creatures. While the plan initially works, the quickly wears off and the Shriekers detect his body heat, forcing Earl to throw the detonator among Burt's supplies before escaping. The group manages to escape before a massive explosion devastates the entire facility, destroying all of the Shriekers with it. In the aftermath, Earl and Kate decide to pursue each other romantically, while Grady suggests opening a monster-themed theme park due to the money Ortega now owes them.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: "Tremors 2: Aftershocks" began production in 1993 when MCA Universal (feature films division) liked the script. The film was originally planned to be filmed in Australia on a 17 million-dollar budget with the proposal that Kevin Bacon and Reba McEntire would both be returning. Unfortunately, McEntire declined due to a major tour she had currently been on, and Bacon, while intrigued, ultimately turned it down to do "Apollo 13". Due to the lack of star power and the mediocre box-office performance of the first film, the distributional and promotional cost for a theater release was considered to be too high and the feature film division lost interest. The film was on the verge of being canceled entirely due to high costs when several actors and effects artists offered to lower their rates or do the jobs for free just to help the film get produced; this included S.S. Wilson, who offered to direct the film for free to save money on hiring another director.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: Although the first film was only a minor theatrical hit, it would go on to be far more successful on the home-video rental market. This caused "Tremors 2" to be moved to the MCA/Universal home video division on a budget of $4 million. Despite the budget being severely slashed, the same script was ultimately used but with several special effects sequences scrapped, including a scene where Burt Gummer commandeers a tank and a scene where characters fight the monsters using American Civil War muskets. To assist with costs, the location was changed from Australia to southern Mexico. Filming took place near Valencia, California in a total of 27 days in early 1994. The film was also released straight-to-video with only a limited theater release.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: In "Tremors 2: Aftershocks", the creature design team, Amalgamated Dynamics, was faced with a challenge different from the first film. In "Tremors", the graboids spend most of their time underground, and thus a prop was not needed for these scenes. However, in this film the shriekers spend all their time above ground and there are always more shriekers than graboids, thus the need for more props. The shrieker props used in the film include two fully articulated, full-scale puppet shrieker, three hand-puppet versions of the shriekers, and three un-jointed non-articulated rubber shrieker dummies. The fully articulated, full-scale puppet shrieker required 16 puppeteers to operate, while the rubber shrieker dummies, not requiring puppeteers, were used in scenes when a shrieker needed to be dropped, shot, or exploded.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: One of the full scale graboids used in the film was a refurbished model that was used in the first film.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: To achieve the infrared view of the shriekers as seen in several scenes, the actors wore red suits and yellow stockings, then were shot in Hi-8 video tape and blown up to 35mm film to add an additional grainy effect. The post-production video engineers then rendered the faces and bodies in different colors.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: The scene where a baby shrieker is seen was created using a full size shrieker in a large cage, making the shrieker look small. As a consequence, no actors could be shown at the same time as the cage and shrieker.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: In addition to the shriekers designed by Amalgamated Dynamics, some scenes in the film utilized shriekers that were computer generated imagery (CGI) designed by Tippett Studio. These animated shriekers were used when ever the film depicts them as walking, running, or climbing, as these movements were beyond the capabilities of the fully articulated puppet shriekers.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: After the film had been finished, its release date was delayed numerous times when test screenings were met with glowing reviews, which lead to its creators and the studio to consider theatrical distribution. A release date was finally set for April 9, 1996, over two years after the film had been finished. Although a theatrical release was deemed too expensive, the film did receive a very small limited screening in international theaters with an exclusive premiere screening that took place on April 9, 1996 at 8 PM in the Alfred Hitchcock Theater in Hollywood, California. The film was released on Videocassette on April 9, 1996 and on laserdisc on April 16, 1996.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: As of March 2021, "Tremors 2: Aftershocks" holds a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on reviews from 8 critics.


title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

text: TV Guide gave the film a positive review, saying "this movie is a rarity among direct-to-video sequels, one that's not only worthy of its theatrical predecessor but suggests that it too, belongs on the big screen...despite the significantly lower budget, the monsters remain entirely convincing." Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a mixed C+, calling it "definitely not as bad as a lot of straight-to-tape sequels" and further praised the acting, cinematography, and effects, but gave negative criticisms to the film's second half, saying "the movie becomes a bald-faced imitation of Jurassic Park." In an essay on direct-to-video horror sequels, Gavin Al-Asif for the Houston Chronicle gave the film a glowing review, saying ""Tremors 2" is probably the best direct-to-video sequel ever made...it's leaps and bounds ahead of any of its competitors, including some theatrical sequels."


title: Three Pines

text: Three Pines is a mystery streaming television series starring Alfred Molina, based on the novel series by Louise Penny centered on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. The first season premiered on Amazon Prime Video on 2 December 2022 with four standalone murder mysteries each spanning two episodes.


title: Three Pines

text: Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec police force sees things that others do not: the light between the cracks, the mythic in the mundane, and the evil in the seemingly ordinary. As he investigates a series of murders in Three Pines, a seemingly idyllic village in the Eastern Townships, of Quebec, Canada, he discovers long-buried secrets and must face ghosts of his own. Each of the standalone murder mysteries span two episodes.


title: Three Pines

text: Unlike the books, the series includes a secondary story line throughout the season, with Gamache investigating the disappearance of a young Indigenous woman.


title: Three Pines

text: On 21 May 2020, it was announced that Left Bank Pictures had optioned the 18-book novel series by Louise Penny, which centers on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, with Amazon Prime Video in final negotiations to order the project to series. Emilia di Girolamo was attached as head writer, and Sam Donovan was announced as the lead director, directing four episodes. Indigenous Mohawk director Tracey Deer is a series consultant and directed two episodes. On 2 September 2021, it was announced that Alfred Molina was cast in the lead role of Gamache. Rossif Sutherland, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Tantoo Cardinal, Clare Coulter, Sarah Booth, and Anna Tierney were also cast in main roles.


title: Three Pines

text: Principal photography was completed between August and December 2021. Filming took place over five five-week periods in Montreal and rural Quebec, specifically in the Eastern Townships, the region of Quebec where the novels take place and original author Penny resides.


title: Three Pines

text: On 1 November 2022, Amazon Studios announced the premiere date and official trailer of "Three Pines". With eight one-hour episodes in total, the first two episodes premiered on 2 December 2022, with two new episodes released each week until the finale on 23 December. Initially, the series was set to air only in certain countries: the US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Greenland.


title: Three Pines

text: As of 4 December 2022, after the first two episodes had begun streaming, the score on Rotten Tomatoes was 78% based on reviews from 9 critics.


title: Three Pines

text: Chase Hutchinson of Collider praised Alfred Molina's performance as Inspector Gamache, rating the series a B and wrote, "It is in its more melancholic and macabre moments that "Three Pines" stumbles upon something more sinister that elevates it a bit beyond a standard mystery tale." Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com called it, "A collection of intelligent two-hour mysteries that fans of Agatha Christie or even Columbo should watch."


title: Three Pines

text: Amber Dowling of "Variety" gave it a positive review and concluded "For now, this short-but-sweet adaptation offers a sweeping cinematic taste of cultures and stories that are deserving of the global platform Prime Video offers, all while doing justice to the best-selling novels on which they’re based."


title: Steve Miller Band discography

text: The discography of American rock group Steve Miller Band is composed of 18 studio albums (including one solo album by Steve Miller), six live albums, eleven compilation albums, three video albums and thirty singles.


title: Steve Miller Band discography

text: Originally called the Steve Miller Blues Band, the group first made its mark as a psychedelic blues rock band in San Francisco. They went through a fallow period commercially in the early seventies before coming back with the hit album "The Joker" and the song of the same name in late 1973, followed by the band's two most successful studio albums in 1976 and 1977, "Fly Like an Eagle" and "Book of Dreams". In 1978, they released their biggest selling album in North America, "Greatest Hits 1974–78", which has been certified 13× Platinum in the United States and diamond in Canada. Although the 1981 release "Circle of Love" was less successful than the two preceding studio albums, the popularity of 1982's "Abracadabra", which included the worldwide hit single of the same name, more than made up for it. The band's studio releases became more infrequent at this point, with the biggest gap in albums being between 1993's "Wide River" and 2010's "Bingo!". Their most recent studio album is 2011's "Let Your Hair Down".


title: Steve Miller Band discography

text: The band's releases have been most successful in North America: two number-one albums in Canada, three number one singles in the United States, two number one singles in Canada, three multi-platinum awards in the United States, and selling over 24 million albums in the United States alone. The band's most successful singles have been "The Joker", which peaked in the top 10 of the trade charts of six countries—reaching number one in four, and "Abracadabra", which made the top 10 in five countries—and number one in two countries. Of the band's albums, 12 have reached the top 40 in the United States and seven have done the same in Canada.


title: Hooverphonic

text: Hooverphonic is a Belgian band that formed in October 1995. Though originally categorized as a trip hop group, they quickly expanded their sound to the point where they could no longer be described as a singular genre, but rather encompass alternative, electronica, electropop, rock, and a mixture of others. The band originally called themselves Hoover, but later changed their name to Hooverphonic after discovering other groups were already using the Hoover name and to avoid any legal issues with the vacuum cleaner company.


title: Hooverphonic

text: Since their formation, Hooverphonic's lineup consisted of bassist Alex Callier, guitarist Raymond Geerts, and various lead singers. Prominent ones included Liesje Sadonius (1996–1997), Geike Arnaert (1997–2008, 2020–present), Noémie Wolfs (2010–2015), and Luka Cruysberghs (2018–2020).


title: Hooverphonic

text: The band were set to represent at the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Rotterdam with their song "Release Me". However, on March 18, 2020, the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They instead represented Belgium in the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with the song "The Wrong Place".


title: Hooverphonic

text: The original members of the group were vocalist Esther Lybeert, keyboardist Frank Duchêne, bassist Alex Callier, and guitarist Raymond Geerts. Lybeert recorded several demos with the group; however, she backed out of the band on the day they were to sign their contract with Sony Music. The band then brought in Liesje Sadonius to record the album. Sadonius left Hooverphonic on amicable terms shortly after the release of "A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular". Kyoko Baertsoen, singer for fellow Belgian trip hop band Lunascape, filled in for Sadonius for three months of a European tour in 1997 before Geike Arnaert was made the permanent singer later that year.


title: Hooverphonic

text: The band achieved international recognition through the inclusion of the "Stereophonic" track "2Wicky" on the soundtrack to Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 film "Stealing Beauty". "2Wicky" also appeared on the soundtracks of "I Know What You Did Last Summer" and "Heights". The track's main riff is sampled from Isaac Hayes' recording of the 1960s hit "Walk On By".


title: Hooverphonic

text: Additional session musicians for "Stereophonic" include Eric Bosteels, a session drummer with Hooverphonic from 1997 to 1998 (replaced by Mario Goossens until 2005) and David Poltrock, a keyboard player with the group on and off from 1998 until 2005. In 1998, Hooverphonic also contributed to the Depeche Mode tribute album "For the Masses" with their cover of "Shake the Disease".


title: Hooverphonic

text: After an extensive European tour with artists such as Massive Attack, Morcheeba, and Apollo 440, and a tour opening for Fiona Apple in the United States in 1997, the band released "Blue Wonder Power Milk" in 1998 with 18-year-old Arnaert on vocals. A marked departure from their debut, the album is driven less by breakbeats and samples, and more by organic string elements and traditional song structures.


title: Hooverphonic

text: The single "Club Montepulciano" was a hit in native Belgium and a minor college hit in the U.S., while "Renaissance Affair" was featured in the North American commercial campaign for the new Volkswagen Vapor Beetle. "This Strange Effect" and "Eden" were both featured in American cell phone commercials: "This Strange Effect" for the Motorola SLVR, and in 2006, "Eden" for the Cingular 8525. "Eden" was also used in the 1998 slasher film "I Still Know What You Did Last Summer". At the time of their release, both songs were also featured in two separate third-season episodes of "La Femme Nikita". Shortly afterwards, Sarah Brightman recorded a cover of "Eden" on her 1998 album "Eden". Yoko Kanno samples the opening track "Battersea" in "Cyberbird", on the .


title: Hooverphonic

text: At this point, Frank Duchêne decided to quit the band: «Having made two successful albums for Sony Music with his band Hooverphonic, and after extensive touring as support for Fiona Apple, Moloko & Massive Attack, he was unhappy with the project and near the end of 1998, decided to leave.»


title: Hooverphonic

text: The band followed up "Blue Wonder Power Milk" with 2000's "The Magnificent Tree", which expands on the sound of "Milk" with a warmer, more approachable sound. Highlights from the album are the string-laden "Out of Sight", "Mad About You", and the title track.


title: Hooverphonic

text: The same year, Hooverphonic was asked to write a song specifically for the opening ceremony of the 2000 European Football Championship, which took place in Brussels, Belgium. The result — a 12-minute-long track called "Visions" — became the theme song of the championship, and Hooverphonic's performance at the opening ceremony was heard/seen by more than 1 billion people.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On the heels of "Tree"'s success, the band became the first Belgian outfit to headline the Belgian Rock Werchter musical festival in 2001.


title: Hooverphonic

text: 2002 saw the group shifting gears again, this time releasing the concept album "Hooverphonic Presents Jackie Cane". The album tells the story of the fictional title character, a celebrity and singer catapulted into stardom at the expense of her relationship with her twin sister. Driven to the brink of insanity by the pressures of fame, Jackie quits show business and returns home to attempt reconciliation, where her sister kills them both with a poisoned last supper.


title: Hooverphonic

text: "Jackie Cane" retains the dreamy elements of Hooverphonic's previous works, most notably on songs "Nirvana Blue" and "Human Interest" (which contains references to "Echoes" by Pink Floyd), but tracks like "The World Is Mine" (the first single) and "Day After Day" have a clear Broadway influence and quality to them. The album went platinum in Belgium and won the group ZAMU’s Best Pop/Rock Band and Best Album awards in 2002.


title: Hooverphonic

text: In 2003, the band released an album performed live in a studio with an orchestra entitled "Sit Down and Listen to Hooverphonic", featuring a selection of songs from the band’s body of work, as well as the new songs "Antarctica" and "The Last Thing I Need Is You", and a cover of Lee Hazlewood's "My Autumn’s Done Come". The band launched into an extended European tour in September 2003, performing in over 100 concert halls.


title: Hooverphonic

text: The band's fifth studio album, a double CD entitled "No More Sweet Music/More Sweet Music", was released in December 2005. Both CDs include the same 11 tracks, however, they are all different versions.


title: Hooverphonic

text: In 2006 the band left Sony/BMG, complaining of lack of label support for "No More Sweet Music". A best-of album ("Singles '96 - '06") was released to end the relation with Sony/BMG. The band went on to work without a label.


title: Hooverphonic

text: In an interview for the Spanish TV program "Nosolomusica", Alex Callier gave some hints of a new, more psychedelic orientation for the band's forthcoming music. During a show in Moscow (October 2007), the band revealed the first single of the new album, "Expedition Impossible".


title: Hooverphonic

text: "The President of the LSD Golf Club" was released in October 2007 in Belgium and the Netherlands. The album was released in Europe in March 2008. Following the release, the lead singer of the band, Geike Arnaert, announced on 10 October 2008 she would be leaving the band to pursue a solo career. Arnaert had been working on solo material for a few months. The last concert Hooverphonic did with Geike was on 13 December 2008 in Tele-Club, Ekaterinburg, Russia. It was filmed by the local MTV station and was shown on Russian TV in 2009.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On 4 November 2010, the new lead singer Noémie Wolfs was announced on "De Laatste Show" at the VRT, the Flemish public broadcasting organization.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On 29 October 2010, Hooverphonic announced a new single on their website. The videoclip showcased fourteen possible singers but only one of them, Noémie Wolfs, proved to be the real successor to Geike Arnaert. The single "The Night Before" introduced the new singer and was followed on November 26 by the release of the full-length album "The Night Before". The album went platinum in Belgium soon after its release.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On 9 November 2011 they announced the re-release of their first album, "A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular".


title: Hooverphonic

text: Three more albums were released in the following years featuring Wolfs as main vocalist: the orchestral album "With Orchestra" and the live album "With Orchestra Live" in 2012, and the studio album "Reflection" in 2013. "With Orchestra Live" features orchestral renditions of songs spanning the Hooverphonic entire career performed live at the Koningin Elisabethzaal in Antwerp. The performance was also released on DVD. In 2016, all the songs from the concert were uploaded on the band's official YouTube channel in high definition. With more than 100 million views, the "Mad About You" performance is the most watched video of Hooverphonic.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On 26 March 2015, Hooverphonic announced that Wolfs would be leaving the band "in mutual agreement". The band's ninth studio album, "In Wonderland" (2016), featured vocals from Janie Price, Emilie Satt, Litlo Tinz, Christa Jérôme, Tjeerd Bomhof and Felix Howard. Anton Marin, of the design agency Power & Glory, who had been the band's official house illustrator and designer since their debut, released a special comic strip based on the lyrics of Hooverphonic's hit single "Badaboum".


title: Hooverphonic

text: In April 2018, Hooverphonic introduced their new singer Luka Cruysberghs. Cruysberghs provided vocals for the band's tenth studio album "Looking For Stars", anticipated by the single "Romantic".


title: Hooverphonic

text: Hooverphonic were supposed to represent at the Eurovision Song Contest 2020 in Rotterdam with their song "Release Me". The event was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hooverphonic was the only Eurovision entrant for 2020 who refused to take part in the "Love Shine a Light" performance, where entrants each contributed sections of the song, although a photograph of Cruysberghs was included with the other participants making a hand heart at the end.


title: Hooverphonic

text: On 9 November 2020, Cruysberghs was abruptly fired from the band to make way for the return of Geike Arnaert. Also on the same day, they released a new version of "Mad About You" for the song's 20th anniversary.


title: Hooverphonic

text: In May 2021, the band's released their eleventh studio album overall and sixth to feature Arnaert as vocalist, "Hidden Stories".


title: Hooverphonic

text: They participated at the Eurovision Song Contest 2021 with the song "The Wrong Place". They finished the contest in 19th place with 74 points.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: The Samsung Galaxy S5 is an Android-based smartphone unveiled, produced, released and marketed by Samsung Electronics as part of the Samsung Galaxy S series. Unveiled on 24 February 2014 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, it was released on 11 April 2014 in 150 countries as the immediate successor to the Galaxy S4. As with the S4, the S5 is an evolution of the prior year's model, placing a particular emphasis on an improved build with a textured rear cover and IP67 certification for dust and water resistance, a more refined user experience, new security features such as a fingerprint reader and private mode, expanded health-related features including a built-in heart rate monitor, a USB 3.0 port, and an updated camera featuring speedy auto-focus through phase-detection as well as video resolution upgraded to 2160p (4K) and framerate at 1080p doubled.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: The Galaxy S5 received mostly positive reviews; the phone was praised for its display, hardware, camera, long battery life, and incorporating water resistance while retaining a removable battery and MicroSD card slot, making it the final in its series with the former. However, the S5 was criticized for bloated software, its unresponsive fingerprint scanner, and its ostensibly non-"premium" polycarbonate in light of rival smartphones' metal or glass bodies.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: In August 2015, following the release of its then-latest flagship, the Galaxy S6, Samsung released an updated version called the "Galaxy S5 Neo" which has an Exynos 7 Octa (7580) processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. It has 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB of internal storage, USB 2.0 port, comes with Android 5.0.2 "Lollipop", and lacks fingerprint unlocking and 4K (2160p) video recording.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: The Galaxy S5 was unveiled on 24 February 2014 as part of the company's presentation at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Samsung Electronics president JK Shin explained that consumers did not want a phone dependent on "eye-popping" or "complex" technology, but one with "beautiful design and performance", a "simple, yet powerful camera", "faster and seamless connectivity", and fitness-oriented features.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: Samsung announced that it would release the S5 on 11 April 2014 in 150 countries—including the United Kingdom and United States. On 18 June 2014, Samsung unveiled an LTE-Advanced version of the S5, exclusively released in South Korea. Unlike other models, the LTE-A version also upgrades the display to a quad HD, 1440p panel.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: Shortly after the release of the S5, it was discovered that some Samsung Galaxy S5 devices—particularly those on Verizon Wireless—were suffering from a major bug that caused the device's camera hardware to permanently cease functioning, and display a "Camera failed" error on-screen whenever users attempt to use the camera. Both Samsung and Verizon confirmed the issue, which affected a limited number of Galaxy S5 devices; Samsung instructed users affected by the bug to contact the company or their carrier to have their phone replaced under warranty.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: The design of the S5 evolves upon the design of the S4. It features a rounded, polycarbonate chassis carrying a "modern glam" look with a dot pattern similarly to that on the 2012 Google Nexus 7 tablet computer, faux metal trim and a removable rear cover. Unlike past models, the S5's rear cover uses a higher quality soft plastic and is dimpled to improve grip.


title: Samsung Galaxy S5

text: The S5 is IP67 certified for dust and water resistance. As such, the phone is able to be submerged in water up to for up to 30 minutes. The S5's Micro-USB 3.0 port uses a removable cover. The S5 is available in Charcoal Black, Electric Blue, Copper Gold, and Shimmery White color finishes. The S5's screen is a 1080p Super AMOLED panel, which is slightly larger than that of the S4, and allows for automatic brightness and gamut adjustments. Its minimum dimmable brightness level has been lowered to facilitate vision in dark environments without the need for third-party screen filter overlay apps which would interfere with screen captures.