title: Bird anatomy

text: The structure of the avian skull has important implications for their feeding behaviours. Birds show independent movement of the skull bones known as cranial kinesis. Cranial kinesis in birds occurs in several forms, but all of the different varieties are all made possible by the anatomy of the skull. Animals with large, overlapping bones (including the ancestors of modern birds) have akinetic (non-kinetic) skulls. For this reason it has been argued that the pedomorphic bird beak can be seen as an evolutionary innovation.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds have a diapsid skull, as in reptiles, with a pre-lachrymal fossa (present in some reptiles). The skull has a single occipital condyle.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The shoulder consists of the scapula (shoulder blade), coracoid, and humerus (upper arm). The humerus joins the radius and ulna (forearm) to form the elbow. The carpus and metacarpus form the "wrist" and "hand" of the bird, and the digits are fused together. The bones in the wing are extremely light so that the bird can fly more easily.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The hips consist of the pelvis, which includes three major bones: the ilium (top of the hip), ischium (sides of hip), and pubis (front of the hip). These are fused into one (the innominate bone). Innominate bones are evolutionary significant in that they allow birds to lay eggs. They meet at the acetabulum (hip socket) and articulate with the femur, which is the first bone of the hind limb.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The upper leg consists of the femur. At the knee joint, the femur connects to the tibiotarsus (shin) and fibula (side of lower leg). The tarsometatarsus forms the upper part of the foot, digits make up the toes. The leg bones of birds are the heaviest, contributing to a low center of gravity, which aids in flight. A bird's skeleton accounts for only about 5% of its total body weight.


title: Bird anatomy

text: They have a greatly elongate tetradiate pelvis, similar to some reptiles. The hind limb has an intra-tarsal joint found also in some reptiles. There is extensive fusion of the trunk vertebrae as well as fusion with the pectoral girdle.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds' feet are classified as anisodactyl, zygodactyl, heterodactyl, syndactyl or pamprodactyl. Anisodactyl is the most common arrangement of digits in birds, with three toes forward and one back. This is common in songbirds and other perching birds, as well as hunting birds like eagles, hawks, and falcons.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Syndactyly, as it occurs in birds, is like anisodactyly, except that the second and third toes (the inner and middle forward-pointing toes), or three toes, are fused together, as in the belted kingfisher "Ceryle alcyon". This is characteristic of Coraciiformes (kingfishers, bee-eaters, rollers, etc.).


title: Bird anatomy

text: Zygodactyl (from Greek ζυγον, a yoke) feet have two toes facing forward (digits two and three) and two back (digits one and four). This arrangement is most common in arboreal species, particularly those that climb tree trunks or clamber through foliage. Zygodactyly occurs in the parrots, woodpeckers (including flickers), cuckoos (including roadrunners), and some owls. Zygodactyl tracks have been found dating to 120–110 Ma (early Cretaceous), 50 million years before the first identified zygodactyl fossils.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Heterodactyly is like zygodactyly, except that digits three and four point forward and digits one and two point back. This is found only in trogons, while pamprodactyl is an arrangement in which all four toes may point forward, or birds may rotate the outer two toes backward. It is a characteristic of swifts (Apodidae).


title: Bird anatomy

text: A significant similarity in the structure of the hind limbs of birds and other dinosaurs is associated with their ability to walk on two legs, or bipedalism. In the 20th century, the prevailing opinion was that the transition to bipedalism occurred due to the transformation of the forelimbs into wings. Modern scientists believe that, on the contrary, it was a necessary condition for the occurrence of flight.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The transition to the use of only the hind limbs for movement was accompanied by an increase in the rigidity of the lumbar and sacral regions. The pubic bones of birds and some other bipedal dinosaurs are turned backward. Scientists associate this with a shift in the center of gravity of the body backward. The reason for this shift is called the transition to bipedality or the development of powerful forelimbs, as in Archaeopteryx. The large and heavy tail of two-legged dinosaurs may have been an additional support. Partial tail reduction and subsequent formation of pigostyle occurred due to the backward deviation of the first toe of the hind limb; in dinosaurs with a long rigid tail, the development of the foot proceeded differently. This process, apparently, took place in parallel in birds and some other dinosaurs. In general, the anisodactyl foot, which also has a better grasping ability and allows confident movement both on the ground and along branches, is ancestral for birds. Against this background, pterosaurs stand out, which, in the process of unsuccessful evolutionary changes, could not fully move on two legs, but instead developed an aircraft that was fundamentally different from birds.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Changes in the hindlimbs did not affect the location of the forelimbs, which in birds remained laterally spaced, and in non-avian dinosaurs they switched to a parasagittal orientation. At the same time, the forelimbs, freed from the support function, had ample opportunities for evolutionary changes. Proponents of the running hypothesis believe that flight was formed through fast running, bouncing, and then gliding. The forelimbs could be used for grasping after a jump or as "insect trapping nets", animals could wave them, helping themselves during the jump. According to the arboreal hypothesis, the ancestors of birds climbed trees with the help of their forelimbs, and from there they planned, after which they proceeded to flight.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Most birds have approximately 175 different muscles, mainly controlling the wings, skin, and legs. Overall, the muscle mass of birds is concentrated ventrally. The largest muscles in the bird are the pectorals, or the pectoralis major, which control the wings and make up about 15–25% of a flighted bird's body weight. They provide the powerful wing stroke essential for flight. The muscle deep to (underneath) the pectorals is the supracoracoideus, or the pectoralis minor. It raises the wing between wingbeats. Both muscle groups attach to the keel of the sternum. This is remarkable, because other vertebrates have the muscles to raise the upper limbs generally attached to areas on the back of the spine. The supracoracoideus and the pectorals together make up about 25–40% of the bird's full body weight. Caudal to the pectorals and supracoracoides are the internal and external obliques which compress the abdomen. Additionally, there are other abdominal muscles present that expand and contract the chest, and hold the ribcage. The muscles of the wing, as seen in the labelled images, function mainly in extending or flexing the elbow, moving the wing as a whole or in extending or flexing particular digits. These muscles work to adjust the wings for flight and all other actions. Muscle composition does vary between species and even within families.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds have unique necks which are elongated with complex musculature as it must allow for the head to perform functions other animals may utilize pectoral limbs for.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The skin muscles help a bird in its flight by adjusting the feathers, which are attached to the skin muscle and help the bird in its flight maneuvers as well as aiding in mating rituals.


title: Bird anatomy

text: There are only a few muscles in the trunk and the tail, but they are very strong and are essential for the bird. These include the lateralis caudae and the levator caudae which control movement of the tail and the spreading of rectrices, giving the tail a larger surface area which helps keep the bird in the air as well as aiding in turning.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Muscle composition and adaptation differ by theories of muscle adaptation in whether evolution of flight came from flapping or gliding first.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The scales of birds are composed of keratin, like beaks, claws, and spurs. They are found mainly on the toes and tarsi (lower leg of birds), usually up to the tibio-tarsal joint, but may be found further up the legs in some birds. In many of the eagles and owls the legs are feathered down to (but not including) their toes. Most bird scales do not overlap significantly, except in the cases of kingfishers and woodpeckers. The scales and scutes of birds were originally thought to be homologous to those of reptiles; however, more recent research suggests that scales in birds re-evolved after the evolution of feathers.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Bird embryos begin development with smooth skin. On the feet, the corneum, or outermost layer, of this skin may keratinize, thicken and form scales. These scales can be organized into;


title: Bird anatomy

text: The rows of scutes on the anterior of the metatarsus can be called an "acrometatarsium" or "acrotarsium".


title: Bird anatomy

text: Reticula are located on the lateral and medial surfaces (sides) of the foot and were originally thought to be separate scales. However, histological and evolutionary developmental work in this area revealed that these structures lack beta-keratin (a hallmark of reptilian scales) and are entirely composed of alpha-keratin. This, along with their unique structure, has led to the suggestion that these are actually feather buds that were arrested early in development.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The bills of many waders have Herbst corpuscles which help them find prey hidden under wet sand, by detecting minute pressure differences in the water. All extant birds can move the parts of the upper jaw relative to the brain case. However, this is more prominent in some birds and can be readily detected in parrots.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The region between the eye and bill on the side of a bird's head is called the lore. This region is sometimes featherless, and the skin may be tinted, as in many species of the cormorant family.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The beak, bill, or rostrum is an external anatomical structure of birds which is used for eating and for preening, manipulating objects, killing prey, fighting, probing for food, courtship and feeding young. Although beaks vary significantly in size, shape and color, they share a similar underlying structure. Two bony projections—the upper and lower mandibles—covered with a thin keratinized layer of epidermis known as the rhamphotheca. In most species, two holes known as nares lead to the respiratory system.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Due to the high metabolic rate required for flight, birds have a high oxygen demand. Their highly effective respiratory system helps them meet that demand.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Although birds have lungs, theirs are fairly rigid structures that do not expand and contract as they do in mammals, reptiles and many amphibians. Instead, the structures that act as the bellows that ventilate the lungs are the air sacs, which are distributed throughout much of the birds' bodies. The airsacs move air unidirectionally through the parabronchi of the rigid lungs.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The primary mechanism of unidirectional flows in bird lungs is flow irreversibility at high Reynolds number manifested in asymmetric junctions and their loop-forming connectivity.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Although bird lungs are smaller than those of mammals of comparable size, the air sacs account for 15% of the total body volume, whereas in mammals, the alveoli, which act as the bellows, constitute only 7% of the total body volume. The walls of the air sacs do not have a good blood supply and so do not play a direct role in gas exchange.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds lack a diaphragm, and therefore use their intercostal and abdominal muscles to expand and contract their entire thoraco-abdominal cavities, thus rhythmically changing the volumes of all their air sacs in unison (illustration on the right). The active phase of respiration in birds is exhalation, requiring contraction of their muscles of respiration. Relaxation of these muscles causes inhalation.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Three distinct sets of organs perform respiration — the anterior air sacs (interclavicular, cervicals, and anterior thoracics), the lungs, and the posterior air sacs (posterior thoracics and abdominals). Typically there are nine air sacs within the system; however, that number can range between seven and twelve, depending on the species of bird. Passerines possess seven air sacs, as the clavicular air sacs may interconnect or be fused with the anterior thoracic sacs.


title: Bird anatomy

text: During inhalation, environmental air initially enters the bird through the nostrils from where it is heated, humidified, and filtered in the nasal passages and upper parts of the trachea. From there, the air enters the lower trachea and continues to just beyond the syrinx, at which point the trachea branches into two primary bronchi, going to the two lungs. The primary bronchi enter the lungs to become the intrapulmonary bronchi, which give off a set of parallel branches called ventrobronchi and, a little further on, an equivalent set of dorsobronchi. The ends of the intrapulmonary bronchi discharge air into the posterior air sacs at the caudal end of the bird. Each pair of dorso-ventrobronchi is connected by a large number of parallel microscopic air capillaries (or parabronchi) where gas exchange occurs. As the bird inhales, tracheal air flows through the intrapulmonary bronchi into the posterior air sacs, as well as into the "dorso"bronchi (but not into the ventrobronchi whose openings into the intrapulmonary bronchi were previously believed to be tightly closed during inhalation. However, more recent studies have shown that the aerodynamics of the bronchial architecture directs the inhaled air away from the openings of the ventrobronchi, into the continuation of the intrapulmonary bronchus towards the dorsobronchi and posterior air sacs). From the dorsobronchi the air flows through the parabronchi (and therefore the gas exchanger) to the ventrobronchi from where the air can only escape into the expanding anterior air sacs. So, during inhalation, both the posterior and anterior air sacs expand, the posterior air sacs filling with fresh inhaled air, while the anterior air sacs fill with "spent" (oxygen-poor) air that has just passed through the lungs.


title: Bird anatomy

text: During exhalation the intrapulmonary bronchi were believed to be tightly constricted between the region where the ventrobronchi branch off and the region where the dorsobronchi branch off. But it is now believed that more intricate aerodynamic features have the same effect. The contracting posterior air sacs can therefore only empty into the dorsobronchi. From there the fresh air from the posterior air sacs flows through the parabronchi (in the same direction as occurred during inhalation) into ventrobronchi. The air passages connecting the ventrobronchi and anterior air sacs to the intrapulmonary bronchi open up during exhalation, thus allowing oxygen-poor air from these two organs to escape via the trachea to the exterior. Oxygenated air therefore flows constantly (during the entire breathing cycle) in a single direction through the parabronchi.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The blood flow through the bird lung is at right angles to the flow of air through the parabronchi, forming a cross-current flow exchange system (see illustration on the left). The partial pressure of oxygen in the parabronchi declines along their lengths as O diffuses into the blood. The blood capillaries leaving the exchanger near the entrance of airflow take up more O than do the capillaries leaving near the exit end of the parabronchi. When the contents of all capillaries mix, the final partial pressure of oxygen of the mixed pulmonary venous blood is higher than that of the exhaled air, but is nevertheless less than half that of the inhaled air, thus achieving roughly the same systemic arterial blood partial pressure of oxygen as mammals do with their bellows-type lungs.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The trachea is an area of dead space: the oxygen-poor air it contains at the end of exhalation is the first air to re-enter the posterior air sacs and lungs. In comparison to the mammalian respiratory tract, the dead space volume in a bird is, on average, 4.5 times greater than it is in mammals of the same size. Birds with long necks will inevitably have long tracheae, and must therefore take deeper breaths than mammals do to make allowances for their greater dead space volumes. In some birds (e.g. the whooper swan, "Cygnus cygnus", the white spoonbill, "Platalea leucorodia", the whooping crane, "Grus americana", and the helmeted curassow, "Pauxi pauxi") the trachea, which some cranes can be 1.5 m long, is coiled back and forth within the body, drastically increasing the dead space ventilation. The purpose of this extraordinary feature is unknown.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Air passes unidirectionally through the lungs during both exhalation and inspiration, causing, except for the oxygen-poor dead space air left in the trachea after exhalation and breathed in at the beginning of inhalation, little to no mixing of new oxygen-rich air with spent oxygen-poor air (as occurs in mammalian lungs), changing only (from oxygen-rich to oxygen-poor) as it moves (unidirectionally) through the parabronchi.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Avian lungs do not have alveoli as mammalian lungs do. Instead they contain millions of narrow passages known as parabronchi, connecting the dorsobronchi to the ventrobronchi at either ends of the lungs. Air flows anteriorly (caudal to cranial) through the parallel parabronchi. These parabronchi have honeycombed walls. The cells of the honeycomb are dead-end air vesicles, called "atria", which project radially from the parabronchi. The "atria" are the site of gas exchange by simple diffusion. The blood flow around the parabronchi (and their atria), forms a cross-current gas exchanger (see diagram on the left).


title: Bird anatomy

text: All species of birds with the exception of the penguin, have a small region of their lungs devoted to "neopulmonic parabronchi". This unorganized network of microscopic tubes branches off from the posterior air sacs, and open haphazardly into both the dorso- and ventrobronchi, as well as directly into the intrapulmonary bronchi. Unlike the parabronchi, in which the air moves unidirectionally, the air flow in the neopulmonic parabronchi is bidirectional. The neopulmonic parabronchi never make up more than 25% of the total gas exchange surface of birds.


title: Bird anatomy

text: In order for birds to produce sound, they use a organ located above the lungs called the Syrinx (bird anatomy), which is composed of tracheal rings, syringeal muscles, Tympaniform membrane, and internal bony structures that contribute to the production of sound. Air then passes through this organ, resulting in the vocalization of birds. Sound can then be produced through the movement of the Tympaniform membrane. Pitch can also changed by opening and closing of the Tympaniform membrane, allowing for higher and lower production of sound.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds have a four-chambered heart, in common with mammals, and some reptiles (mainly the crocodilia). This adaptation allows for an efficient nutrient and oxygen transport throughout the body, providing birds with energy to fly and maintain high levels of activity. A ruby-throated hummingbird's heart beats up to 1200 times per minute (about 20 beats per second).


title: Bird anatomy

text: Many birds possess a muscular pouch along the esophagus called a crop. The crop functions to both soften food and regulate its flow through the system by storing it temporarily. The size and shape of the crop is quite variable among the birds. Members of the family Columbidae, such as pigeons, produce a nutritious crop milk which is fed to their young by regurgitation.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The avian stomach is composed of two organs, the proventriculus and the gizzard that work together during digestion. The proventriculus is a rod shaped tube, which is found between the esophagus and the gizzard, that secretes hydrochloric acid and pepsinogen into the digestive tract. The acid converts the inactive pepsinogen into the active proteolytic enzyme, pepsin, which breaks down specific peptide bonds found in proteins, to produce a set of peptides, which are amino acid chains that are shorter than the original dietary protein. The gastric juices (hydrochloric acid and pepsinogen) are mixed with the stomach contents through the muscular contractions of the gizzard.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The gizzard is composed of four muscular bands that rotate and crush food by shifting the food from one area to the next within the gizzard. The gizzard of some species of herbivorous birds, like turkey and quails, contains small pieces of grit or stone called gastroliths that are swallowed by the bird to aid in the grinding process, serving the function of teeth. The use of gizzard stones is a similarity found between birds and dinosaurs, which left gastroliths as trace fossils.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The partially digested and pulverized gizzard contents, now called a bolus, are passed into the intestine, where pancreatic and intestinal enzymes complete the digestion of the digestible food. The digestion products are then absorbed through the intestinal mucosa into the blood. The intestine ends via the large intestine in the vent or cloaca which serves as the common exit for renal and intestinal excrements as well as for the laying of eggs. However, unlike mammals, many birds do not excrete the bulky portions (roughage) of their undigested food (e.g. feathers, fur, bone fragments, and seed husks) via the cloaca, but regurgitate them as food pellets.


title: Bird anatomy

text: There are three general ways in which birds drink: using gravity itself, sucking, and by using the tongue. Fluid is also obtained from food.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Most birds are unable to swallow by the "sucking" or "pumping" action of peristalsis in their esophagus (as humans do), and drink by repeatedly raising their heads after filling their mouths to allow the liquid to flow by gravity, a method usually described as "sipping" or "tipping up".


title: Bird anatomy

text: The notable exception is the family of pigeons and doves, the Columbidae; in fact, according to Konrad Lorenz in 1939:


title: Bird anatomy

text: one recognizes the order by the single behavioral characteristic, namely that in drinking the water is pumped up by peristalsis of the esophagus which occurs without exception within the order. The only other group, however, which shows the same behavior, the Pteroclidae, is placed near the doves just by this doubtlessly very old characteristic.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Although this general rule still stands, since that time, observations have been made of a few exceptions in both directions.


title: Bird anatomy

text: In addition, specialized nectar feeders like sunbirds (Nectariniidae) and hummingbirds (Trochilidae) drink


title: Bird anatomy

text: Many seabirds have glands near the eyes that allow them to drink seawater. Excess salt is eliminated from the nostrils. Many desert birds get the water that they need entirely from their food. The elimination of nitrogenous wastes as uric acid reduces the physiological demand for water, as uric acid is not very toxic and thus does not need to be diluted in as much water.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Male birds have two testes which become hundreds of times larger during the breeding season to produce sperm. The testes in birds are generally asymmetric with most birds having a larger left testis. Female birds in most families have only one functional ovary (the left one), connected to an oviduct — although two ovaries are present in the embryonic stage of each female bird. Some species of birds have two functional ovaries, and the kiwis always retain both.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Most male birds have no phallus. In the males of species without a phallus, sperm is stored in the seminal glomera within the cloacal protuberance prior to copulation. During copulation, the female moves her tail to the side and the male either mounts the female from behind or in front (as in the stitchbird), or moves very close to her. The cloacae then touch, so that the sperm can enter the female's reproductive tract. This can happen very fast, sometimes in less than half a second.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The sperm is stored in the female's sperm storage tubules for a period varying from a week to more than 100 days, depending on the species. Then, eggs will be fertilized individually as they leave the ovaries, before the shell is calcified in the oviduct. After the egg is laid by the female, the embryo continues to develop in the egg outside the female body.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Many waterfowl and some other birds, such as the ostrich and turkey, possess a phallus. This appears to be the ancestral condition among birds; most birds have lost the phallus. The length is thought to be related to sperm competition in species that usually mate many times in a breeding season; sperm deposited closer to the ovaries is more likely to achieve fertilization. The longer and more complicated phalli tend to occur in waterfowl whose females have unusual anatomical features of the vagina (such as dead end sacs and clockwise coils). These vaginal structures may be used to prevent penetration by the male phallus (which coils counter-clockwise). In these species, copulation is often violent and female co-operation is not required; the female ability to prevent fertilization may allow the female to choose the father for her offspring. When not copulating, the phallus is hidden within the proctodeum compartment within the cloaca, just inside the vent.


title: Bird anatomy

text: After the eggs hatch, parents provide varying degrees of care in terms of food and protection. Precocial birds can care for themselves independently within minutes of hatching; altricial hatchlings are helpless, blind, and naked, and require extended parental care. The chicks of many ground-nesting birds such as partridges and waders are often able to run virtually immediately after hatching; such birds are referred to as nidifugous. The young of hole-nesters, though, are often totally incapable of unassisted survival. The process whereby a chick acquires feathers until it can fly is called "fledging".


title: Bird anatomy

text: Some birds, such as pigeons, geese, and red-crowned cranes, remain with their mates for life and may produce offspring on a regular basis.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Avian kidneys function in almost the same way as the more extensively studied mammalian kidney, but with a few important adaptations; while much of the anatomy remains unchanged in design, some important modifications have occurred during their evolution.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The three-sectioned kidneys are placed on the bilateral side of the vertebral column, and there are connected to the lower gastrointestinal tract. Depending on the bird species, the cortex makes up around 71–80% of the kidney's mass, while the medulla is much smaller at about 5–15% of the mass. Blood vessels and other tubes make up the remaining mass.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Unique to birds is the presence of two different types of nephrons (the functional unit of the kidney): both reptilian-like nephrons located in the cortex; and mammalian-like nephrons located in the medulla.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Reptilian nephrons are more abundant but lack the distinctive loops of Henle seen in mammals. Because of the absence of the loop of Henle in birds, their ability to concentrate water doesn’t depend heavily on it. Water reabsorption depends entirely on the coprodeum and the rectum.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The urine collected by the kidney is emptied into the cloaca through the ureters and then to the colon by reverse peristalsis.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds have acute eyesight—raptors (birds of prey) have vision eight times sharper than humans—thanks to higher densities of photoreceptors in the retina (up to 1,000,000 per square mm in "Buteos", compared to 200,000 for humans), a high number of neurons in the optic nerves, a second set of eye muscles not found in other animals, and, in some cases, an indented fovea which magnifies the central part of the visual field. Many species, including hummingbirds and albatrosses, have two foveas in each eye. Many birds can detect polarised light.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The avian ear is adapted to pick up on slight and rapid changes of pitch found in bird song. General avian tympanic membrane form is ovular and slightly conical. Morphological differences in the middle ear are observed between species. Ossicles within green finches, blackbirds, song thrushes, and house sparrows are proportionately shorter to those found in pheasants, Mallard ducks, and sea birds. In song birds, a syrinx allows the respective possessors to create intricate melodies and tones. The middle avian ear is made up of three semicircular canals, each ending in an ampulla and joining to connect with the macula sacculus and lagena, of which the cochlea, a straight short tube to the external ear, branches from.


title: Bird anatomy

text: Birds have a large brain to body mass ratio. This is reflected in the advanced and complex bird intelligence.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The immune system of birds resembles that of other jawed vertebrates. Birds have both innate and adaptive immune systems. Birds are susceptible to tumours, immune deficiency and autoimmune diseases.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The bursa of fabricius, also known as the cloacal bursa, is a lymphoid organ which aids in the production of B lymphocytes during humoral immunity. The bursa of fabricius is present during juvenile stages but curls up, and in the sparrow is not visible after sexual maturity.


title: Bird anatomy

text: The bursa of fabricius is a circular pouch connected to the superior dorsal side of the cloaca . The bursa is composed of many folds, known as plica, which are lined by more than 10,000 follicles encompassed by connective tissue and surrounded by mesenchyme. Each follicle consists of a cortex that surrounds a medulla. The cortex houses the highly compacted B lymphocytes, whereas the medulla houses lymphocytes loosely. The medulla is separated from the lumen by the epithelium and this aids in the transport of epithelial cells into the lumen of the bursa. There are 150,000 B lymphocytes located around each follicle.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Slave breeding was the practice in slave states of the United States of slave owners to systematically force the reproduction of enslaved people to increase their profits. It included coerced sexual relations between enslaved men and women or girls, forced pregnancies of enslaved women, and favoring women or young girls who could produce a relatively large number of children. The objective was to increase the number of slaves without incurring the cost of purchase, and to fill labor shortages caused by the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: The laws that ultimately abolished the Atlantic slave trade came about as a result of the efforts of British abolitionist Christian groups such as the Society of Friends, known as Quakers, and Evangelicals led by William Wilberforce, whose efforts through the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade led to the passage of the 1807 Slave Trade Act by the British parliament in 1807. This led to increased calls for abolition in America, supported by members of the U.S. Congress from both the North and the South as well as President Thomas Jefferson.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: At the same time that the importation of slaves from Africa was being restricted or eliminated, the United States was undergoing a rapid expansion of cotton, sugar cane, and rice production in the Deep South and the West. Invention of the cotton gin enabled the profitable cultivation of short-staple cotton, which could be produced more widely than other types; this led to the economic preeminence of cotton throughout the Deep South. Slaves were treated as a commodity by owners and traders alike, and were regarded as the crucial labor for the production of lucrative cash crops that fed the triangle trade.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: The slaves were managed as chattel assets, similar to farm animals. Slave owners passed laws regulating slavery and the slave trade, designed to protect their financial investment. The enslaved workers had no more rights than a cow or a horse, or as famously put by the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, "they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect". On large plantations, enslaved families were separated for different types of labor. Men tended to be assigned to large field gangs. Workers were assigned to the task for which they were best physically suited, in the judgment of the overseer.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: The prohibition on the importation of slaves into the United States after 1808 limited the supply of slaves in the United States. This came at a time when the invention of the cotton gin enabled the expansion of cultivation in the uplands of short-staple cotton, leading to clearing lands cultivating cotton through large areas of the Deep South, especially the Black Belt. The demand for labor in the area increased sharply and led to an expansion of the internal slave market. At the same time, the Upper South had an excess number of slaves because of a shift to mixed-crops agriculture, which was less labor-intensive than tobacco. To add to the supply of slaves, slaveholders looked at the fertility of slave women as part of their productivity, and intermittently forced the women to have large numbers of children. During this time period, the terms "breeders", "breeding slaves", "child bearing women", "breeding period", and "too old to breed" became familiar.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Slave owners often bred their slaves to produce more workers. The function of such breeding farms was to produce as many slaves as possible for the sale and distribution throughout the South, in order to meet its needs. Two of the largest breeding farms were located in Richmond, VA, and the Maryland Eastern-Shore.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Planters in the Upper South states started selling slaves to the Deep South, generally through slave traders such as Franklin and Armfield. Louisville, Kentucky, on the Ohio River was a major slave market and port for shipping slaves downriver by the Mississippi to the South. New Orleans had the largest slave market in the country and became the fourth largest city in the US by 1840 and the wealthiest, mostly because of its slave trade and associated businesses.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: In the antebellum years, numerous escaped slaves wrote about their experiences in books called slave narratives. Many recounted that at least a portion of slave owners continuously interfered in the sexual lives of their slaves (usually the women). The slave narratives also testified that slave women were subjected to rape, arranged marriages, forced matings, sexual violation by masters, their sons or overseers, and other forms of abuse.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: The historian E. Franklin Frazier, in his book "The Negro Family", stated that "there were masters who, without any regard for the preferences of their slaves, mated their human chattel as they did their stock." Ex-slave Maggie Stenhouse remarked, "Durin' slavery there were stockmen. They was weighed and tested. A man would rent the stockman and put him in a room with some young women he wanted to raise children from."


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Several factors coalesced to make the breeding of slaves a common practice by the end of the 18th century, chief among them the enactment of laws and practices that transformed the view of slaves from "personhood" into "thinghood". In this way, slaves could be bought and sold as chattel without presenting a challenge to the religious beliefs and social mores of the society at large. All rights were to the owner of the slave, with the slave having no rights of self-determination either to his or her own person, spouse, or children.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Slaveholders began to think that slavery was grounded in the Bible. This view was inspired in part by an interpretation of the Genesis passage "And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren." (Genesis 9); Ham, son of Noah and father of Canaan, was deemed the antediluvian progenitor of the African people. Some whites used the Bible to justify the economic use of slave labor. The subjugation of slaves was taken as a natural right of the white slave owners. The second class position of the slave was not limited to his relationship with the slave master but was to be in relation to all whites. Slaves were considered subject to white persons.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: In a study of 2,588 slaves in 1860 by the economist Richard Sutch, he found that on slave-holdings with at least one woman, the average ratio of women to men exceeded 2:1. The imbalance was greater in the "selling states", where the excess of women over men was 300 per thousand.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Ned Sublette, co-author of "The American Slave Coast", states that the reproductive worth of "breeding women" was essential to the young country's expansion not just for labor but as merchandise and collateral stemming from a shortage of silver, gold, or sound paper tender. He concludes that slaves and their descendants were used as human savings accounts with newborns serving as interest that functioned as the basis of money and credit in a market premised on the continual expansion of slavery.


title: Slave breeding in the United States

text: Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman reject the idea that "systematic" slave breeding was a major economic concern in their 1974 book "Time on the Cross". They argue that there is very meager evidence for the systematic breeding of slaves for sale in the market in the Upper South during the 19th century. They distinguish systematic breeding—the interference in normal sexual patterns by masters with an aim to increase fertility or encourage desirable characteristics—from pro-natalist policies, the generalized encouragement of large families through a combination of rewards, improved living and working conditions for fertile women and their children, and other policy changes by masters. They point out that the demographic evidence is subject to a number of interpretations. Fogel argues that when planters intervened in the private lives of slaves it actually had a negative impact on population growth.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: The Triumph of Death is an oil panel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted c. 1562. It has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1827.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: The painting shows a panorama of an army of skeletons wreaking havoc across a blackened, desolate landscape. Fires burn in the distance, and the sea is littered with shipwrecks.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: A few leafless trees stud hills otherwise bare of vegetation. Fish lie rotting on the shores of a corpse-choked pond. Art historian James Snyder emphasizes the "scorched, barren earth, devoid of any life as far as the eye can see."


title: The Triumph of Death

text: In this setting, legions of skeletons advance on the living, who either flee in terror or try in vain to fight back. In the foreground, skeletons haul a wagon full of skulls. In the upper left corner, others ring the bell that signifies the death knell of the world. People are herded into a coffin-shaped trap decorated with crosses, while skeletons on horseback kill people with a scythe. This is one of four horses ridden by skeletons that are depicted in the painting, probably alluding to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The painting depicts people of different social backgrounds – from peasants and soldiers to nobles as well as a king and a cardinal – being taken by death indiscriminately.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: A skeleton parodies human happiness by playing a hurdy-gurdy, while the wheels of his cart crush a man as if his life is of no importance. A woman has fallen in the path of the death cart. She has a slender thread which is about to be cut by the scissors in her other hand—Bruegel's interpretation of Atropos. Nearby, another woman in the path of the cart holds in her hand a spindle and distaff, classical symbols of the fragility of human life—another Bruegel interpretation of Clotho and Lachesis.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: A starving dog nibbles at the face of a dead child she holds. Just beside her, a cardinal is helped towards his fate by a skeleton who mockingly wears the red hat, while a dying king's barrels of gold and silver coins are looted by yet another skeleton, oblivious to the fact that a skeleton is warning him with an empty hourglass that his life is about to literally run out of time. The foolish and miserly monarch's last thoughts still compel him to reach out for his useless and vain wealth, seeming unaware of the need for repentance. In the centre, an awakening religious pilgrim has his throat cut by a robber-skeleton for his money purse. Above the murder, skeleton-fishermen catch people in a net.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: In the bottom right-hand corner, a dinner has been broken up and the diners are putting up a futile resistance. They have drawn their swords in order to fight the skeletons dressed in winding-sheets. No less hopelessly, the court jester takes refuge beneath the dinner table. The backgammon board and the playing cards have been scattered, while a skeleton thinly disguised with a mask (possibly the face of a corpse) empties away the wine flasks. Of the menu of the interrupted meal, all that can be seen are a few pallid rolls of bread and an appetiser apparently consisting of a pared human skull. Above the table are two women. The one on the left struggles in vain while being embraced by a skeleton, in a hideous parody of after-dinner amorousness. The woman on the right is horrified with the realisation of mortality when a skeleton in a hooded robe mockingly seems to bring another dish, also consisting of human bones, to the table.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: In the bottom right-hand corner, a musician plays a lute while his lady sings. Both are oblivious to the fact that, behind both of them, the skeleton that plays along is grimly aware that the couple can not escape their inevitable doom. A cross sits in the centre of the painting. The painting shows aspects of everyday life in the mid-sixteenth century, when the risk of plague was very severe. Clothes are clearly depicted, as are pastimes such as playing cards and backgammon. It shows objects such as musical instruments, an early mechanical clock, scenes including a funeral service, and various methods of execution, including the breaking wheel, the gallows, burning at the stake, and the headsman about to behead a victim who has just taken wine and communion. In one scene, a human is the prey of a skeleton-hunter and his dogs.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: In another scene at the left, skeletons drag victims down to be drowned in a pond. A man with a grinding stone around his neck is about to be thrown into the pond by the skeletons—an echoing of Matthew 18.6 and Luke 17.2. On the bridge just above at the right, a skeleton is about to strike a prostrate victim with a Falchion.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: Bruegel combines two distinct visual traditions within the panel. These represent both the native tradition of Northern woodcuts of the Dance of Death, and the Italian conception of the "Triumph of Death". Classic examples of his frescoes can now be seen in the Palazzo Sclafani in Palermo and in the Camposanto Monumentale at Pisa.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: The painting plays a pivotal role in "The Rich Man's House", the final novel by Australian writer Andrew McGahan, with its theme of inevitable mortality. The rich man of the title (called Richman) has acquired the painting from the Museo del Prado and it hangs in pride of place in his mountaintop house.


title: The Triumph of Death

text: In "Underworld", a 1996 novel by Don Delillo, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover becomes utterly intrigued by the painting after and eventually obtains a print of it.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Offa's Dyke () is a large linear earthwork that roughly follows the border between England and Wales. The structure is named after Offa, the Anglo-Saxon king of Mercia from AD 757 until 796, who is traditionally believed to have ordered its construction. Although its precise original purpose is debated, it delineated the border between Anglian Mercia and the Welsh kingdom of Powys.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The earthwork, which was up to wide (including its flanking ditch) and high, traversed low ground, hills and rivers. Today it is protected as a scheduled monument. Some of its route is followed by the Offa's Dyke Path, a long-distance footpath that runs between Liverpool Bay in the north and the Severn Estuary in the south.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Although the Dyke has conventionally been dated to the Early Middle Ages of Anglo-Saxon England, research in recent decades – using techniques such as radioactive carbon dating – has challenged the conventional historiography and theories about the earthwork and shows that part was started in the early 5th century, during the sub-Roman period.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The generally accepted theory of the earthwork attributes most of its construction to Offa, King of Mercia from 757 to 796. The structure did not represent a mutually agreed boundary between the Mercians and the Kingdom of Powys. It had a ditch on the Welsh (western) side, with the displaced soil piled into a bank on the Mercian (eastern) side. This suggests that Mercians constructed it as a defensive earthwork, or to demonstrate the power and intent of their kingdom.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Throughout its entire length, the Dyke provides an uninterrupted view from Mercia into Wales. Where the earthwork encounters hills or high ground, it passes to the west of them.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Although historians often overlook Offa's reign because of limitations in source material, he ranks as one of the greatest Anglo-Saxon rulers – as evidenced in his ability to raise the workforce and resources required to construct Offa's Dyke. The construction of the earthwork probably involved a "corvée" system requiring vassals to build certain lengths of the earthwork for Offa in addition to performing their normal services to their king. The Tribal Hidage, a primary document, shows the distribution of land within 8th-century Britain; it shows that peoples were located within specified territories for administration.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The first historians and archaeologists to examine the Dyke seriously compared their conclusions with the late 9th-century writer Asser, who wrote: "there was in Mercia in fairly recent time a certain vigorous king called Offa, who terrified all the neighbouring kings and provinces around him, and who had a great dyke built between Wales and Mercia from sea to sea". In 1955, Sir Cyril Fox published the first major survey of the Dyke. He concurred with Asser that the earthwork ran 'from sea to sea', theorising that the Dyke ran from the River Dee estuary in the north to the River Wye in the south: approximately . Although Fox observed that Offa's Dyke was not a continuous linear structure, he concluded that earthworks were raised in only those areas where natural barriers did not already exist.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Sir Frank Stenton, the UK's most eminent 20th-century scholar on Anglo-Saxon England, accepted Fox's conclusions. He wrote the introduction to Fox's account of the Dyke. Although Fox's work has now been revised to some extent, it still remains a vital record of some stretches of Offa's Dyke that still existed between 1926 and 1928, when his three field surveys took place, but have since been destroyed.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: In 1978, Dr Frank Noble challenged some of Fox's conclusions, stirring up new academic interest in Offa's Dyke. His MPhil thesis entitled "Offa's Dyke Reviewed" (1978) raised several questions concerning the accepted historiography of Offa's Dyke. Noble postulated that the gaps in the Dyke were not due to the incorporation of natural features as defensive barriers, but instead the gaps were a "ridden boundary", perhaps incorporating palisades, that left no archaeological trace. Noble also helped establish the Offa's Dyke Association, which maintains the Offa's Dyke Path. This long-distance footpath mostly follows the route of the dyke and is a designated British National Trail.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: John Davies wrote of Fox's study: "In the planning of it, there was a degree of consultation with the kings of Powys and Gwent. On the Long Mountain near Trelystan, the dyke veers to the east, leaving the fertile slopes in the hands of the Welsh; near Rhiwabon, it was designed to ensure that Cadell ap Brochwel retained possession of the Fortress of Penygadden." And, for Gwent, Offa had the dyke built "on the eastern crest of the gorge, clearly with the intention of recognizing that the River Wye and its traffic belonged to the kingdom of Gwent".


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Ongoing research and archaeology on Offa's Dyke has been undertaken for many years by the Extra-Mural Department of the University of Manchester. Interviews with Dr David Hill, broadcast in episode 1 of "In Search of the Dark Ages" (aired in 1979), show support for Noble's idea. Most recently, Hill and Margaret Worthington have undertaken considerable research on the Dyke. Their work, though far from finished, has demonstrated that there is little evidence for the Dyke stretching from sea to sea. Rather, they claim that it is a shorter structure stretching from Rushock Hill north of the Herefordshire Plain to Llanfynydd, near Mold, Flintshire, some 64 miles (103 km). According to Hill and Worthington, dykes in the far north and south may have different dates, and though they may be connected with Offa's Dyke, there is as yet no compelling evidence behind this. However, not all experts accept this view.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: 'Ofer' means 'border' or 'edge' in Old English, giving rise to the possibility of alternative derivations for some border features associated with Offa.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The Roman historian Eutropius in his book "Historiae Romanae Breviarium", written around 369, mentions the Wall of Severus, a structure built by Septimius Severus, who was Roman Emperor between 193 and 211:


title: Offa's Dyke

text: "Novissimum bellum in Britannia habuit, utque receptas provincias omni securitate muniret, vallum per CXXXIII passuum milia a mari ad mare deduxit. Decessit Eboraci admodum senex, imperii anno sexto decimo, mense tertio." "Historiae Romanae Breviarium, viii 19.1"


title: Offa's Dyke

text: He had his most recent war in Britain, and to fortify the conquered provinces with all security, he built a wall for 133 miles from sea to sea. He died at York, a reasonably old man, in the sixteenth year and third month of his reign.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: This source is conventionally thought to be referring, in error, to either Hadrian's Wall, , or the Antonine Wall, , which were both shorter and built in the 2nd century. Recently, some writers have suggested that Eutropius may have been referring to the earthwork later called Offa's Dyke. Most archaeologists reject this theory.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The Venerable Bede also mentions the barrier built by Septimus Severus, but Bede says that the rampart was made of earth and timber, a description which would closer match Offa's Dyke than Hadrian's Wall, though it would describe the Antonine Wall:


title: Offa's Dyke

text: After many great and severe battles, (Severus) thought fit to divide that part of the island, which he had recovered, from the other unconquered nations, not with a wall, as some imagine, but with a rampart. For a wall is made of stones, but a rampart, with which camps are fortified to repel the assaults of enemies, is made of sods, cut out of the earth, and raised high above the ground, like a wall, having in front of it the trench whence the sods were taken, with strong stakes of wood fixed above it. Thus Severus drew a great trench and strong rampart, fortified with several towers, from sea to sea. "Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, Bk 1-5"


title: Offa's Dyke

text: However, the solution to the problem lies a few chapters later in Bede's account. In Book One Chapter Twelve of Bede's "Ecclesiastical History", he writes that the Romans "built a strong wall of stone directly from sea to sea in a straight line between the towns that had been built as strong-points, where Severus had built his earthwork ... straight from east to west". The strong wall of stone cannot refer to the Antonine Wall or Offa's Dyke, so it clearly refers to Hadrian's Wall, especially as Offa's Dyke runs from north to south. Also, as Severus's earthwork is described as being in the same location as Hadrian's Wall, it cannot be Offa's Dyke either, so the earth rampart with a great trench that Bede refers to must be the Vallum, the adjoining earthen barrier immediately south of Hadrian's Wall. Where Bede got it wrong was in attributing the Vallum to Septimius Severus, and saying that it predated the Wall. In fact the Vallum was the work of Hadrian, and slightly post-dated the Wall.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: Evidence has also been found that challenges the accepted date of the construction of Offa's Dyke. In December 1999, Shropshire County Council archaeologists uncovered the remains of a hearth or fire on the original ground surface beneath Wat's Dyke near Oswestry. Carbon dating analysis of the burnt charcoal and burnt clay "in situ" showed it was covered by earth on or around AD 446. Archaeologists concluded that this part of Wat's Dyke, so long thought of as Anglo-Saxon and a mid-8th-century contemporary of Offa's Dyke, must have been built 300 years earlier in the post-Roman period.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: In 2014, excavations by the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust focused on nine samples of the Dyke near Chirk. Radiocarbon dating of redeposited turf resulted in a series of dates. In one section, these ranged from AD 430 to AD 652 and in another section from AD 887 to AD 1019: confirming that the bank is clearly post-Roman, and that at least some rebuilding work took place after Offa's reign. It has been suggested that Offa's Dyke may have been a long-term project by several Mercian kings. Further excavations by Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust on the Dyke at Chirk Castle found well-preserved remains of the ditch under later parkland; radiocarbon samples were recovered, but the results have not yet been made public.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The England–Wales border still mostly passes within a few miles of the course of Offa's Dyke through the Welsh Marches. A section of the Dyke which overlooks Tintern Abbey and includes the Devil's Pulpit near Chepstow is now managed by English Heritage.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: All sections of Offa's Dyke that survive as visible earthworks, or as infilled but undeveloped ditch, are designated as a scheduled monument. However, some parts of the Dyke may also remain buried under later development. Some sections are also defined as Sites of Special Scientific Interest, including stretches within the Lower Wye Valley SSSI and the Highbury Wood National Nature Reserve. Parts are located within the Wye Valley and Shropshire Hills Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Most of the line of Offa's Dyke is designated as a public right of way, including those sections which form part of the Offa's Dyke Path.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: In August 2013, a section of Dyke, between Chirk and Llangollen, was destroyed by a local landowner. The destruction of the Dyke to build a stable was said to be like "driving a road through Stonehenge", but the perpetrator escaped punishment.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: In 2010, the Dyke was proposed by the Offa's Dyke Association and local authorities for World Heritage Site status. Part of the proposal stated:


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The Offa's Dyke Centre is a purpose-built information centre in the town of Knighton, on Offa's Dyke on the border between England (Shropshire) and Wales (Powys). Some of the best remains of the earthworks can be seen within a two-minute walk from the centre.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The Offa's Dyke Path (Welsh: "Llwybr Clawdd Offa") is a long-distance footpath close to the England–Wales border. Although large sections are close to the Dyke itself, the Path is longer, and in some places passes at some distance from the earthworks. Opened on 10 July 1971, the Path is one of Britain's longest National Trails, stretching for from the Severn estuary at Sedbury, near Chepstow, to Prestatyn on the north Wales coast. There is a visitor centre at Knighton.


title: Offa's Dyke

text: The dyke has a cultural significance symbolising the separation between England and Wales: a symbolism similar to Hadrian's Wall between England and Scotland in the Scottish Marches. George Borrow, in his "Wild Wales" (1862), drawn from folklore, claimed that:


title: School Dance (film)

text: School Dance is a 2014 American musical comedy-drama film directed, co-written, and produced by Nick Cannon. The film stars Bobb'e J. Thompson, Luenell, Mike Epps, George Lopez, Lil Duval, Katt Williams, and Wilmer Valderrama. The film was released on July 2, 2014, in select theaters, VOD, and Digital HD. It is Cannon's directorial feature film debut.


title: School Dance (film)

text: The film opens with a news broadcast about a teenager named Jason Jackson being shot outside the Monte Vista High School dance lock-in. Jason tells the story from the beginning, starting with him trying to get into the most popular dance clique in school, The Ranger$. They say he has to pass the initiation of getting a pair of panties from one of the Sweet Gyrls by midnight. Jason then decides that he is going to attempt to get a pair of panties from his longtime crush Anastacia during the school's lock-in.


title: School Dance (film)

text: Meanwhile, Day Day, one of the Ranger$ and Jason's older cousin, owes Anastacia's eldest brother Junior $2,000 by midnight due to Day Day's father Darren telling Junior that Day Day would have his money after losing to him in a game of dominoes. In his English class, Jason gives Anastacia a poem he wrote about her after she forgets to do the homework assignment expect the teacher makes her read it in front of the class, which everyone including Anastacia finds to be very great. After school is over, Anastacia gives Jason her number, so they can write a song together sometime.


title: School Dance (film)

text: Another subplot of the film follows two police officers Officer P'eniss and Lagney, who are chasing down the New Boyz who are on their way to the lock-in but get caught with weed brownies and "grape juice", which Officer Lagney consumes.


title: School Dance (film)

text: At the school dance lock-in, Jason, Anastacia, the Ranger$, and Sweet Gyrls play "seven minutes in heaven", but when it is Jason and Anastacia's turn, she tells him that she already knows his plan, and they decide to just stay friends. They later compete in a talent show to win $2,000 but when it comes to the Ranger$' performance, Jason finally beats his fear and raps to help them win the money. However, the Sweet Gyrls end up winning the prize money.


title: School Dance (film)

text: At midnight, Jason and the Ranger$ meet the Eses in the parking lot and are about to be killed until the wannabe gangsters start a drive-by shooting. Jason saves Anastacia, but is shot in the process. Jason is sent to the hospital and Anastacia goes with him, becomes his girlfriend, and gives the $2,000 prize money to Flaco.


title: School Dance (film)

text: The film ends with Jason's mother, Mamma Tawanna, coming into the parking lot with a gun, trying to figure out who shot Jason and breaks the fourth wall by showing Nick, the producers, and the crew then her shouting out at the audience.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast (), also referred to as Ivano-Frankivshchyna (), is an oblast (region) in western Ukraine. Its administrative center is the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. As is the case with most other oblasts of Ukraine this region has the same name as its administrative center – which was renamed by the Soviet Ukrainian authorities after the Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko on 9 November 1962. It has a population of


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is also known to Ukrainians by a deep-rooted alternative name: "Prykarpattia" (although some sources may also consider the southern Lviv Oblast including such cities as Stryi, Truskavets, and Drohobych, as also part of Prykarpattia). Prykarpattia, together with Lviv and Ternopil regions, was the main body of the historic region of eastern Halychyna; which in the 13th century was a part of the Kingdom of Rus and the Halych-Volyn Principality (see Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia). Along with the Lviv and Ternopil regions "Prykarpattia" is a component of the Carpathian Euroregion.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: During the times of the Second Polish Republic the area was known as Stanisławów Voivodeship (1918–1939) and later, after the Soviet invasion of Poland, as Stanislav Oblast (1939–1962). During World War II it was part of the District of Galicia in General Governorate. Until the 20th century the major center of the region was the city of Kolomyia (which is a major cultural center of Pokuttya, the traditional name for the southern part of the oblast).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: On November 9, 1962, a decree was issued by the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of the UkrSSR, according to which: "Taking into account the wishes of the labor collectives of the city and region, the Presidium of the Verkhovna Rada of the USSR decided to rename the city of Stanislav (Stanislaviv) to Ivano-Frankivsk, and the Stanislav Oblast to Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast." The renaming was timed to the 300th anniversary of the city's founding and in honor of the outstanding Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: As with the rest of Ukraine's oblasts Ivano-Frankivsk may also be known by its matronymical name "Ivano-Frankivshchyna ("). However, that name did not receive general public acceptance and commonly Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is almost always called "Prykarpattia" (en. Prekarpathians) – a historic name for the same region. (Geographically the historic region covers a much larger portion of Ukraine than just the Ivano-Frankivsk region.) Formerly as Stanislavshchyna or Stanyslavivshchyna – .


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast borders Lviv Oblast to its north and west, Zakarpattia Oblast to its south-west, has a 50-km long state border with Romania (Maramureș County) to its immediate south, and it borders Chernivtsi Oblast to the south-east and Ternopil Oblast to the east. It is situated partly in the Eastern European Plain and partly Carpathian Foothills. The oblast may be divided into three regions: mountainous, pre-mountainous, and plains.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The climate is mildly-continental and damp with cool summers and mild winters. The average monthly temperature in June is with in the mountains. The average monthly temperature in January is with in the mountains. Average precipitation varies annually around with in the mountains.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The region is situated between two main regional tectonic plates: Carpathian fold belt and Volhynia-Podillya plate. The most prominent features of the first one are the Carpathian Mountains, while the second one - Dniester river.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The Carpathian Mountains contribute tremendously to the change in relief of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast and their elevation rises from north-east to south-west stretching along the oblast's south-western border. The elevation of the oblast varies from 230m to 2,061m above sea level. The mountains occupy almost one half of the whole Oblast and consist of two main mountain ranges: the Gorgany (highest peak – Mt. Syvulya Major (1,836m)) and the Chornohora range (highest peak – Mt. Hoverla (2,061m)).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The rest of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is located within the Dniester river and Prut river valleys. The plains of the oblast are part of the Carpathian Foothills and Opillia Upland (part of Podillia Upland) which are cut through by Dniester. The upland has a temperate-climate habitat mixed with grassland and woodland – also known as the forest steppe. The relief of the region consists mostly of rolling hills of 230-400m over the sea level. Near river valleys are common canyons and ravines.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: A particular feature of the southern region of the Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is Stanislav Canyon, in the so-called Kherson Mountains, a deep cut in the local topography where episodic water flowing into the Baltic has steeply eroded a canyon formation.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The Dniester flows mainly through the Halych Raion and along the administrative border between Ivano-Frankivsk and Ternopil Oblasts. The territory of the region within immediate proximity to the river is traditionally known as "Opillia". Opillia, however, stretches far beyond the oblast and only covers two of its raions: Halych Raion and Rohatyn Raion, both located in the north. Relief in the area consists of rolling hills uplands.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The Carpathian foothills consist mostly of low denudation accumulative uplands, while the right bank of Dniester along the border with the Ternopil Oblast depicts karst type relief of Pokuttia Upland. Because of it near that area along Dniester relief shows forms of canyon. Pokuttia Upland between Bystrytsia of Nadvirna and Prut River (Prut-Bystrytsia Upland) serves as drainage divide within the oblast between Dniester and Prut. Carpathian foothills have two depressions: one is at the confluence of Bystrytsia of Solotvyn, Bystrytsia of Nadvirna, Vorona and Bystrytsia rivers, called Bystrytsia Depression, and another is around the city of Kalush, called Kalush Depression.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast has a plethora of rivers, waterfalls, mountainous brooks, and smaller ponds, but there is almost no other type of bodies of water such as lakes and water reservoirs. Most of rivers either flow into Dniester or Prut River (tributary of Danube). The total water drainage area of the region is . Segments of Dniester and Cheremosh River are used as administrative borders with Ternopil and Chernivtsi oblasts respectfully.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The water drainage divide between Dniester and Prut cuts the region through middle of following districts: Nadvirna Raion, Kolomyia Raion, Tlumach Raion, and Horodenka Raion.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The region is a home to some 456 preserved areas (on June 1, 2006) of some , 30 out of which are of all-national importance with an area of and the rest of a local importance. In the Ivano-Frankivsk Region is located a strict nature reserve Gorgany that was created in 1996. There are five national parks in the region. There are numerous natural monuments of feature and habitat management areas (zakazniks).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The government in the region is headed by the chairman of the regional state administration (for simplicity sake - governor) appointed by the President of Ukraine. The governor appoints his deputies forming his regional governing cabinet to supervise the government policies in the region. Aside of the state administration the region has its own council that is headed by its chairman. The composition of the council depends on the popular vote in the region, while the chairman is elected within the elected council.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Regional State Administration consists of the chairman and his deputies (5) supported by the "aparat" of the administration. Within the administration are numerous departments, each of them headed by a chief of department. The Ivano-Frankivsk Region State Administration has 17 departments and other government institutions such as the Children Service, regional state archives, and others.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is administratively subdivided into 14 districts (raions) as well as 6 cities (municipalities) which represent a separate raion and in direct subordination to the regional government, among which are Bolekhiv, Kalush, Kolomyya, Yaremche, and the administrative center of the region, Ivano-Frankivsk. Burshtyn became the 6th city of regional importance in 2014. The formation of the region was established in 1921 in the Second Polish Republic and was in majority preserved during the Soviet times. Most of the districts (former powiats) were reestablished as well in 1960s. The major industrial and cultural centers of the region were given a wider form of autonomy and assigned as the cities of regional subordination.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The oblast has 15 cities which are (alphabetical order): Bolekhiv, Burshtyn, Dolyna, Halych, Horodenka, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kalush, Kolomyia, Kosiv, Nadvirna, Rohatyn, Sniatyn, Tlumach, Tysmenytsia, and Yaremche. Five of those cities are of regional importance and the other ten are of district importance. All cities have its own council and mayor that represent a local form of self-government allowed by the laws on local administration and the Constitution of Ukraine. City municipalities of the region are independent from any district administration.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Within the region there are 24 urbanized settlements (towns) which are a special settlement classification inherited from the Soviet municipal organization. Three of those towns serve as administrative centers of their respective districts. Each town has its own council that along with surrounding village councils compose a district administration which has its own executive branch, District State Administration, appointed by the President of Ukraine. Towns do not have a mayoral office and their head of the council serves as the main representative of the whole settlement.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: All other settlements in the region are considered rural and accounted for some 765 localities including villages and 20 selyshches (smaller villages) which are administered by 477 village councils. Some village municipalities consist of several villages, while others are a single-village municipality. There are several villages that are part of city municipalities such as Ivano-Frankivsk, Bolekhiv, and Yaremcha, while all others are spread out across the districts of the region.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: When on November 27, 1939, the Soviet regime was established in Stanisławów Voivodeship, the Polish administrative division of it was kept almost the same until January 17, 1940. Only two powiats Stryi and Zydaczow were transferred away.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: On December 4, 1939, the voivodeship was officially renamed into Stanislav Oblast. In 1940 the oblast was redivided into 37 raions and two municipalities (cities of oblast subordination). The administrative centers of the former raions were following settlements: Bohorodchany (town), Bolekhiv (city), Bilshivtsi (town), Bukachivtsi (village), Burshtyn (town), Voinylov (village), Vyhoda (village), Halych (town), Hvizdets (town), Horodenka (town), Delyatyn (town), Dolyna (city), Zhabie (village), Zhovten (town), Zabolotiv (town), Kalush (city), Kolomyia (city), Korshiv (village), Kosiv (city), Kuty (town), Lanchyn (town), Lysets (town), Nadvirna (city), Novytsya (village), Obertyn (town), Otynya (town), Pechenizhyn (town), Rohatyn (city), Rozhnyativ (town), Snyatyn (city), Solotvyn (town), Stanislav (city), Tlumach (city), Tysmenytsya (town), Chernelytsya (town), Yabluniv (town), Yaremcha (village). Two municipalities were cities of Stanislav and Kolomyia. On November 11, 1940, Delyatyn Raion was liquidated. On November 16, 1940, Novytsya Raion was re-administrated under town of Perehinske.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: During the World War II the region was occupied by the Nazi Germany (see Operation Barbarossa). Along with Lviv, Drohobych and Tarnopil oblasts, it was reorganized on August 1, 1941, into Distrikt Galizien centered in Lemberg and annexed to the General Government. The area of the former Stanislav Oblast was divided into three kreis (counties): Kalusz, Stanislau, and Kolomea. On July 27, 1944, the region was liberated from the Nazi Germany by the Soviet Army (see Lvov–Sandomierz Offensive).


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The administrative division of Stanislav Oblast was reinstated and confirmed on January 1, 1947, with the same 36 raions and two municipalities as their existed before the war. Several settlements, however, had their status elevated. The status of a town obtained Bukachivtsi, Vyhoda, and Yaremcha, while Halych and Horodenka became recognized as cities. The next major changes in the region took place in the late 1950s. In 1957 five raions were liquidated: Vyhoda, Zhovten, Kuty, Pechenizhyn, and Chernelytsya. Then another five were liquidated in 1959: Bukachivtsi, Korshiv, Perehinske, Solotvyn, and Stanislav. On December 30, 1962, within the oblast was created the Verkhovyna Industrial Raion, centered in a town of Verkhovyna.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: On October 28, 1963, another major change took place when raions of the oblast were re-administered into the six rural raions, one – industrial, and two municipalities. There were the following administrative centers: Bohorodchany, Halych, Horodenka, Kalush, Kolomyia, Kosiv, Dolyna (municipalities – Ivano-Frankivsk (new name) and Kolomyia). On January 4, 1965, Dolyna Industrial Raion Raion was redesigned into the regular raion, while five other previous raions were recreated: Nadvirna, Rohatyn, Rozhnyativ, Snyatyn, and Tlumach. On December 8, 1966, there were created Verkhovyna and Ivano-Frankivsk raions. That was the last major re-administration of the oblast.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: On March 20, 1972, in the city of Kalush was created a municipality and it became a city of oblast subordination. On December 30, 1977, the same thing happened to Yaremcha status of which was elevated as well. On March 28, 1982, the Ivano-Frankivsk Raion was re-administrated under the Tysmenytsya Raion. On October 21, 1993, the city of Bolekhiv became of an oblast subordination with its own municipality. On December 14, 2006, Yaremcha was renamed into Yaremche.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: According to the Ukrainian Census of 2001 most of the population consider themselves Ukrainians with a small Russian diaspora mostly located within the city of Ivano-Frankivsk. The Russian language is the dominant foreign language in the region and well understood by everyone. Among other common foreign languages are Polish, English, and German languages. The population in the region as the rest of the country was on substantial decline


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The dominant religion in Ivano-Frankvisk Oblast is Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, professed by 57% of the population. Another 35% is Eastern Orthodox and 6% are unaffiliated generic Christians. Adherents of Roman Catholicism and Protestantism make up 1% of the population respectively.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast is home of numerous cultural festivals. There are numerous natural and architectural benchmarks that are scattered throughout the region.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: One of the famous festivals is the Ukrainian International festival of ethnic music and land art "Sheshory" that usually takes place in the picturesque Hutsul village of the Kosiv Raion Sheshory since 2003. From 2007, however the festival has spread throughout the country taking place in Podillya, Kyiv Oblast, and other places. In August 2010 the village of Spas in the Kolomyia Raion hosted a culinary event "Smachny Spas" in association with "Sheshory", while in July of the same year another eco-cultural event "Trypilske kolo" in the Rzhyschiv city of Kyiv region.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: The city of Ivano-Frankivsk hosts several other festivals such as the All-Ukrainian festival of art collectives "Carpathian Spring" that takes place every May. Every two year the festival of modern art "Impreza" takes place every other year. Every odd year the city hosts the festival national-patriotic music and poetry "Freedom". Since May 2001 every year the city of Ivano-Frankivsk is the capital of the European blacksmith movement hosting the "Festival of blacksmith" and the art exhibition "Ornamental Forging" that takes place at the Mickewicz Square and neighboring Andrei Sheptytsky Square in city's old town.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: On the territory of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast are located numerous monuments of architectural heritage. On February 8, 1994, near the city of Halych was established the National preserve of Ancient Halych. Among other important sites in the region is the Church of the Holy Spirit located in the city of Rohatyn as well as the Manyava Skete near the village of Manyava in Bohorodchany Raion. The oblast also accounts for some number of various wooden churches of Boykos and Hutsuls traditional architecture.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: In the Dolyna Raion (western region) visitors can find the Carpathian Train that still uses a narrow gauge railway system. Train is used for its direct purpose transporting wood as well as for a tourist recreation. The biggest benchmark of the region is the Hoverla mountain, the tallest in the nation. However, due to increased touristic activities in the post-Soviet times the mountain is a subject to a high degree of pollution. No less interesting destination serve the Dovbush rocks that are located near the city of Bolekhiv in mountains. That location was a base of an anti-Polish Peasant movement. Near the Manyava Skete is located the highest waterfall in Ukraine, the Maniava waterfall (20 m). In the same Bohorodchany Raion visitors may find the local mud volcano located near the village of Starunia. It was noticed for the first time in 1977 after an earthquake that took place in Romania.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Bukovel ski resort, centralized around the village of Polianytsia, on the ridge-lines of the Carpathian Mountain range at an elevation of represents a major all seasons tourist destination in the region. It is one of the most popular ski resorts in Eastern Europe and in 2012 was named the fastest growing ski resort in the world. Bukovel consists of 16 ski lifts with approximately 50 kilometers of pistes. As well as skiing visitors to the resort can enjoy 7 world class hotels, chalets with swimming pools and saunas, as well as numerous other recreational activities ranging from family friendly leisurely activities to extreme sports. During the warmer months the resort boasts cross-country and downhill mountain biking trails. Over 6,000 people visit the resort every year.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: In 1979 Sofia Rotaru performed the song "Krai" ("[Native] Land") about "Prykarpattia". In the song Rotaru calls "Prykarpattia" the land of the Cheremosh and Prut rivers.


title: Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast

text: Through Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast runs one European route which travels through the city of Rohatyn in the north. It coincides with the Ukrainian International highway which is the only highway of that classification in the region. The highway travels from Zhydachiv in Lviv Oblast and after passing Rohatyn travels towards Berezhany in Ternopil Oblast.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: The soprano saxophone is a higher-register variety of the saxophone, a woodwind instrument invented in the 1840s. The soprano is the third-smallest member of the saxophone family, which consists (from smallest to largest) of the soprillo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, contrabass saxophone and tubax. Soprano saxophones are the smallest and thus highest-pitched saxophone in common use.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: A transposing instrument pitched in the key of B, modern soprano saxophones with a high F key have a range from concert A to E (written low B to high F) and are therefore pitched one octave above the tenor saxophone. There is also a soprano saxophone pitched in C, which is uncommon; most examples were produced in America in the 1920s.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: The soprano has all the keys of other saxophone models (with the exception of the low A on some baritones and altos). Soprano saxophones were originally keyed from low B to high E, but a low B mechanism was patented in 1887 and by 1910 nearly all saxophones were keyed to low B including sopranos. During the 1920s it became standard for sopranos to be keyed to high F. Starting in the 1950s, high F was offered as an option on some sopranos, and by the 1970s most professional-level instruments had a high F key. Nearly all sopranos made today are keyed to high F as standard, and some recent professional sopranos (e.g. those made by Yanagisawa, Selmer, and Yamaha) may have a high G key next to the F key. Additionally, skilled players can make use of the altissimo register, which allows them to cover these notes and play even higher, usually regardless of their instrument's keyed range.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Many sopranos made since the 1990s feature detachable necks and will include one straight and one downward-curved neck. A fully straight soprano must be held upward and outward while playing, which allows it to project well and can allow for a more energetic appearance in performance. A curved neck allows the instrument to be held somewhat downward and still maintain a proper mouthpiece angle, which makes for easier use of a music stand and can reduce fatigue in the right arm for some players. Some also believe that a curved neck gives the soprano a warmer, less nasal tone, although this is the subject of debate among players. However, some players, technicians, and engineers prefer one-piece sopranos over a detachable neck because the neck receiver/tenon system is prone to excessive wear and can develop leaks over time which hinder the instrument's playability if not corrected, so due to some players' preference for curved necks, occasionally one-piece instruments are bent during manufacturing above the octave key (e.g. the Yamaha YSS-62R and YSS-82ZR). Some manufacturers also produce fully curved sopranos which look much like a small alto saxophone with a straighter neck/crook, as well as 'tipped-bell' sopranos which are straight but have the bell angled upward somewhat and are typically used with a curved neck (these are often called 'saxellos' for their resemblance to the somewhat rare Saxello model produced by King in the 1920s, though an actual Saxello's bell is angled more and its bore is different). All variants have the same keys and range as the traditional straight soprano, but as with the necks, some players believe curved and tipped-bell sopranos sound warmer and less nasal.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Due to the higher pitch of the soprano, it is more sensitive with respect to intonation than the lower saxophones, so a player must have more skill with breath support, tongue and soft palate position, and embouchure (collectively known as voicing). It is also less forgiving of poor maintenance than lower saxophones. This has led to the common belief that soprano is either inherently out of tune, or far more difficult to play than lower saxophones, but many experienced players and teachers disagree with these sentiments.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Soprano saxophone mouthpieces are available in various designs, allowing players to tailor their tone as desired.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: The soprano saxophone is mainly used as a solo and chamber instrument in classical music, though it is occasionally used in a concert band or orchestra. It is included in the saxophone quartet and plays a lead role. Many solo pieces have been written for it by composers such as Heitor Villa-Lobos, Alan Hovhaness, Jennifer Higdon, Takashi Yoshimatsu, Charles Koechlin, John Mackey, Miklos Maros, Marc Mellits, and Belinda Reynolds.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: As an orchestral instrument, it has been used in several compositions. It was used by Richard Strauss in his Sinfonia Domestica, where included in the music are parts for four saxophones, including a soprano saxophone in C. It is also used in Maurice Ravel's "Boléro" and has a featured solo directly following the tenor saxophone's solo. Vincent d'Indy includes a soprano in his opera Fervaal.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Notable classical soprano saxophonists include Carina Rascher, Christine Rall, Michael Hernandez, Eugene Rousseau, Kenneth Tse, Jean-Yves Fourmeau, Jean-Denis Michat, Vincent David, Rob Buckland, John Harle, Mariano Garcia, Claude Delangle, Arno Bornkamp, Timothy McAllister, and Christopher Creviston.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: While not as popular as the alto and tenor saxes in jazz, the soprano saxophone has played a role in its evolution. Greats of the jazz soprano sax include 1930s virtuoso Sidney Bechet, 1950s innovator Steve Lacy, and, beginning with his landmark 1961 album "My Favorite Things", John Coltrane.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Other well-known jazz players include: Wayne Shorter, Paul McCandless, Johnny Hodges, Walter Parazaider, Oliver Nelson, Bob Berg, Joe Farrell, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Fortune, Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Gary Bartz, Bennie Maupin, Branford Marsalis, Kirk Whalum, Jan Garbarek, Danny Markovitch of Marbin, Paul Winter, Dave Liebman, Evan Parker, Hanah Jon Taylor, Sam Newsome, Kenny G, and Charlie Mariano (including in his work with bassist Eberhard Weber).


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Other notable soprano saxophonists include Julian Smith, Joshua Redman, Jay Beckenstein, Dave Koz, Grover Washington Jr., Ronnie Laws, LeRoi Moore, Sarah Skinner of Red Dirt Skinners, and Nigerian Afrobeat multi-instrumentalist Fela Kuti.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Big band music sometimes calls for an alto or tenor saxophone player to double on soprano saxophone, particularly the lead alto.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Similar to the flute, the soprano saxophone is culturally associated with smooth jazz and easy listening. Thus, it is often the subject of various instrumental "background music" played in elevators, hotels, supermarkets, shopping malls and other indoor facilities.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Kenny G has become a colloquial icon of the instrument, featuring in occasional commercials and internet memes. Julian Smith inspired by the work of Kenny G, placed third on Britain's Got Talent in 2009, doing a solo performance in each of three appearances with a soprano saxophone.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: In some popular music interpretations, the soprano saxophone is commonly paired with FM-type electric piano and electronic drum sounds to create a smooth, R&B-like arrangement. It is also popular in Japanese music, most commonly within the AOR and "city pop" genre.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: Because of its sometimes similar sound to the oboe, the soprano saxophone can be confused with it by listeners. The soprano saxophone may also be used as a substitute when an oboe is not available.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: The soprano saxophone is also sometimes confused with the Bclarinet. The clarinet has a distinctly different timbre, is usually much quieter, can play an augmented fourth lower and is commonly played as much as a fifth higher (though the soprano saxophone can also be played this high with altissimo, it is uncommon for a player to do so). The saxophone is made of brass and is either lacquered or plated with silver, gold, or occasionally black nickel, while the clarinet is either black or distinctly wood-grained, with silver or gold keys.


title: Soprano saxophone

text: In 2001, François Louis created the aulochrome, a woodwind instrument made of two joined soprano saxophones, which can be played either in unison or in harmony.


title: The School Nurse Files

text: The School Nurse Files () is a South Korean streaming television series starring Jung Yu-mi and Nam Joo-hyuk. Based on the 2015 award-winning novel "School Nurse Ahn Eun-young" by Chung Serang, it was released on Netflix on September 25, 2020.


title: The School Nurse Files

text: Ahn Eun-young is a school nurse with the power to see human desires, feelings, and spirits that exist in the form of "jellies". Some of these jellies can take on dangerous, monstrous forms. Ahn is appointed to a new high school where mysterious incidents are taking place. Along with a fellow teacher, Hong In-pyo, a man with a special energy field around him that protects him from jellies, she tries to solve these mysterious cases.


title: The School Nurse Files

text: On December 19, 2018, Netflix announced that it would produce a 6-part adaptation of the South Korean novel "School Nurse Ahn Eun-young". Its author, Chung Serang, wrote the series, while Lee Kyoung-mi, who previously wrote and directed an episode of the anthology series "Persona" for the streaming platform, served as the director. The series is produced for Netflix by KeyEast.


title: The School Nurse Files

text: It was revealed that Jung Yu-mi would portray the titular role when Netflix announced the commission of the series. On March 8, 2019, Nam Joo-hyuk was confirmed to have joined the main cast.


title: Japanese literature

text: Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanese creole language. Indian literature also had an influence through the spread of Buddhism in Japan.


title: Japanese literature

text: During the Heian period, Japan's original culture () developed and literature also established its own style, with the significant usage and development of to write Japanese literature.


title: Japanese literature

text: Following the Perry Expedition which led to the end of the policy and the forced reopening of foreign trade, Western literature has also made influences to the development of modern Japanese writers, while Japanese literature has in turn become more recognized internationally, leading to two Japanese Nobel laureates in literature, namely Yasunari Kawabata and Kenzaburō Ōe.


title: Japanese literature

text: Before the introduction of kanji from China to Japan, Japan had no writing system; it is believed that Chinese characters came to Japan at the very beginning of the 5th century, brought by immigrants from Korea and China. Early Japanese texts first followed the Chinese model, before gradually transitioning to a hybrid of Chinese characters used in Japanese syntactical formats, resulting in sentences written with Chinese characters but read phonetically in Japanese.


title: Japanese literature

text: Chinese characters were also further adapted, creating what is known as , the earliest form of , or Japanese syllabic writing. The earliest literary works in Japan were created in the Nara period. These include the (712), a historical record that also chronicles ancient Japanese mythology and folk songs; the (720), a chronicle written in Chinese that is significantly more detailed than the ; and the (759), a poetry anthology. One of the stories they describe is the tale of Urashima Tarō.


title: Japanese literature

text: The Heian period has been referred to as the golden era of art and literature in Japan. During this era, literature became centered on a cultural elite of nobility and monks. The imperial court particularly patronized the poets, most of whom were courtiers or ladies-in-waiting. Reflecting the aristocratic atmosphere, the poetry was elegant and sophisticated and expressed emotions in a rhetorical style. Editing the resulting anthologies of poetry soon became a national pastime. The poem, now one of two standard orderings for the Japanese syllabary, was also developed during the early Heian period.


title: Japanese literature

text: , written in the early 11th century by female courtier Murasaki Shikibu, is considered the pre-eminent novel of Heian fiction. Other important writings of this period include the (905), a -poetry anthology, and . "The Pillow Book" was written by Sei Shōnagon, Murasaki Shikibu's contemporary and rival, as an essay about the life, loves, and pastimes of nobles in the Emperor's court. Another notable piece of fictional Japanese literature was , a collection of over a thousand stories in 31 volumes. The volumes cover various tales from India, China and Japan.


title: Japanese literature

text: The 10th-century Japanese narrative, , can be considered an early example of proto-science fiction. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter. She is later taken back to her extraterrestrial family in an illustrated depiction of a disc-shaped flying object similar to a flying saucer.


title: Japanese literature

text: During the Kamakura period (1185–1333), Japan experienced many civil wars which led to the development of a warrior class, and subsequent war tales, histories, and related stories. Work from this period is notable for its more somber tone compared to the works of previous eras, with themes of life and death, simple lifestyles, and redemption through killing. A representative work is , an epic account of the struggle between the Minamoto and Taira clans for control of Japan at the end of the 12th century. Other important tales of the period include Kamo no Chōmei's (1212) and Yoshida Kenkō's (1331).


title: Japanese literature

text: Despite a decline in the importance of the imperial court, aristocratic literature remained the center of Japanese culture at the beginning of the Kamakura period. Many literary works were marked by a nostalgia for the Heian period. The Kamakura period also saw a renewed vitality of poetry, with a number of anthologies compiled, such as the compiled in the early 1200s. However, there were fewer notable works by female authors during this period, reflecting the lowered status of women.


title: Japanese literature

text: As the importance of the imperial court continued to decline, a major feature of Muromachi literature (1333–1603) was the spread of cultural activity through all levels of society. Classical court literature, which had been the focal point of Japanese literature up until this point, gradually disappeared. New genres such as , or linked verse, and Noh theater developed among the common people, and such as the were created by Buddhist priests for preaching. The development of roads, along with a growing public interest in travel and pilgrimages, brought rise to the greater popularity of travel literature from the early 13th to 14th centuries. Notable examples of travel diaries include (1432) and (1480).


title: Japanese literature

text: Literature during this time was written during the largely peaceful Tokugawa shogunate (commonly referred to as the Edo period). Due in large part to the rise of the working and middle classes in the new capital of Edo (modern Tokyo), forms of popular drama developed which would later evolve into kabuki. The and kabuki dramatist Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725) became popular at the end of the 17th century, and he is also known as Japan's Shakespeare.


title: Japanese literature

text: Many different genres of literature made their debut during the Edo period, helped by a rising literacy rate among the growing population of townspeople, as well as the development of lending libraries. Ihara Saikaku (1642–1693) might be said to have given birth to the modern consciousness of the novel in Japan, mixing vernacular dialogue into his humorous and cautionary tales of the pleasure quarters, the so-called ("floating world") genre. Ihara's "Life of an Amorous Man" is considered the first work in this genre. Although Ihara's works were not regarded as high literature at the time because it had been aimed towards and popularized by the (merchant classes), they became popular and were key to the development and spread of .


title: Japanese literature

text: Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694) is recognized as the greatest master of haiku (then called ). His poems were influenced by his firsthand experience of the world around him, often encapsulating the feeling of a scene in a few simple elements. He made his life's work the transformation of into a literary genre. For Bashō, involved a combination of comic playfulness and spiritual depth, ascetic practice, and involvement in human society. In particular, Bashō wrote a major work in the form of a travel diary and considered "one of the major texts of classical Japanese literature."