title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2009 VGAs was held on December 12, 2009, at the Nokia Event Deck in Los Angeles, California and is the only VGAs that did not feature a host. It opened with a trailer announcing the to "". There were other exclusive looks at "", "UFC 2010 Undisputed", "", "", "Medal of Honor", "Crackdown 2", "Bonanza", "", "Rock Band 3", "", and "True Crime". Samuel L. Jackson previewed LucasArts newest upcoming "Star Wars" game, "". In addition, "" was announced and accompanied with a trailer. Appearances were made by Stevie Wonder, the cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore", Green Day, and Jack Black, with live music performances by Snoop Dogg and The Bravery.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2008 VGAs was held on December 14, 2008, at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. Hosted by Jack Black, the show featured previews of "Brütal Legend", "Dante's Inferno", "Fight Night Round 4", "Gears of War 2" "Combustion" map pack announcement and trailer, "God of War III", "", "Mafia II", Pearl Jam's album "Ten" for "Rock Band", "Terminator Salvation", "", and "". Musical performances included 50 Cent, The All-American Rejects, Weezer, and LL Cool J.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2007 VGAs aired December 9, 2007. Hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, the winners were announced ahead of the event which was held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas. The show featured performances by Foo Fighters, Kid Rock, and exclusive world video game premieres of "Borderlands", "Gran Turismo 5 Prologue", "", and "TNA iMPACT!".


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2006 VGAs aired December 13, 2006, at the Galen Center in Los Angeles and were hosted by Samuel L. Jackson. The show featured a world premiere of Blizzard Entertainment's opening cinematic movie for its highly anticipated expansion set, "". The event featured musical performances by Tenacious D and AFI and show appearances by 50 Cent, Eva Mendes, Sarah Silverman, Seth Green, Masi Oka, Hayden Panettiere, Yellowcard, Brandon Routh, Rachael Leigh Cook, Tony Hawk, Michael Irvin, Method Man, Maria Menounos, Tyrese Gibson, Xzibit, James Gandolfini, Kurt Angle, among others. In character as Stewie Griffin and Tom Tucker from "Family Guy", Seth MacFarlane served as the voice of the VGAs.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2005 VGAs was held December 10, 2005, at the Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. The first VGAs hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, the show featured world premieres of "" from 2K Games, "" from Midway Games, "" from LucasArts, and "", as well as a 25th anniversary comic tribute to "Pac-Man" from Namco. Musical performances were by 50 Cent, Def Leppard, and Missy Elliott, and show appearances by Charlize Theron, Kiefer Sutherland, Jack Black, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Rock, Vin Diesel, Carson Daly, Donald Faison, Jaime Pressly, Josie Maran, Snoop Dogg, Xzibit, Carmen Electra, Natasha Bedingfield, and Dane Cook, among others.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2004 VGAs was held in Santa Monica, California on December 14, 2004, at the Barker Hangar and hosted by Snoop Dogg. The show featured exclusive world premiere game play and footage of Midway Games' "Fear & Respect", "" from John Singleton and Electronic Arts, and "" for the PlayStation Portable. Musical performances included Sum 41, Ludacris, and a special live performance by Snoop Dogg and the remaining members of The Doors performing "Riders on the Storm". Other performances included Snoop Dogg and Pharrell, Mötley Crüe, Busta Rhymes, and Method Man and Redman in the first-ever "" performance. Celebrity appearances included Brooke Burke, Samuel L. Jackson, Vin Diesel, Green Day, Giovanni Ribisi, Gabrielle Union, Tara Reid, Papa Roach, Tony Hawk, John Singleton, Danny Masterson, Frankie Muniz, Bai Ling, Ron Perlman, Bam Margera, Freddy Adu, Fabolous, Bobby Crosby, Barry Zito, and Michelle Rodriguez, among others.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2003 Spike Video Game Awards was the first video game award show to be hosted by Spike TV. It was held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada on December 2, 2003, and aired on December 4. The event was hosted by David Spade and featured appearances by Lil' Kim, Jaime Pressly, DMX, P.O.D., Orlando Jones, and Cedric the Entertainer. The event also featured a WWE tag team wrestling match with the superstars Rey Mysterio, Chris Jericho, Trish Stratus, and Victoria.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: Spike's Video Game Hall of Fame was established to recognize video game "franchises throughout history that have brought the industry to where it is today" – Casey Patterson, executive producer of the VGAs and executive vice president of event production for Viacom Media Networks Entertainment Group. The only inductee, due to the award show ending in 2013, was awarded at the ninth annual Spike Video Game Awards on December 10, 2011. The inaugural, and subsequently only, recipient was "The Legend of Zelda" franchise. Shigeru Miyamoto accepted the award.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: With the exception of the fan-voted "Most Anticipated Game", "Character of the Year", and a few other non-annual categories, the award nominees and winners are voted by an advisory council, featuring over 20 journalists from various media outlets. Fans, however, can vote online for which games they think should win each category.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: Video game journalism veteran Jeff Green has been vocal in his criticism of the Spike Video Game Awards. In his assessment of the 2010 VGAs, Green laments that Spike TV alienated viewers due to their decision to focus the awards on its own primary demographic, rather than the video game community at large. Green states that this leads to appearances by celebrities who "either didn't want to be or know why they were there." 2011 VGA host Zachary Levi recognized this and prior to hosting the event, told MTV in an interview that, "I’m happy to work on the VGAs on Spike and make the network happy, but I want to be respectful to the community of gamers because I am one myself. And [with] the humor involved, I want it to be smart, I want it to be honest, and accurate." Giant Bomb's Alex Navarro has also commented on the VGAs, questioning the importance of the awards themselves next to the VGA's focus on its exclusive reveals.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2011 VGAs were given similar criticisms. Kotaku reported that VGA nominees Mark Hamill and Tara Strong were disappointed that they were present at the event but their respective categories were not present at the show, only finding out the results of the "Best Performance by a Human Male" and "Best Performance by a Human Female" awards after the show. Wired.com writer Jason Schreier addressed Spike TV after the event in reference to food eating segments by Felicia Day and the host Zachary Levi having simulations of a sexual act performed on him. Schreier said, "It’s not hard to find the root of the problem here: You think we’re dumb. You think your audience is so stupid that they’ll be amused by YouTube rants and health potion gags. You think we get our jollies out of watching girls bite cupcakes off conveyor belts. You think video game references make a good substitute for humor." Schreier also quoted Joystiq's Justin McElroy, who voiced his concern at many awards being shown together in a short montage. Praise was given for the handling of "The Legend of Zelda's" induction into the Hall of Fame including the video package of the franchise's releases and an appearance by creator Shigeru Miyamoto.


title: Spike Video Game Awards

text: The 2013 VGX received considerable negative press after airing; much of the criticism was aimed at host McHale's insults towards the developers and the audience.


title: Thaiboy Digital

text: Thanapat Bunleang (born Khazitin G. Bonleunge, formerly Thanapat Thaothawong), better known by his stage name Thaiboy Digital, is a Thai rapper, singer, producer and fashion designer. Born in Khon Kaen, Thailand, Bunleang moved to Stockholm, Sweden at the age of eight, and is now based in Bangkok. In addition to his solo work, Bunleang is a member of the group Drain Gang.


title: Thaiboy Digital

text: Born in the Isan region of Thailand, Bunleang's family moved to Sweden from Thailand in 2003 after his mother became a chef in the Austrian embassy in Stockholm.


title: Thaiboy Digital

text: In his teen years, Bunleang became involved in the city's music scene, joining what would later become Drain Gang and collaborating with local artists including Yung Lean.


title: Thaiboy Digital

text: In 2015, due to the end of his mother's work visa, Bunleang was forced to leave Sweden by Migrationsverket, the Swedish immigration authority, and return to Thailand, settling in Bangkok. In Bangkok, Bunleang began recording with local artists such as Younggu and Dandee, while remaining a member of Drain Gang and contributing to all of their subsequent releases, including the 2019 release Trash Island which was partially recorded in Bunleang's apartment in Bangkok.


title: Thaiboy Digital

text: Bunleang grew up with his grandma and step-grandpa (on his mothers side) in Khon Kaen, his mother, Aphantri, being half black caused Bunleang to be bullied at school back in Thailand. When he was 5, Aphantri got a job within the Swiss embassy at Bangkok as a chef and brought Bunleang with her. When Bunleang was in Bangkok he attended kindergarten with 6-year-olds when he was only 5. One day after school a man came to him claiming to be his father and took him home to his mother, Bunleang was later told the reason why his father appeared that very day but did not go within detail. Bunleang got married on January 7, 2020 and his first child, a daughter, was born on February 9, 2020.


title: Marc Nelson

text: He was an original member of Boyz II Men while still attending Philadelphia's High School of Performing Arts. However, Nelson left the group to pursue a solo career before they released their first album.


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson's mother was the late American singer Phyllis Nelson, best known for the songs "I Like You" and "Move Closer".


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson attended the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts, in Pennsylvania. There, he and his friend Nathan Morris (joined later by Wanya Morris, Shawn Stockman and Michael McCary), formed the singing group Unique Attraction.


title: Marc Nelson

text: After hearing New Edition's song "Boys to Men" on the radio, the group changed their name to Boyz II Men. In 1989, the group met Michael Bivins and began making arrangements to sign the group to a major label and begin recording. In the interim, the group encountered delays in recording their album. Nelson grew impatient and left the group and began recording his debut solo project.


title: Marc Nelson

text: After signing a solo deal with Capitol Records, Nelson scored a hit with a cover of Marvin Gaye's "I Want You", which hit No. 26 on the R&B charts. His follow-up, "Count On Me", reached No. 48 on the R&B charts. Nelson released his solo album, "I Want You", in 1991.


title: Marc Nelson

text: Following the release of his solo album, Nelson began concentrating his talents as a songwriter. Drawing the attention of Babyface, Nelson wrote for artists like Toni Braxton, Brandy, Tamia, Tyrese and Jon B. Through Babyface, Nelson met the four members of the group Az Yet and was added to the line-up as second lead vocalist; the group was signed to LaFace Records.


title: Marc Nelson

text: As a member of Az Yet, Nelson found success. The group's self-titled debut album, released in 1996, went platinum. A single on the album, "Last Night", went gold and reached No. 9 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart. Their second single, "Hard To Say I'm Sorry" did even better, going platinum and reaching No. 8 on the Hot 100.


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson left Az Yet and began writing intensely. Subsequently, he released his second solo album, "Chocolate Mood", in 1999. The album featured Nelson's biggest solo hit,


title: Marc Nelson

text: "15 Minutes", which reached No. 4 on the R&B charts and No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100. He also featured on the duet "After All is Said and Done" with Beyoncé, on the soundtrack to the motion picture "The Best Man" (1999).


title: Marc Nelson

text: On January 9, 2007, SESAC honored Nelson at their third Jazz Awards Luncheon, for his authorship on "It's On Tonight" by Brian Culbertson. The event honored jazz writers whose works achieved Top 5 status on the jazz charts from January 1, 2006 through December 31, 2006.


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson released his first independent project, "Marc: My Words" (Lyric Masters 911) on July 24, 2007. Nelson wrote or co-wrote the lyrics on all 15 tracks of the album. He also produced or co-produced all of the tracks on the album. Nelson extracted the material for the release from his existing catalog of songs written between 2001 and 2007, and began recording the material in 2006. The album features the original version of "I Don't Wanna Be In Love" (co-written by jazz artist Brian Culbertson) which also appears on the 2007 release "Crystal City" by Andre Ward.


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson was also a founding member of the R&B super-group Blayse, with fellow R&B veterans Tony Grant of Az Yet, Gary "Lil G" Jenkins of Silk (group), and Terrell Phillips of Blackstreet. Although the group managed to record several songs, the recordings were never publicly released, the album was never completed, and the group disbanded in December 2007. Lil G returned to Silk, Nelson returned to Az Yet, and Tony Grant toured in the Tyler Perry stage production "The Marriage Counselor" (from January 2008 through May 2008).


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson released the R&B/Soul single "Wishing You The Worst" on July 24, 2017. The song was released independently via his production company "Focused Artist Entertainment".


title: Marc Nelson

text: Nelson was nominated for an Emmy Award, for penning the theme song to the 2016 animated Christmas television film "Snowy Day". The title song was performed by Boyz II Men.


title: Unisex name

text: A unisex name (also known as an epicene name, a gender-neutral name or an androgynous name) is a given name that is not gender-specific. Unisex names are common in the English-speaking world, especially in the United States. By contrast, some countries have laws preventing unisex names, requiring parents to give their children sex-specific names. In other countries or cultures, social norms oppose such names and transgressions may result in discrimination, ridicule, and psychological abuse.


title: Unisex name

text: Names may have different gender connotations from country to country or language to language. For example, the Italian male name "Andrea" (derived from Greek "Andreas") is understood as a female name in many languages, such as English, German, Hungarian, Czech, and Spanish.


title: Unisex name

text: Parents may name their child in honor of a person of another sex, which – if done widely – can result in the name becoming unisex. For example, Christians, particularly Catholics, may give a child a second/middle name of the opposite sex, e.g. name a son Marie or Maria in honor of the Virgin Mary or formerly Anne for Saint Anne; or name a daughter José in honor of Saint Joseph or Jean in honor of John the Baptist. This practice is rare in English-speaking countries.


title: Unisex name

text: Some masculine and feminine names are homophones, pronounced the same for both sexes but spelled differently. These names are not strictly unisex names.


title: Unisex name

text: Shona, a Bantu group in Zimbabwe, have unisex names which may indicate the circumstances of the baby or the family during the time of the birth. All Shona names have a meaning, some also celebrate virtue or worship God.


title: Unisex name

text: Chinese given names are composed of 1–3 Chinese characters, with the exception of non-Han ethnic groups who sometimes choose to use their native naming traditions instead and transliterate their names to Chinese for legal registration, often ending up in very long Chinese full names. Some characters have masculine connotations tied to them, some have feminine connotations, and some can be fully gender-neutral or will only gain a masculine/feminine leaning when paired with another character that has a specific leaning. Some Chinese given names may have the same pronunciation, but use different characters associated with different genders to give the name a gender association.


title: Unisex name

text: Many of the modern Hebrew names have become unisex, that suitable for both boys and girls. Some popular examples are:


title: Unisex name

text: Many Indian names become unisex when written with Latin characters because of the limitations of transliteration. The spellings "Chandra" and "Krishna", for example, are transliterations of both the masculine and feminine versions of those names. In Indian languages, the final "a" in each of these names are different letters with different pronunciations, so there is no ambiguity. However, when they are seen (and usually, spoken) by someone unfamiliar with Indian languages, they become sexually ambiguous. Other Indian names, such as "Ananda", are exclusively or nearly exclusively masculine in India, but because of their "a" ending, are assumed to be feminine in Anglophone societies.


title: Unisex name

text: Nehal, Sonal, Sonu, Snehal, Niral, Pranjal and Anmol are used commonly to name baby boys or girls in western states of India such as Gujarat. Similarly, names like Kajal, Sujal, Viral, Harshal, Deepal, Bobby, Mrinal, Jyoti, Shakti, Nilam, Kiran, Lucky, Ashwini, Shashi, Malhar, Umang, Shubham and Anupam are also very common sex-neutral names or unisex names in India. Most Punjabi Sikh first names such as "Sandeep, Gurdeep, Kuldeep, Mandeep", "Surjeet, Gurjeet, Kuljeet, Harjeet, Manjeet", "Harpreet, Gurpreet, Jaspreet, Kulpreet, Manpreet", "Prabhjot, Harjot, Gurjot, Jasjot" and "Sukhjinder, Bhupinder, Jasbinder, Parminder, Kulvinder, Harjinder, Ranjodh, Sheeraz, Hardeep, Kirandeep, Sukhdeep, Govindpal, Encarl, Rajan" are unisex names and equally commonly given to either sex. Also, names derived from Dari Persian and Arabic, but not used among native speakers of those languages, are common among South Asian Muslims. Since Persian does not assign genders to inanimate nouns, some of these names are gender-neutral, for example Roshan, Hitesh, Sudesh, Parveen, and Insaaf.


title: Unisex name

text: Despite there being only a small number of Japanese unisex names in use, unisex names are widely popular. Many high-profile Japanese celebrities such as Hikaru Utada, Jun Matsumoto, Ryo Nishikido, and Izumi Sakai have unisex names.


title: Unisex name

text: Many of the entries in the following list, in Roman characters, each represent more than one name, with different meanings, which are often distinguished by the use of different kanji characters.


title: Unisex name

text: Unisex names may also be used as nicknames. For example, a man named Ryounosuke and a woman named Ryouko may both use the unisex name Ryou as a nickname.


title: Unisex name

text: All Korean names are unisex (ungendered), but some names are more commonly given to boys and other more commonly to girls.


title: Unisex name

text: There are many Turkish names which are unisex. These names are almost always pure Turkish names (i.e. not Turkified Arabic names that have an Islamic connotation) that derive from Turkish words. These names may either be modern names or be derived from Turkic mythology. Some Persian-derived Turkish names, like Can and Cihan, are also unisex, as are even a few Arabic-derived names, like İhsan and Nur.


title: Unisex name

text: Among modern Vietnamese names, unisex names are very popular. Vietnamese people may distinguish unisex names by middle names. For example Quốc Khánh may be a male name (Quốc is a male name) and Ngân Khánh may be a female name (Ngân is a female name), and sex-specific middle names such as "Văn" for males and "Thị" for females also help. In many cases, a male could have a female name and vice versa. Popular examples of unisex names in Vietnamese are:


title: Unisex name

text: The Czech Registry Act forbids giving male names or surnames to females or female names or surnames to males, but does not restrict neutral names and surnames. For the period of transitioning, the Act explicitly allows the use of gender-neutral given names and surnames.


title: Unisex name

text: A Czech trans people web enumerates given names which are most popular as gender-neutral names. Most of them are originally hypocorisms, or loanwords. The most natural of them are names ending with -a, falling under male inflectional paradigm "předseda" and/or female paradigm "žena". Generally, hypocorisms are not allowed to be used in official registers, but in case of trans people, they are tolerated.


title: Unisex name

text: The most popular neutral names are Saša and Nikola, both with a slight Russian (or East-Slavic) connotation. Other names of that paradigm are Áda, Jarka, Jára, Jindra, Jirča, Jirka, Kája, Mára, Míla, Mira, Míša, Míťa, Nikola, Péťa, Saša, Stáňa, Sváťa, Štěpa, Vlasta, Zbyňa, Zdena. They are unisex hypocorisms of complementary male and female names, e.g. Péťa belong to male "Petr" as well as female "Petra". Ilja, Issa, Bronia or Andrea are felt as original foreign names. Maria is felt as a female name (this form is reserved for mother of Jesus, the common Czech female form is Marie, the male form is Marián), but some historical men are known under that name (Klement Maria Hofbauer, Jan Maria Vianney, Rainer Maria Rilke).


title: Unisex name

text: The page indicates some other names which can be usable as unisex but are not tried by that community yet.


title: Unisex name

text: Finnish law forbids giving a female name to a male child and a male name to a female child among other restrictions. Some names do exist that have been given to children of both genders. Such unisex names were more common in the first half of the 20th century. This is an incomplete list:


title: Unisex name

text: Many of these names are rare, foreign or neologisms; established names tend to be strongly sex-specific. Notably, a class of names that are derived from nature can be often used for either sex, for example: Aalto (wave), Halla (frost), Lumi (snow), Paju (willow), Ruska (fall colors), and Valo (light). Similarly, there are some (sometimes archaic) adjectives which carry no strong gender connotations, like Kaino (timid), Vieno (calm) or Lahja (a gift). Certain names can have unisex diminutives, such as Alex, which can be short for Aleksandra or Aleksanteri (or variants thereof).


title: Unisex name

text: There are also pairs of masculine and feminine names that have slightly different spellings but identical pronunciation, such as André / Andrée, Frédéric / Frédérique, René / Renée and Gabriel / Gabrielle. In France and French-speaking countries, it can happen for people to have a combination of both masculine and feminine given names, but most of these include "Marie", such as Jean-Marie, Marie-Jean, Marie-Pierre. Marie was a unisex name in medieval times; it is nowadays only female except for its presence in compound names. Notable examples of people with a combination of masculine and feminine given names are Jean-Marie Le Pen (male), Marie-Jean Hérault de Séchelles (male), Marie-Pierre Kœnig (male), and Marie-Pierre Leray (female). In the past, it was not unusual to give a child that was assigned male at birth the middle name Marie as a sign of religious devotion; the most notable example is that of François Maurice Marie Mitterrand.


title: Unisex name

text: European royals often bear the name Marie, the French form of Maria, in their names. Prince Amedeo of Belgium, Archduke of Austria-Este (Amedeo Marie Joseph Carl Pierre Philippe Paola Marcus), Prince Jean of Luxembourg (Jean Félix Marie Guillaume), and Jean, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (Jean Benoît Guillaume Robert Antoine Louis Marie Adolphe Marc) are examples of male royals who bear Marie in their names.


title: Unisex name

text: In the past, German law required parents to give their child a sex-specific name. This is no longer the case, since the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany held in 2008 that there is no obligation for a name to be sex-specific, even if the child has only one given name. The custom of adding a second name which matches the child's legal sex is no longer required. Still, unisex names of German origin are rare, most of them being nicknames rather than formal names (such as Alex).


title: Unisex name

text: In June, 2019, Iceland's Parliament, the Althing, passed a new gender autonomy act which will recognize all approved Icelandic names as unisex.


title: Unisex name

text: Previously, unisex names were in generally illegal in Iceland. The Icelandic Naming Committee (Icelandic: "Mannanafnanefnd") maintained preapproved lists of male and female names, with names not on the list - or on a different gender's list - typically denied. Earlier court cases had carved out exceptions, such as the names "Blær" (approved for women after a 2013 court case), "Auður" (approved for men later in 2013), and "Alex" (denied for women in 2013 but approved in 2018).


title: Unisex name

text: Additionally, the new gender autonomy act makes changes to the traditional patronymics/matronymics used as Icelandic surnames. Before the bill, Icelandic last names (by law) could not be unisex: the suffix "-dóttir" ("daughter") was attached to a parent's name for women and the suffix "-son" ("son") was used for men. The new law will allow adults who have officially changed their gender marker to "X", a non-binary gender marker, to also change their patronymic/matronymic suffix to "-bur" ("child"). Newborns cannot be assigned a non-binary gender marker at this time, and will continue to receive a patronymic/matronymic suffix in keeping with their assigned sex at birth.


title: Unisex name

text: Among Irish Catholics in the 19th and 20th centuries, it was not unusual to give a child that was assigned male at birth a feminine middle name, particularly "Mary", as a sign of religious devotion. Joseph Mary Plunkett was a signatory of the Irish Declaration of Independence in 1916, and was later executed as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising.


title: Unisex name

text: In Italy, unisex names ("nomi ambigenere") are very rare. There are names that are primarily male, like Andrea (which is female, e.g., in English, Spanish, German, and French) or Felice, that can also be given to females. Names like Celeste, Amabile, Fiore, Loreto, or Diamante are, as opposite, female names that occasionally can be given to males.


title: Unisex name

text: Names that end with an "i" are considered unisex in Brazil. They tend to be Native Brazilian Indigenous names in origin, such as Araci, Jaci, Darci, Ubirani, but names from other cultures are now being absorbed, such as Remy, Wendy, and Eddy. Names that end with "ir" and "mar" tend to be unisex also, such as Nadir, Aldenir, Dagmar and Niomar – though in these cases there are some exceptions.


title: Unisex name

text: Diminutive forms of names in Russian language can be unisex, such as Sasha/Shura (Alexandr or Alexandra), Zhenya (Yevgeniy or Yevgeniya), Valya (Valentin or Valentina), Valera (Valeriy or Valeriya), Slava (for names ending with -slav or -slava), Vitalya (Vitaly or Vitalia).


title: Unisex name

text: In Spain, unisex names are extremely rare. María, an originally feminine name is used in Spanish for males as second name, very commonly after José (e.g., José María). José is used for females preceded by María (María José). Also, Guadalupe, a feminine name, is sometimes used as masculine after José (José Guadalupe). More names given to both genders include Carmen, Inés, Reno, Trinidad, Nazaret, Reyes, and Celes.


title: Unisex name

text: Like in English, some common nicknames are unisex such as Álex (Alejandro, Alejandra), Cris (Cristina, Cristian, Cristóbal), Dani (Daniel, Daniela).


title: Unisex name

text: Unisex names have been enjoying some popularity in English-speaking countries in the past several decades. Masculine names have become increasingly popular among females in the past century but originally feminine names remain extremely rare among males.


title: Unisex name

text: In the United States, most of the male names are now largely female, while in Britain, some (notably Charlie, Hilary, Sidney, and Robin) remain largely male. Sometimes different spellings have different sex distributions (Francis is less likely female than Frances), but these are rarely definitive. For example, in the US, as of 2016, both Skylar and Skyler are more common for females, but Skylar is most strongly associated with females (the 42nd most common name for females and the 761 most common for males born in 2016) than Skyler (the 359 most common name for females and the 414 most common for males born in 2016).


title: Unisex name

text: According to the Social Security Administration, Jayden has been the most popular unisex name for boys since 2008 and Madison has been the most popular unisex name for girls since 2000 in the United States.


title: Unisex name

text: Prior to Jayden, Logan was the most popular unisex name for boys and prior to Madison, Alexis was the most popular unisex name for girls.


title: Unisex name

text: Many popular nicknames are unisex. Some nicknames, such as Alex and Pat, have become popular as given names in their own right.


title: Unisex name

text: The following list of unisex nicknames are most commonly seen in English-speaking countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.


title: Unisex name

text: Some names are masculine in one culture and feminine in another, so that when these cultures mix in a third location, the same name appears unisex.


title: Prasanth Varma

text: Prasanth Varma is an Indian film director and screenwriter who works primarily in Telugu cinema. He is best known for directing "Awe" (2018) and "Zombie Reddy" (2021).


title: Prasanth Varma

text: Varma began his career in 2011 by directing a short film "Deenamma Jeevitham." He then directed advertisement films and few short films including "A Silent Melody" (2014) and "Dialogue in the Dark" (2017). In 2015, he directed a five-episode web series "Not Out" starring Brian Lara. It was premiered on YuppTV.


title: Prasanth Varma

text: In an interview to "Idlebrain.com", he admitted that Singeetam Srinivasa Rao, Christopher Nolan, K. Viswanath and Mani Ratnam are his major influences.


title: Prasanth Varma

text: His first feature film was 2018 psychological cross genre film "Awe" (2018), although "That Is Mahalakshmi" was his directorial debut. Due to production issues and creative differences "That is Mahalakshmi" was post poned and delayed for several times. In September 2017, it was revealed that Tamannaah would work on the Telugu version of the film which would be directed by Neelakanta. Filming began on 2 November 2017. However, in January 2018, Neelakanta left the film, and was replaced by Prashanth Varma. As of 2022, the film is yet to release.


title: Prasanth Varma

text: In 2017, Varma narrated his Awe story to actor Nani. Soon, it was confirmed that the film will be produced by Nani and Prashanti Tipirneni through Wall Poster Cinema. The film deals with various psychological issues and social problems like child abuse, sexual abuse, and drug abuse. Critics praised Varma's story and direction for showcasing social problems and portrayal of lesbian characters. Baradwaj Rangan stated ""Awe" is genuinely subversive." His next release was "Kalki" (2019), starring Rajasekhar and produced by C. Kalyan. The original story was written by Saitej Desharaj, like a web-series, for which Prasanth had to adapt the screenplay into a feature film format, which took him eight months to finish.


title: Prasanth Varma

text: Varma's third release was "Zombie Reddy" (2021). It was originally scheduled for a release in 2020, but was indefinitely post-poned due to COVID-19 lockdown in India. Marketed as the first zombie film in Tollywood (Telugu cinema), it opened to positive reviews and was success full at the box-office. Sangeetha Devi Dundoo of "The Hindu" wrote that "In one stroke, director Prasanth Varma juxtaposes different worlds — a pandemic looming large, zombies, Rayalaseema faction rivalry — to hilarious effect" On 29 May 2021, he announced his next film "Hanu Man." The film is marketed as the first Telugu superhero film. On 23 March 2022, he announced his next film with D.V.V. Danayya's son, Kalyan Dasari, titled, "Adhira". "Adhira", along with "Hanu Man", are intended to be part of his superhero cinematic universe.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (; 5 November 18921 December 1964), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS", was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. He served in the Great War, and obtained the rank of captain. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field, he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London. Renouncing his British citizenship, he became an Indian citizen in 1961 and worked at the Indian Statistical Institute for the rest of his life.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane's article on abiogenesis in 1929 introduced the "primordial soup theory", which became the foundation for the concept of the chemical origin of life. He established human gene maps for haemophilia and colour blindness on the X chromosome, and codified Haldane's rule on sterility in the heterogametic sex of hybrids in species. He correctly proposed that sickle-cell disease confers some immunity to malaria. He was the first to suggest the central idea of in vitro fertilisation, as well as concepts such as hydrogen economy, cis and trans-acting regulation, coupling reaction, molecular repulsion, the darwin (as a unit of evolution), and organismal cloning.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1957, Haldane articulated Haldane's dilemma, a limit on the speed of beneficial evolution, an idea which is still debated today. He willed his body for medical studies, as he wanted to remain useful even in death. He is also remembered for his work in human biology, having coined "clone", "cloning", and "ectogenesis". With his sister, Naomi Mitchison, Haldane was the first to demonstrate genetic linkage in mammals. Subsequent works established a unification of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution by natural selection whilst laying the groundwork for modern synthesis, and helped to create population genetics.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was a professed socialist, Marxist, atheist, and secular humanist whose political dissent led him to leave England in 1956 and live in India, becoming a naturalised Indian citizen in 1961. Arthur C. Clarke credited him as "perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation". Brazilian-British biologist and Nobel laureate Peter Medawar called Haldane "the cleverest man I ever knew". According to Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Haldane was always recognized as a singular case"; Ernst Mayr described him as a "polymath"; Michael J. D. White described him as "the most erudite biologist of his generation, and perhaps of the century"; James Watson described him as "England's most clever and eccentric biologist" and Sahotra Sarkar described him as "probably the most prescient biologist of this [20th] century." According to a Cambridge student, "he seemed to be the last man who might know all there was to be known."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was born in Oxford in 1892. His father was John Scott Haldane, a physiologist, scientist, a philosopher and a Liberal who was the grandson of evangelist James Alexander Haldane. His mother Louisa Kathleen Trotter, was a Conservative, and descended from Scottish ancestry. His only sibling, Naomi, became a writer and married Dick Mitchison, Baron Mitchison (thereby becoming Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison), who was his best friend at Eton College. His uncle was Viscount Haldane and his aunt the author Elizabeth Haldane. Descended from an aristocratic and secular family of the Clan Haldane, he would later claim that his Y chromosome could be traced back to Robert the Bruce.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane grew up at 11 Crick Road, North Oxford. He learnt to read at the age of three, and at four, after injuring his forehead he asked the doctor of the bleeding, "Is this oxyhaemoglobin or carboxyhaemoglobin?" As a youth he was raised as an Anglican. From age eight he worked with his father in their home laboratory where he experienced his first self-experimentation, the method he would later be famous for. He and his father became their own "human guinea pigs", such as in their investigation on the effects of poison gases. In 1899 his family moved to "Cherwell", a late Victorian house at the outskirts of Oxford with its own private laboratory. At age 8, in 1901, his father brought him to the Oxford University Junior Scientific Club to listen to a lecture on Mendelian genetics, which had been recently rediscovered. Although he found the lecture given by Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire, Demonstrator of Zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, "interesting but difficult," it influenced him permanently such that genetics became the field in which he made his most important scientific contributions.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: His formal education began in 1897 at Oxford Preparatory School (now Dragon School), where he gained a First Scholarship in 1904 to Eton. In 1905 he joined Eton, where he experienced severe abuse from senior students for allegedly being arrogant. The indifference of authority left him with a lasting hatred for the English education system. However, the ordeal did not stop him from becoming Captain of the school.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: He participated for the first time in scientific research as a volunteer subject for his father in 1906. John was the first to study the effects of decompression (relief from high pressure) in humans. He investigated the physiological condition called "bends," such as when goats lift and bend their legs if discomforted, that is also experienced by deep-sea divers. In July 1906, on board "HMS Spanker" off the west coast of Scotland, Rothesay, young Haldane jumped into the Atlantic Ocean with the experimental diving suit. The study was published in a 101-paged article in "The Journal of Hygiene" in 1908; where Haldane was described as "Jack Haldane (age 13)" for whom it "was the first time [he] had ever dived in a diving dress." The research became a foundation for a scientific theory called Haldane's decompression model.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: He studied mathematics and classics at New College, Oxford and obtained first-class honours in mathematical moderations in 1912. He became engrossed in genetics and presented a paper on gene linkage in vertebrates in the summer of 1912. His first technical paper, a 30-page long article on haemoglobin function, was published that same year, as a co-author alongside his father. He presented the mathematical treatment of the study on 19 October in the "Proceedings of the Physiological Society" and was published in December 1913.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane did not want his education to be confined to a specific subject. He took up Greats and graduated with first-class honours in 1914. While he had full intention of studying physiology, his plan was, as he described later, "somewhat overshadowed by other events" (referring to World War I). His only formal education in biology was an incomplete course in vertebrate anatomy.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: To support the war effort, Haldane volunteered for and joined the British Army, and was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the 3rd Battalion of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) on 15 August 1914. He was assigned as the trench mortar officer, to lead his team for hand-bombing the enemy trenches, the experience of which he remarked "enjoyable." In his article in 1932 he described how "he enjoyed the opportunity of killing people and regarded this as a respectable relic of primitive man." He was promoted to temporary lieutenant on 18 February 1915 and to temporary captain on 18 October. While serving in France, he was wounded by an artillery fire for which he was sent back to Scotland. There he served as instructor of grenades for the Black Watch recruits. In 1916, he joined the war in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where an enemy bomb severely wounded him. He was relieved from war fronts and was sent to India and stayed there for the rest of the war. He returned to England in 1919 and relinquished his commission on 1 April 1920, retaining his rank of captain. For his ferocity and aggressiveness in battles, his commander Douglas Haig described him as the "bravest and dirtiest officer in my Army."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Between 1919 and 1922, he served as Fellow of New College, Oxford, where he taught and researched in physiology and genetics, despite his lack of formal education in the field. During his first year at Oxford, he published six papers dealing with physiology of respiration and genetics. He then moved to the University of Cambridge, where he accepted a newly created readership in Biochemistry, in 1923 and taught until 1932. During his nine years at Cambridge, he worked on enzymes and genetics, particularly the mathematical side of genetics. While working as a visiting professor at the University of California in 1932, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane worked part-time at the John Innes Horticultural Institution (later named John Innes Centre) at Merton Park in Surrey from 1927 to 1937. When Alfred Daniel Hall became the Director in 1926, one of his earliest tasks was to appoint as assistant director "a man of high quality in the study of genetics" who could become his successor. Recommended by Julian Huxley, the council appointed Haldane in March 1927, with the terms: "Mr Haldane to visit the Institution fortnightly for a day and a night during the Cambridge terms, to put in two months also at Easter and long vacations in two continuous blocks and to be free in the Christmas vacation." He was Officer in charge of Genetical Investigations. He became the Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution from 1930 to 1932 and in 1933 he became full Professor of Genetics at University College London, where he spent most of his academic career. As Hall did not retire as early as expected – retiring in 1939, Haldane had to resign from the John Innes in 1936 to become the first Weldon Professor of Biometry at University College London. Haldane's service was recorded to have helped the John Innes as "the liveliest place for research in genetics in Britain." At the height of World War II, he moved his team to the Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire during 1941 to 1944 to escape bombings. Complying an invitation of Reginald Punnett, who founded the "Journal of Genetics" in 1910 with William Bateson, he became the editor since 1933 until his death.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1956, Haldane left University College London, and joined the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) in Calcutta (later renamed Kolkata), India, where he worked in the biometry unit. Haldane gave many reasons for moving to India. Officially he stated that he left the UK because of the Suez Crisis, writing: "Finally, I am going to India because I consider that recent acts of the British Government have been violations of international law." He believed that the warm climate would do him good, and that India shared his socialist dreams. In an article "A passage to India" which he wrote in "The Rationalists Annual" in 1958, he stated: "For one thing I prefer Indian food to American. Perhaps my main reason for going to India is that I consider that the opportunities for scientific research of the kind in which I am interested are better in India than in Britain, and that my teaching will be at least as useful there as here." The university had sacked his wife Helen for being drunk and disorderly and refusing to pay a fine, triggering Haldane's resignation. He declared he would no longer wear socks, "Sixty years in socks is enough." and always dressed in Indian attire.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was keenly interested in inexpensive research. Explaining in "A passage to India," he said, "Of course, if my work required electron microscopes, cyclotrons, and the like, I should not get them in India. But the sort of facilities which Darwin and Bateson used for their researches—such as gardens, gardeners, pigeon lofts, and pigeons—are more easily obtained in India than in England." He wrote to Julian Huxley about his observations on "Vanellus malabaricus", the yellow-wattled lapwing. He advocated the use of "Vigna sinensis" (cowpea) as a model for studying plant genetics. He took an interest in the pollination of "Lantana camara". He lamented that Indian universities forced those who took up biology to drop mathematics. He took an interest in the study of floral symmetry. In January 1961 he befriended Canadian lepidopterist Gary Botting, the 1960 U.S. Science Fair winner in zoology (who had first visited the Haldanes along with Susan Brown, 1960 U.S. National Science Fair winner in botany), inviting him to share the results of his experiments hybridising "Antheraea" silk moths. He, his wife Helen Spurway and student Krishna Dronamraju were present at the Oberoi Grand Hotel in Kolkata when Brown reminded the Haldanes that she and Botting had a previously scheduled event that would prevent them from accepting an invitation to a banquet proposed by the Haldanes in their honour and had regretfully declined the honour. After the two students had left the hotel, Haldane went on his much-publicized hunger strike to protest what he regarded as a "U.S. insult." When the director of the ISI, P. C. Mahalanobis, confronted Haldane about both the hunger strike and the unbudgeted banquet, Haldane resigned from his post (in February 1961), and moved to a newly established biometry unit in Bhubaneswar, the capital of Orissa (Odisha).


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane took Indian citizenship; he was interested in Hinduism and became a vegetarian. In 1961, Haldane described India as "the closest approximation to the Free World." Jerzy Neyman objected that "India has its fair share of scoundrels and a tremendous amount of poor unthinking and disgustingly subservient individuals who are not attractive." Haldane retorted:Perhaps one is freer to be a scoundrel in India than elsewhere. So one was in the U.S.A in the days of people like Jay Gould, when (in my opinion) there was more internal freedom in the U.S.A than there is today. The "disgusting subservience" of the others has its limits. The people of Calcutta riot, upset trams, and refuse to obey police regulations, in a manner which would have delighted Jefferson. I don't think their activities are very efficient, but that is not the question at issue.When on 25 June 1962 he was described in print as a "Citizen of the World" by Groff Conklin, Haldane responded:No doubt I am in some sense a citizen of the world. But I believe with Thomas Jefferson that one of the chief duties of a citizen is to be a nuisance to the government of his state. As there is no world state, I cannot do this. On the other hand, I can be, and am, a nuisance to the government of India, which has the merit of permitting a good deal of criticism, though it reacts to it rather slowly. I also happen to be proud of being a citizen of India, which is a lot more diverse than Europe, let alone the U.S.A, the U.S.S.R or China, and thus a better model for a possible world organisation. It may of course break up, but it is a wonderful experiment. So, I want to be labeled as a citizen of India.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was married twice, first to Charlotte Franken and then to Helen Spurway. In 1924, Haldane met Charlotte Franken, who was a journalist for the "Daily Express" and married to Jack Burghes. Following the publication of Haldane's "Daedalus, or Science and the Future," she interviewed Haldane and they began a relationship. In order to marry Haldane, Franken filed a divorce suit, which resulted in controversy as Haldane was involved as co-respondent in the legal proceeding. Additionally, as Sahotra Sarkar reported: "For her to secure a divorce, Haldane overtly committed adultery with her." Haldane's conduct was described as "gross immorality," for which he was formally dismissed by Cambridge's Sex Viri (a six-member disciplinary committee) from the university in 1925. Cambridge professors, including G. K. Chesterton, Bertrand Russell, and W. L. George, raised their defence for Haldane insisting that the university should not make such judgements, based solely on a professor's private life. The ouster was revoked in 1926. Haldane and Charlotte Franken were married in 1926. Following their separation in 1942, they divorced in 1945. Later that year he married Helen Spurway, his former PhD student.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane once boasted about himself, saying, "I can read 11 languages and make public speeches in three; but am unmusical. I am a fairly competent public speaker." He had no children, but he and his father were important influences to his sister Naomi's children, of whom Denis Mitchison, Murdoch Mitchison and Avrion Mitchison became professors of biology at the University of London, Edinburgh University, and University College London, respectively.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Inspired by his father, Haldane often used self-experimentation and would expose himself to danger to obtain data. To test the effects of acidification of the blood he drank dilute hydrochloric acid, enclosed himself in an airtight room containing 7% carbon dioxide, and found that it 'gives one a rather violent headache'. One experiment to study elevated levels of oxygen saturation triggered a fit which resulted in him suffering crushed vertebrae. In his decompression chamber experiments, he and his volunteers suffered perforated eardrums. But, as Haldane stated in "What is Life," "the drum generally heals up; and if a hole remains in it, although one is somewhat deaf, one can blow tobacco smoke out of the ear in question, which is a social accomplishment."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane made himself unpopular among his colleagues from the start of his academic career. In Cambridge, he annoyed most of the senior faculty due to his uninhibited behaviour, particularly at dinner. His partisan, Edgar Adrian (the 1932 Nobel laureate), had almost convinced the university to offer an appointment as Fellow of Trinity College, but that was ruined by an incident when Haldane arrived at the dining table, carrying a gallon jar of urine from his laboratory.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In the autumn of 1963, Haldane visited the US for a series of scientific conferences. At the University of Wisconsin, Sewall Wright introduced him before his speech, noting many of Haldane's achievements, after which Haldane modestly remarked that the introduction would have been more accurate if all the references to "Haldane" were replaced with "Wright". In Florida, he met, for the first and only time, the Russian biochemist Alexander Oparin, who had developed the origin of life theory quite independent of his own in the 1920s. It was while there that he started feeling abdominal pains.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane went to London for a diagnosis. He was found to have colorectal cancer, and had a surgery in February 1964. Around that time Philip Dally was making a BBC documentary about eminent living scientists, which included Sewall Wright and the double Nobel laureate Linus Pauling. Dally's team approached Haldane at the hospital for the documentary profile, but instead of a filmed interview, Haldane gave them a self-obituary, the opening lines of which run:I am going to begin with a boast. I believe that I am one of the [originally as "I am the most"] most influential people living today, although I haven't got a scrap of power. Let me explain. In 1932 I was the first person to estimate the rate of mutation of a human gene.He also wrote a comic poem while in the hospital, mocking his own incurable disease. It was read by his friends, who appreciated the consistent irreverence with which Haldane had lived his life. The poem first appeared in print on 21 February 1964 issue of the "New Statesman", and runs:


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: He willed that his body be used for medical research and teaching at the Rangaraya Medical College, Kakinada.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: His surgery in London was declared successful. But the symptoms reappeared after returning to India in June, and in August, the Indian doctors confirmed that his condition was terminal. Writing to John Maynard Smith on 7 September, he said, "I am not appreciably upset by the propect of dying fairly soon. But I am very angry [at the English doctor who performed the operation]."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: He died on 1 December 1964 in Bhubaneswar. On that day the BBC broadcast his self-obituary as "Professor J.B.S. Haldane, obituary."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Following his father's footsteps, Haldane's first publication was on the mechanism of gaseous exchange by haemoglobin in "The Journal of Physiology", and he subsequently worked on the chemical properties of blood as a pH buffer. He investigated several aspects of kidney functions and mechanism of excretion.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1904, Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire published a paper on an experiment attempting to test Mendelian inheritance between Japanese waltzing and albino mice. When Haldane came across the paper, he noticed that Darbishire had overlooked the possibility of genetic linkage in the experiment. Having sought advice from Reginald Punnett, a professor of biology at the University of Cambridge, he was ready to write a paper but only after an independent experiment. With his sister Naomi and a friend Alexander Dalzell Sprunt, one year his senior, he started the experiment in 1908 using guinea pigs and mice. By 1912, the report was ready. But the paper titled "Reduplication in mice" was published in the "Journal of Genetics" only in December 1915 that became the first demonstration of genetic linkage in mammals, showing that certain genetic traits tend to be inherited together (as was later discovered, because of their proximity on chromosomes). (Between 1912 and 1914, genetic linkage had been reported in the fruit fly "Drosophilla," silk moth, and plants.)


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: As the paper was written during Haldane's service during World War I, James F. Crow called it "the most important science article ever written in a front-line trench." Haldane himself recalled that he was the "only officer to complete a scientific paper from a forward position of the Black Watch." As was Haldane, Sprunt had joined 4th Battalion Bedfordshire Regiment at the start of World War I, and was killed at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle on 17 March 1915. It was upon this news that Haldane submitted the paper for publication, in which he remarked: "Owing to the war it has been necessary to publish prematurely, as unfortunately one of us (A. D. S.) has already been killed in France." He was also the first to demonstrate linkage in chickens in 1921, and (with Julia Bell) in humans in 1937.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1925, with G.E. Briggs, Haldane derived a new interpretation of the enzyme kinetic law of Victor Henri in 1903, better known as the 1913 Michaelis–Menten equation. Leonor Michaelis and Maud Menten assumed that enzyme (catalyst) and substrate (reactant) are in fast equilibrium with their complex, which then dissociates to yield product and free enzyme. By contrast, at almost the same time, Donald Van Slyke and G. E. Cullen treated the binding step as an irreversible reaction. The Briggs–Haldane equation was of the same algebraic form as both of the earlier equations, but their derivation is based on the quasi-steady state approximation, which is the concentration of intermediate complex (or complexes) does not change. As a result, the microscopic meaning of the "Michaelis Constant" ("K") is different. Although commonly referring to it as Michaelis–Menten kinetics, most of the current models typically use the Briggs–Haldane derivation.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In his essay "On Being the Right Size" he outlines Haldane's principle, which states that the size very often defines what bodily equipment an animal must have: "Insects, being so small, do not have oxygen-carrying bloodstreams. What little oxygen their cells require can be absorbed by simple diffusion of air through their bodies. But being larger means an animal must have complicated oxygen pumping and distributing systems to reach all the cells."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1927 Haldane pointed out that because selection mainly acts on heterozygotes, newly arisen dominant mutations are much more likely to be fixed than recessive ones, a mechanism now called "Haldane's sieve". This leads to the expectation that adaptation from new mutations in large outcrossing populations should primarily proceed via fixing non-recessive beneficial mutations.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane introduced the modern concept of abiogenesis in an eight-page article titled "The origin of life," in "The" "Rationalist Annual" in 1929, describing the primitive ocean as a "vast chemical laboratory" containing a mixture of inorganic compounds – like a "hot dilute soup" in which organic compounds could have formed. Under the solar energy the anoxic atmosphere containing carbon dioxide, ammonia and water vapour gave rise to a variety of organic compounds, "living or half-living things". The first molecules reacted with one another to produce more complex compounds, and ultimately the cellular components. At some point a kind of "oily film" was produced that enclosed self-replicating nucleic acids, thereby becoming the first cell. J. D. Bernal named the hypothesis "biopoiesis" or "biopoesis", the process of living matter spontaneously evolving from self-replicating but lifeless molecules. Haldane further hypothesised that viruses were the intermediate entities between the prebiotic soup and the first cells. He asserted that prebiotic life would have been "in the virus stage for many millions of years before a suitable assemblage of elementary units was brought together in the first cell." The idea was generally dismissed as "wild speculation".


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Alexander Oparin had suggested a similar idea in Russian in 1924 (published in English in 1936). The hypothesis gained some empirical support in 1953 with the classic Miller–Urey experiment. Since then, the primordial soup theory (Oparin–Haldane hypothesis) has become the foundation in the study of abiogenesis. Although Oparin's theory became widely known only after the English version in 1936, Haldane accepted Oparin's originality and said, "I have very little doubt that Professor Oparin has the priority over me."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was the first to realise the evolutionary link between genetic disorder and infection in humans. While estimating the rates of human mutation in different situations and diseases, he noted that mutations expressed in red blood cells, like thalassemias, were prevalent only in tropical regions where deadly infection like malaria has been endemic. He further observed that these were favourable traits (heterozygous inheritance of sickle cell trait) for natural selection which protected individuals from receiving malarial infection. He introduced his hypothesis at the Eighth International Congress of Genetics held in 1948 at Stockholm on a topic "The Rate of Mutation of Human Genes". He proposed that genetic disorders in humans living in malaria-endemic regions provided a condition (phenotype) that makes them relatively immune to malarial infections. He formalised in a technical paper published in 1949 in which he made a prophetic statement: "The corpuscles of the anaemic heterozygotes are smaller than normal, and more resistant to hypotonic solutions. It is at least conceivable that they are also more resistant to attacks by the sporozoa which cause malaria." This became known as "Haldane's malaria hypothesis", or concisely, the "malaria hypothesis". This hypothesis was eventually confirmed by Anthony C. Allison in 1954 in the case of sickle-cell anemia.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was one of the three major figures to develop the mathematical theory of population genetics, along with Ronald Fisher and Sewall Wright. He thus played an important role in the modern evolutionary synthesis of the early 20th century. He re-established natural selection as the central mechanism of evolution by explaining it as a mathematical consequence of Mendelian inheritance. He wrote a series of ten papers, A Mathematical Theory of Natural and Artificial Selection, deriving expressions for the direction and rate of change of gene frequencies, and also analyzing the interaction of natural selection with mutation and migration. The series consists of ten papers published between 1924 and 1934 in journals such as "Biological Reviews" (part II), "Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society" (parts I and from III to IX) and "Genetics" (part X). He gave a set of lectures based on this series at the University of Wales in 1931, and were summarised in a book, "The Causes of Evolution" in 1932.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: His first paper on the series in 1924 specifically treats the rate of natural selection in peppered moth evolution. He predicted that environmental condition can favour the increase or decline of either the dominant (in this case the black or melanic forms) or the recessive (the grey or wild type) moths. For a sooty environment such as Manchester, where the phenomenon was discovered in 1848, he predicted that the dominant melanic moths will have fifty times more survival fitness than the typical grey ones. According to his estimate, assuming 1% dominant form in 1848 and about 99% in 1898, "48 generations are needed for the change [for the dominant to appear]... After only 13 generations the dominants would be in a majority." Such mathematical prediction was considered improbable for natural selection in nature. But it was subsequently proven by an elaborate experiment (named Kettlewell's experiment) performed by an Oxford zoologist Bernard Kettlewell between 1953 and 1958, and further by a Cambridge geneticists Michael Majerus in his experiments conducted between 2001 and 2007.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: His contributions to statistical human genetics included: the first methods using maximum likelihood for the estimation of human linkage maps; pioneering methods for estimating human mutation rates; the first estimates of mutation rate in humans (2 × 10 mutations per gene per generation for the X-linked haemophilia gene); and the first notion that there is a "cost of natural selection". He was the first to estimate the rate of human mutation in his 1932 book "The Causes of Evolution." At the John Innes Horticultural Institution, he developed the complicated linkage theory for polyploids; and extended the idea of gene/enzyme relationships with the biochemical and genetic study of plant pigments.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane became a socialist during the First World War, supported the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War, and then became an open supporter of the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1937. A pragmatic dialectical-materialist Marxist, he wrote many articles for the "Daily Worker". In "On Being the Right Size", he wrote that "while nationalization of certain industries is an obvious possibility in the largest of states, I find it no easier to picture a completely socialized British Empire or United States than an elephant turning somersaults or a hippopotamus jumping a hedge."


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1938, Haldane proclaimed enthusiastically: "I think that Marxism is true." He joined the Communist Party in 1942. He was pressed to speak out about the rise of Lysenkoism and the persecution of geneticists in the Soviet Union as anti-Darwinist and the political suppression of genetics as incompatible with dialectical materialism. He shifted his polemic focus to the United Kingdom, criticizing the dependence of scientific research on financial patronage. In 1941, he wrote about the Soviet trial of his friend and fellow geneticist Nikolai Vavilov:


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: By the end of the Second World War, Haldane had become an explicit critic of the regime. He left the party in 1950, shortly after considering standing for Parliament as a Communist Party candidate. He continued to admire Joseph Stalin, describing him in 1962 as "a very great man who did a very good job". Haldane has been accused by authors including Peter Wright and Chapman Pincher of having been a Soviet GRU spy codenamed "Intelligentsia".


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was the first to have thought of the genetic basis for human cloning, and the eventual artificial breeding of superior individuals. For this he introduced the terms "clone" and "cloning", modifying the earlier "clon" which had been used in agriculture since the early 20th century (from Greek "klōn", twig). He introduced the term in his speech on "Biological Possibilities for the Human Species of the Next Ten Thousand Years" at the "Ciba Foundation Symposium on Man and his Future" in 1963. He said:


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: His essay "Daedalus; or, Science and the Future" (1924) posited the concept of in vitro fertilisation, which he called ectogenesis. He envisioned ectogenesis as a tool for creating better individuals (eugenics). Haldane's work was an influence on Huxley's "Brave New World" (1932) and was also admired by Gerald Heard. Various essays on science were collected and published in a volume titled "Possible Worlds" in 1927. His book, "A.R.P. (Air Raid Precautions)" (1938) combined his physiological research into the effects of stress upon the human body with his experience of air raids during the Spanish Civil War to provide a scientific account of the likely effects of the air raids that Britain was to endure during the Second World War.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Along with Olaf Stapledon, Charles Kay Ogden, I. A. Richards, and H. G. Wells, Haldane was accused by C. S. Lewis of scientism. Haldane criticised Lewis and his Ransom Trilogy for the "complete mischaracterisation of science, and his disparagement of the human race". Haldane wrote a book for children titled "My Friend Mr Leakey" (1937), containing the stories "A Meal With a Magician", "A Day in the Life of a Magician", "Mr Leakey's Party", "Rats", "The Snake with the Golden Teeth", and "My Magic Collar Stud"; later editions featured illustrations by Quentin Blake. He also wrote an essay criticising Lewis's arguments for the existence of God, entitled "More Anti-Lewisite", a reference to the poison gas and its antidote.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In 1923, in a talk given in Cambridge titled "Science and the Future", Haldane, foreseeing the exhaustion of coal for power generation in Britain, proposed a network of hydrogen-generating windmills. This is the first proposal of the hydrogen-based renewable energy economy.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: In his "An Autobiography in Brief", published shortly before his death in India, Haldane named four close associates as showing promise to become illustrious scientists: T. A. Davis, Dronamraju Krishna Rao, Suresh Jayakar and S. K. Roy.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1932. The French Government conferred him its National Order of the Legion of Honour in 1937. In 1952, he received the Darwin Medal from the Royal Society. In 1956, he was awarded the Huxley Memorial Medal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain. He received the Feltrinelli Prize from Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in 1961. He also received an Honorary Doctorate of Science, an Honorary Fellowship at New College, Oxford, and the Kimber Award of the US National Academy of Sciences. He was awarded the Linnean Society of London's prestigious Darwin–Wallace Medal in 1958.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: The Haldane Lecture at the John Innes Centre, where Haldane worked from 1927 to 1937 is named in his honour. The JBS Haldane Lecture of The Genetics Society is also named in his honour.


title: J. B. S. Haldane

text: Haldane was parodied as an obsessive self-experimenter, described as "the biologist too absorbed in his experiments to notice his friends bedding his wife" by his friend Aldous Huxley in the novel "Antic Hay" (1923).


title: Panorama Studios

text: Panorama Studios is an Indian film production and distribution company established by "Ajay Devgn" 's exclusive manager Kumar Mangat Pathak. Along with its subsidiaries and associates, is a diversified film studio with various business segments such as production and distribution.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Reagan Amyre Gomez-Preston (born April 24, 1980) is an American television, film and voice actress. She is known for her roles of Zaria Peterson on The WB sitcom "The Parent 'Hood" (1995–1999) and Roberta Tubbs on the FOX animated comedy "The Cleveland Show" (2009–2013). She has also reprised the role of Roberta Tubbs in occasional "Family Guy" appearances. Gomez-Preston also starred in the short-lived UPN sitcom, "Love, Inc." in the 2005–2006 season as Francine.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Was born in Detroit, Michigan to a Puerto Rican mother, Cheryl Gomez, and an African American father, Dr. Bennett Preston. She has a younger brother named Kyle.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Gomez-Preston's father, Bennett Preston, is a medical examiner/pathologist in Philadelphia. When Gomez-Preston was young her mother worked for the Detroit Police Department. Cheryl Gomez was one of the first women assigned to street patrol. Due to verbal abuse, written racist epithets, death threats, and a commanding officer expressing interest in a relationship with her, she filed a sexual harassment suit against the Detroit Police Department, which she won, receiving an award somewhere between $800,000 and $1.2 million. After this Cheryl Gomez moved the family to Little Rock, AR, then to Philadelphia. In Philadelphia Gomez-Preston was enrolled in acting, dancing, and singing lessons at Philadelphia's Freedom Theatre. Her parents eventually divorced. In 1994, she moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles with her mother and brother Kyle, so she could pursue an acting career.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: At 14 years old, Gomez-Preston began her acting career in The WB sitcom "The Parent 'Hood", as Zaria Peterson. She guest starred on UPN's "One on One" as Flex's younger sister/Brianna's aunt, Bernadette. Also, she was a guest host of the weekly music series "Soul Train", aired in December 1995. She also played Francine opposite Holly Robinson Peete in the short-lived UPN sitcom, "Love Inc." She is also a former cast member of Nickelodeon's "The Amanda Show". She has been featured in "King" magazine twice, first in the September/October 2003 issue, and again in the December 2006/January 2007 issue. She was one of five cover girls in her second appearance. She also appeared in music videos "Sorry 2004" by Ruben Studdard, "No Better Love" by Young Gunz, and "Whatever You Like" by T.I.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Gomez-Preston is a writer of feature films, with her own business and production company. She voiced Roberta Tubbs, Cleveland Brown's stepdaughter on the FOX animated comedy "The Cleveland Show" from 2009 until the show's cancellation in 2013. Gomez-Preston replaced actress Nia Long.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Since 2014, she has had a recurring voice-over role as the twin sisters Jenny and Kiki Pizza on the animated Cartoon Network television series "Steven Universe" and in 2016, she began a recurring role on the OWN television drama "Queen Sugar" as Chantal Williams.


title: Reagan Gomez-Preston

text: Gomez-Preston began dating model DeWayne Turrentine in 1995. Turrentine was a member of the hip hop duo Quo. The couple married on November 10, 1999. They have two children, a daughter named Scarlett Annette Turrentine (born May 13, 2007) and a son named Tyger Attila Turrentine (born April 2, 2011).


title: Lee–Metford

text: The Lee–Metford rifle (a.k.a. "Magazine Lee–Metford", abbreviated "MLM") was a bolt-action British army service rifle, combining James Paris Lee's rear-locking bolt system and detachable magazine with an innovative seven groove rifled barrel designed by William Ellis Metford. It replaced the Martini–Henry rifle in 1888, following nine years of development and trials, but remained in service for only a short time until replaced by the similar Lee–Enfield.


title: Lee–Metford

text: - The rear-mounted lugs placed the operating handle much closer to the rifleman, over the trigger. This made it much quicker to operate than other, forward-mounted lug designs which forced the rifleman to move his hand forward to operate the bolt. It also enabled the rifleman to operate the trigger with his middle finger while still holding the bolt between thumb and index finger.


title: Lee–Metford

text: - The bolt's distance of travel was identical with the length of the cartridge, whereas in forward mounted lug designs bolt travel was cartridge length plus lug length. This also meant the firer did not have to lift his face out of the way when drawing back the bolt.


title: Lee–Metford

text: - The bolt lift was 60 degrees compared to the 90 degree rotation of some French and Mauser-style actions, both speedier and also meaning the rifleman did not lose the sight picture when the bolt handle was in the open position.


title: Lee–Metford

text: In addition Lee introduced a superior detachable box magazine to replace the integral magazines in use with most repeaters, and this magazine offered greater capacity than the competing Mannlicher design. Metford's polygonal rifling was adopted to reduce fouling from powder residue building up in the barrel, and to make cleaning easier.


title: Lee–Metford

text: In spite of its many advantageous features, the Lee–Metford was something of an anachronism, due to its use of a black powder–loaded cartridge. By the time of the rifle's introduction, rifle design had moved on to using small-calibre smokeless powder cartridges, which allowed bullets to be propelled at much higher velocities without as much smoke or residue. The .303 ammunition designed for the rifle was in fact originally intended to be loaded with a smokeless propellant, but as a result of protracted development, selection of a smokeless propellant was delayed, forcing the British to rely on black powder in the interim. By the time Cordite cartridges were available, it was found that they were wholly unsuited for use with the shallow Metford rifling, which would wear out and render barrels unusable after approximately 6,000 rounds, compared to the 10,000 rounds that the deeper, square-cut Enfield rifling pattern rifles could deliver. The Lee rifles fitted with Enfield barrels became known as Lee Enfields.


title: Lee–Metford

text: Regardless of the shortfalls brought about by the use of black powder, the Lee–Metford went through several revisions during its short service life, with the principal changes being to the magazine (from eight-round single stack to ten-round staggered), sights, and safety. Starting in 1895, the Lee–Metford started to be phased out in favor of the Lee–Enfield for the reasons outlined above, involving a change to Enfield barrels and sights adjusted for the flatter trajectory enabled by the smokeless propellant.


title: Lee–Metford

text: Replacement of the Lee–Metford rifles took several years to achieve, and they were still in service in some units during the Second Boer War in 1899. Poor sighting-in and quality control at the factory level resulted in British rifles being woefully inaccurate at ranges greater than . Nonetheless, captured Lee–Metford rifles became the primary weapon for the Boers too when their Mauser ammunition ran out.


title: Lee–Metford

text: The British considered an entirely new rifle, the Pattern 1913 Enfield, based upon a modified Mauser design, but its development was cut short by the First World War and the eminently adaptable Lee–Enfield served for another half century.


title: Lee–Metford

text: In British service the Lee–Metford was also upgraded to the standards of later rifle patterns (e.g. to charger loading and Short Rifle, the SMLE pattern), though the barrel was almost always switched to one with Enfield pattern rifling. The Lee–Metford was produced commercially and used by civilian target shooters until the outbreak of World War I, as it was considered to be inherently more accurate than the Enfield pattern of rifling. In this context, barrels and boltheads could be replaced as frequently as the owner wished, or could afford. It remained a reserve arm in many parts of the British Empire into WWII, even being issued to the New Zealand Home Guard and the Australian Volunteer Defence Corps until more modern rifles could be obtained. The Lee–Metford is still in ceremonial use with the Atholl Highlanders.


title: Lee–Metford

text: Small numbers of Lee–Metford rifles were built as, or converted to, experimental semi-automatic loading systems, such as the British Howell and South African Reider and the best-known of which was the Charlton Automatic Rifle, designed by a New Zealander, Philip Charlton in 1941 to act as a substitute for the Bren and Lewis gun light machine guns which were in chronically short supply at the time. During the Second World War, the majority of New Zealand's land forces were deployed in North Africa. When Japan entered the war in 1941, New Zealand found itself lacking the light machine guns that would be required for local defence should Japan choose to invade, and so the New Zealand Government funded the development of self-loading conversions for the Lee–Metford rifle. The end result was the Charlton Automatic Rifle (based on the obsolete MLE), which was issued to Home Guard units in NZ from 1942. Over 1,500 conversions were made, including a handful by the Australian firm Electrolux using Lithgow SMLE Mk III* rifles.


title: Lee–Metford

text: The two Charlton designs differed markedly in external appearance (amongst other things, the New Zealand Charlton had a forward pistol grip and bipod, whilst the Australian one did not), but shared the same operating mechanism. Most of the Charlton Automatic Rifles were destroyed in a fire after the Second World War, but a few examples survive in museums and private collections.


title: Complex plane

text: In mathematics, the complex plane is the plane formed by the complex numbers, with a Cartesian coordinate system such that the -axis, called the real axis, is formed by the real numbers, and the -axis, called the imaginary axis, is formed by the imaginary numbers.


title: Complex plane

text: The complex plane allows a geometric interpretation of complex numbers. Under addition, they add like vectors. The multiplication of two complex numbers can be expressed more easily in polar coordinates—the magnitude or "modulus" of the product is the product of the two absolute values, or moduli, and the angle or "argument" of the product is the sum of the two angles, or arguments. In particular, multiplication by a complex number of modulus 1 acts as a rotation.


title: Complex plane

text: In complex analysis, the complex numbers are customarily represented by the symbol "z", which can be separated into its real ("x") and imaginary ("y") parts:


title: Complex plane

text: for example: "z" = 4 + 5"i", where "x" and "y" are real numbers, and "i" is the imaginary unit. In this customary notation the complex number "z" corresponds to the point ("x", "y") in the Cartesian plane.


title: Complex plane

text: In the Cartesian plane it may be assumed that the arctangent takes values from −"π"/2 to "π"/2 (in radians), and some care must be taken to define the more complete arctangent function for points ("x", "y") when "x" ≤ 0. In the complex plane these polar coordinates take the form


title: Complex plane

text: Here |"z"| is the "absolute value" or "modulus" of the complex number "z"; "θ", the "argument" of "z", is usually taken on the interval ; and the last equality (to |"z"|"e") is taken from Euler's formula. Without the constraint on the range of "θ", the argument of "z" is multi-valued, because the complex exponential function is periodic, with period 2"π i". Thus, if "θ" is one value of arg("z"), the other values are given by , where "n" is any non-zero integer.


title: Complex plane

text: While seldom used explicitly, the geometric view of the complex numbers is implicitly based on its structure of a Euclidean vector space of dimension 2, where the inner product of complex numbers and is given by formula_5; then for a complex number its absolute value coincides with its Euclidean norm, and its argument with the angle turning from 1 to .


title: Complex plane

text: The theory of contour integration comprises a major part of complex analysis. In this context, the direction of travel around a closed curve is important – reversing the direction in which the curve is traversed multiplies the value of the integral by −1. By convention the "positive" direction is counterclockwise. For example, the unit circle is traversed in the positive direction when we start at the point "z" = 1, then travel up and to the left through the point "z" = "i", then down and to the left through −1, then down and to the right through −"i", and finally up and to the right to "z" = 1, where we started.


title: Complex plane

text: Almost all of complex analysis is concerned with complex functions – that is, with functions that map some subset of the complex plane into some other (possibly overlapping, or even identical) subset of the complex plane. Here it is customary to speak of the domain of "f"("z") as lying in the "z"-plane, while referring to the range of "f"("z") as a set of points in the "w"-plane. In symbols we write


title: Complex plane

text: and often think of the function "f" as a transformation from the "z"-plane (with coordinates ("x", "y")) into the "w"-plane (with coordinates ("u", "v")).


title: Complex plane

text: Argand diagram refers to a geometric plot of complex numbers as points using the "x"-axis as the real axis and the "y"-axis as the imaginary axis. Such plots are named after Jean-Robert Argand (1768–1822), although they were first described by Norwegian–Danish land surveyor and mathematician Caspar Wessel (1745–1818). Argand diagrams are frequently used to plot the positions of the zeros and poles of a function in the complex plane.


title: Complex plane

text: It can be useful to think of the complex plane as if it occupied the surface of a sphere. Given a sphere of unit radius, place its center at the origin of the complex plane, oriented so that the equator on the sphere coincides with the unit circle in the plane, and the north pole is "above" the plane.


title: Complex plane

text: We can establish a one-to-one correspondence between the points on the surface of the sphere minus the north pole and the points in the complex plane as follows. Given a point in the plane, draw a straight line connecting it with the north pole on the sphere. That line will intersect the surface of the sphere in exactly one other point. The point will be projected onto the south pole of the sphere. Since the interior of the unit circle lies inside the sphere, that entire region () will be mapped onto the southern hemisphere. The unit circle itself () will be mapped onto the equator, and the exterior of the unit circle () will be mapped onto the northern hemisphere, minus the north pole. Clearly this procedure is reversible – given any point on the surface of the sphere that is not the north pole, we can draw a straight line connecting that point to the north pole and intersecting the flat plane in exactly one point.


title: Complex plane

text: Under this stereographic projection the north pole itself is not associated with any point in the complex plane. We perfect the one-to-one correspondence by adding one more point to the complex plane – the so-called "point at infinity" – and identifying it with the north pole on the sphere. This topological space, the complex plane plus the point at infinity, is known as the extended complex plane. We speak of a single "point at infinity" when discussing complex analysis. There are two points at infinity (positive, and negative) on the real number line, but there is only one point at infinity (the north pole) in the extended complex plane.


title: Complex plane

text: Imagine for a moment what will happen to the lines of latitude and longitude when they are projected from the sphere onto the flat plane. The lines of latitude are all parallel to the equator, so they will become perfect circles centered on the origin . And the lines of longitude will become straight lines passing through the origin (and also through the "point at infinity", since they pass through both the north and south poles on the sphere).


title: Complex plane

text: This is not the only possible yet plausible stereographic situation of the projection of a sphere onto a plane consisting of two or more values. For instance, the north pole of the sphere might be placed on top of the origin in a plane that is tangent to the circle. The details don't really matter. Any stereographic projection of a sphere onto a plane will produce one "point at infinity", and it will map the lines of latitude and longitude on the sphere into circles and straight lines, respectively, in the plane.


title: Complex plane

text: When discussing functions of a complex variable it is often convenient to think of a cut in the complex plane. This idea arises naturally in several different contexts.


title: Complex plane

text: Before we can treat this relationship as a single-valued function, the range of the resulting value must be restricted somehow. When dealing with the square roots of non-negative real numbers this is easily done. For instance, we can just define


title: Complex plane

text: to be the non-negative real number "y" such that . This idea doesn't work so well in the two-dimensional complex plane. To see why, let's think about the way the value of "f"("z") varies as the point "z" moves around the unit circle. We can write


title: Complex plane

text: Evidently, as "z" moves all the way around the circle, "w" only traces out one-half of the circle. So one continuous motion in the complex plane has transformed the positive square root "e" = 1 into the negative square root .


title: Complex plane

text: This problem arises because the point "z" = 0 has just one square root, while every other complex number "z" ≠ 0 has exactly two square roots. On the real number line we could circumvent this problem by erecting a "barrier" at the single point "x" = 0. A bigger barrier is needed in the complex plane, to prevent any closed contour from completely encircling the branch point "z" = 0. This is commonly done by introducing a branch cut; in this case the "cut" might extend from the point "z" = 0 along the positive real axis to the point at infinity, so that the argument of the variable "z" in the cut plane is restricted to the range 0 ≤ arg("z") < 2"π".


title: Complex plane

text: We can now give a complete description of . To do so we need two copies of the "z"-plane, each of them cut along the real axis. On one copy we define the square root of 1 to be , and on the other we define the square root of 1 to be "e" = −1. We call these two copies of the complete cut plane "sheets". By making a continuity argument we see that the (now single-valued) function maps the first sheet into the upper half of the "w"-plane, where , while mapping the second sheet into the lower half of the "w"-plane (where ).


title: Complex plane

text: The branch cut in this example doesn't have to lie along the real axis. It doesn't even have to be a straight line. Any continuous curve connecting the origin "z" = 0 with the point at infinity would work. In some cases the branch cut doesn't even have to pass through the point at infinity. For example, consider the relationship


title: Complex plane

text: Here the polynomial "z" − 1 vanishes when , so "g" evidently has two branch points. We can "cut" the plane along the real axis, from −1 to 1, and obtain a sheet on which "g"("z") is a single-valued function. Alternatively, the cut can run from "z" = 1 along the positive real axis through the point at infinity, then continue "up" the negative real axis to the other branch point, "z" = −1.


title: Complex plane

text: This situation is most easily visualized by using the stereographic projection described above. On the sphere one of these cuts runs longitudinally through the southern hemisphere, connecting a point on the equator ("z" = −1) with another point on the equator ("z" = 1), and passing through the south pole (the origin, "z" = 0) on the way. The second version of the cut runs longitudinally through the northern hemisphere and connects the same two equatorial points by passing through the north pole (that is, the point at infinity).


title: Complex plane

text: A meromorphic function is a complex function that is holomorphic and therefore analytic everywhere in its domain except at a finite, or countably infinite, number of points. The points at which such a function cannot be defined are called the poles of the meromorphic function. Sometimes all of these poles lie in a straight line. In that case mathematicians may say that the function is "holomorphic on the cut plane". Here's a simple example.


title: Complex plane

text: where "γ" is the Euler–Mascheroni constant, and has simple poles at 0, −1, −2, −3, ... because exactly one denominator in the infinite product vanishes when "z" is zero, or a negative integer. Since all its poles lie on the negative real axis, from "z" = 0 to the point at infinity, this function might be described as "holomorphic on the cut plane, the cut extending along the negative real axis, from 0 (inclusive) to the point at infinity."


title: Complex plane

text: Alternatively, Γ("z") might be described as "holomorphic in the cut plane with −"π" < arg("z") < "π" and excluding the point "z" = 0."


title: Complex plane

text: This cut is slightly different from the branch cut we've already encountered, because it actually "excludes" the negative real axis from the cut plane. The branch cut left the real axis connected with the cut plane on one side (0 ≤ "θ"), but severed it from the cut plane along the other side ("θ" < 2"π").


title: Complex plane

text: Of course, it's not actually necessary to exclude the entire line segment from "z" = 0 to −∞ to construct a domain in which Γ("z") is holomorphic. All we really have to do is puncture the plane at a countably infinite set of points {0, −1, −2, −3, ...}. But a closed contour in the punctured plane might encircle one or more of the poles of Γ("z"), giving a contour integral that is not necessarily zero, by the residue theorem. By cutting the complex plane we ensure not only that Γ("z") is holomorphic in this restricted domain – we also ensure that the contour integral of Γ over any closed curve lying in the cut plane is identically equal to zero.


title: Complex plane

text: Many complex functions are defined by infinite series, or by continued fractions. A fundamental consideration in the analysis of these infinitely long expressions is identifying the portion of the complex plane in which they converge to a finite value. A cut in the plane may facilitate this process, as the following examples show.


title: Complex plane

text: Since "z" = (−"z") for every complex number "z", it's clear that "f"("z") is an even function of "z", so the analysis can be restricted to one half of the complex plane. And since the series is undefined when


title: Complex plane

text: it makes sense to cut the plane along the entire imaginary axis and establish the convergence of this series where the real part of "z" is not zero before undertaking the more arduous task of examining "f"("z") when "z" is a pure imaginary number.


title: Complex plane

text: In this example the cut is a mere convenience, because the points at which the infinite sum is undefined are isolated, and the "cut" plane can be replaced with a suitably "punctured" plane. In some contexts the cut is necessary, and not just convenient. Consider the infinite periodic continued fraction


title: Complex plane

text: It can be shown that "f"("z") converges to a finite value if and only if "z" is not a negative real number such that . In other words, the convergence region for this continued fraction is the cut plane, where the cut runs along the negative real axis, from − to the point at infinity.


title: Complex plane

text: can be made into a single-valued function by splitting the domain of "f" into two disconnected sheets. It is also possible to "glue" those two sheets back together to form a single Riemann surface on which can be defined as a holomorphic function whose image is the entire "w"-plane (except for the point ). Here's how that works.


title: Complex plane

text: Imagine two copies of the cut complex plane, the cuts extending along the positive real axis from to the point at infinity. On one sheet define , so that , by definition. On the second sheet define , so that , again by definition. Now flip the second sheet upside down, so the imaginary axis points in the opposite direction of the imaginary axis on the first sheet, with both real axes pointing in the same direction, and "glue" the two sheets together (so that the edge on the first sheet labeled "" is connected to the edge labeled "" on the second sheet, and the edge on the second sheet labeled "" is connected to the edge labeled "" on the first sheet). The result is the Riemann surface domain on which is single-valued and holomorphic (except when ).


title: Complex plane

text: To understand why "f" is single-valued in this domain, imagine a circuit around the unit circle, starting with on the first sheet. When we are still on the first sheet. When we have crossed over onto the second sheet, and are obliged to make a second complete circuit around the branch point before returning to our starting point, where is equivalent to , because of the way we glued the two sheets together. In other words, as the variable "z" makes two complete turns around the branch point, the image of "z" in the "w"-plane traces out just one complete circle.


title: Complex plane

text: from which we can conclude that the derivative of "f" exists and is finite everywhere on the Riemann surface, except when (that is, "f" is holomorphic, except when ).


title: Complex plane

text: also discussed above, be constructed? Once again we begin with two copies of the "z"-plane, but this time each one is cut along the real line segment extending from to – these are the two branch points of "g"("z"). We flip one of these upside down, so the two imaginary axes point in opposite directions, and glue the corresponding edges of the two cut sheets together. We can verify that "g" is a single-valued function on this surface by tracing a circuit around a circle of unit radius centered at . Commencing at the point on the first sheet we turn halfway around the circle before encountering the cut at . The cut forces us onto the second sheet, so that when "z" has traced out one full turn around the branch point , "w" has taken just one-half of a full turn, the sign of "w" has been reversed (since ), and our path has taken us to the point on the second sheet of the surface. Continuing on through another half turn we encounter the other side of the cut, where , and finally reach our starting point ( on the first sheet) after making two full turns around the branch point.


title: Complex plane

text: The natural way to label in this example is to set on the first sheet, with on the second. The imaginary axes on the two sheets point in opposite directions so that the counterclockwise sense of positive rotation is preserved as a closed contour moves from one sheet to the other (remember, the second sheet is "upside down"). Imagine this surface embedded in a three-dimensional space, with both sheets parallel to the "xy"-plane. Then there appears to be a vertical hole in the surface, where the two cuts are joined together. What if the cut is made from down the real axis to the point at infinity, and from , up the real axis until the cut meets itself? Again a Riemann surface can be constructed, but this time the "hole" is horizontal. Topologically speaking, both versions of this Riemann surface are equivalent – they are orientable two-dimensional surfaces of genus one.


title: Complex plane

text: In control theory, one use of the complex plane is known as the "s-plane". It is used to visualise the roots of the equation describing a system's behaviour (the characteristic equation) graphically. The equation is normally expressed as a polynomial in the parameter 's' of the Laplace transform, hence the name 's' plane. Points in the s-plane take the form formula_19, where "'j'" is used instead of the usual "'i"' to represent the imaginary component.


title: Complex plane

text: Another related use of the complex plane is with the Nyquist stability criterion. This is a geometric principle which allows the stability of a closed-loop feedback system to be determined by inspecting a Nyquist plot of its open-loop magnitude and phase response as a function of frequency (or loop transfer function) in the complex plane.


title: Complex plane

text: The "z-plane" is a discrete-time version of the s-plane, where z-transforms are used instead of the Laplace transformation.