title: Edward Hardwicke

text: Hardwicke had a small role in "The Greek Interpreter" episode of the 1968 series "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes" featuring Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes.


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: Hardwicke played Judas Iscariot in the Dennis Potter TV play "Son of Man" (1969). He became familiar to television audiences in the 1970s drama series "Colditz", in which he played Pat Grant, a character based on the real-life war hero Pat Reid. He then played Arthur in the sitcom "My Old Man". In 1978 he appeared as Bellcourt in the last filmed episode of "The Sweeney", "Hearts and Minds".


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: David Burke suggested Hardwicke as his successor in the role of Doctor Watson in the Granada Television adaptations of the Sherlock Holmes stories in "The Return of Sherlock Holmes" series, alongside Jeremy Brett as Holmes. Hardwicke played the role for eight years from 1986 to 1994, his first episode being "The Empty House" and his last "The Cardboard Box". He portrayed a very calm and attentive Watson, somewhat intolerant of Holmes's more outlandish moods, and became permanently associated with it, also playing it on the West End stage with Brett in "The Secret of Sherlock Holmes" in 1989. That same year, he also directed "Going On" by Charles Dennis at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: His other television appearances were numerous, and included "Holocaust" (1978), "Oppenheimer" (1980), "Lovejoy" (1992), "Dangerfield" (1996), "The Ruth Rendell Mysteries" (1997), "Heartbeat" (1999), David Copperfield" (2000), "Agatha Christie's Poirot" (2004), ""Fanny Hill"" (2007), "Holby City", ""Shameless"" (2010) as a World War II veteran, and Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em (1978).


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: Hardwicke also provided narration for several films. He voiced Major Swift in the Xbox 360 game "Fable III".


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: Hardwicke had two daughters, Kate and Emma, by his first marriage to Anne Iddon (died 2000), which ended in divorce. He was married to Prim Cotton from 1994 until his death.


title: Edward Hardwicke

text: Hardwicke lived in Chichester. On 16 May 2011 he died of cancer at a hospice in the city, with his remains handled at the Chichester Crematorium.


title: Systems analyst

text: A systems analyst, also known as business technology analyst, is an information technology (IT) professional who specializes in analyzing, designing and implementing information systems. Systems analysts assess the suitability of information systems in terms of their intended outcomes and liaise with end users, software vendors and programmers in order to achieve these outcomes. A systems analyst is a person who uses analysis and design techniques to solve business problems using information technology. Systems analysts may serve as change agents who identify the organizational improvements needed, design systems to implement those changes, and train and motivate others to use the systems.


title: Systems analyst

text: As of 2015, the sectors employing the greatest numbers of computer systems analysts were state government, insurance, computer system design, professional and commercial equipment, and company and enterprise management. The number of jobs in this field is projected to grow from 487,000 as of 2009 to 650,000 by 2016.


title: Systems analyst

text: This job ranked third best in a 2010 survey, fifth best in the 2011 survey, 9th best in the 2012 survey and the 10th best in the 2013 survey.


title: History of silk

text: The production of silk originated in Neolithic China within the Yangshao culture (4th millennium BCE). Though it would later reach other places in the world, the art of silk production remained confined to China until the Silk Road opened at 114 BC, though China maintained its virtual monopoly over silk production for another thousand years. The use of silk within China was not confined to clothing alone, and silk was used for a number of applications, such as writing. Within clothing, the color of silk worn also held social importance, and formed an important guide of social class during the Tang dynasty.


title: History of silk

text: Silk cultivation spread to Japan around 300 AD, and, by 552 AD, the Byzantine Empire managed to obtain silkworm eggs and were able to begin silkworm cultivation; the Arabs also began to manufacture silk at the same time. As a result of the spread of sericulture, Chinese silk exports became less important, although they still maintained dominance over the luxury silk market. The Crusades brought silk production to Western Europe, in particular to many Italian states, which saw an economic boom exporting silk to the rest of Europe. Developments in manufacturing technique also began to take place during the Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries) in Europe, with devices such as the spinning wheel first appearing at this time. During the 16th century, France joined Italy in developing a successful silk trade, though the efforts of most other nations to develop a silk industry of their own were unsuccessful.


title: History of silk

text: The Industrial Revolution changed much of Europe's silk industry. Due to innovations in the spinning of cotton, cotton became much cheaper to manufacture, leading to cotton production becoming the main focus for many manufacturers, and causing the more costly production of silk to shrink. New weaving technologies, however, increased the efficiency of producing silk cloth; among these was the Jacquard loom, developed for the production of highly detailed silks with embroidery-like designs. An epidemic of several silkworm diseases at this time caused production to fall, especially in France, where the industry never fully recovered.


title: History of silk

text: In the 20th century, Japan and China regained their earlier dominant role in silk production, and China is now once again the world's largest producer of silk. The rise of new imitation silk fabrics, such as nylon and polyester, has reduced the prevalence of silk throughout the world, being a cheaper and easier to care for alternative. Silk is now once again thought of as a luxury good, with a greatly reduced importance compared to its historical heyday.


title: History of silk

text: The earliest evidence of silk dates back to more than 8,500 years ago and has been found at the early Neolithic Age tombs of Jiahu, China. Biomolecular evidence, reported from a study, showed the existence of prehistoric silk fibroin in the tombs. Rough weaving tools and bone needles were also excavated, indicating the possibility that the Jiahu residents may have possessed basic weaving and sewing skills required for making textile. Other evidences of silk include ones found at the sites of Yangshao culture in Xia County, Shanxi, where a silk cocoon was found cut in half by a sharp knife, dating back to between 4000 and 3000 BC. The species was identified as "Bombyx mori", the domesticated silkworm. Fragments of a primitive loom can also be seen from the sites of Hemudu culture culture in Yuyao, Zhejiang, dated to about 4000 BC.


title: History of silk

text: The earliest extant example of a woven silk fabric is from 3630 BC, used as wrapping for the body of a child. The fabric comes from a Yangshao site in Qingtaicun at Rongyang, Henan. Similar remains of silk fabric were discovered at another Yangshao site located in Wanggou, Henan, in the year 2019. The fabric was used to wrap the body of a child placed inside a burial urn. Scraps of silk were found in a Liangzhu culture site at Qianshanyang in Huzhou, Zhejiang, dating back to 2700 BC. Other fragments have been recovered from royal tombs in the Shang dynasty ().


title: History of silk

text: During the later epoch, the knowledge of silk production was spread outside of China, with the Koreans, the Japanese and, later, the Indian people gaining knowledge of sericulture and silk fabric production. Allusions to the fabric in the Old Testament show that it was known in Western Asia in biblical times. Scholars believe that starting in the 2nd century BC, the Chinese established a commercial network aimed at exporting silk to the West. Silk was used, for example, by the Persian court and its king, Darius III, when Alexander the Great conquered the empire.


title: History of silk

text: Even though silk spread rapidly across Eurasia, with the possible exception of Japan, its production remained exclusively Chinese for three millennia. The earliest examples of silk production outside China are from silk threads discovered from the Chanhudaro site in the Indus Valley civilisation, which are dated to 2450–2000 BC. The analysis of the silk fibres shows presence of reeling and sericulture, and predates another example of silk found in Nevasa in peninsular India, dated to 1500 BC.


title: History of silk

text: The Siberian Ice Maiden, discovered in the Pazyryk burials, was found clad in a long crimson-and-white striped woolen skirt, with white felt stockings. Her yellow blouse was originally thought to be made of wild tussah silk, but closer examination of the fibres revealed the material not to be Chinese in origin, and was instead woven from a wild silk of a different origin, potentially India.


title: History of silk

text: Many myths and legends exist as to the exact origin of silk production; the writings of both Confucius and Chinese tradition recount that, in about 3000 BC, a silk worm's cocoon fell into the teacup of the Empress Leizu. Wishing to extract it from her drink, the 14-year-old girl began to unroll the thread of the cocoon; seeing the long fibers that constituted the cocoon, the Empress decided to weave some of it, and so kept some of the cocoons to do so. Having observed the life of the silkworm on the recommendation of her husband, the Yellow Emperor, she began to instruct her entourage in the art of raising silkworms - sericulture. From this point, the girl became the goddess of silk in Chinese mythology.


title: History of silk

text: Knowledge of silk production eventually left China via the heir of a princess who was promised to a prince of Khotan, likely around the early 1st century AD. The princess, refusing to go without the fabric that she loved, decided to break the imperial ban on silkworm exportation.


title: History of silk

text: Though silk was exported to foreign countries in great amounts, sericulture remained a secret that the Chinese carefully guarded; consequently, other cultures developed their own accounts and legends as to the source of the fabric. In classical antiquity, most Romans, great admirers of the cloth, were convinced that the Chinese took the fabric from tree leaves. This belief was affirmed by Seneca the Elder in his work "Phaedra", and by Virgil in his work Georgics. Pliny the Elder notably accurately determined where silk came from; speaking of the "Bombyx" or silk moth, he wrote in his "Natural History" that, "They weave webs, like spiders, that become a luxurious clothing material for women, called silk."


title: History of silk

text: In China, silkworm farming was originally restricted to women, and many women were employed in the silk-making industry. Even though some saw the development of a luxury product as useless, silk provoked such a craze among the high society that the rules in the were used to limit its use to the members of the imperial family.


title: History of silk

text: For approximately a millennium, the right to wear silk was reserved for the emperor and the highest dignitaries. Silk was, at the time, a sign of great wealth, due to its shimmering appearance, created by the silk fiber's prismatic structure, which refracted light from every angle. After some time, silk gradually extended to other classes of Chinese society, though this was mainly the uppermost noble classes. Silk began to be used for decorative means and also in less luxurious ways; musical instruments, fishing, and bow-making all utilized silk. Peasants, however, did not have the right to wear silk until the Qing dynasty (1644–1911).


title: History of silk

text: Paper was one of the greatest discoveries of ancient China. Beginning in the 3rd century BC, paper was made in all sizes with various materials. Silk was no exception, and silk workers had been making paper since the 2nd century BC. Silk, bamboo, linen, wheat and rice straw were all used, and paper made with silk became the first type of luxury paper. Researchers have found an early example of writing done on silk paper in the tomb of a marchioness, who died around 168, in Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan. The material was more expensive, but also more practical than bamboo slips. Treatises on many subjects, including meteorology, medicine, astrology, divinity, and even maps written on silk have been discovered.


title: History of silk

text: During the Han dynasty, silk became progressively more valuable in its own right, and was used in a greater capacity than as simply a material; lengths of silk cloth were used to pay government officials and to compensate citizens who were particularly worthy. In the same manner that one would sometimes estimate the price of products according to a certain weight of gold, a length of silk cloth became a monetary standard in China, in addition to bronze coins. Many neighbouring countries began to grow envious of the wealth that sericulture provided China, and beginning in the 2nd century BC, the Xiongnu people regularly pillaged the provinces of the Han Chinese for around 250 years. Silk was a common offering by the emperor to these tribes in exchange for peace.


title: History of silk

text: Silk is described in a chapter of the from the Western Han period (206 BC–9 AD), and a surviving calendar for silk production in an Eastern Han (25–220 AD) document. The two other known works on silk from the Han period are lost.


title: History of silk

text: For more than a millennium, silk remained the principal diplomatic gift of the emperor of China to neighbouring countries or vassal states. The use of silk became so important that the character for silk () soon constituted one of the principal radicals of Chinese script.


title: History of silk

text: As a material for clothing and accessories, the use of silk was regulated by a very precise code in China. For example, the Tang Dynasty and Song Dynasty used colour symbolism to denote the various ranks of bureaucrats, according to their function in society, with certain colours of silk restricted to the upper classes only. Under the Ming Dynasty, silk began to be used in a series of accessories: handkerchiefs, wallets, belts, or even as an embroidered piece of fabric displaying dozens of animals, real or mythical. These fashion accessories remained associated with a particular position: there was specific headgear for warriors, for judges, for nobles, and others for religious use. The women of high Chinese society also followed these codified practices, and used silk in their garments alongside the addition of countless decorative motifs. A 17th century work, , gives a description of one such motif:


title: History of silk

text: Silk was made using various breeds of lepidopterans, both wild and domestic. While wild silks were produced in many countries, the Chinese are considered to have been the first to produce silk fabric on a large scale, having the most efficient species of silk moth for silk production, the "Bombyx mandarina", and its domesticated descendant, "Bombyx mori". Chinese sources claim the existence in 1090 of a machine to unwind silkworm cocoons; the cocoons were placed in a large basin of hot water, the silk would leave the cauldron by tiny guiding rings, and would be wound onto a large spool, using a backward and forward motion. However, little information exists about the spinning techniques previously used in China. The spinning wheel, in all likelihood moved by hand, was known to exist by the beginning of the Christian era. The first accepted image of a spinning wheel appears in 1210, with an image of a silk spinning machine powered by a water wheel that dates to 1313.


title: History of silk

text: More information is known about the looms used. The ', or "Fundamentals of Agriculture and Sericulture" (compiled around 1210) is rich with pictures and descriptions, many pertaining to silk. It repeatedly claims the Chinese looms to be far superior to all others, and speaks of two types of loom that leave the worker's arms free: the drawloom, which is of Eurasian origin, and the pedal loom, which is attributed to East Asian origins. There are many diagrams of these that originate in the 12th and 13th centuries. When examined closely, many similarities between Eurasian machines can be drawn. Following the Jin Dynasty (266–420), the existence of silk damasks was well recorded, and beginning in the 2nd century BC, four-shafted looms and other innovations allowed the creation of silk brocades.


title: History of silk

text: Numerous archaeological discoveries show that silk had become a luxury material appreciated in foreign countries well before the opening of the Silk Road by the Chinese. For example, silk has been found in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, in the tomb of a mummy dating to 1070 BC.


title: History of silk

text: Both the Greeks and the Romans - the latter later than the former - spoke of the Seres, "people of silk", a term used for the inhabitants of the far-off kingdom of China. According to certain historians, the first Roman contact with silk was that of the legions of the governor of Syria, Crassus. At the Battle of Carrhae, near the Euphrates, the legions were said to be so surprised by the brilliance of the banners of Parthia that they fled.


title: History of silk

text: The Silk Road toward the west was opened by the Chinese in the 2nd century AD. The main road left from Xi'an, going either to the north or south of the Taklamakan desert, one of the most arid in the world, before crossing the Pamir Mountains. The caravans that travelled this route to exchange silk with other merchants were generally sizeable, constituting 100 to 500 people, as well as camels and yaks carrying around of merchandise. The route linked to Antioch and the coasts of the Mediterranean, about one year's travel from Xi'an. In the south, a second route went by Yemen, Burma, and India before rejoining the northern route.


title: History of silk

text: Not long after the conquest of Egypt in 30 BC, regular commerce began between the Romans and Asia, marked by the Roman appetite for silk cloth coming from the Far East, which was then resold to the Romans by the Parthians. The Roman Senate tried in vain to prohibit the wearing of silk, for economic reasons as well as moral ones. The import of Chinese silk resulted in vast amounts of gold leaving Rome, to such an extent that silk clothing was perceived as a sign of decadence and immorality.


title: History of silk

text: China traded silk, teas, and porcelain, while India traded spices, ivory, textiles, precious stones, and pepper, and the Roman Empire exported gold, silver, fine glassware, wine, carpets, and jewels. Although the term "the Silk Road" implies a continuous journey, very few who traveled the route traversed it from end to end; for the most part, goods were transported by a series of agents on varying routes, and were traded in the bustling markets of the oasis towns. The main traders during Antiquity were the Indian and Bactrian traders, followed by Sogdian traders from the 5th to the 8th century AD, and then followed by Arab and Persian traders.


title: History of silk

text: In the late Middle Ages, transcontinental trade over the land routes of the Silk Road declined as sea trade increased. Centuries went by, civilizations, and dynasties were formed, prospered, or perished, but the route that linked the continents of Europe and Asia survived and expanded, becoming known as the Silk Road. The Silk Road was a significant factor in the development of the civilizations of China, India, Ancient Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Ancient Rome. Though silk was certainly the major trade item from China, many other goods were traded, and various technologies, religions and philosophies, as well as the bubonic plague (the "Black Death"), also traveled along the silk routes. Some of the other goods traded included luxuries such as silk, satin, hemp and other fine fabrics, musk, other perfumes, spices, medicines, jewels, glassware, and even rhubarb, as well as slaves.


title: History of silk

text: Although silk was well known in Europe and most of Asia, China was able to keep a near-monopoly on silk production for several centuries, defended by an imperial decree and condemning to death anyone attempting to export silkworms or their eggs. According to the , sericulture reached Japan for the first time around 300 AD, following a number of international students, having been sent from Japan to China, recruiting four young Chinese girls to teach the art of plain and figured weaving in Japan. Techniques of sericulture were subsequently introduced to Japan on a larger scale by frequent diplomatic exchanges between the 8th and 9th centuries.


title: History of silk

text: Starting in the 4th century BC, silk began to reach the Hellenistic world by merchants who would exchange it for gold, ivory, horses or precious stones. Up to the frontiers of the Roman Empire, silk became a monetary standard for estimating the value of different products. Hellenistic Greece appreciated the high quality of the Chinese goods and made efforts to plant mulberry trees and breed silkworms in the Mediterranean basin, while Sassanid Persia controlled the trade of silk destined for Europe and Byzantium. The Greek word for "silken" was , from (), the name of the people from whom silk was first obtained, according to Strabo. The Greek word gave rise to the Latin , and ultimately the Old English , which later developed into the Middle English .


title: History of silk

text: According to a story by Procopius, it was not until 552 AD that the Byzantine emperor Justinian obtained the first silkworm eggs. He had sent two Nestorian monks to Central Asia, and they were able to smuggle silkworm eggs to him hidden in rods of bamboo. While under the monks' care, the eggs hatched, though they did not cocoon before arrival. The church manufacture in the Byzantine Empire was thus able to make fabrics for the emperor, with the intention of developing a large silk industry in the Eastern Roman Empire, using techniques learned from the Sassanids. These had a legal monopoly on the fabric, but the empire continued to import silk from other major urban centers on the Mediterranean. The silk produced by the Byzantines was well known for its high quality, owing to the meticulous attention paid to the execution of its weaving and decoration, with weaving techniques taken from Egypt used to produce the fabric. The first diagrams of looms appeared in the 5th century.


title: History of silk

text: The Arabs, with their widening conquests, spread sericulture across the shores of the Mediterranean, leading to the development of sericulture in North Africa, Andalusia, Sicily and Southern Italy's Calabria, which was under the Byzantine dominion. According to André Guillou, mulberry trees for the production of raw silk were introduced to southern Italy by the Byzantines at the end of the 9th century. Around 1050, the theme of Calabria had cultivated 24,000, mulberry trees for their foliage, with growth still ongoing. The interactions among Byzantine and Muslim silk-weaving centers of all levels of quality, with imitations made in Andalusia and Lucca, among other cities, have made the identification and date of rare surviving examples difficult to pinpoint.


title: History of silk

text: Catanzaro, in the region of Calabria, was the first center to introduce silk production to Italy between the 9th and the 11th century. During the following centuries, the silk of Catanzaro supplied almost all of Europe and was sold in a large market fair in the port of Reggio Calabria to Spanish, Venetian, Genoese, Florentine and Dutch merchants. Catanzaro became the lace capital of Europe, with a large silkworm breeding facility that produced all the laces and linens used in the Vatican. The city was famous for its fine fabrication of silks, velvets, damasks, and brocades. While the cultivation of mulberry was moving first steps in Northern Italy, silk made in Calabria reached a peak of 50% of the whole Italian/European production. As the cultivation of mulberry was difficult in Northern and Continental Europe, merchants and operators used to purchase raw materials in Calabria in order to finish the products, before reselling them for a higher price. Genoese silk artisans also used fine Calabrian and Sicilian silk for the production of velvets.


title: History of silk

text: While the Chinese lost their monopoly on silk production, they were able to re-establish themselves as major silk suppliers during the Tang dynasty, and to industrialize their production on a large scale during the Song dynasty. China continued to export high-quality fabric to Europe and the Near East along the Silk Road; however, following the beginning of the first Crusades, techniques of silk production began to spread across Western Europe.


title: History of silk

text: In 1147, while Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos was focusing all his efforts on the Second Crusade, the Norman king Roger II of Sicily attacked Corinth and Thebes, two important centers of Byzantine silk production. They took the crops and silk production infrastructure, and deported all the workers to Palermo and Calabria, thereby causing the Norman silk industry to flourish. The sack of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204 brought decline to the city and its silk industry, and many artisans left the city in the early 13th century. Italy developed a large domestic silk industry after 2,000 skilled weavers came from Constantinople. Many also chose to settle in Avignon to furnish the popes of Avignon.


title: History of silk

text: The sudden boom of the silk industry in the Italian state of Lucca, starting in the 11th and 12th centuries, was due to much Sicilian, Jewish, and Greek settlement, alongside many other immigrants from neighboring cities in southern Italy. With the loss of many Italian trading posts in the Orient, the import of Chinese styles drastically declined. In order to satisfy the demands of the rich and powerful bourgeoisie for luxury fabrics, the cities of Lucca, Genoa, Venice and Florence increase the momentum of their silk production, and were soon exporting silk to all of Europe, with 84 workshops and at least 7,000 craftsmen in Florence in 1472 alone.


title: History of silk

text: In 1519, Emperor Charles V formally recognized the growth of the industry of Catanzaro by allowing the city to establish a consulate of the silk craft, charged with regulating and check in the various stages of a production that flourished throughout the 16th century. At the moment of the creation of its guild, the city declared that it had over 500 looms. By 1660, when the town had about 16,000 inhabitants, its silk industry kept 1,000 looms, and at least 5,000 people, in employment. The silk textiles of Catanzaro were not only sold at the Kingdom of Naples's markets, they were also exported to Venice, France, Spain and England.


title: History of silk

text: The high Middle Ages (1000–1250 AD) saw continued use of established techniques for silk manufacture without change in either materials or tools used. Small changes began to appear between the 10th and 12th centuries, followed by larger and more radical innovations in the 13th century, resulting in the invention of new fabrics; other, more mundane fabrics made of hemp and cotton also developed. Silk remained a rare and expensive material, but improved technology saw Byzantine magnaneries in Greece and Syria (6th to 8th centuries), silk production centres in Calabria and those of the Arabs in Sicily and Spain (8th to 10th centuries) able to supply the luxury material in much greater abundance.


title: History of silk

text: The 13th century saw an improvement in the already-changing technology of silk production; as with the Industrial Revolution of late-18th century England, advances in silk production also possibly accompanied more general advances in the technology of modern society as a whole. At the beginning of the 13th century, a primitive form of milling silk yarns was in use; Jean de Garlande's 1221 dictionary and Étienne Boileau's 1261 ("Tradesman's Handbook") both illustrate many types of machinery which can only have been doubling machines. This machinery was further perfected in Bologna between 1270 and 1280.


title: History of silk

text: From the start of the 14th century, many documents allude to the use of complex weaving machinery. Depictions of fabric production techniques from this time period can be found in several places; the earliest surviving depiction of a European spinning wheel is a panel of stained glass in the Cathedral of Chartres, alongside bobbins and warping machines appearing both together in the stained glass at Chartres and in a fresco in the Cologne Kunkelhaus (). It is possible that the toothed warping machine was created by the silk industry, as it allowed the for a longer length of warp to hold more uniformity throughout the length of the cloth.


title: History of silk

text: Towards the end of the 14th century, no doubt on account of the devastation caused mid-century by the Black Death, trends began to shift towards less expensive production techniques. Many techniques that earlier in the century would have been completely forbidden by the guilds for low-quality production were now commonplace (such as using low-quality wool, carding, etc.). In the silk industry, the use of water-powered mills grew.


title: History of silk

text: In the second half of the 15th century, drawloom technology was first brought to France by an Italian weaver from Calabria, known as Jean le Calabrais, who was invited to Lyon by Louis XI. He introduced a new kind of machine, which had the ability to work the yarns faster and more precisely. Further improvements to the loom were made throughout the century.


title: History of silk

text: [[Image:Planche Soie.jpg|thumb|right|250px|A picture from the of [[Diderot]] and [[d'Alembert]], showing the different steps in sericulture and the manufacture of silk.


title: History of silk

text: Following the example of the wealthy Italian city-states of the era, [[Florence]], and [[Lucca]] (which had become the center of the luxury-textile industry), [[Lyon]] obtained a similar function in the French market. In 1466, King [[Louis XI]] decided to develop a national silk industry in Lyon, and employed a large number of Italian workers, mainly from Calabria. The fame of the master weavers of Catanzaro spread throughout France, and they were invited to Lyon in order to teach the techniques of weaving. The drawloom that appeared in those years in France was called loom by Jean Le Calabrais.


title: History of silk

text: In the face of protests by the people of Lyon, Louis XI conceded to move silk production to [[Tours]], but the industry in Tours stayed relatively marginal. His main objective was to reduce France's [[trade deficit]] with the Italian states, which caused France to lose 400,000 to 500,000 golden [[écu]]s a year. It was under [[Francis I of France|Francis I]] in around 1535 that a royal charter was granted to two merchants, Étienne Turquet and Barthélemy Naris, to develop a silk trade in Lyon. In 1540, the king granted a [[monopoly]] on silk production to the city of Lyon. Starting in the 16th century, Lyon became the capital of the European silk trade, notably producing many reputable fashions. Gaining confidence, the silks produced in the city began to abandon their original Oriental styles in favor of their own distinctive style, which emphasized landscapes. Thousand of workers, the [[canut]]s, devoted themselves to the flourishing industry. In the middle of the 17th century, over 14,000 looms were used in Lyon, and the silk industry fed a third of the city's population.


title: History of silk

text: In the 18th and 19th centuries, [[Provence]] experienced a boom in sericulture that would last until [[World War I]], with much of the silk shipped north to Lyon. [[Viens, Vaucluse|Viens]] and [[La Bastide-des-Jourdans]] are two of the of [[Luberon]] that profited the most from its now-extinct mulberry plantations. However, silk centers still operate today. Working at home under the [[domestic system]], silk spinning and silk treatment employed many people and increased the income of the working class.


title: History of silk

text: England under [[Henry IV of England|Henry IV]] (1367–1413) also looked to develop a silk industry, but no opportunity arose until [[Edict of Fontainebleau|the revocation of the Edict of Nantes]] the 1680s, when hundreds of thousands of French [[Huguenots]], many of whom were skilled weavers and experts in sericulture, began immigrating to England to escape religious persecution. Some areas, including [[Spitalfields]], saw many high-quality silk workshops spring up, their products distinct from continental silk largely by the colors used. Nonetheless, the [[Climate of the United Kingdom|British climate]] prevented England's domestic silk trade from becoming globally dominant.


title: History of silk

text: Many envisioned starting a silk industry in the [[Colonial history of the United States|British colonies in America]], starting in 1619 under the reign of King [[James I of England]]; however the silk industry in the colonies never became very large. Likewise, silk was introduced to numerous other countries, including Mexico, where it was brought by [[Hernán Cortés|Cortez]] in 1522. Only rarely did these new silk industries grow to any significant size.


title: History of silk

text: [[Image:M.I. Tatischeva by David Luders (1759, GTG).jpg|thumb|right| Mme Tatischeva is shown wearing a paduasoy silk dress.]]


title: History of silk

text: The start of the [[Industrial Revolution]] was marked by a massive boom in the textile industry in general, with remarkable technological innovations made, led by the cotton industry of [[Great Britain]]. In its early years, there were often disparities in technological innovation between different stages of fabric manufacture, which encouraged complementary innovations. For example, [[spinning (textiles)|spinning]] progressed much more rapidly than weaving.


title: History of silk

text: The silk industry, however, did not gain any benefit from innovations in spinning, as silk did not require spinning in order to be woven. Furthermore, the production of silver, and gold silk [[brocade]]s was a very delicate and precise process, with each color needing its own dedicated [[shuttle (weaving)|shuttle]]. In the 17th and 18th centuries, progress began to be made in the simplification and standardization of silk manufacture, with many advances following one after another. [[Basile Bouchon|Bouchon]] and [[Jean Falcon|Falcon]]'s [[punched card]] loom appeared in 1775, later improved on by [[Jacques de Vaucanson]]. Later, [[Joseph-Marie Jacquard]] improved on the designs of Falcon and Vaucanson, introducing the revolutionary [[Jacquard loom]], which allowed a string of punched cards to be processed mechanically in the correct sequence. The punched cards of the Jacquard loom were a direct precursor to the modern [[computer]], in that they gave a (limited) form of programmability. Punched cards themselves were carried over to computers and were ubiquitous until their obsolescence in the 1970s. From 1801, embroidery-style designs became highly mechanized, due to the effectiveness of the Jacquard loom in imitating embroidered fabrics. The mechanism behind the Jacquard looms even allowed complex designs to be [[mass production|mass-produced]].


title: History of silk

text: The Jacquard loom was immediately denounced by workers, who accused it of causing [[unemployment]], but it soon became vital to the industry. The loom was declared as public property in 1806, and Jacquard was rewarded with a [[pension]] and a [[Royalties|royalty]] on each machine. In 1834, there were a total of 2,885 Jacquard looms in Lyon alone. The [[Canut revolt]] in 1831 foreshadowed many of the larger worker uprisings of the Industrial Revolution. The canuts occupied the city of Lyon, refusing to relinquish it until a bloody repression by the army, led by [[Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult|Marshal Soult]]. A second revolt, similar to the first, took place in 1834.


title: History of silk

text: The first silkworm diseases began to appear in 1845, creating an epidemic. Among them were [[pébrine]], caused by the [[microsporidia]] "Nosema bombycis"; grasserie, caused by a [[virus]]; [[flacherie]], caused by eating infected mulberry leaves; and [[white muscardine disease]], caused by the [[fungus]] "[[Beauveria bassiana]]". The epidemic grew to a massive scale, and spread to infect the mulberry trees after having affected the silkworms. The chemist [[Jean-Baptiste Dumas]], French minister of agriculture, was charged with stopping the epidemic. In face of sericulturers' call for help, he asked [[Louis Pasteur]] to study the disease, starting in 1865. For many years, Pasteur thought that pébrine was not a contagious disease; however, in 1870 he changed his view, and measures were enacted that caused the disease to decline.


title: History of silk

text: Nevertheless, the increase in the price of silkworm cocoons and the reduction in the importance of silk in the garments of the [[bourgeoisie]] in the 19th century caused the decline of the silk industry in Europe. The opening of the [[Suez Canal]] in 1869 and the silk shortage in France reduced the price of importing Asian silk, particularly from China and Japan.


title: History of silk

text: Starting from the [[Long Depression]] (1873–1896), Lyonnais silk production had become totally industrialized, and handlooms were rapidly disappearing. The 19th century saw the textile industry's progress caused by advances in chemistry. The [[Chemical synthesis|synthesis]] of [[aniline]] was used to make [[mauveine]] (aniline purple) [[dye]], and the synthesis of [[quinine]] was used to make [[indigo]] dye. In 1884, Count Hilaire de Chardonnet invented [[viscose]], intended as an artificial silk, and in 1891 opened a factory dedicated to the production of viscose, which cost much less and in part replaced natural silk.


title: History of silk

text: Following the crisis in Europe, the modernization of [[sericulture]] in Japan made it the world's foremost silk producer. By the early 20th century, rapidly industrializing Japan was producing as much as 60 percent of the world's raw silk, most exports shipping through the port of [[Yokohama]]. Italy managed to rebound from the crisis, but France was unable. Urbanization in Europe saw many French and Italian agricultural workers leave silk growing for more lucrative factory work. Raw silk was imported from Japan to fill the void. Asian countries, formerly exporters of [[raw material]]s (cocoons and raw silk), progressively began to export more and more finished garments.


title: History of silk

text: During the [[Second World War]], silk supplies from Japan were cut off, so western countries were forced to find substitutes. Synthetic fibers such as [[nylon]] were used in products such as parachutes and stockings, replacing silk. Even after the war, silk was not able to regain many of the markets lost, though it remained an expensive luxury product. Postwar Japan, through improvements in technology and a [[Protectionism|protectionist]] market policy, became the world's foremost exporter of raw silk, a position it held until the 1970s. The continued rise in the importance of synthetic fibers and loosening of the protectionist economy contributed to the decline of Japan's silk industry, and by 1975 it was no longer a net exporter of silk.


title: History of silk

text: With its recent economic reforms, the People's Republic of China has become the world's largest silk producer. In 1996 it produced 58,000 [[tonnes]] out of a world production of 81,000, followed by India at 13,000 tonnes. Japanese production is now marginal, at only 2,500 tonnes. Between 1995 and 1997, Chinese silk production went down 40% in an effort to raise prices, reminiscent of earlier shortages.


title: History of silk

text: In December 2006 the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed 2009 to be the [[International Year of Natural Fibres]], so as to raise the profile of silk and other [[natural fibre]]s.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is a trademark used by Sony and Philips for their system for digitally encoding audio signals for the Super Audio CD (SACD).


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DSD uses pulse-density modulation encoding - a technology to store audio signals on digital storage media which are used for the SACD. The signal is stored as delta-sigma modulated digital audio, which is a sequence of single-bit values at a sampling rate of 2.8224 MHz (64 times the CD audio sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, but only at formula_1 of its 16-bit resolution). Noise shaping occurs by use of the 64-times oversampled signal to reduce noise and distortion caused by the inaccuracy of quantization of the audio signal to a single bit. Therefore, it is a topic of discussion whether it is possible to eliminate distortion in one-bit delta-sigma conversion.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DSD is a method of storing a delta-sigma signal before applying a decimation process that converts the signal to a PCM signal. Delta-sigma conversion was first described by C. C. Cutler in 1954, but was not named as such until a 1962 paper by Inose et al. Decimation did not initially exist, and oversampled data was sent as is. The proposal to decimate oversampled delta-sigma data before converting it into PCM audio was made by D. J. Goodman in 1969.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DSD technology was later developed and commercialized by Sony and Philips, the designers of the audio CD. However, in 2005, Philips later sold its DSD tool division to Sonic Studio.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DVD-Audio was endorsed by the Warner Music Group, while the SACD format was endorsed by Sony and Universal Music Group, with an especially high-profile by UMG imprint Virgin Records. Despite this, in 2011, "The Warner Premium Sound series" of albums was released by Warner Music Group, marking the first time the label released titles in a SACD format, with recording in DSD. The series grew to ten rock and pop albums, with Super Audio CD/CD hybrid discs containing both an SACD layer and a standard CD layer.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Sony did not promote SACD actively in North America, with the result that DVD-Audio gained competitive traction in the market. Elsewhere, such as in Europe or Japan, SACD gained more of a foothold. Examples include the German Stockfisch Records, which releases vinyl editions of albums and DSD-recordings, released as hybrid SACDs.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Many music companies that specialize in Super Audio CD products therefore use DSD encoding. A number of independent record labels have also worked directly with Sony to focus on DSD products or the DSD recording process.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DMP Digital Music Products was an early user of the SACD digital audio format. In 1997 their release "Alto" by Joe Beck & Ali Ryerson was the first commercial recording captured with Sony's Direct Stream Digital recording technology. The label's "Just Jobim" by Manfredo Fest in 1998 was the first project captured with the new Meitner DSD conversion technology. In 2000, DMP released the world's first multi-channel SACD—"Sacred Feast" by Gaudeamus.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: The majority of Telarc International Corporation's releases were on (generally hybrid) SACD, and are DSD recordings. Telarc often worked with early audiophile company Soundstream, and re-released many of its original Soundstream recordings in SACD format. Soundstream, which made the first digital recording in the United States, recorded in 16 bit PCM at a sample rate of 50 kHz via its own proprietary digital recorder. This 50 kHz PCM format was converted to DSD for release on Telarc SACD.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: The record label Mobile Fidelity had engineers who decided to adopt the Super Audio CD over the DVD-Audio disc as a high resolution digital format after listening tests and technical evaluations. On the label's Hybrid SACD releases, the SACD layer is a direct DSD recording of the analog master tape, while the CD layer is a digital down conversion of the DSD, with Super Bit Mapping applied. Post-2001, CD-only are sourced from DSD, but omit the SACD layer.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: In 2007, Blue Coast Records was founded in California for the purpose of recording and releasing music recorded with the DSD format, primarily focusing on jazz and acoustic artists.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: On August 28, 2013, the Acoustic Sounds label launched SuperHiRez.com (now defunct), which sold mainstream albums from major record labels that were produced with Direct Stream Digital or PCM audio formats. On September 4, 2013, Acoustic Sounds announced an agreement with Sony Music Entertainment to provide the company's new digital download service with albums that have been produced or remastered in Direct Stream Digital format.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: The format is used on albums such as "Pop, Songs & Death" in 2009, and the remastered The Rolling Stones album "Their Satanic Majesties Request" in 2002.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Labels that specialize in direct to DSD recording ("Pure DSD"), with no assistance from analog tape or PCM/DSP mixing/effects include Channel Classics, Hunnia and Eudora records.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: SACD audio is stored in DSD, which differs from the conventional PCM used by the compact disc or conventional computer audio systems.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: A DSD recorder uses delta-sigma modulation. DSD is 1-bit with a 2.8224 MHz sampling rate. The output from a DSD recorder is a bitstream. The long-term average of this signal is proportional to the original signal. DSD uses noise shaping techniques to push quantization noise up to inaudible ultrasonic frequencies. In principle, the retention of the bitstream in DSD lets the SACD player use a basic (one-bit) DAC design with a low-order analog filter. The SACD format can deliver a dynamic range of 120 dB from 20 Hz to 20 kHz and an extended frequency response up to 100 kHz—though most current players list an upper limit of 80–90 kHz.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Most professional audiologists accept that the upper limit of human adult hearing is 20 kHz and that high frequencies are the first to be affected by hearing loss.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: The process of creating a DSD signal is conceptually similar to taking a one-bit delta-sigma analog-to-digital (A/D) converter without adding a decimator, which converts the 1-bit bitstream into multi-bit PCM. Instead, the 1-bit signal is recorded directly and, in theory, only requires a lowpass filter to reconstruct the original analog waveform. In reality, it is a little more complex, and the analogy is incomplete in that 1-bit sigma-delta converters are, these days, rather unusual, most modern sigma-delta converters are multi-bit, one reason being that a one-bit signal cannot be dithered properly.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Because it has been extremely difficult to carry out DSP operations (for example performing EQ, balance, panning and other changes in the digital domain) in a one-bit environment, and because of the prevalence of solely PCM studio equipment such as Pro Tools, the vast majority of SACDs—especially rock and contemporary music, which rely on multitrack techniques—are in fact mixed in PCM (or mixed analog and recorded on PCM recorders) and then converted to DSD for SACD mastering.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: To address some of these issues, a new studio format has been developed, usually referred to as "DSD-wide", which retains the high sample rate of standard DSD, but uses an 8-bit, rather than single-bit digital word length, yet still relies heavily on the noise shaping principle. DSD-wide is PCM with noise shaping—and is sometimes disparagingly referred to as "PCM-narrow"—but has the added benefit of making DSP operations in the studio a great deal more practical. The main difference is that "DSD-wide" still retains 2.8224 MHz () sampling frequency while the highest frequency in which PCM is being edited is 384 kHz (). The "DSD-wide" signal is down-converted to regular DSD for SACD mastering. As a result of this technique and other developments there are now a few digital audio workstations (DAWs) that operate, or can operate, in the DSD domain, notably Pyramix and some SADiE systems.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Another format for DSD editing is Digital eXtreme Definition (DXD), a PCM format with 24-bit resolution sampled at 352.8 kHz (or alternatively 384 kHz). DXD was initially developed for the Merging Technologies Pyramix workstation and introduced together with their Sphynx 2, AD/DA converter in 2004. This combination meant that it was possible to record and edit directly in DXD, and that the sample only converts to DSD once before publishing to SACD. This offers an advantage to the user as the noise created by converting DSD rises dramatically above 20 kHz, and more noise is added each time a signal is converted back to DSD during editing.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Note that high-resolution PCM (DVD-Audio, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc) and DSD (SACD) may still technically differ at high frequencies. A reconstruction filter is typically used in PCM decoding systems, much the same way that bandwidth-limiting filters are normally used in PCM encoding systems. Any error or unwanted artifact introduced by such filters typically affects the end-result. A claimed advantage of DSD is that product designers commonly choose to have no filtering, or modest filtering. Instead DSD leads to constant high levels of noise at these frequencies. The dynamic range of DSD decreases quickly at frequencies over 20 kHz due to the use of strong noise shaping techniques that push the noise out of the audio band, resulting in a rising noise floor just above 20 kHz. The dynamic range of PCM, on the other hand, is the same at all frequencies. However, almost all present-day DAC chips employ some kind of sigma-delta conversion of PCM files that results in the same noise spectrum as DSD signals. All SACD players employ an optional low-pass filter set at 50 kHz for compatibility and safety reasons, suitable for situations where amplifiers or loudspeakers cannot deliver an undistorted output if noise above 50 kHz is present in the signal.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Referred to as DSD128 because the sample rate is 128 times that of CD. Since its establishment content creators have started to make 5.6 MHz DSD128 recordings available, such as the audiophile label Opus3. Additionally a 44.1 kHz variant at 5.6448 MHz has been supported by multiple hardware devices such as the exaSound e20 Mk II DAC. The Korg MR-1000 1-bit digital recorder samples at 5.6448 MHz, twice the SACD rate.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Referred to as DSD256 because the sample rate is 256 times that of CD. The Pyramix Virtual Studio Digital Audio Workstation allows for recording, editing and mastering all DSD formats, being DSD64 (SACD resolution), DSD128 (Double-DSD) and DSD256 (Quad-DSD). A 48 kHz variant of 12.288 MHz has been established. The exaSound e20 DAC was the first commercially available device capable of DSD256 playback at sampling rates of 11.2896/12.288 MHz. The Merging Technologies Horus AD/DA Converter offers sample rates up to 11.2 MHz, or four times the SACD rate.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Referred to as DSD512 because the sample rate is 512 times that of CD. It has a sample rate of 22.5792 MHz (512 times that of CD), or alternatively 24.576 MHz (512 times 48 kHz). Hardware such as the Amanero Combo384 DSD output adapter, and exaU2I USB to I²S interface, and software such as JRiver Media Center, foobar2000 with SACD plugin (up to DSD256 only), Roon, HQPlayer and Neutron Music Player are all able to handle DSD files of this advanced sampling rate fully natively.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Sony developed DSD for SACD, and many disk players support SACD. Since the format is digital, there are other ways to play back a DSD stream; the development of these alternatives has enabled companies to offer high-quality music downloads in DSD.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Some professional audio recorders (from Korg, Tascam, and others) can record in DSD format. Transferring this signal to a recordable DVD with the appropriate tools, such as the AudioGate software bundled with Korg MR-1/2/1000/2000 recorders, renders a "DSD Disc". Such discs can be played back in native DSD only on certain Sony VAIO laptops and PlayStation 3 systems. HQPlayer from February 16, 2011, version 2.6.0 beta includes support for direct/native playback from DSD Interchange File Format (DSDIFF) and DSD stream files (DSF) to ASIO devices with DSD support. Moreover, Sony produces two SACD players, the SCD-XA5400ES and the SCD-XE800, that fully support the DSD-disc format. Only the DSF format is supported. However, since most personal computers have only PCM audio hardware, DSD discs must be transcoded to PCM on the fly with the proper software plug-ins with questionable quality benefits compared to native high resolution PCM sources like DVD or Blu-ray Disc Audio.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: In June 2012, Pioneer launched a series of SACD players compatible with DSD-disc. The PD-30 and PD-50.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: An alternative to burning DSD files onto disks for eventual playback is to transfer the (non-encrypted) files from a computer to audio hardware over a digital link such as USB.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: The USB audio 2.0 specification defined several formats for the more common PCM approach to digital audio, but did not define a format for DSD.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: In 2012, representatives from many companies and others developed a standard to represent and detect DSD audio within PCM frames; the standard, commonly known as "DSD over PCM", or "DoP", is suitable for other digital links that use PCM. The 1.1 revision added protocol support for higher DSD sample rates without requiring an increase the underlying PCM sample rate. Many manufacturers now offer DACs that support DoP.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: "Native DSD" playback definition is somewhat a matter of philosophy. Generally speaking, it avoids the conversion of DSD data into multibit PCM at anywhere along the decoding/reproduction chain, as is common in digital volume control.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Many commercially available DACs now support 'native DSD', featuring off-the-shelf chips from ESS, AKM, Cirrus Logic, or Burr Brown.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Due to the minimalist appeal of 1-bit DSD, and its theoretical simplicity in decoding, there are also commercially available and DIY DACs that specialize in DSD decoding, avoiding the use of off-the-shelf DAC chips. These include RT Audio Design's Pure DSD Converter, and the STAR Pure DSD DAC.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Finally, Ed Meitner and Andreas Koch, who have historical ties with the development of DSD and SACD, have companies that produce DACs. Ed Meitner has affiliation with EMM Labs and Meitner Audio. Andreas Koch is affiliated with Playback Designs.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: There has been much controversy between proponents of DSD and PCM over which encoding system is superior. In 2001, Lipshitz and Vanderkooy stated that one-bit converters, as employed by DSD, are unsuitable for high-end applications due to their high distortion. In 2002, Philips published a paper arguing the contrary. Lipshitz and Vanderkooy's paper was further criticized by Angus. Lipshitz and Vanderkooy responded to the criticisms. Stuart also defined sigma-delta modulation a "totally unsuitable choice" for high resolution digital audio.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Conventional implementation of DSD has an intrinsic high distortion. Distortion can be alleviated to some degree by using multibit DACs. State-of-the-art ADCs are based around sigma-delta modulation designs. Oversampling converters are usually used in linear PCM formats, where the ADC or DAC output is subject to bandlimiting and dithering. Most modern ADC and DAC converters use oversampling and a multi-bit design; in other words, while DSD is a 1-bit format, modern converters internally use a 2-bit to 6-bit format.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: Comparisons of DSD and PCM recordings with the same origin, number of channels and similar bandwidth and noise have yielded contradictory results. A 2004 study conducted at the Erich-Thienhaus Institute in Detmold, Germany found that in double-blind tests "hardly any of the subjects could make a reproducible distinction between the two encoding systems." In contrast, a 2014 study conducted at the Tokyo University of the Arts found that listeners could distinguish PCM (192 kHz/24 bits) from either DSD (2.8 MHz) or DSD (5.6 MHz) (but not between the two DSD samplings), preferring the sound of DSD over PCM: "For example, Drums stimulus of DSD (5.6 MHz) has p = 0.001 when compared against PCM (192 kHz/24 bit) in overall preference.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: This suggests that DSD version was statistically significantly preferred over the PCM version." These findings are questionable however, because "the two formats were subject to different processing, most notably, different filtering of the low frequency content."


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: DSD met with relatively little success in the consumer market, even though the SACD was actually more successful than its direct competitor, the PCM-based DVD-Audio. Direct manipulation of recorded DSD data is difficult due to the limited availability of appropriate software. The advent of new high-resolution PCM standards, such as DXD, further restricted its market niche. DSD, however, is still used as an archival format for studio applications and is seen as a possible replacement for analog tapes.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: There are several alternative ways to store DSD encoded audio as files on a computer. One option is to use DSD native file formats that have been specifically for this purpose. Alternatively, DSD can be stored in general purpose audio formats that have been officially adapted to support DSD storage. Finally, DSD audio can be embedded into PCM audio streams that do not have special DSD support. However, a special decoder is needed to recover the DSD stream afterwards.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: "DSD Interchange File Format" (DSDIFF) is a native DSD file format developed by Philips between years 2000 and 2004 for storage of DSD recordings. The format supports DST compression of the payload as well as annotations used in Super Audio CD production. A single DSDIFF file may store an entire album as a single audio stream together with markers indicating where to cut the individual tracks for the album. Some parts of the audio content may be left out entirely from the resulting SACD. The embedded metadata format is intended for mastering engineers and not consumers. For example, markers indicating beginning of a new audio track have a text field for storing arbitrary text based information. However, there is no requirement for the text to contain the title of the track. A defacto standard for including ID3 metadata in an unofficial ID3 chunk has later formed as consumers have adopted the format for storing individual tracks of DSD audio. Files containing DSDIFF data would typically use the codice_1 file suffix. No official media type has been registered for the DSDIFF file format. Freedesktop.org uses the unofficial media types codice_2.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: "Wideband Single-bit Data" (WSD) is a native DSD file format developed by 1-bit Audio Consortium in 2002. The consortium was established by Waseda University, Sharp and Pioneer a year earlier. In 2012 the consortium published an updated 1.1 version of the specification. The WSD header has a field for storing an absolute timestamp in samples since midnight. The timestamp makes it possible to accurately know how much time passed between two recordings made consecutively on the same physical recording device. Korg portable recorders MR-1, MR-2, MR-1000 and MR-2000s support WSD alongside other DSD based formats.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: "DSD Stream File" (DSF) is a native DSD file format developed by Sony around year 2005. The format is intended for storing individual tracks of DSD audio and has native support for ID3 metadata inclusion. The format defines a "format ID" field that could presumably be used to indicate DST compression. However, the only identifier defined in the spec is number 0 indicating "DSD raw". Files containing DSF data would typically use thecodice_3 file suffix. No official media type has been registered for the DSF file format. Freedesktop.org uses the unofficial media types codice_4.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: WavPack is a generic audio storage format supporting various different forms of audio. Compressed DSD audio is also supported by the format. The DSD support was initially introduced with the release of WavPack software suite version 5 in December 2016. Files containing WavPack data would typically use thecodice_5 file suffix. No official media type has been registered for the WavPack file format. Freedesktop.org uses the unofficial media types codice_6. Since WavPack supports multiple formats the suffix or mime type alone do not indicate the presence of DSD audio.


title: Direct Stream Digital

text: In addition to actual DSD file formats, a wire format called "DSD Audio over PCM Frames" (DoP) is used for embedding DSD into PCM audio streams. DoP makes it possible to circumvent any PCM-only component preventing DSD capable DAC from receiving the raw DSD data required for native DSD playback. While DoP is intended to be a wire protocol used for communication between music player application and a DAC, there exists tools that can embed DoP encoded DSD into FLAC files enabling user to use a non-DSD capable player for DSD playback with their DoP capable DAC. DoP is not backward compatible with PCM. Thus, a DoP stream is likely to sound broken when played back by an unsuspecting PCM-only DAC, while a DoP capable DAC can detect the presence of DSD data, extract it from the PCM and play it back as DSD.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a book by anthropologist David Graeber published in 2011. It explores the historical relationship of debt with social institutions such as barter, marriage, friendship, slavery, law, religion, war and government. It draws on the history and anthropology of a number of civilizations, large and small, from the first known records of debt from Sumer in 3500 BCE until the present.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: A major argument of the book is that the imprecise, informal, community-building indebtedness of "human economies" is only replaced by mathematically precise, firmly enforced debts through the introduction of violence, usually state-sponsored violence in some form of military or police.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: A second major argument of the book is that, contrary to standard accounts of the history of money, debt is probably the oldest means of trade, with cash and barter transactions being later developments.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Debt, the book argues, has typically retained its primacy, with cash and barter usually limited to situations of low trust involving strangers or those not considered credit-worthy. Graeber proposes that the second argument follows from the first; that, in his words, "markets are founded and usually maintained by systematic state violence", though he goes on to show how "in the absence of such violence, they... can even come to be seen as the very basis of freedom and autonomy".


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Reception of the book was mixed, with praise for Graeber's sweeping scope from earliest recorded history to the present; but others raised doubts about the accuracy of some statements in "Debt", as outlined below in the section on "critical reception".


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Graeber lays out the historical development of the idea of debt, starting from the first recorded debt systems in the Sumer civilization around 3500 BCE. In this early form of borrowing and lending, farmers would often become so mired in debt that their children would be forced into debt peonage. Because of the social tension that came with this enslavement of large parts of the population, kings periodically canceled all debts. In ancient Israel, the resulting amnesty came to be known as the Law of Jubilee.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Graeber claims that debt and credit historically appeared before money, which itself appeared before barter. This is the opposite of the narrative given in standard economics texts dating back to Adam Smith. To support this, he cites numerous historical, ethnographic and archaeological studies. He also claims that the standard economics texts cite no evidence for suggesting that barter came before money, credit and debt, and he has seen no credible reports suggesting such.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The primary theme of the book is that excessive popular indebtedness has sometimes led to unrest, insurrection, and revolt.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: He argues that credit systems originally developed as means of account long before the advent of coinage, which appeared around 600 BCE. Credit can still be seen operating in non-monetary economies. Barter, on the other hand, seems primarily to have been used for limited exchanges between different societies that had infrequent contact and often were in a context of ritualized warfare.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Graeber suggests that economic life originally related to social currencies. These were closely related to routine non-market interactions within a community. This created an "everyday communism" based on mutual expectations and responsibilities among individuals. This type of economy is contrasted with exchange based on formal equality and reciprocity (but not necessarily leading to market relations) and hierarchy. The hierarchies in turn tended to institutionalize inequalities in customs and castes.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The great Axial Age civilizations (800 BCE–600 CE) began to use coins to quantify the economic values of portions of what Graeber calls "human economies". Graeber says these civilizations held a radically different conception of debt and social relations. These were based on the radical incalculability of human life and the constant creation and recreation of social bonds through gifts, marriages, and general sociability. The author postulates the growth of a "military–coinage–slave complex" around this time. These were enforced by mercenary armies that looted cities and cut human beings from their social context to work as slaves in Greece, Rome, and elsewhere. The extreme violence of the period marked by the rise of great empires in China, India, and the Mediterranean was, in this way, connected with the advent of large-scale slavery and the use of coins to pay soldiers. This was combined with obligations to pay taxes in currency; the obligation to pay taxes with money required people to engage in monetary transactions, often with very disadvantageous terms of trade. This typically increased debt and slavery.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: At this time, great religions also spread, and the general questions of philosophical inquiry emerged in world history. These included discussions of debt and its relation to ethics (e.g., Plato's "Republic").


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: When the great empires in Rome and India collapsed, the resulting checkerboard of small kingdoms and republics saw a gradual decline in standing armies and cities. This included the creation of hierarchical caste systems, the retreat of gold and silver to the temples and the abolition of slavery. Although hard currency was no longer used in everyday life, its use as a unit of account and credit continued in medieval Europe. Graeber insists that people in the Middle Ages in Europe continued to use the concept of money, even though they no longer had the physical symbols. This contradicts the popular claims of economists that the Middle Ages saw the economy "revert to barter". During the Middle Ages more sophisticated financial instruments appeared. These included promissory notes and paper money (in China, where the empire managed to survive the collapse observed elsewhere), letters of credit, and cheques (in the Islamic world).


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The emergence of the Atlantic slave trade and the massive amounts of gold and silver extracted from the Americas—most of which ended up in East Asia, especially China—stimulated the reemergence of the bullion economy and large-scale military violence. All of these developments, according to Graeber, directly intertwined with the earlier expansion of the Italian mercantile city-states as centers of finance that defied the Catholic Church's ban on usury and led to the current age of great capitalist empires. As the new continent opened new possibilities for gain, it also created a new area for adventurous militarism backed by debts that required the economic exploitation of the Amerindian and, later, West African populations. As it did, cities again flourished in the European continent and capitalism advanced to encompass larger areas of the globe when European trade companies and military outposts disrupted local markets and pushed for colonial monopolies.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The bullion economy ended with the abandonment of the gold standard by the U.S. government in 1971. This return to credit money increased uncertainties. For the moment, the dollar still stands as the primary world currency. This status of the dollar (as with all money) is based on its capacity to extend its quantity through debts and deficits and, more importantly, by the unrestrained authority of the Federal Reserve to create money, which has enabled the USA to create a 21 trillion dollar debt by 2018. This may continue as long as (a) the United States maintains its status as the world's pre-eminent military power and (b) client states are eager to pay seignorage for U.S. government bonds. By comparing the evolution of debt in our times to other historical eras and different societies, the author suggests that modern debt crises are not the inevitable product of history and must be resolved in the near future in a way similar to the solutions, at least in principle, as applied during the last 5000 years.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: In "Debt: The First 5,000 Years", Graeber proposes a concept of "everyday communism" which he defines, when analysing peasant lives as "The peasants' visions of communistic brotherhood did not come out of nowhere. They were rooted in real daily experience: of the maintenance of common fields and forests, of everyday cooperation and neighborly solidarity. It is out of such homely experience of everyday communism that grand mythic visions are always built". Also, "society was rooted above in the 'love and amity' of friends and kin, and it found expression in all those forms of everyday communism (helping neighbors with chores, providing milk or cheese for old widows) that were seen to flow from it".


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Closer to home, he gives this example: "If someone fixing a broken water pipe says, 'Hand me the wrench,' his co-worker will not, generally speaking, say, 'And what do I get for it?' ... The reason is simple efficiency... : if you really care about getting something done, the most efficient way to go about it is obviously to allocate tasks by ability and give people whatever they need to do them." Moreover, we tend to ask and give without thinking for things like asking directions, or


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: small courtesies like asking for a light, or even for a cigarette. It seems more legitimate to ask a stranger for a cigarette than for an equivalent amount of cash, or even food; in fact, if one has been identified as a fellow smoker, it's rather difficult to refuse such a request. In such cases—a match, a piece of information, holding the elevator—one might say the "from each" element is so minimal that most of us comply without even thinking about it. Conversely, the same is true if another person's need—even a stranger's—is particularly spectacular or extreme: if he is drowning, for example. If a child has fallen onto the subway tracks, we assume that anyone who is capable of helping her up will do so.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The thing which makes it "everyday" is this argument: "communism is the foundation of all human sociability. It is what makes society possible. There is always an assumption that anyone who is not actually an enemy can be expected to act on the principle of "from each according to their abilities", at least to an extent, which is to say, the extent just described.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: He proposes studying these practices and says that the "sociology of everyday communism is a potentially enormous field, but one which, owing to our peculiar ideological blinders, we have been unable to write about because we have been largely unable to see it". Nevertheless, Graeber's ideas were later discussed by journalist Richard Swift as being a type of "a reciprocal economy"— which makes use of the "ethic of reciprocity" or the "Golden Rule". The anthropologist, Chris Knight, has critiqued the idea of "everyday communism" in his "Brooklyn Rail" article, "Did communism make us human? On the anthropology of David Graeber".


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The book won the inaugural Bread and Roses Award for radical literature, and the 2012 Bateson Award of the American Society for Cultural Anthropology.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Journalist Robert Kuttner in the "New York Review of Books" called the book "an encyclopedic survey ... an authoritative account of the background to the recent crisis ... an exhaustive, engaging, and occasionally exasperating book."


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Journalist and activist Raj Patel of "The Globe and Mail" said, "This is a big book of big ideas: Within its 500 pages, you’ll find a theory of capitalism, religion, the state, world history and money, with evidence reaching back more than 5,000 years, from the Inuit to the Aztecs, the Mughals to the Mongols.”


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Journalist Gillian Tett of the "Financial Times" compared the book to the works of Marcel Mauss, Karl Polanyi, and Keith Hart.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Economist and historian Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, a scholar at the Cato Institute and a professor of economics at San Jose State University, found several "serious conceptual confusions" in the book. For example, Hummel pointed out that Graeber likely confused the Austrian school economist Carl Menger with his son, the mathematician Karl Menger, which led to erroneous statements and accusations against the former, such as that he supposedly added "various mathematical equations" to economics and that he came up with the term "transaction costs". Hummel also contended that the book's tone is overly polemical and that it is "riddled with errors and distortions".


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Economist George Selgin, a fellow at the Cato Institute and a professor emeritus of economics at the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia, echoed similar criticisms, adding that Graeber hadn't read Menger at all, and that his reading of Adam Smith was ungenerous. According to Selgin, the foundation upon which Graeber's evaluation of modern economics and commercial society rests is severely flawed.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: Economist Julio Huato, associate professor of economics at St. Francis College, writing in "Science & Society" pointed out some of the book's contradictions, such as Graeber's claim in p. 21, that money and debt appeared simultaneously, and his claim in p. 40, that money and debt did not appear simultaneously and that debt appeared first. He also stated that, contrary to Graeber's claims, the "myth of barter" – i.e the hypothesis that the accidental direct exchange of quasi-commodities predated money historically – is not an absurd fantasy. Hulio concluded by asserting that several other of Graeber's claims in the book, such as the claim that violent dispossession is the "secret scandal" of modern capitalism, are problematic.


title: Debt: The First 5000 Years

text: The book was reviewed by way of a debate in the socialist magazine "Jacobin". In the first review, economist Mike Beggs, a lecturer in political economy at the University of Sydney, wrote that while "there is a lot of fantastic material in there", he "found the main arguments wholly unconvincing ... Graeber is a wonderful storyteller. But the accumulation of anecdotes does not add up to an explanation, and certainly not one that would overturn the existing wisdom on the subject, conventional or otherwise". In response, economist J. W. Mason, an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, defended the book. He noted that the book's "key themes are in close harmony with the main themes of heterodox economics work going back to Keynes," and that while it is "no substitute for Marx, Keynes and Schumpeter, for Minsky and Leijonhufvud, for Henwood and Mehring ... it is a fine complement."


title: Spade

text: A spade is a tool primarily for digging consisting of a long handle and blade, typically with the blade narrower and flatter than the common shovel. Early spades were made of riven wood or of animal bones (often shoulder blades). After the art of metalworking was developed, spades were made with sharper tips of metal. Before the introduction of metal spades manual labor was less efficient at moving earth, with picks being required to break up the soil in addition to a spade for moving the dirt. With a metal tip, a spade can both break and move the earth in most situations, increasing efficiency. A classic spade, with a narrow body and flat (or near flat) tip is suited for digging post holes, and is not to be confused with a "roundpoint" shovel, which has a wider body and tapered tip.


title: Spade

text: English "spade" is from Old English ' (f.) or ' (m.). The same word is found in Old Frisian ' and Old Saxon '. High German "" only appears in Early Modern German, probably loaned from Low German. In the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden and Norway the word is "spade" as well. Other Scandinavian forms are in turn loaned from German.


title: Spade

text: The term may thus not originate in Common Germanic and appears to be a North Sea Germanic innovation or loaned. Closely related is Greek : , whence Latin "".


title: Spade

text: Spades are made in many shapes and sizes, for a variety of different functions and jobs, and there are many different designs used in spade manufacturing. People often mistakenly use the word "shovel" interchangeably with spade but shovel is a generic term for a variety of tools that include numerous broad-bottomed versions for moving loose materials, such as a "coal shovel", "snow shovel", "grain shovel", etc., whereas spades tend to have a sharpened edge, curved profile, and pointed end better designed for digging. Noting that the term "garden spade" is attached to certain sharp-edged but square ended tools suited to cutting through sod.


title: Spade

text: The most common garden spade typically has a long handle, is wide, and is treaded (has rests for the feet to drive the spade into the ground). An "Irish spade" is similar to a common garden spade, with the same general design, although it has a much thinner head. A "sharpshooter" is a narrow spade. A "turfing iron" has a short, round head, and is used for cutting and paring off turf. A "digging fork," or "grape," not referred to as a spade, is forked much like a pitchfork, and is useful for loosening ground and gardening. Small spades are made as toys for children. The "fishtail spade" has a flared triangular blade combining the versatility of the dutch hoe and power of the common round point shovel into a multipurpose tool.


title: Spade

text: Loy ploughing was a form of manual ploughing carried out in Ireland using a form of spade called a loy. It was done on very small farms where horses could not be afforded or did not have enough work, and on very hilly ground where horses could not work. It was used on poorer land until the 1960s. This suited the moist climate of Ireland as the trenches formed by turning in the sods providing drainage. It also allowed potatoes to be grown on mountain slopes where nothing else could be cultivated.


title: Spade

text: The blade of the spade was used as currency in ancient China. Later, they were miniaturized and then stylized into a flat piece. The Qin Dynasty replaced them with round coins.


title: Ron Shelton

text: Ronald Wayne Shelton (born September 15, 1945) is an American film director and screenwriter and former minor league baseball infielder. Shelton is known for the many films he has made about sports. His 1988 film "Bull Durham", based in part on his own baseball experiences, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.


title: Ron Shelton

text: A former minor league baseball infielder in Baltimore's farm system, Shelton played with the Bluefield Orioles, Stockton Ports, Florida Instructional League Orioles, Dallas–Fort Worth Spurs and Rochester Red Wings from 1967 through 1971.


title: Ron Shelton

text: After working on the scripts for a number of films, including co-writing the Nick Nolte and Gene Hackman political drama "Under Fire", Shelton made his directorial debut with "Bull Durham" in 1988. Set in the world of minor league baseball, the romantic comedy stars Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. Shelton's screenplay netted him multiple awards, including Best Original Script from the Writers Guild of America and Best Script from the US National Society of Film Critics. It was also nominated for an Academy Award.


title: Ron Shelton

text: In 1990, Ron Shelton had received a three-year first look writing and producing deal with 20th Century Fox.


title: Ron Shelton

text: Shelton worked with Costner again on the 1996 golf-themed romantic comedy "Tin Cup". Other films as writer and director included the boxing comedy "Play It to the Bone", a critical and commercial flop, and acclaimed 1992 comedy "White Men Can't Jump", starring Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes as two basketball hustlers. Calling the latter film "very smart and very funny," and "not simply a basketball movie," critic Roger Ebert wrote that Shelton "knows how his characters talk and sound, and how they get into each other's minds with non-stop talking and boasting."


title: Ron Shelton

text: Shelton has also written and directed two biopics: "Cobb", in which Tommy Lee Jones portrayed record-breaking baseballer Ty Cobb, and "Blaze", which starred Paul Newman as colourful Louisiana Governor Earl Long. He wrote or co-wrote other sports-themed films including "The Best of Times", starring Robin Williams and Kurt Russell as former football teammates; the basketball drama "Blue Chips", starring Nick Nolte, and a boxing comedy, "The Great White Hype", starring Samuel L. Jackson.


title: Ron Shelton

text: He also directed two Los Angeles-based crime films, "Dark Blue", a drama starring Kurt Russell, and "Hollywood Homicide", a comedy with Harrison Ford and Josh Hartnett.


title: Ron Shelton

text: Shelton grew up in Montecito, California, the oldest of four brothers. He is an alumnus of Santa Barbara High School and of the University of Arizona and Westmont College.


title: Ron Shelton

text: Shelton is married to Canadian-born actress Lolita Davidovich, who has appeared in several of his films, including taking the title role of Blaze Starr in "Blaze". The couple have two children and reside in Los Angeles and Ojai, California. Shelton has two daughters with his first wife, filmmaker Lois Shelton.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) is a ministry of the Government of India, that is the apex body for formulation and administration of the rules, regulations and laws relating to road transport, transport research and in also to increase the mobility and efficiency of the road transport system in India. Through its officers of Central Engineering Services (Roads) cadre it is responsible for the development of National Highways of the country. Road transport is a critical infrastructure for economic development of the country. It influences the pace, structure and pattern of development. In India, roads are used to transport over 60 percent of the total goods and 85 percent of the passenger traffic. Hence, development of this sector is of paramount importance for India and accounts for a significant part in the budget.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The Department of War Transport was formed in July, 1942, by the bifurcation of the then Department of Communications into two Departments:


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The functions allocated to the Department of war Transport include Major Ports, Railways Priorities, utilization of road and water transport, Petrol rationing and Producer Gas. Broadly speaking, the functions of the War Transport Department were to coordinate the demands for transport in war time, Coastal Shipping and the administration and development of major ports. Later, the planning of export was undertaken as a corollary to the Departments control of transport priorities also.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: Following are the autonomous agencies, subordinate offices regional offices under the Director General.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The road wing of the MORTH is the backbone of the country's road network development programme. It is staffed by officers of the Central Engineering Services (Roads). It is headed by Director General (Road Development) and Special Secretary to the Government of India.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The Road wing of MORTH is further divided into five Project Zones. Each Project zone is generally vested with responsibility of four to five states for National highway development and development of road network. These five project Zones are headed by five Additional Director Generals (ADG) of Central Engineering Services (Roads) cadre who are assisted by Zonal Chief Engineer of Headquarter and Regional Officers. Regional officers are posted on ground in their respective states for development and maintenance of National Highways through State PWDs.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: This zones are headed by two separate Chief Engineers of Central Engineering Services (Roads). Main responsibilities of this zone are:


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: This zones is headed by a Chief Engineers of Central Engineering Services (Roads). Main responsibilities of this zone is Preparation of standards/ rules / guidelines for NH development program and related activities.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: Over years the ministry has passed several acts to maintain law and order in Road Transport in the country


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The total road length of India had grown more than 11 times in 60 years from 1951 to 2011; also the length of the surfaced roads had increased about 16 times over the same period. The connectivity in India has tremendously improved due to formation of new surface roads.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: For development of roads in the country the government has made an allocation of ₹19,423.88 crores under the Central Road Fund for 2013–2014 with the following breakup:


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The government has provided various incentives for private and foreign investments in the roads sector. 100% FDI is allowed in the sectors of land transport to promote building of highway bridges, toll roads, and vehicular tunnels; services incidental to transport such as cargo handling is incidental to land transport; construction and maintenance of roads, bridges; and construction and maintenance of roads and highways offered on build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis, including collection of toll.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: A 10-year tax exemption under Section 80 IA has been granted to the highway building projects to attract private investors. The ministry has also framed a ‘Special Accelerated Road Development Programme in North Eastern Region' for improving road connectivity to remote places in this region. The estimated cost of the proposal is US$2.53 billion. The Union Budget 2012–13 proposed an increase of allocation of the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways by 14% to .


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The World Bank has approved a US$975 million loan for developing the first phase of the eastern arm of the US$17.21 billion Dedicated Freight Corridor Project in India. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd. has tied up with the Japanese Bank of Industrial Cooperation for US$14.56 billion funding as loan for the first phase and it is likely to be commissioned in 2016.


title: Ministry of Road Transport and Highways

text: The Prime Minister Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) is a scheme for development of rural roads in India. The Construction of Rural Roads Project (CRRP) is another initiative focused on rural development.


title: Avatar 4

text: Avatar 4 is an upcoming American epic science fiction film co-written, co-edited, co-produced and directed by James Cameron. It will be the sequel to the upcoming 2024 "Avatar 3", and the fourth installment in the "Avatar" franchise. It will star Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña, among others from the original cast, reprising their roles. The screenplay is written by James Cameron and Josh Friedman. The film is scheduled to be released on December 18, 2026, by 20th Century Studios and is planned to be followed by a sequel, "Avatar 5", in 2028.


title: Avatar 4

text: On July 31, 2017, it was announced that the New Zealand-based visual effects studio Weta Digital had commenced work on the "Avatar" sequels. Cameron stated that "Avatar: The Tulkun Rider" is being considered as a possible title for the film.


title: Avatar 4

text: In August 2017, Matt Gerald had officially signed on to portray his first film's role Corporal Lyle Wainfleet in all upcoming sequels. In August 2017, in an interview with Empire, Cameron revealed that Stephen Lang would not only be returning in all four sequels but he would also be the main villain in all four films. On January 25, 2018, Dileep Rao was confirmed to return as Dr. Max Patel.


title: Avatar 4

text: Filming on all four sequels was supposed to begin simultaneously on September 25, 2017, in Manhattan Beach, California, but Cameron revealed that the filming on 4 and 5 would begin after post-production wrapped on the first two sequels. However, producer Jon Landau revealed in February 2019 that some motion capture scenes had been shot for "Avatar 4", at the same time as its two predecessors. Landau later declared that a third of "Avatar 4" has already been filmed for "logistical reasons". Elaborating on shooting a portion of 4 during the production of 2 and 3, Cameron stated that "I had to shoot the kids out. They're allowed to age six years in the middle of the story on page 25 of movie '4.' So I needed everything before then, and then everything after, we'll do later."


title: Avatar 4

text: "Avatar 4" is also expected to be the first film not to carry a traditional Dolby Digital or DTS soundtrack, focusing more on utilizing Dolby Atmos and .


title: Avatar 4

text: In August 2021, Landau announced that Simon Franglen would compose the score for the "Avatar" sequels.


title: Avatar 4

text: "Avatar 4" is scheduled to be released on December 18, 2026, by 20th Century Studios, two years after the release of "Avatar 3" in December 2024.


title: Avatar 4

text: A fifth film has been announced and is scheduled for December 22, 2028. Cameron stated in an interview with ABC News Australia that he is uncertain whether he will direct the fifth film.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: The series takes place in a world where vampires are very real. There are inferior vampires, which are basically animals, and vampire lords, who have human-like physiques and intelligence. All vampire lords have basic vampire abilities and weaknesses, but some of them have special abilities that set them apart from the rest of their kind. They can also find regular animals to make into their immortal familiars.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: Some vampires choose to live in peace with humans while others choose to be menaces instead. Thus, some humans take up the role as vampire hunters to keep the hostile vampires in check.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: The story follows the famed vampire hunter, Ronaldo, who receives a job to destroy the supposedly invincible vampire lord Draluc and rescue a human boy he allegedly kidnapped. Upon meeting him in his mansion, however, he quickly realizes that he is only called "invincible" because of his unique ability to revive almost instantly after being reduced to ashes, which is convenient since almost anything can kill him due to him being incredibly weak. The boy who was believed to be a hostage just sneaks into the castle regularly to play Draluc's huge collection of video games. Chaos ensues and Draluc's castle ends up completely destroyed as a result.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: Homeless, Draluc then moves into Ronaldo's apartment for the time being, much to Ronaldo's chagrin. He also brings along his familiar, a cute armadillo named John, who Ronaldo becomes fond of. After helping Ronaldo in a case, the two become unofficial partners, often clashing with other vampires and hunters alike.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: "The Vampire Dies in No Time" is written and illustrated by Itaru Bonnoki. The manga began its serialization in Akita Shoten's "Weekly Shōnen Champion" magazine on June 25, 2015. As of June 8, 2022, twenty-one "tankōbon" volumes have been released.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: An anime adaptation was announced in the 23rd issue of "Weekly Shōnen Champion" on May 7, 2020. The adaptation, revealed to be a television series, is animated by Madhouse and directed by Hiroshi Kōjina, with Yukie Sugawara overseeing the series' scripts, Mayuko Nakano designing the characters, and Ryō Takahashi composing the music. The series aired from October 4 to December 20, 2021, on Tokyo MX, BS11, tvk, KBS Kyoto, and SUN. Jun Fukuyama performed the series' opening theme song "Dies in No Time", while Daisuke Ono and Takayuki Kondō, performing as TRD, performed the series' ending theme song "Strangers". Funimation licensed the series outside of Asia. One year later, Netflix later licensing anime adaptation in Asia in August 31.


title: The Vampire Dies in No Time

text: After the airing of the series' final episode, a second season was announced. The staff members of the first season will reprise their roles. The second season will premiere on January 9, 2023. Jun Fukuyama and TRD are returning to perform the opening and ending theme songs, respectively titled "New Drama Paradise" and "Cozy Crazy Party!".


title: Red Cell

text: Red Teams or Red Cells are United States government terms for the National Security Co-ordination Team (NSCT). These teams or units are designed to test the effectiveness of American tactics or personnel.


title: Red Cell

text: In 1984, Red Cell was formed after Richard Marcinko relinquished command of SEAL Team Six to Commander Robert Gormly. Red Cell members demonstrated the vulnerabilities of military bases and would regularly use false IDs, dismantle fences, barricade buildings, take hostages, and kidnap high ranking personnel. Additionally, Red Cell planted bombs near Air Force One, snuck into submarine bases, and took them over. Their operations were recorded and subsequently displayed to base personnel. This action was partly to humiliate the targets and also give them a look into vulnerabilities that they should patch. "I'd tell them Red Cell was coming, eat them alive, and then show the film and rub their noses in it," Marcinko stated in an interview.


title: Red Cell

text: The original Red Cell was a 14-man team composed of 13 former members of SEAL Team Six and one Force Recon Marine. The unit was also known as OP-O6D which had been organized to attempt to infiltrate and otherwise test the security of U.S. military bases and other installations sensitive to U.S. security interests.


title: Red Cell

text: The team was led by the former commander of SEAL Team Six (DEVGRU) Richard Marcinko until he was relieved of duty and charged with various offenses including misappropriating funds. It was alleged that these were made up allegations as part of a vendetta against Marcinko, due to anger felt at senior levels at how easily Marcinko and his team had infiltrated bases and procured top secret information from high-ranking individuals. A high-ranking Navy official says there was no vendetta and that "the general take was that Red Cell was a good thing."