title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders () is a 1970 Czechoslovak surrealist fantasy horror film directed by Jaromil Jireš, based on the 1935 novel of the same name by Vítězslav Nezval. It is considered part of the Czechoslovak New Wave movement. The film portrays the heroine as living in a disorienting dream, cajoled by priests, vampires, and men and women alike. The film blends elements of the fantasy and gothic horror film genres.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Valerie, a beautiful young girl, is asleep when a thief steals her earrings; as she tries to investigate, she is startled by a horrific man, the Constable, who wears a mask. The thief returns her earrings the next day, angering the Constable. Back at her house, Valerie's grandmother, Elsa, tells her that the earrings were left behind by Valerie's mother upon joining a convent. Previously, the earrings belonged to the Constable, who also owned their house. Valerie also learns that a group of missionaries and a company of actors are coming to town. During her neighbor Hedvika's wedding, Valerie sees the Constable watching her in the crowd and her grandmother also seems to recognize him. Valerie receives a letter from the thief, Orlík ("Eaglet"), warning her that the Constable, his uncle, killed Orlík's parents and now wants Valerie's earrings back. Orlík asks Valerie to meet him at the church that evening; when they meet he doesn't hide his attraction to her.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Later, Valerie meets the Constable in the street, in disguise; he leads Valerie to a chamber where her grandmother whips herself to win back the love of a past lover, a priest named Gracián. Orlík saves Valerie and tells her that his uncle is in love with her. The Constable meets Elsa, who calls him Richard and was his lover when she was 17. He promises to make her young again if she sells him the house that Valerie will inherit. Meanwhile, Orlík gives Valerie a pearl for protection, then hides her from Richard again. At a picnic, Gracián tells Valerie that Orlík is her brother. That night, Gracián comes into her bedroom and attempts to rape her, but she swallows the pearl to protect herself. Meanwhile, Richard and Elsa sneak into Hedvika's; while Hedvika and her husband consummate their marriage, Elsa bites her on the neck, stealing the blood necessary to become young again.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Valerie finds Orlík bound to a waterfall by Richard. Valerie frees Orlík and takes him to her house, avoiding his romantic intentions by blindfolding him, since she now thinks they're siblings. They discover Gracián hanging dead from Valerie's window and take the body to a crypt under Valerie's house; Elsa is there, now a vampire. Disguised as a young woman, Elsa introduces herself as a distant cousin and tells Valerie that her grandmother left suddenly. She tries to bite Valerie, then restrains her while she's asleep and steals the earrings. Elsa imprisons Valerie, who then observes Elsa having sex with a man and then killing him, then attempting to seduce Orlík, who instead steals the earrings again.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Orlík frees Valerie, returns her earrings, and confesses his love for her. He tries to explain that he's not her father's son, but Richard's, but Valerie runs away. She has guessed Elsa is actually her grandmother, and started to feel something for Richard, who's dying. Valerie steals a chicken from the market and takes it to Richard, who's just told Elsa that he is Valerie's father, and that Valerie's blood is the key to their survival. When Valerie heals Richard, he reverts to being a monster and attacks her. He plans to transplant Orlík's heart into Valerie to make her immortal, but Elsa wants it for herself. Valerie, pretending to be unconscious, overhears everything. She revives Gracián, who wasn't actually dead, and finds a goodbye letter from Orlík.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Valerie meets Hedvika, sick from Elsa's bite and depressed about her marriage. They retreat into Hedvika's bedroom and spend the night together, after which Hedvika is healed. Outside, Gracián tells a crowd that Valerie is a witch who tempted him into sin. He orders her captured and burned at the stake, but Valerie swallows the magic earrings and escapes unharmed. In the crypt, now a brothel, Valerie tricks Richard into drinking one of the earrings, turning him into a polecat. In a progressively more dreamlike sequence, Valerie reunites with Orlík, revealed to be one of the actors; then Elsa, who doesn't recall anything that's happened; then her long-lost parents. In the final scene everyone dances around Valerie in the forest, while the virgins sing for her. Eventually she falls asleep in a bed in the forest, alone.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: The original screenplay was written by Ester Krumbachová, who is also credited with production design on the movie. The screenplay was approved in late April 1968. The movie was supposed to be directed by Krumbachová's husband Jan Němec. However, after the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Němec was fired from Barrandov film studio and was not allowed to direct. The project then went to Jireš, and despite Jireš's 1969 feature "The Joke" being banned by communist authorities, production proceeded on "Valerie". Jaroslava Schallerová was chosen from 1,500 girls who auditioned for the role.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: The Czech town of Slavonice was chosen as the main filming location, because of its preserved renaissance-era town centre. The local people played extras. Some scenes were shot in nearby Kostelní Vydří monastery. Robert Nezval, son of the author of the novel Vítězslav Nezval, appears in the film as a boy with a drum.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: The film soundtrack, featuring music composed by Luboš Fišer, was released for the first time in December 2006 by Finders Keepers Records. Available both on CD and LP, the booklet reveals previously unseen archive images, international poster designs, as well as notes by the label founder Andy Votel, a film professor Peter Hames and Trish Keenan from the band Broadcast. An alternative soundtrack was made by The Valerie Project in 2006.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 81% based on , with a weighted average rating of 7.39/10. "The New York Times" called the film "Consistently and humorously anticlerical", writing that it "may be the most exotic flower to bloom on the grave of the Prague Spring, but it's one with deep roots in 20th-century Czech culture".


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Jordan Cronk of "Slant Magazine" wrote that the film "may be a willfully enigmatic, even obtuse viewing experience, but every frame continues to vibrate with energy and thrum with life", and gave the film a rating of three-and-a-half out of five stars.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: University of Nebraska film studies professor Wheeler W. Dixon wrote in his book "Visions of Paradise: Images of Eden in the Cinema" "The film's brevity and its seductive mise-en-scène, sumptuously photographed by Jan Cuřík, make the film seem almost an outlaw project, or an act of social criticism designed to enforce atheism by embracing an anti-Catholic stance, particularly in relation to sexual morality."


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: In the book "101 Horror Films You Must See Before You Die", author and professor at Brunel University Tanya Krzyminska called the film "an exquisitely crafted fairy tale woven around the sexual awakening of a young woman". Krzyminska also noted that, although the film shared many similarities with soft-core pornographic films of the period, "it seeks a broader canvas in a blend of attributes drawn from both high and low culture." Krzyminska also noted the film's elements of gothic horror and fairy tales, as well as its use of symbolic imagery.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: In January 2004, the film was released on DVD in the United States and Canada by Facets Video. In June of that same year, the film was released on DVD in the UK by Redemption Films Ltd. In June 2015, the film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by the Criterion Collection, featuring a 4K digital restoration; three early short films by director Jireš, "Uncle" (1959), "Footprints" (1960), and "The Hall of Lost Steps" (1960); interviews from 2006 with Jaroslava Schallerová and Jan Klusák; and an alternate psychedelic folk soundtrack by The Valerie Project.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: Many writers have cited similarities between the film and the work of English writer Angela Carter, who saw the film during its release in England. Her screenplay for "The Company of Wolves" (1984) adapted from Carter's short stories, in collaboration with director Neil Jordan, bears a direct or indirect influence.


title: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (film)

text: In 2006, members of New Weird America acts Espers, Fern Knight, Fursaxa and other musicians formed The Valerie Project. The group performed original compositions in unison with the film from 2006 to 2008.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: Elle Greenaway is a fictional character from the CBS crime drama "Criminal Minds", portrayed by Lola Glaudini throughout the first season and the beginning of the second season.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: Before joining the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU), Greenaway was assigned to the FBI's Seattle field office with a specialty in profiling sexual offenders, a skill that would prove to be useful to the BAU. Elle's unnamed mother is Cuban, and she is fluent in Spanish, as seen in "Machismo". Her father, Robert Greenaway, was a police officer who was killed in the line of duty. The day her father was killed, she angrily told him she hated him because he was too busy to teach her to ride her bicycle; those were the last words she ever said to him, and she has felt guilty about it ever since.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: Elle Greenaway joined the BAU directly after success in the pilot episode "". Unit Chief Jason Gideon (Mandy Patinkin), who had recently returned to active duty in the BAU, used her file as a guide and labelled her impatient, instructing her to correct the characteristic. After being hired, Greenaway quickly became good friends with the team's media liaison, Jennifer Jareau (A.J. Cook) and Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler).


title: Elle Greenaway

text: For a year and a half, Greenaway is relatively successful in the BAU, aiding her colleagues in solving cases and capturing the criminals responsible until the season one finale, "".


title: Elle Greenaway

text: In the episode “Derailed”, Greenaway is involved in a hostage situation, when a mentally unstable man wounds his caretaker and nearly shoots her. Reid saves her life, but the caretaker is killed; both Greenaway and Reid suffer survivor's guilt for some time afterward.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: During the first season finale, Randall Garner (Charles Haid), a murderer the unit is investigating, ambushes Greenaway in her apartment and shoots her in retaliation for the BAU disobeying the "rules" to his "game"; he then reaches his fingers into her bullet wounds and writes the word "RULES" on the walls with her blood. After this trauma, Greenaway goes on a four-month leave of absence in an attempt to heal and move on with her life. Despite having physically recovered from her injuries, she remains psychologically traumatized, as seen in the post-shooting changes in her personality—once open to others and full of laughter, Greenaway becomes distant, withdrawn, and hypervigilant.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: When she returns, a case involving a serial rapist affects her deeply, to the point that she panics during an undercover operation, an action that prevents the team from obtaining probable cause to hold the rapist, William Lee (Jason London), in custody. Upon seeing Lee leaving the station, Greenaway accuses Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner (Thomas Gibson) of getting her shot. Later that night, Greenaway follows Lee, who taunts her about the women he will harm now that he is free. Enraged, she shoots and kills him. When her colleagues arrive at the scene, she claims that she killed him in self-defense when he pulled a gun on her. She is ultimately found innocent, although her BAU colleagues suspect otherwise. Reid, in particular, blames himself for not having seen the signs of her impending breakdown and prevented the shooting; on a previous night, he had dropped by her room to check on her and saw that she was drinking.


title: Elle Greenaway

text: A short time after the shooting — during the episode "" — Greenaway resigns from the BAU, right before Hotchner is about to fire her. She turns in her badge and gun, saying she is not admitting guilt; she then says that she would not have done anything differently if she could go back to that night. Greenaway leaves the FBI, facing no legal consequences for the shooting, and is eventually replaced by Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster).


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: Sethurama Iyer CBI is a 2004 Malayalam-language mystery crime film directed by K Madhu.The movie is written by S. N. Swami, and The movie stars Mammootty in titular role. Actors Mukesh and Jagathy Sreekumar played important supporting roles. Shyam composed the background score for the film.


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: This film is the third in the series of the "CBI investigative thrillers" featuring Mammootty as CBI officer Sethurama Iyer.This film was a Blockbuster and was the highest-grossing film of the year collecting around distributors share of ₹4 crore and a gross around ₹10 crore The success of this movie made Mammootty "Man of the year" The base story and initial scenes are adopted from Arthur Hailey's Novel Detective.


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: The movie begins with Sethurama Iyer visiting Isow Alex, a convicted serial killer who is awaiting his execution. Alex was arrested and convicted for the cold-blooded murder of seven people in two different families. Alex, who had been living a wild life then, had committed the crime high on narcotic drugs. The murder case was left to the CBI for investigation and an able officer, played by Siddique, nabbed Alex in no time. Alex is now a new man, mainly due to the influence of a priest, who requests Iyer to visit Alex.


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: What Alex tells Iyer is startling; he didn't commit one of the seven murders he was convicted for. The murder was that of Manikkunju, a businessman. Manikkunju, along with his daughter-in-law Mosi, was murdered at his house. Alex tells this all the same confessing that he murdered Mosi. The possibility of another killer involved is very remote and Alex is a serial killer who thoroughly denied any hand in the murders when he was arrested, but yet Iyer decides to reopen the case and investigate. He faces many odds; to prove Alex right would be proving his own bureau wrong and to prove Alex wrong would be wasting time and money.


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: Originally, the CBI officer in the film "Oru CBI Diary Kuruppu" was supposed to be a rough-and-tough cop named Ali Imran. It was Mammootty who suggested that a simple-looking brahmin who uses his brains more than his brawn would be a better idea.


title: Sethurama Iyer CBI

text: The film was commercial success and highest grossing Malayalam film of the year 2004 and also collected around ₹10 crore from the box office. The film ran around 200 days in theatres.


title: Status Update

text: Status Update is a 2018 American direct-to-video teen comedy romance film, directed by Scott Speer, from a screenplay by Jason Filardi. It stars Ross Lynch and Olivia Holt.


title: Status Update

text: The film had a limited release on March 23, 2018, before being released through video on demand on March 30, 2018, by Vertical Entertainment.


title: Status Update

text: A not-so-popular high schooler named Kyle Moore is uprooted by his parents' separation and struggles to fit into his new hometown. Then he stumbles upon a magical app that causes his social media updates to come true, which brings all of his wildest real-world fantasies to life.


title: Status Update

text: In November 2014, "The Hollywood Reporter" announced that Ross Lynch would star in a new supernatural/comedy/romance film called "Status Update", set in New England. Legendary's Asylum Entertainment bought the pitch from "17 Again" writer Jason Filardi. Offspring Entertainment's Jennifer Gibgot and Adam Shankman produced with Voltage's Dominic Rustam and Brightlight’s Shawn Williamson. Scott Speer directed the film. The film went into production in Vancouver, British Columbia in June 2016.


title: Status Update

text: "Status Update" had a limited release on March 23, 2018, before being released through video on demand on March 30, 2018, by Vertical Entertainment.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The Visconti of Milan are a noble Italian family. They rose to power in Milan during the Middle Ages where they ruled from 1277 to 1447, initially as lords then as dukes, and several collateral branches still exist. The effective founder of the Visconti lordship of Milan was the archbishop Ottone, who wrested control of the city from the rival Della Torre family in 1277.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The earliest members of the Visconti lineage appeared in Milan in the second half of the 11th century. The first evidence is on October 5, 1075, when Ariprando Visconti and his son Ottone ("Ariprandus Vicecomes", "Otto Vicecomes filius Ariprandi") attended and signed together some legal documents in Milan. Ariprando Visconti's family is believed to have pre-existed in Milan and obtained the title of viscount, which became hereditary throughout the male descent.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In the years following 1075, Ottone Visconti is shown in the proximity of the Salian dynasty's sovereigns, Henry IV and his son Conrad. His death's circumstances confirm the relationship with the imperial family. In 1111 in Rome, Ottone was captured and executed after attempting to defend Henry V from an assault. In the first documents where they appear, Ottone and his offspring declared that they abided by the Lombard law and acted in connection with other Milanese families of the noble upper class ("capitanei"). A relationship with the Litta, a Milanese vavasour family subordinate to the Visconti in the feudal hierarchy, is also documented. These circumstances demonstrate their participation in the Milanese society in the years before 1075 and, ultimately, their Lombard origin.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In 1134, Guido Visconti, son of Ottone, received from the abbot of Saint Gall the investiture of the court of Massino, a strategic location on the hills above Lake Maggiore, near Arona. Here, another family member was present in the second half of the 12th century as the castellan ("custos") of the local archiepiscopal fortress. In 1142, King Conrad III confirmed the investiture in a diploma released to Guido in Ulm. Another royal document, issued by Conrad III in 1142 as well, attests to the Visconti's entitlement to the in Albusciago and Besnate. Based on a document issued in 1157, the Visconti were considered holders of the captaincy of Marliano (today Mariano Comense) since the time of archbishop Landulf; however, the available documentation cannot infer such a conclusion.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: A second Ottone, son of Guido, is attested in the documentary sources between 1134 and 1192. The primary role of Ottone in the political life of the Milanese commune emerges in the period of the confrontation with Frederick Barbarossa: his name is the first to be cited, March 1, 1162, in the group of Milanese leaders who surrendered to the emperor after the capitulation of the city that took place in the previous weeks. A member of the following generation, Ariprando, was bishop of Vercelli between 1208 and 1213 when he also played the role of Papal legate for Innocent III. An attempt to have him elected archbishop of Milan failed in 1212 amidst growing tensions between opposite factions inside the city. His death in 1213, was probably caused by poisoning.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The family dispersed into several branches, some of which obtained fiefs far off from Milan. Among them, the one that gave origin to the lords and dukes of Milan allegedly descended from Uberto, who died in the first half of the 13th century. The other branches' members frequently added to their surname the name of the place where they chose to live and where a fortification was available for their residence. The first of such cases were the Visconti di Massino, the Visconti di Invorio, and the Visconti di Oleggio Castello. In these localities, a castle (Massino), its remains (Invorio), or a later reconstruction of the initial building (Oleggio Castello) are still visible today.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The Visconti ruled Milan until the early Renaissance, first as Lords, then, from 1395, with the mighty Gian Galeazzo who endeavored to unify Northern Italy and Tuscany, as Dukes. Visconti rule in Milan ended with the death of Filippo Maria Visconti in 1447. He was succeeded by a short-lived republic and then by his son-in-law Francesco I Sforza, who established the reign of the House of Sforza.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: When Frederick II died in 1250, the war engaged by the Lombard League and Milan against him ended. Inside the Milanese commune, united in its defence until then, a period of conflicts between rivaling factions began. The Della Torre family progressively acquired power in Milan after 1240, when Pagano Della Torre assumed the leadership of the Credenza di Sant'Ambrogio, a political party with a popular base. This position allowed them to have a role in the tax collection of the commune (estimo), which was essential to finance the war against Frederick II while affecting the great landowners. In 1247 Pagano was succeeded by his nephew Martino Della Torre. The commune created for him the new role of Senior of the Credenza (Anziano della Credenza) to underline his authority. In this position, the Della Torre began to clash with the Milanese noble families organized in their political party, the Societas Capitaneorum et Valvassorum, having the Visconti among the most prominent figures. After a period of unrest between the opposite parties, in 1258, the so-called Sant'Ambrogio Peace was signed among the parties, strengthening the position of La Credenza and La Motta (a second political party with popular tendencies).


title: Visconti of Milan

text: New events in favor of the Della Torre undermined the Sant'Ambrogio Peace. At the end of 1259, Oberto Pallavicino, a former partisan of Frederick II who got closer to the Guelph positions of the Della Torre, was appointed by the Milanese commune for five years in the role of General Captain of the People. The victory he obtained in the Battle of Cassano on 16 September 1259 against Ezzelino da Romano, formerly his ally on the Ghibelline side in the war of Frederick II against Milan, enhanced his position in Milan. The noble expelled from Milan during the clashes preceding the Sant'Ambrogio Peace placed their hopes on Ezzelino to regain their old power in the city.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: A decisive event in the confrontation between the Della Torre and the Visconti factions was the appointment of Ottone Visconti as archbishop of Milan in 1262. Pope Urban IV preferred Ottone to Raimondo, another candidate member of the Della Torre family. Prevented from assuming his office and forced by the opposite faction to remain outside the city, Ottone settled in Arona, a town at the Milanese archdiocese's border. At the end of 1263, Della Torre forces, with the support of Oberto Pallavicino, dislodged him from Arona. Ottone sought refuge in central Italy near the pope.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In 1264, Pallavicino left his office, leaving the Della Torre sole ruler of Milan. Under the guidance of Filippo Della Torre, brother of Martino and his successor after 1263, the Della Torre party took advantage of the favour of Charles of Anjou. Milan allied with him and other northern Italian cities (Guelph League) to fight the Hohenstaufen rule in southern Italy. Francesco Della Torre led the Milanese expedition in southern Italy, which ended in 1266 with the allied victory against Manfred of Sicily in the Battle of Benevento. Charles of Anjou became the new King of Sicily, having an indirect rule (exercised through the Della Torre) on Milan.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Trying to take advantage from the favourable moment, in 1266 the Della Torre advocated their cause against the Visconti in a consistory held by Pope Clement IV in Viterbo and attended by the archbishop Ottone. Despite the presence of a delegate of Charles of Anjou, the decision of the pope was in favour of Ottone. The pope then attempted to appease the two factions through an oath of allegiance demanded from the Milanese population. Part of it was the acceptance of Ottone as archbishop. New circumstances, however, again changed the events in favour of the Della Torre. At the end of 1266, the German princes decided to support Conradin, the last Hohenstaufen member, to recover the domains in southern Italy lost to the Anjou house after the defeat of Benevento. This move reinstated again the Della Torre in their position of leader of the Guelph League. Moreover, in 1268, Clement IV died, initiating a period of papal vacancy that left the dispositions in favour of Ottone without practical consequences.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After the definitive end of the Hohenstaufen threat (Conradin was defeated and executed in Naples in 1268), the confrontation between the two Milanese factions assumed more and more a military connotation. A leading figure on the Visconti side was Simone Orelli da Locarno, whose military ability became legendary during the wars against Fredrick II. Notwithstanding this, being in favor of the Visconti, he was arrested in 1263 and jailed in Milan. In 1276, he was freed in the context of a compromise between the two factions about Como and after his promise of not acting against the Della Torre. He joined the Visconti army altogether, assuming the role of General Captain. The Visconti forces gained ground in the Lake Maggiore's area, but, in the same year, Teobaldo Visconti, nephew of Ottone, was captured with other leading figures of the Visconti forces. Brought to Gallarate, they were executed by beheading. The Visconti eventually defeated the Della Torre army in the decisive Battle of Desio on 27 January 1277, opening the way for Ottone to enter Milan. Napoleone, son of Pagano, was arrested with other Della Torre family members. He died in jail a few months later. These events are generally considered to mark the foundation of the Visconti lordship of Milan


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Ottone initially granted power in Milan to Simone Orelli, appointing him Captain of the People. In 1287, he transferred this role to his grandnephew Matteo Visconti (the son of Teobaldo executed in 1276). One year later, Matteo obtained the title of Imperial vicar from the emperor Rudolf of Habsburg. Ottone died in 1295, leaving Matteo Lord of Milan. In 1302, the Della Torre retook power, forcing Matteo to leave the city. In 1311, an intervention of Henry VII appeased the dispute between the two families and restored Matteo's lordship. After him, seven members of his offspring, along four generations, ruled over Milan and a growing territory in northern and central Italy.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The reconciliation agreement with the Della Torre, reached in December 1310 on the initiative of Henry VII, was attended by Matteo, his brother Uberto and their cousin Ludovico, also known as Lodrisio. In the following years, Matteo acted alone as Lord of Milan. He ruled for about eleven years, providing to his family the legal basis for the hereditary lordship over Milan and extending the territory under the Milanese influence against the traditional opponents of the Visconti: the Della Torre and Anjou dynasties allied with the Papacy. After being accused of necromancy and heresy, he was convicted by the Church. Looking for a reconciliation, he transferred the power to his eldest son Galeazzo and left Milan for the Augustinian monastery of Crescenzago, where he died in 1322.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After Matteo's death, Galeazzo associated his brothers Marco, Luchino, Stefano, and Giovanni (a cleric) in the inherited domains' controls. He died five years later, succeeded by his son Azzone, who ruled between 1329 and 1339. Stefano married Valentina Doria from Genoa and died in 1327 under unclear circumstances. He left three children: Matteo (Matteo II), Bernabò, and Galeazzo (Galeazzo II). Marco felt in disgrace and was killed by hitmen in 1329. The two brothers' deaths restricted the future successions to Luchino, Giovanni (since 1342 archbishop of Milan), and Stefano's three sons.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: During Azzone's rule, Lodrisio (the cousin of Matteo, who in 1310 attended the reconciliation with the Della Torre) raised against him, trying to revert the line of succession in favor of his own family. He obtained the support of the Della Scala family of Verona, but in 1339, in the Battle of Parabiago, he was defeated by an army led by Azzone and backed by his uncles Luchino and Giovanni. Azzone died in 1339 without heirs, and the power passed to his uncles Luchino and Giovanni. During their rule, the three sons of Stefano were suspected of a conspiracy against Luchino. Threatened by him, they left Milan.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After Luchino died in 1349, archbishop Giovanni remained alone in power and recalled his three nephews in Milan. Under his rule, the territorial expansion continued (to Genoa and Bologna) thanks to his diplomacy. Part of his initiatives were the marriages of his nephews to members of the nearby noble dynasties of northern Italy: in 1340, Matteo II to Egidiola Gonzaga; in 1350, Bernabò to Regina Della Scala and Galeazzo II to Bianca of Savoy. In 1353, Petrarch accepted an invitation from Giovanni and moved to Milan, where he lived until 1361. He took part in Visconti's diplomatic initiatives and provided first-hand accounts of his life in Milan and Visconti's family events in his letters.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: On 5 October 1354, archbishop Giovanni died. A few days after, Petrarch held a commemorative oration in his honor. In the same month, the three sons of Stefano agreed to share the power, dividing the Visconti domains according to geographic criteria. Matteo II died the following year, and Bernabò and Galeazzo II divided his territory between them. The two brothers settled their courts separately: Bernabò in Milan, Galeazzo II in Pavia. Through the marriages of their sons and daughters, Bernabò and Galeazzo II extended the Visconti relationships to several other European noble dynasties.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In 1360, Gian Galeazzo, son of Galeazzo II, married Isabelle of Valois, daughter of King John II of France. The marriage was the result of negotiation, also participated by Petrarch with a journey to Paris, leading the Visconti to contribute 600,000 francs to the ransom paid by France to England to obtain the freedom of the King in an episode of the Hundred Years' War. Violante, daughter of Galeazzo II, married in 1368 Lionel of Antwerp Duke of Clarence, the third son of King Edward III of England. After her husband's death, only a few months after the marriage, in 1377, Violante married Secondotto, Marquess of Montferrat. Remained again widow, in 1381, she married her cousin Lodovico, one of the sons of Bernabò.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Bernabò and his wife, Regina Della Scala, had 15 children. Nine daughters (Taddea, Viridis, Valentina, Agnese, Antonia, Maddalena, Anglesia, Elisabetta, Lucia) married scions of other European dynasties, connecting the Visconti to the houses of Wittelsbach (Taddea, Maddalena, Elisabetta), Habsburg (Viridis), Poitiers-Lusignan (Valentina, Anglesia), Württemberg (Antonia), Gonzaga (Agnese), Kent (Lucia). Their sons Marco and Carlo married Elisabeth of Bavaria and Beatrice of Armagnac, respectively. Caterina, another daughter of Bernabò, married in 1380 her cousin Gian Galeazzo, widow of Isabelle of Valois, who died in 1373 in Pavia while giving birth to her fourth child.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: When Galeazzo II died in 1378, his son Gian Galeazzo was the only heir of his half of the Visconti territories. Bernabò, being 28 years older than his nephew, tended to assume a leading role towards him. The two Visconti had different personalities and ruling styles: instinctive, bad-tempered, and establisher of a terror regime Bernabò; circumspect and relatively mild to his subjects Gian Galeazzo. In the following years, the relationship between the two Visconti progressively deteriorated.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: A few months after the death of his wife and counselor, Bernabò was deposed by his nephew in a coup, probably prepared for years and kept secret. On 5 May 1385, accompanied by his generals (Jacopo dal Verme, Antonio Porro and Guglielmo Bevilacqua) and with a heavy armed escort, Gian Galeazzo moved from Pavia for an apparent pilgrimage journey to Santa Maria del Monte di Velate near Varese. The following day, passing by Milan, he arranged to meet Bernabò for what was expected to be a familiar greeting. Bernabò, unprotected, was intercepted and arrested. The coup also led to the arrest of two sons of Bernabò, who were accompanying him. The people in the domains of Bernabò, firstly the Milanese, promptly submitted to Gian Galeazzo, an attitude widely attributed to their desire to abandon the ruthless regime under which they had been living. Incarcerated in his own castle at Trezzo sull'Adda, Bernabò died a few months later after being given a poisoned meal.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The death of Bernabò left Gian Galeazzo as the sole ruler of the Visconti territories. The two sons of Bernabò arrested with him (Ludovico and Rodolfo) spent the rest of their lives in jail. The two still free (Carlo and Mastino) lived far from Milan and never posed a threat to Gian Galeazzo. Only the Della Scala in Verona, their mother's family, continued to support them. After reaching some agreement with their cousin, they ended their lives in exile, in Bavaria and Venice. The three unmarried daughters of Bernabò (Anglesia, Elisabetta, Lucia) moved to Pavia. They lived there under the care of their sister Caterina, the second wife of Gian Galeazzo, until their wedding.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: For his court, Gian Galeazzo preferred Pavia to Milan. There, he continued to develop the castle's renowned library and support the local university. His daughter Valentina revived the relationship with the French royal family, interrupted by his first wife Isabelle's death. She married in 1389 Louis I, Duke of Orléans, brother of Charles VI, King of France. The three sons of Gian Galeazzo and Isabelle died before reaching adulthood.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Gian Galeazzo and Caterina had two sons: Giovanni Maria in 1388 and Filippo Maria in 1392. In 1395, for 100,000 florins, Gian Galeazzo obtained the Duke of Milan's title from the King Wenceslaus IV of Bohemia. During his rule, the Visconti territories reached their broadest extension in northern and central Italy. Among the previous domains, only Genoa, ruled by archbishop Giovanni, remained excluded. After a short disease, the plague or gout, Gian Galeazzo died on 3 September 1402.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The unexpected death of Gian Galeazzo put the Visconti court in serious difficulty. The news of his end was initially kept secret, and the funeral was delayed until 20 October 1402. The two sons, being only 12 and 10 years old, remained under the care of their mother, Caterina, who acted as Regent according to Gian Galeazzo's last will. A Council of Regency supporting Caterina was set up but contrasts soon emerged inside it. Moreover, some members of Visconti collateral branches and two of Bernabò's illegitimate sons opposed Caterina's regency, using circumstances to gain power. In 1404 Giovanni Maria became the new Duke of Milan. Ruling under the influence of his mother's opposers, he induced her to leave Milan for Monza. There, on 17 October 1404, she died in unclear circumstances.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: During the rule of Giovanni Maria, the political crisis deteriorated. Facino Cane, one of Gian Galeazzo's generals, obtained the title of Count of Biandrate and gained considerable authority in the Visconti territories. Other local forces emerged, leading to the fragmentation of territorial unity. Nearby powers conquered peripheral regions. This situation ended in 1412 when Facino Cane died, and a conspiracy against Giovanni Maria led to his assassination. In the same year, his brother Filippo Maria married the widow of Facino Cane, the 42-year-old Beatrice of Tenda, taking advantage of a testamentary disposition in favor of any Visconti that would have married her. The marriage ended with the accusation of adultery against Beatrice, her incarceration, and the sentence to death carried out in the Binasco castle in 1418.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In 1428 Filippo Maria married Mary of Savoy, but they had no sons. In 1425 his mistress Agnese Del Maino gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, Bianca Maria. Considered by his father his only heir, she grew up with her mother in the Abbiategrasso and Cusago castles. In 1432 Bianca Maria was betrothed to Francesco Sforza, a condottiero of Filippo Maria. In 1441 she married him, granting him the succession to the Duchy of Milan. A sign of their marriage is visible today in the twin churches of Santa Maria Incoronata in Milan.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After the death of Filippo Maria in 1447 and the short-lived Ambrosian Republic in 1447–1450, Francesco Sforza became the new Duke of Milan. Bianca Maria and her husband initiated a new dynasty that ruled Milan discontinuously until 1535.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: When Louis XII of France entered Milan in 1499 after the First Italian War, he leveraged a clause of the marriage contract of his grandmother Valentina, the daughter of Gian Galeazzo, to assume the title of Duke of Milan. After his death and the short rule of Maximilian Sforza (1512–1515), Francis I, heir of Valentina as well, inherited the Duchy. After an Imperial-Spanish army defeated France in the Battle of Pavia in 1525, a Sforza, Francesco II, assumed rule in Milan again. His death and a new war led the Duchy of Milan into the hands of Philip II of Spain, ending the line of succession initiated by Ottone and Matteo Visconti.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Under the rule of the Visconti, the government of the city of Milan underwent profound transformations while its territorial hegemony greatly extended, to suffer a crisis after the death of Gian Galeazzo.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The lordship of Ottone and Matteo brought to an end the confrontation between noble and popular parties, which had assumed growing violent forms in Milan during the 13th century. The new power of the Visconti initially relied on the combined roles of Archbishop (Ottone) and Captain of the People, along with the authority deriving from the title of Imperial Vicar (Matteo). After Matteo, the rule in the city assumed hereditary nature inside his family, making any formal recognition by the communal institutions unnecessary. The first Visconti claimed an absolute power ("plenitudo potestatis") comparable to the one preserved to pope and emperor, culminating with Bernabò, who openly considered their authorities irrelevant in his dominions. The political change in Milan was part of the general decline of the Commune and the subsequent rise of the Signoria that affected northern and central Italy during 13th and 14th centuries.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The annexation of the properties of the Milanese church, which included fortifications like the Angera and Arona castles guarding Lake Maggiore's navigation, was the first step Matteo Visconti took to consolidate his power in the territory of the Milanese diocese. That takeover originated a conflict with the Papacy that lasted the following decades. The expansion of the Visconti rule outside the Milanese diocese took advantage of the traditional importance of Milan in northern Italy, reinforced by the leading role played in the Lombard League during the wars against the Hohenstaufen emperors. After the destructions inflicted by Frederick Barbarossa in 1162, in a few years the Milanese reconstructed their city and defeated the emperor at Legnano in 1176, forcing him to the Peace of Constance, which granted autonomy also to the cities allied to Milan. The war was resumed against Frederick II and his successors, eventually leading to the end of the Hohenstaufen dynasty. Based on this favorable position, after the death of Henry VII in 1313, Matteo and his son Galeazzo managed to become lords of other cities in northern Italy: Bergamo, Tortona, Alessandria, Vercelli, and Piacenza. Regimes favoring the Visconti settled in Como, Novara, and Pavia. During this first expansion phase, the Visconti continued to face the opposition of the Guelph League: the Papacy, the Anjou house (sovereigns in southern Italy), and the Della Torre family.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After a crisis suffered during the years of Galeazzo I, the expansion continued under the lordship of Azzone with the military support of his uncle Luchino. In 1334 Cremona surrendered to Azzone. In 1337 Luchino entered Brescia, allowing Azzone to become Lord of the city. In 1339 Azzone and Luchino defeated in the battle of Parabiago an army formed by their cousin Lodrisio Visconti and the Della Scala family, lords of Verona. In 1341, Luchino obtained a reconciliation with the Church. In 1346 Luchino took Parma, and in 1347 he extended the western border of the Visconti dominions along a stretch of land until Mondovì and Cuneo, at the foot of the Western Alps.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: After the death of Luchino, archbishop Giovanni further extended the territories under Milanese control. In 1350 he obtained Bologna from the Pepoli family, and in 1353 he accepted the lordship of Genoa. Through the marriages of his nephews (Matteo II, Bernabò, and Galeazzo II), he linked the Visconti dynastically to the families ruling the territories to the west and east of the Visconti dominions: the Gonzaga, the Della Scala, and the Savoy. The acquisition of Bologna, a city belonging to the territory of the Papal States, reopened the conflict with the pope. In 1352, negotiation with the papal envoy, the abbot Guillaume de Grimoard (later Pope Urban V), led to an agreement that allowed Giovanni to continue to rule Bologna as the papal vicar.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Archbishop Giovanni's death in 1354 and the power transfer to Bernabò and Galeazzo II were followed by a reaction in Genoa and Bologna. In 1356 Genoa regained its independence. In Bologna, the rebellion of Giovanni Visconti di Oleggio, a former protégée of Archbishop Giovanni and his lieutenant in the city, opened the way to the intervention of Cardinal Albornoz, who in 1360 brought back the city within the Papal States. Bernabò, the ruler of the eastern portion of the Visconti dominions, repeatedly tried to recover Bologna. This, among other disputes with the Church, cost him a sentence of excommunication by Pope Innocent VI. After his defeat in the Battle of San Ruffillo in 1361, Bernabò finally came to terms with the loss of Bologna. Bernabò and Galeazzo II engaged in bitter clashes also with the imperial authority. After the marquess of Monferrato was appointed imperial vicar in Pavia by Charles IV, the relationship between the emperor and the Visconti deteriorated. In November 1356, in the Battle of Casorate, Visconti forces under the command of Lodrisio Visconti (now reconciled with his cousins) defeated an imperial army and captured its commander, Marquard of Randeck. In 1359, Pavia surrendered to Galeazzo II. His decision to erect a vast castle in Pavia for his family and court was a sign of his ambition to extend Visconti's dominions to the area of the ancient Lombard Kingdom.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In the 1370s, Bernabò and Galeazzo II emerged without severe consequences from manifold simultaneous attacks. The two brothers were deprived by the emperor of their vicariate and condemned by Pope Gregory XI as heretics. They subsequently suffered military incursions from the eastern border (by the count of Savoy) and from Bologna (by Papal-Florentine forces), which ended without significant impacts. Peace with the pope and reconciliation with the count of Savoy followed while Florence turned against the pope in a new war. The extension of their matrimonial policies also marked Bernabò and Galeazzo II's years. The marriages of their daughters and sons connected the Visconti to the elite of the European aristocracy: the French and English royal houses and several German princely families.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The ineffectiveness of the policies of both Empire and Papacy against the Visconti and the absence of internal conflicts that followed the arrest of Bernabò in 1385 encouraged Gian Galeazzo's expansion policy. Military and diplomatic initiatives were continuously taken and personally conducted by Gian Galeazzo from his castle in Pavia. A military campaign between 1386 and 1388 ended with the conquest of the Della Scala and Da Carrara territories of Verona and Padua. Between 1390 and 1398, the attacks of Gian Galeazzo encountered the opposition of the local powers of northern and central Italy; wars against Florence and Mantua were ineffective and even led to the loss of Padua. In 1399, without the use of force, Gian Galeazzo took possession of Pisa and Siena, followed by Perugia in 1400. In July 1402, after the victory in the Battle of Casalecchio against a Bolognese-Florentine army, he assumed the rule of Bologna. His sudden death in September 1402 prevented his long-foreseen attack on Florence.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Gian Galeazzo accompanied the territorial expansion with reforms of the administration (creation of the Consiglio Segreto and the Consiglio di Giustizia), revenues (Maestri Delle Entrate) and criminal justice (Capitano di Giustizia). His promotion to the rank of Duke transformed Milan's territory (between Ticino and the Adda rivers) into a duchy. The deep crisis that resulted after the death of Gian Galeazzo is attributed to the lack of time required to secure power in the rapidly growing dominions. The territorial unity of the Visconti state was heavily affected, and the Council of Regency, created to overcome the young age of Gian Galeazzo's sons, could not stem the dividing forces that resurfaced, causing the collapse of the system of government built by him. Filippo Maria restored the basis of the Visconti state, and the marriage of his daughter Bianca Maria to Francesco Sforza paved the way to a renewed strong government. In the course of the 15th century, however, the territory under Milanese control narrowed to the Duchy of Milan and later never regained the extension reached under the Visconti rule. In the 16th century, the absolute power established by the Visconti ended with Francesco II, the last Sforza duke.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Family branches have been continually arising since the appearance in Milan of the surname Visconti in the year 1075.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: During the first generations, the firstborn among brothers is supposed to have received the role of the most important member in the house. The family of the archbishop Ottone and his grandnephew Matteo, first lords of Milan in the second half of the 13th century, are accordingly considered the descendants of the first Ariprando Visconti along an agnatic primogeniture line over about two centuries. The younger brothers gave origin to cadet branches that continued to live in Milan, participating in the political life of the Milanese Commune.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: In 1134, Guido Visconti (one of the members of the primogeniture line) obtained from the abbot of Saint Gall the castle of Massino located in the Vergante region on the hills overlooking the Lake Maggiore.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: The firstborn of Guido Visconti, Ottone, is attested in Milan in the second half of the 12th century with important roles in the public life of the Milanese commune. His other descendants initiated to live in the Vergante, originating the cadet branches of the Visconti di Massino, the Visconti di Invorio, and the Visconti di Oleggio Castello. To the Visconti di Massino belonged Uberto Pico, who happened to be confused with Uberto Visconti, the brother of Matteo Lord of Milan. A prominent member of the Visconti di Oleggio Castello was Giovanni, Lord of Bologna (1355–1360) and Fermo. He had been wrongly considered an illegitimate son of the archbishop Giovanni Visconti.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: From Ottone, son of Guido Visconti, descended the family of the archbishop Ottone and his nephew Tebaldo, executed in 1276 by the opposite faction supporting the Della Torre family. After the death of Tebaldo, a division of the family inheritance took place in 1288 between his sons (Matteo and Uberto) and Pietro (another nephew of the archbishop Ottone). The object of the division was the lands and castles located between the Lake Maggiore and Gallarate (a long-established area of Visconti possessions), the family compound in the center of Milan and other properties. To Pietro went the territories near Gallarate, fortified with castles scattered on the local hills, to Matteo and Uberto the remaining parts.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Among the descendants of Pietro, other divisions followed: first between his sons, Lodrisio and Gaspare; a generation later among his grandchildren. The members of their offspring added to their surnames the names of the inherited lands. From the sons of Lodrisio (Ambrogio, Estorolo) originated the Visconti di Crenna and the Visconti di Besnate; from the sons of Gaspare (Azzo, Antonio, and Giovanni) the Visconti di Jerago, the Visconti di Orago, and the Visconti di Fontaneto. These branches extinguished in the following centuries. Their castles and lands were subsequently transferred to other families.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: A generation after the separation of the lands assigned to Pietro, another division followed between Matteo and Uberto, the sons of Tebaldo. Uberto (c. 1280–1315) received the castles of Cislago and Somma Lombardo with the lands subject to them. Vercellino, the firstborn of Uberto, was Podestà of Vercelli (1317) and Novara (1318-1320).


title: Visconti of Milan

text: From Vercellino, in the 15th century, descended Giambattista Visconti. In 1473, after his death, the castle of Somma Lombardo was divided between his sons, Francesco and Guido. The offspring of Francesco and Guido became known by the surname of Visconti di Somma. Several branches originated from them: among the descendants of Francesco, the Visconti di San Vito and the Visconti della Motta; from Guido, the Visconti di Modrone and the Visconti di Cislago.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: A descendant of Francesco Visconti di Somma in the 17th century was Francesco Maria. In 1629, he received from the King of Spain the title of Marquess of San Vito. From him originated the Visconti di San Vito branch.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: Between the 19th and the 20th centuries, the Visconti di San Vito reunited the property of the castle of Somma Lombardo, fragmented after the division of 1473. The Visconti di San Vito extinguished in 1998. The castle of Somma was left to a foundation bearing their name and later open to the public.


title: Visconti of Milan

text: From the descendants of Guido Visconti di Somma, came the lateral branch of the Visconti di Modrone (marquesses of Vimodrone since 1694, later Dukes of Vimodrone since 1813). To this family belonged the film directors Luchino Visconti di Modrone and Eriprando Visconti di Modrone. Luchino was one of the most prominent directors of the Italian neorealist cinema.


title: Ugric languages

text: The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a proposed branch of the Uralic language family. The name Ugric is derived from Ugrians, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and Yugra, a region in northwest Russia.


title: Ugric languages

text: Ugric includes three subgroups: Hungarian, Khanty, and Mansi. The last two have traditionally been considered single languages, though their main dialects are sufficiently distinct that they may also be considered small subfamilies of three to four languages each. A common Proto-Ugric language is posited to have been spoken from the end of the 3rd millennium BC until the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in Western Siberia, east of the southern Ural Mountains. Of the three languages, Khanty and Mansi have traditionally been set apart from Hungarian as Ob-Ugric, though features uniting Mansi and Hungarian in particular are known as well.


title: Ugric languages

text: The Ugric language family was first noticed by Pope Pius II in his "Cosmographia" (1458), when he wrote that the Ostyaks (Khanty) and Voguls (Mansi) spoke a language like that of the Hungarians.


title: Ugric languages

text: Two common phonetic features of the Ugric languages are a rearrangement of the Proto-Uralic (PU) system of sibilant consonants and a lenition of velar consonants:


title: Ugric languages

text: It has however been pointed out that these changes are applicable to the Samoyedic languages as well.


title: Ugric languages

text: The consonant cluster *lm is in the Ugric languages mostly reduced to plain (e.g. PU *śilmä 'eye' → Hungarian "szem", Mansi сам , Khanty сем ). A peculiar exception is the numeral '3', in which Hungarian ("három") and Mansi (хурэм ) point to an original cluster *rm, whereas the rest of the Uralic family suggests original *lm (Khanty холәм, Finnish "kolme", Estonian "kolm", Inari Sami "kulma", Erzya колмо, etc.) This has frequently been listed as an argument for considering Hungarian more closely related to Mansi than Khanty. The reverse has also been suggested—Hungarian and Mansi retaining the original form of the numeral, whereas Khanty and all the Finno-Permic languages would have innovated for some reason.


title: Ugric languages

text: Hungarian and the current literary standard of Mansi and Khanty all share a spirantization of Proto-Uralic *k to or before back vowels, e.g. 'fish': PU *kala → Hungarian "hal", Mansi хул , Khanty хул . This is itself not a common Ugric feature — remains in other Mansi and Khanty dialects (e.g. Eastern Khanty , Southern Mansi 'fish'), but it has been argued to result from a proto-Ugric split of *k to front and back allophones ~ , with the latter then independently spirantizing in each three cases.


title: Ugric languages

text: The three Ugric varieties also share the lateralization of Proto-Uralic *δ to *l (as do the Permic languages), but it is possible this postcedes the emergence of retroflex *ɭ from PU *l in Khanty. Another possible counterargument is the similar lateralization of the palatalized counterpart *δ́ → Mansi , likely to have been a simultaneous change with the lateralization of *ð. In Khanty the reflex is , whereas instances of also exist, which may suggest a separate development. An original *ĺ is no longer reconstructed for older stages of Uralic, however, which leaves the origin of Khanty an open question.


title: Ugric languages

text: An innovation clearly limited to the Ugric languages is the development of *ŋ to *ŋk, though there are numerous exceptions in each language to this.


title: Ugric languages

text: The development of the vowel system remains subject to interpretation. All three Ugric branches contrast vowel length; in Hungarian this is late, generally derived by compensatory lengthening after loss of unstressed vowels and *ɣ. The Ob-Ugric languages, however, derive their quantity contrasts mainly from PU quality contrasts: thus for example in Northern Mansi, PU *peljä 'ear' → *päĺ → , but PU *pälä 'half' → *pääl → .


title: Ugric languages

text: Contrasts between PU stem vowels (*a/*ä vs. *i) do not survive as such in modern Ugric languages, but they commonly leave their mark on vowel qualities in the first syllable, suggesting retention of the contrast at least to the Proto-Ugric stage. For example, PU *ńïxli 'arrow' → Hungarian "nyíl", but PU *mïksa 'liver' → Hungarian "máj". Remnants of original stem vowels are also found in the oldest Hungarian records, such as PU *konta 'group, hunting party' → Old Hungarian "hodu" 'army' (→ Modern Hungarian "had").


title: Ugric languages

text: The Ugric languages share considerable amounts of common lexicon not found in the other Uralic languages. This includes both basic vocabulary, e.g. 'fire' (Hungarian "tűz", Mansi таўт /taːwt/, Khanty тут /tut/) as well as more specialized terminology, particularly the word for 'horse' (H "ló, lov-", M луў /luw/, Kh лав /law/) and related items such as 'saddle' (H "nyerëg", M нагэр /naɣər/). This latter fact together with an importance of horse motifs in Ob-Ugric folklore has been used to argue for locating Proto-Ugric in the southernmost parts of Siberia, in close contact with nomadic steppe peoples if not nomadic themselves. Some loanwords from such sources into Ugric are known as well, perhaps most prominently the numeral '7': *θäpt(V) → H "hét", M сат /sat/, Kh тапәт /tapət/ (from an Indo-Iranian source; cf. Sanskrit "saptá", Avestan "hapta", both from Proto-Indo-Iranian "*saptá" < Proto-Indo-European "").


title: Ugric languages

text: "Names" of two of the Ugric peoples are cognate as well: Hungarian "magyar" 'Hungarian' can be equated with "Mansi" (from an original root *mäńć-). A related word in Khanty denotes a specific phratry.


title: Ugric languages

text: A common derivational innovation is seen in the word for 'louse': Proto-Uralic *täji → *tä(j)-ktVmV → H "tetű", M такэм, Kh тевтәм.


title: Ugric languages

text: In Hungarian, the citation form of verbs is the present tense indicative of the 3rd person singular form, which is given here, which does not have any suffixes.


title: François Boucher

text: François Boucher ( , ; ; 29 September 1703 – 30 May 1770) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher, who worked in the Rococo style. Boucher is known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories, and pastoral scenes. He was perhaps the most celebrated painter and decorative artist of the 18th century.


title: François Boucher

text: A native of Paris, Boucher was the son of a lesser known painter Nicolas Boucher, who gave him his first artistic training. At the age of seventeen, a painting by Boucher was admired by the painter François Lemoyne. Lemoyne later appointed Boucher as his apprentice, but after only three months, he went to work for the engraver Jean-François Cars.


title: François Boucher

text: In 1720, he won the elite Grand Prix de Rome for painting, but did not take up the consequential opportunity to study in Italy until five years later, due to financial problems at the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. On his return from studying in Italy he was admitted to the refounded Académie de peinture et de sculpture on 24 November 1731. His "morceau de réception" (reception piece) was his "Rinaldo and Armida" of 1734.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher married Marie-Jeanne Buzeau in 1733. The couple had three children together. Boucher became a faculty member in 1734 and his career accelerated from this point as he was promoted Professor then Rector of the Academy, becoming inspector at the Royal Gobelins Manufactory and finally "Premier Peintre du Roi" (First Painter of the King) in 1765.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher died on 30 May 1770 in his native Paris. His name, along with that of his patron Madame de Pompadour, had become synonymous with the French Rococo style, leading the Goncourt brothers to write: "Boucher is one of those men who represent the taste of a century, who express, personify and embody it."


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher was associated with the gemstone engraver Jacques Guay, whom he taught to draw. He also mentored the Moravian-Austrian painter Martin Ferdinand Quadal as well as the neoclassical painter Jacques-Louis David in 1767. Later, Boucher made a series of drawings of works by Guay which Madame de Pompadour then engraved and distributed as a handsomely bound volume to favored courtiers.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher took inspiration from artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and Antoine Watteau. Boucher's early works celebrate the idyllic and tranquil portrayal of nature and landscape with great elan. However, his art typically forgoes traditional rural innocence to portray scenes with a definitive style of eroticism as his mythological scenes are passionate and intimately amorous rather than traditionally epic. Boucher's paintings of a flirtatious shepherd and shepherdess in a woodland setting, featured in "The Enjoyable Lesson" ("The Flute Players") of 1748 and "An Autumn Pastoral" ("The Grape Eaters") of 1749, were based upon characters in a 1745 play by Boucher's close friend Charles-Simon Favart. Boucher's characters in those paintings later inspired a pair of figurines created by the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory, c. 1757–66. Marquise de Pompadour (mistress of King Louis XV), whose name became synonymous with Rococo art, was a great admirer of his work. Marquise de Pompadour is often referred to as the "godmother of Rococo" and Boucher's portraits were central to her self-presentation and cultivation of her image. For instance, Boucher's 'Sketch for a Portrait of Madame de Pompadour', displayed in the Starhemburg room at Waddesdon Manor, acts as a surviving example of the oil preparation prior to the, now lost, portrait. In one hand she holds her hat, in the other she picks up a pearl bracelet with a portrait of the king – symbolising the relationship upon which her status depends.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher's paintings such as "The Breakfast" (1739), a familial scene, show how he was as a master of the genre scene, where he regularly used his own wife and children as models. These intimate family scenes are contrasting to the licentious style seen in his "Odalisque" portraits.


title: François Boucher

text: The dark-haired version of the "Odalisque" portraits prompted claims by the art critic Denis Diderot that Boucher was "prostituting his own wife", and the "Blonde Odalisque" was a portrait that illustrated the extramarital relationships of the King. Boucher gained lasting notoriety through such private commissions for wealthy collectors and, after Diderot expressed his disapproval, his reputation came under increasing critical attack during the last years of his career.


title: François Boucher

text: Along with his painting, Boucher also designed theater costumes and sets, and the ardent intrigues of the comic operas of Charles Simon Favart closely paralleled his own style of painting. Tapestry design was also a concern. For the Beauvais tapestry workshops he first designed a series of "Fêtes italiennes" ("Italian festivals") in 1736, which proved to be very successful and often rewoven over the years, and then, commissioned in 1737, a suite of the story of Cupid and Psyche. During two decades' involvement with the Beauvais tapestry workshops Boucher produced designs for six series of hangings in all, like .


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher was also called upon for designs for court festivities organized by that section of the King's household called the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi and for the opera and for royal châteaux Versailles, Fontainebleau and Choisy. His designs for all of the aforementioned augmented his earlier reputation, resulting in many engravings from his work and even reproduction of his designs on porcelain and biscuit-ware at the Vincennes and Sèvres factories. The death of Oudry in 1755 put an end to its contribution to Beauvais but his collaboration with the Gobelins lasted until 1765, when he stepped down from his position as an inspector.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher was a very prolific and varied draftsman. His drawings served not only as preparatory studies for his paintings and as designs for printmakers but also as finished works of art for which there was a great demand by collectors. Boucher followed standard studio practices of the time, by first working out the overall composition of his major canvases, and then making chalk studies for individual figures, or groups of figures. He also relied on oil and gouache sketches in the preparation of major commissions.


title: François Boucher

text: Gradually he made more and more sketches as independent works for the market. The (Metropolitan Museum of Art), a free and painterly sketch in gouache, was long considered a preparatory sketch for Madame de Pompadour's private altarpiece "La lumière du monde" (ca. 1750, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon). Recent scholarship suggests, however, that it was made at least 10 years later as an autonomous work. In the last decade of his career the artist began to favor brown chalk, a fabricated medium.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher was also a gifted engraver and etcher. Boucher etched some 180 original copperplates. He made many etchings after Watteau. He thus helped propagate a taste for reproductions of drawings. When his own drawings began to sell, 266 of them were etched in stipple substitutes by Gilles Demarteau. These were printed in red ink so they resembled red chalk drawings which could be framed as little pictures. They could then be hung in the small blank spaces of the elaborately decorated paneling of luxury dwellings.


title: François Boucher

text: Boucher's most original inventions were decorative, and he contributed to the fashionable style of chinoiserie, after having etched 12 'Figures Chinoises' (Chinese figures) by Watteau.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The stationary-action principle – also known as the principle of least action – is a variational principle that, when applied to the "action" of a mechanical system, yields the equations of motion for that system. The principle states that the trajectories (i.e. the solutions of the equations of motion) are "stationary points" of the system's "action functional". The term "least action" is a historical misnomer since the principle has no minimality requirement: the value of the action functional need not be minimal (even locally) on the trajectories.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The principle can be used to derive Newtonian, Lagrangian and Hamiltonian equations of motion, and even general relativity (see Einstein–Hilbert action). In relativity, a different action must be minimized or maximized.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The classical mechanics and electromagnetic expressions are a consequence of quantum mechanics. The stationary action method helped in the development of quantum mechanics. In 1933, the physicist Paul Dirac demonstrated how this principle can be used in quantum calculations by discerning the quantum mechanical underpinning of the principle in the quantum interference of amplitudes. Subsequently Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman independently applied this principle in quantum electrodynamics.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The principle remains central in modern physics and mathematics, being applied in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, particle physics, and string theory and is a focus of modern mathematical investigation in Morse theory. Maupertuis' principle and Hamilton's principle exemplify the principle of stationary action.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The action principle is preceded by earlier ideas in optics. In ancient Greece, Euclid wrote in his "Catoptrica" that, for the path of light reflecting from a mirror, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Hero of Alexandria later showed that this path was the shortest length and least time.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Scholars often credit Pierre Louis Maupertuis for formulating the principle of least action because he wrote about it in 1744 and 1746. However, Leonhard Euler discussed the principle in 1744, and evidence shows that Gottfried Leibniz preceded both by 39 years.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The "action", denoted formula_1, of a physical system is defined as the integral of the Lagrangian "L" between two instants of time and – technically a functional of the generalized coordinates which are functions of time and define the configuration of the system:


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Stationary action is not always a minimum, despite the historical name of least action. It is a minimum principle for sufficiently short, finite segments in the path.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The action and Lagrangian both contain the dynamics of the system for all times. The term "path" simply refers to a curve traced out by the system in terms of the coordinates in the configuration space, i.e. the curve , parameterized by time (see also parametric equation for this concept).


title: Stationary-action principle

text: In the 1600s, Pierre de Fermat postulated that ""light travels between two given points along the path of shortest time"," which is known as the principle of least time or Fermat's principle.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Credit for the formulation of the principle of least action is commonly given to Pierre Louis Maupertuis, who felt that "Nature is thrifty in all its actions", and applied the principle broadly:


title: Stationary-action principle

text: This notion of Maupertuis, although somewhat deterministic today, does capture much of the essence of mechanics.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: In application to physics, Maupertuis suggested that the quantity to be minimized was the product of the duration (time) of movement within a system by the "vis viva",


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Leonhard Euler gave a formulation of the action principle in 1744, in very recognizable terms, in the "Additamentum 2" to his "Methodus Inveniendi Lineas Curvas Maximi Minive Proprietate Gaudentes". Beginning with the second paragraph:


title: Stationary-action principle

text: As Euler states, is the integral of the momentum over distance travelled, which, in modern notation, equals the abbreviated or reduced action


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Thus, Euler made an equivalent and (apparently) independent statement of the variational principle in the same year as Maupertuis, albeit slightly later. Curiously, Euler did not claim any priority, as the following episode shows.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Maupertuis' priority was disputed in 1751 by the mathematician Samuel König, who claimed that it had been invented by Gottfried Leibniz in 1707. Although similar to many of Leibniz's arguments, the principle itself has not been documented in Leibniz's works. König himself showed a "copy" of a 1707 letter from Leibniz to Jacob Hermann with the principle, but the "original" letter has been lost. In contentious proceedings, König was accused of forgery, and even the King of Prussia entered the debate, defending Maupertuis (the head of his Academy), while Voltaire defended König.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Euler, rather than claiming priority, was a staunch defender of Maupertuis, and Euler himself prosecuted König for forgery before the Berlin Academy on 13 April 1752. The claims of forgery were re-examined 150 years later, and archival work by C.I. Gerhardt in 1898 and W. Kabitz in 1913 uncovered other copies of the letter, and three others cited by König, in the Bernoulli archives.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Euler continued to write on the topic; in his "Réflexions sur quelques loix générales de la nature" (1748), he called action "effort". His expression corresponds to modern potential energy, and his statement of least action says that the total potential energy of a system of bodies at rest is minimized, a principle of modern statics.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Much of the calculus of variations was stated by Joseph-Louis Lagrange in 1760 and he proceeded to apply this to problems in dynamics. In "Mécanique analytique" (1788) Lagrange derived the general equations of motion of a mechanical body. William Rowan Hamilton in 1834 and 1835 applied the variational principle to the classical Lagrangian function formula_6 to obtain the Euler–Lagrange equations in their present form.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: In 1842, Carl Gustav Jacobi tackled the problem of whether the variational principle always found minima as opposed to other stationary points (maxima or stationary saddle points); most of his work focused on geodesics on two-dimensional surfaces. The first clear general statements were given by Marston Morse in the 1920s and 1930s, leading to what is now known as Morse theory. For example, Morse showed that the number of conjugate points in a trajectory equalled the number of negative eigenvalues in the second variation of the Lagrangian. A particularly elegant derivation of the Euler-Lagrange equation was formulated by Constantin Caratheodory and published by him in 1935.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: Other extremal principles of classical mechanics have been formulated, such as Gauss's principle of least constraint and its corollary, Hertz's principle of least curvature.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: counterpart has important philosophical implications. The differential equations are statements about quantities localized to a single point in space or single moment of time. For example, Newton's second law


title: Stationary-action principle

text: states that the "instantaneous" force F applied to a mass "m" produces an acceleration a at the same "instant". By contrast, the action principle is not localized to a point; rather, it involves integrals over an interval of time and (for fields) an extended region of space. Moreover, in the usual formulation of classical action principles, the initial and final states of the system are fixed, e.g.,


title: Stationary-action principle

text: In particular, the fixing of the "final" state has been interpreted as giving the action principle a teleological character which has been controversial historically. However, according to W. Yourgrau and S. Mandelstam, "the teleological approach... presupposes that the variational principles themselves have mathematical characteristics which they "de facto" do not possess" In addition, some critics maintain this apparent teleology occurs because of the way in which the question was asked. By specifying some but not all aspects of both the initial and final conditions (the positions but not the velocities) we are making some inferences about the initial conditions from the final conditions, and it is this "backward" inference that can be seen as a teleological explanation. Teleology can also be overcome if we consider the classical description as a limiting case of the quantum formalism of path integration, in which stationary paths are obtained as a result of interference of amplitudes along all possible paths.


title: Stationary-action principle

text: The short story "Story of Your Life" by the speculative fiction writer Ted Chiang contains visual depictions of Fermat's Principle along with a discussion of its teleological dimension. Keith Devlin's "The Math Instinct" contains a chapter, "Elvis the Welsh Corgi Who Can Do Calculus" that discusses the calculus "embedded" in some animals as they solve the "least time" problem in actual situations.


title: Hard Promises

text: Hard Promises is the fourth studio album by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers released on May 5, 1981 on Backstreet Records.


title: Hard Promises

text: Its original working title was "Benmont's Revenge", referring to the band's keyboard player, Benmont Tench. The album features guest vocals from Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac on the duet "Insider". The Heartbreakers also recorded the hit "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" for Nicks' album "Bella Donna" around the time "Hard Promises" was recorded.


title: Hard Promises

text: This was the second Tom Petty album on the Backstreet Records label. The album's release was delayed while Petty and his distributor MCA Records argued about the list price. The album was slated to be the next MCA release with the new list price of $9.98, following Steely Dan's "Gaucho" and the Olivia Newton-John/Electric Light Orchestra "Xanadu" soundtrack. This so-called "superstar pricing" was $1.00 more than the usual list price of $8.98. Petty voiced his objections to the price hike in the press and the issue became a popular cause among music fans. Non-delivery of the album or naming it "Eight Ninety-Eight" were considered, but eventually MCA decided against the price increase.


title: Hard Promises

text: "Hard Promises" was the last full album to feature bassist Ron Blair until "Mojo", although he would make guest appearances on "Long After Dark" and "Southern Accents" and, after rejoining the band in 2002, played on select tracks on "The Last DJ". He was replaced by Howie Epstein, who continued to play until his removal in 2002 due to deteriorating health.


title: Hard Promises

text: During the recording of the album, John Lennon was scheduled to be in the same studio at the same time. Petty was looking forward to meeting him when he came in. The meeting never occurred, as Lennon was murdered before the date of his planned visit to the studio. Petty and the band paid tribute to the slain former Beatle by etching "WE LOVE YOU J.L." in the runout deadwax on early U.S. and Canadian pressings of "Hard Promises".


title: Bon (festival)

text: The festival of Obon lasts for three days; however, its starting date varies within different regions of Japan. When the lunar calendar was changed to the Gregorian calendar at the beginning of the Meiji era, the localities in Japan responded differently, which resulted in three different times of Obon. (Bon in July) is based on the solar calendar and is celebrated around the 15th of July in eastern Japan (Kantō region such as Tokyo, Yokohama and the Tōhoku region), coinciding with . (Bon in August), based on the lunar calendar, is celebrated around the 15th of August and is the most commonly celebrated time. (Old Bon) is celebrated on the 15th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, and so differs each year, which appears between August 8 and September 7. One exception was in 2008 and 2019, when the solar and lunar calendar matched, and so and were celebrated on the same day. is celebrated in areas such as the northern part of the Kantō region, Chūgoku region, Shikoku, and Okinawa Prefecture. These three festival days are not listed as public holidays, but it is customary for people to be given leave.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Japanese Bon Festival originated from the Ghost Festival of China, which is itself a combination of the Buddhist () Festival and the Taoist () Festival.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Buddhist tradition originates from the story of Maha Maudgalyayana (Mokuren), a disciple of the Buddha, who used his supernatural powers to look upon his deceased mother only to discover she had fallen into the Realm of Hungry Ghosts and was suffering. Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this realm. Buddha instructed him to make offerings to the many Buddhist monks who had just completed their summer retreat on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. Mokuren did this and, thus, saw his mother's release. He also began to see the true nature of her past selflessness and the sacrifices she had made for him during her lifetime. The disciple, happy because of his mother's release from suffering and grateful for her many kindnesses, danced with joy. From this dance of joy comes the or "Bon Dance", a time during which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated. See also: Ullambana Sutra.


title: Bon (festival)

text: As Obon occurs in the heat of the summer, participants traditionally wear , a kind of light cotton kimono. Many Obon celebrations include a huge carnival with rides, games, and summer festival foods.


title: Bon (festival)

text: During the festival, families traditionally sent their ancestors' spirits back to their permanent dwelling place under the guidance of fire in a ritual known as , or, in a larger scale, the Burning of the Character Big in the mountain. Fire also marks the commencement () as well as the closing of the festival.


title: Bon (festival)

text: Another significant ritual practiced during the Obon festival in Japan is to craft a cucumber horse and eggplant cow, known as or , that act as a vessel for the ancestors to come back home and return, respectively.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Japanese word is composed of the honorific prefix and the word . The portion is from the longer Japanese names or , in turn from the Chinese terms () or ().


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Chinese terms are often described as deriving from Sanskrit meaning "hanging upside down", in reference to souls suffering in hell. However, the Sanskrit word was sparsely, if at all, attested; in addition, it would be the present participle of verb Sanskrit ("to hang", intransitive), with no inherent "upside-down" meaning.


title: Bon (festival)

text: Moreover, neither the purported meaning of "hanging upside-down" nor the verifiable meaning of "hanging" match the semantics very well, given that the ceremonies are about helping the dead, closer in meaning to the "helping" sense of the Pali verb ("raising, helping"), present participle of ("to raise up, to help"). This suggests that explanations of the dead hanging upside-down in hell are more likely to be folk etymologies based on a mistaken connection to the Sanskrit verb, rather than a more direct semantic link to the Pali. Alternatively, Takakusu Junjiro propounded that the origin was in fact Pali , a colloquial corruption of the Pali ("raising up; saving; helping"), and that the etymology was mistakenly attributed to Sanskrit.


title: Bon (festival)

text: , meaning simply "Bon dance", is a style of dancing performed during Obon. It is a folk entertainment, which has a history of nearly 600 years. Originally a folk dance to welcome the spirits of the dead, the style of celebration varies in many aspects from region to region. Each region has a local dance, as well as different music. The music can be songs specifically pertinent to the spiritual message of Obon, or local folk songs. Consequently, the Bon dance appears different from region to region. Hokkaidō is known for the folk-song . The song takes its namesake from the capital of Japan. in Gujō in Gifu Prefecture is famous for all night dancing. is a folk song from Shiga Prefecture. Residents of the Kansai area will recognize the famous . Tokushima in Shikoku is very famous for its , and in the far south, one can hear the of Kagoshima.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The way in which the dance is performed is also different in each region, though the typical Bon dance involves people lining up in a circle around a high wooden scaffold made especially for the festival called a . The is usually also the bandstand for the musicians and singers of the Obon music. Some dances proceed clockwise, and some dances proceed counter-clockwise around the . Some dances reverse during the dance, though most do not. At times, people face the and move towards and away from it. Still some dances, such as the Kagoshima dance, and the Tokushima , simply proceed in a straight line through the streets of the town.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The dance of a region can depict the area's history and specialization. For example, the movements of the dance of the (the "coal mining song") of old Miike Mine in Kyushu show the movements of miners, i.e. digging, cart pushing, lantern hanging, etc.; the above-mentioned mimics the work of fishermen such as hauling in the nets. All dancers perform the same dance sequence in unison.


title: Bon (festival)

text: There are other ways in which a regional Bon dance can vary. Some dances involve the use of different kinds of fans, others involve the use of small towels called which may have colourful designs. Some require the use of small wooden clappers, or , during the dance.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The music that is played during the Bon dance is not limited to Obon music and ; some modern hits and kids' tunes written to the beat of the are also used to dance to during Obon season.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Bon dance tradition is said to have started in the later years of the Muromachi period as a public entertainment. In the course of time, the original religious meaning has faded, and the dance has become associated with summer.


title: Bon (festival)

text: (literally "fortnight of the ancestors") is a 16–lunar day period in Hindu calendar when Hindus pay homage to their ancestors (), especially through food offerings. is considered by Hindus to be inauspicious, given the death rite known as or performed during the ceremony.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The Korean version of the Bon celebration is known as . Participants present offerings at Buddhist shrines and temples, and masked dances are performed. It is as much an agricultural festival as a religious one.


title: Bon (festival)

text: In the Philippines, Filipinos of Japanese descent, with support from the Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai Inc., Philippine Nikkei Jin Kai International School, Mindanao Kokusai Daigaku, and various other Japanese Filipino-based organizations, hold an Obon festival every year along with other Japanese-based Filipino festivals, to celebrate the ancestors of Filipinos of Japanese descent, and to celebrate the friendship between Japan and the Philippines.


title: Bon (festival)

text: In Argentina, the Bon Festival is celebrated by Japanese communities during the summer of the southern hemisphere. The biggest festival is held in Colonia Urquiza, in La Plata. It takes place on the sports ground of the La Plata Japanese School. The festival also includes shows and typical dances.


title: Bon (festival)

text: Bon Festival is celebrated every year in many Japanese communities all over Brazil, as Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside Japan. São Paulo is the main city of the Japanese community in Brazil, and also features the major festival in Brazil, with street dancing and dance. It also features and contests. The festival also features a variety of Japanese food and drink, art and dance. Bon is also celebrated in communities of Japanese immigrants and their descendants and friends throughout South America: Bon festivals can be found in the states of Santa Catarina, São Paulo, Goiás, Amazonas, Pará (Tomé-Açu), Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Pernambuco, Bahia, Paraná, Rio Grande do Sul and Brasília.


title: Bon (festival)

text: In Malaysia, Bon Festival is also celebrated every year in Esplanade, Penang, Shah Alam Stadium in Shah Alam, Selangor, and also Universiti Malaysia Sabah at Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. This celebration, which is a major attraction for the state of Selangor, is the brainchild of the Japanese Expatriate & Immigrant's Society in Malaysia. In comparison to the celebrations in Japan, the festival is celebrated on a much smaller scale in Penang, Selangor and Sabah, and is less associated with Buddhism and more with Japanese culture. Held mainly to expose locals to a part of Japanese culture, the festival provides the experience of a variety of Japanese food and drinks, art and dance, with the vast number of Japanese companies in Malaysia taking part to promote their products.


title: Bon (festival)

text: Bon festivals are also celebrated in North America, particularly by Japanese-Americans or Japanese-Canadians affiliated with Buddhist temples and organizations. Buddhist Churches of America (BCA) temples in the U.S. typically celebrate Bon Festival with both religious Obon observances and traditional dancing around a . Many temples also concurrently hold a cultural and food bazaar providing a variety of cuisine and art, also to display features of Japanese culture and Japanese-American history. Performances of taiko by both amateur and professional groups have recently become a popular feature of Bon Odori festivals. Bon festivals are usually scheduled anytime between July and September.


title: Bon (festival)

text: The "Bon season" is an important part of the present-day culture and life of Hawaii. It was brought there by the plantation workers from Japan, and now the Bon dance events are held among the five major islands (Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Maui and Hawaii) on weekend evenings from June to August. They are held usually at Buddhist missions, but sometimes at Shintoist missions or at shopping centres. At some Buddhist missions, the dance is preceded by a simple ritual where the families of the deceased in the past year burn incense for remembrance, but otherwise the event is non-religious. The songs played differ among the regions - one or two hour Bon dance in the Western part of the Big Island (in and around Kailua Kona), for example, typically starts with , continues with songs such as (using wooden clappers), (using given at the donation desk), and from Okinawa Prefecture (reflecting the fact that many Okinawan descendants live in Hawaii), for children, zumba songs for the young, "Beautiful Sunday", etc., and ends with , celebrating abundant harvest. The participants, Japanese descendants and the people of all races, dance in a big circle around the , the central tower set up for the dance, from which recorded songs are broadcast and, most of the time, the group accompany the songs playing drums. In larger cities, Bon dance lessons are given by volunteers before the actual events.


title: Bon (festival)

text: In St. Louis, Missouri, the Botanical Garden has hosted a Bon festival over Labor Day weekend every year since 1977. Known as the Japanese festival, it is a collaboration with several Japanese-American organizations, and hosts thousands of people over a three-day period. The festival provides authentic Japanese music, art, dance, food, and entertainment including dancing around a , sumo wrestling, drums, bonsai demonstrations, music played on traditional instruments, several bazaars, food courts with authentic Japanese foods, tea ceremonies, candlelit lanterns released on the lake in the gardens Japanese garden and much more.


title: Three poisons

text: The three poisons (Sanskrit: "triviṣa"; Tibetan: "dug gsum") or the three unwholesome roots (Sanskrit: "akuśala-mūla"; Pāli: "akusala-mūla"), in Buddhism, refer to the three root kleshas: "Moha" (delusion, confusion), "Raga" (greed, sensual attachment), and "Dvesha" (aversion, hate). These three poisons are considered to be three afflictions or character flaws innate in a being, the root of "Taṇhā" (craving), and thus in part the cause of "Dukkha" (suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness) and rebirths.


title: Three poisons

text: The three poisons are symbolically drawn at the center of Buddhist "Bhavachakra" artwork, with rooster, snake, and pig, representing greed, ill will, and delusion respectively.


title: Three poisons

text: In the Buddhist teachings, the three poisons (of ignorance, attachment, and aversion) are the primary causes that keep sentient beings trapped in samsara. These three poisons are said to be the root of all of the other kleshas.


title: Three poisons

text: The three poisons are represented in the hub of the wheel of life as a pig, a bird, and a snake (representing ignorance, attachment, and aversion, respectively). As shown in the wheel of life (Sanskrit: "bhavacakra"), the three poisons lead to the creation of karma, which leads to rebirth in the six realms of samsara.


title: Three poisons

text: The three kleshas of ignorance, attachment and aversion are referred to as the "three poisons" (Skt. "triviṣa"; Tibetan: "dug gsum") in the Mahayana tradition and as the "three unwholesome roots" (Pāli, "akusala-mūla"; Skt. "akuśala-mūla" ) in the Theravada tradition.


title: Three poisons

text: In the Mahayana tradition "moha" is identified as a subcategory of "avidya". Whereas "avidya" is defined as a fundamental ignorance, "moha" is defined as delusion, confusion and incorrect beliefs. In the Theravada tradition, "moha" and "avidya" are equivalent terms, but they are used in different contexts; "moha" is used when referring to mental factors, and "avidya" is used when referring to the twelve links.


title: Otsu's method

text: In computer vision and image processing, Otsu's method, named after , is used to perform automatic image thresholding. In the simplest form, the algorithm returns a single intensity threshold that separate pixels into two classes, foreground and background. This threshold is determined by minimizing intra-class intensity variance, or equivalently, by maximizing inter-class variance. Otsu's method is a one-dimensional discrete analog of Fisher's Discriminant Analysis, is related to Jenks optimization method, and is equivalent to a globally optimal k-means performed on the intensity histogram. The extension to multi-level thresholding was described in the original paper, and computationally efficient implementations have since been proposed.


title: Otsu's method

text: The algorithm exhaustively searches for the threshold that minimizes the intra-class variance, defined as a weighted sum of variances of the two classes:


title: Otsu's method

text: Weights formula_2 and formula_3 are the probabilities of the two classes separated by a threshold formula_4 ,and formula_5 and formula_6 are variances of these two classes.


title: Otsu's method

text: which is expressed in terms of class probabilities formula_11 and class means formula_12, where the class means formula_13, formula_14 and formula_15 are:


title: Otsu's method

text: codice_1 is a 256-element histogram of a grayscale image different gray-levels (typical for 8-bit images).


title: Otsu's method

text: Matlab has built-in functions codice_3 and codice_4 in the Image Processing Toolbox which are implemented with Otsu's method and Multi Otsu's method, respectively.


title: Otsu's method

text: Python libraries dedicated to image processing such as OpenCV and Scikit-image propose built-in implementations of the algorithm.


title: Otsu's method

text: Otsu's method performs well when the histogram has a bimodal distribution with a deep and sharp valley between the two peaks.


title: Otsu's method

text: Like all other global thresholding methods, Otsu's method performs badly in case of heavy noise, small objects size, inhomogeneous lighting and larger intra-class than inter-class variance. In those cases, local adaptations of the Otsu method have been developed.


title: Otsu's method

text: Moreover, the mathematical grounding of Otsu's method models the histogram of the image as a mixture of two Normal distributions with equal variance and equal size. Otsu's thresholding may however yield satisfying results even when these assumptions are not met, in the same way statistical tests (to which Otsu's method is heavily connected) can perform correctly even when the working assumptions are not fully satisfied. However, several variations of Otsu's methods have been proposed to account for more severe deviations from these assumptions, such as the Kittler-Illingworth method.


title: Otsu's method

text: A popular local adaptation is the two-dimensional Otsu's method, which performs better for the object segmentation task in noisy images. Here, the intensity value of a given pixel is compared with the average intensity of its immediate neighborhood to improve segmentation results.


title: Otsu's method

text: At each pixel, the average gray-level value of the neighborhood is calculated. Let the gray level of the given pixel be divided into formula_8 discrete values and the average gray level is also divided into the same formula_8 values. Then a pair is formed: the pixel gray level and the average of the neighborhood formula_27. Each pair belongs to one of the formula_28 possible 2-dimensional bins. The total number of occurrences (frequency), formula_29, of a pair formula_27, divided by the total number of pixels in the image formula_31, defines the joint probability mass function in a 2-dimensional histogram:


title: Otsu's method

text: Similar to one-dimensional Otsu's method, the optimal threshold formula_41 is obtained by maximizing formula_42.


title: Otsu's method

text: The formula_43 and formula_4 is obtained iteratively which is similar with one-dimensional Otsu's method. The values of formula_43 and formula_4 are changed till we obtain the maximum of formula_42, that is


title: Otsu's method

text: Notice that for evaluating formula_42, we can use a fast recursive dynamic programming algorithm to improve time performance. However, even with the dynamic programming approach, 2d Otsu's method still has large time complexity. Therefore, much research has been done to reduce the computation cost.


title: Otsu's method

text: and sum over formula_51, then the runtime complexity is the maximum of (O(N_pixels), O(N_bins*N_bins)).


title: Otsu's method

text: codice_5 is a formula_52 2D-histogram of grayscale value and neighborhood average grayscale value pair.


title: Otsu's method

text: codice_6 is the number of pairs in the given image.it is determined by the number of the bins of 2D-histogram at each direction.