title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Journey times are approximately 30 to 35 minutes from the city centre to the airport. The first morning services commence at the Gyle Centre and the last evening services terminate at Edinburgh Airport from York Place and Edinburgh Gateway on city-bound services after 22:48 from the Airport. During the Festival, trams run later on Friday and Saturday nights. Service frequencies are usually extended to every 3 minutes before and after events at Murrayfield Stadium.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: A £40 million contract to build 27 Urbos 3 trams, sufficient for phase 1a and (unbuilt) 1b lines, was awarded to CAF. When the line was cut back to York Place, only 17 trams would be needed. An unsuccessful attempt was made in 2011 to lease ten trams to Transport for London for use on Tramlink.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: The trams are bi-directional, long and with low-floor access to meet UK Rail Vehicle Access Regulations for disabled people.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: In April 2010, the first tram was delivered and displayed at the Princes Street stop at the bottom of The Mound, before being moved to open storage in Broxburn. The 27th tram was delivered in December 2012.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Ticketing and fares are integrated with Lothian Buses. A proof of payment system applies. The single fare is the same as on Lothian Buses for most rides, and day tickets and Ridacards are valid on trams and buses. However the tram fare from the centre to the airport is more expensive than the bus, costing £6.50 one-way. Weather permitting, some airport passengers make the relatively short walk of to/from Ingliston Park & Ride where the normal fare of £1.80 applies.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: The "Ridacard" is a smartcard season ticket issued by Transport for Edinburgh; it is valid on both Edinburgh Trams and Lothian Buses (available for 1 week, 4 weeks or annually). On 1 September 2014, a rechargeable pre-paid smartcard for single journeys on both buses and trams, called "Citysmart", was introduced.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Free travel is available to holders of City of Edinburgh Council-issued Scottish National Entitlement Cards which are eligible for concessionary travel, and for a companion travelling with the cardholder of National Entitlement Cards with a companion entitlement. Passengers with National Entitlement Cards eligible for concessionary travel but issued by other local authorities are not offered any fare concession, with the exception of blind or visually impaired cardholders.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: An "onboard fare" of £10 is charged to passengers who have not pre-purchased a ticket or validated either a Ridacard, a National Entitlement Card or an m-ticket before boarding.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: At the request of Lothian Buses, installation of 30 ticket machines at key bus stops began in 2007. Passengers had to purchase tickets before boarding the bus, reducing dwell times, but the machines were not popular with users and were scrapped in 2011. Consideration was given to installing similar on-street ticket machines, and new, advanced machines (capable of reading smartcards and accepting credit/debit cards) were installed in early 2014 at each tram stop. The new ticket machines are the Galexio-Plus type supplied by Flowbird Transport Ltd. Ticket machines do not accept banknotes or give change. The minimum spend for a card transaction was originally £3 which was more than the cost for a single ticket. The minimum spend was scrapped in September 2019 following complaints from customers and negative press comments.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: In May and June 2015 cyclists were allowed to board the trams with their bikes, during a trial period which was supported by cycle campaign groups Spokes and Pedal on Parliament. Following this, Edinburgh trams became the first light rail network in the UK to permit the carriage of bikes on a permanent basis, with up to two bicycles being allowed per tram outwith peak hours (7.30 am to 9.30 am, and 4 pm to 6.30 pm) and excluding the period of the Edinburgh Festival and Fringe (usually weeks during August) and other large events.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Edinburgh Trams Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary company of Transport for Edinburgh Limited. By virtue of its controlling interest in the parent's equity capital, the City of Edinburgh Council is the ultimate controlling party.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: The key trends for Edinburgh Trams Limited since it commenced operations in May 2014 are (years ending 31 December):


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Edinburgh Trams made a pre-tax profit of £252,000 for 2016, against a predicted loss of £170,000, which meant that profitability had been achieved two years ahead of schedule. This was based on excluding maintenance and infrastructure costs. Including these, as has been done since 2018 when these costs were shifted to Edinburgh Trams, the small operating profit (£3m) has turned to a large operating loss (e.g. − £9.4 million in 2018). It has not achieved an operating profit since full costing.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Fifty-two ticket inspectors have been recruited to prevent fare dodging. Edinburgh Council is aiming for a 3% fare evasion rate, lower than any other tramway in Britain. Thirty-two drivers were employed, after passing psychological tests designed to eliminate risk-takers.


title: Edinburgh Trams

text: Frequent accidents involving cyclists and the tramway have been reported since the opening of the system in 2014. These are typically caused by bicycle wheels getting stuck in the rails or by bikes skidding on the rails. A study published in 2018 found that, up to April 2016, 191 cyclists in Edinburgh had suffered tramway-related accidents serious enough to require hospital treatment. In September 2022, using Freedom of Information data, the BBC reported that there had been 422 accidents involving cyclists on the tram tracks, as a result of which 196 cyclists had made successful claims against Edinburgh City Council, resulting in £1,262,141 being paid in damages.


title: Isospin

text: In nuclear physics and particle physics, isospin (I) is a quantum number related to the up- and down quark content of the particle. More specifically, isospin symmetry is a subset of the flavour symmetry seen more broadly in the interactions of baryons and mesons.


title: Isospin

text: The name of the concept contains the term "spin" because its quantum mechanical description is mathematically similar to that of angular momentum (in particular, in the way it couples; for example, a proton–neutron pair can be coupled either in a state of total isospin 1 or in one of 0). But unlike angular momentum, it is a dimensionless quantity and is not actually any type of spin.


title: Isospin

text: Etymologically, the term was derived from isotopic spin, a confusing term to which nuclear physicists prefer isobaric spin, which is more precise in meaning. Before the concept of quarks was introduced, particles that are affected equally by the strong force but had different charges (e.g. protons and neutrons) were considered different states of the same particle, but having isospin values related to the number of charge states. A close examination of isospin symmetry ultimately led directly to the discovery and understanding of quarks and to the development of Yang–Mills theory. Isospin symmetry remains an important concept in particle physics.


title: Isospin

text: In the modern formulation, isospin () is defined as a vector quantity in which up and down quarks have a value of  = 1/2, with the 3rd-component () being +1/2 for up quarks, and −1/2 for down quarks, while all other quarks have  = 0. Therefore, for hadrons in general, where and are the numbers of up and down quarks respectively,


title: Isospin

text: In any combination of quarks, the 3rd component of the isospin vector () could either be aligned between a pair of quarks, or face the opposite direction, giving different possible values for total isospin for any combination of quark flavours. Hadrons with the same quark content but different total isospin can be distinguished experimentally, verifying that flavour is actually a vector quantity, not a scalar (up vs down simply being a projection in the quantum mechanical  axis of flavour space).


title: Isospin

text: For example, a strange quark can be combined with an up and a down quark to form a baryon, but there are two different ways the isospin values can combine either adding (due to being flavour-aligned) or cancelling out (due to being in opposite flavour directions). The isospin-1 state (the ) and the isospin-0 state (the ) have different experimentally detected masses and half-lives.


title: Isospin

text: Isospin is regarded as a symmetry of the strong interaction under the action of the Lie group SU(2), the two states being the up flavour and down flavour. In quantum mechanics, when a Hamiltonian has a symmetry, that symmetry manifests itself through a set of states that have the same energy (the states are described as being "degenerate"). In simple terms, the energy operator for the strong interaction gives the same result when an up quark and an otherwise identical down quark are swapped around.


title: Isospin

text: Like the case for regular spin, the isospin operator I is vector-valued: it has three components I, I, I, which are coordinates in the same 3-dimensional vector space where the 3 representation acts. Note that this vector space has nothing to do with the physical space, except similar mathematical formalism. Isospin is described by two quantum numbers: the total isospin, and an eigenvalue of the I projection for which flavor states are eigenstates, . In other words, each state specifies certain flavor state of a multiplet. The third coordinate (), to which the "3" subscript refers, is chosen due to notational conventions that relate bases in 2 and 3 representation spaces. Namely, for the spin-1/2 case, components of I are equal to Pauli matrices divided by 2, and so I =  , where


title: Isospin

text: While the forms of these matrices are isomorphic to those of spin, "these" Pauli matrices only act within the Hilbert space of isospin, not that of spin, and therefore is common to denote them with τ rather than σ to avoid confusion.


title: Isospin

text: Although isospin symmetry is actually very slightly broken, SU(3) symmetry is more badly broken, due to the much higher mass of the strange quark compared to the up and down. The discovery of charm, bottomness and topness could lead to further expansions up to SU(6) flavour symmetry, which would hold if all six quarks were identical. However, the very much larger masses of the charm, bottom, and top quarks means that SU(6) flavour symmetry is very badly broken in nature (at least at low energies), and assuming this symmetry leads to qualitatively and quantitatively incorrect predictions. In modern applications, such as lattice QCD, isospin symmetry is often treated as exact for the three light quarks (uds), while the three heavy quarks (cbt) must be treated separately.


title: Isospin

text: Isospin was introduced as a concept in 1932, well before the 1960s development of the quark model. The man who introduced it, Werner Heisenberg, did so to explain symmetries of the then newly discovered neutron (symbol n):


title: Isospin

text: This behavior is not unlike the electron, where there are two possible states based on their spin. Other properties of the particle are conserved in this case. Heisenberg introduced the concept of another conserved quantity that would cause the proton to turn into a neutron and vice versa. In 1937, Eugene Wigner introduced the term "isospin" to indicate how the new quantity is similar to spin in behavior, but otherwise unrelated.


title: Isospin

text: Protons and neutrons were then grouped together as nucleons because they both have nearly the same mass and interact in nearly the same way, if the (much weaker) electromagnetic interaction is neglected. In particle physics, the near mass-degeneracy of the neutron and proton points to an approximate symmetry of the Hamiltonian describing the strong interactions. It was thus convenient to treat them as being different states of the same particle.


title: Isospin

text: Heisenberg's particular contribution was to note that the mathematical formulation of this symmetry was in certain respects similar to the mathematical formulation of spin, whence the name "isospin" derives. The neutron and the proton are assigned to the doublet (the spin-1/2, 2, or fundamental representation) of SU(2). The pions are assigned to the triplet (the spin-1, 3, or adjoint representation) of SU(2). Though there is a difference from the theory of spin: the group action does not preserve flavor (specifically, the group action is an exchange of flavour).


title: Isospin

text: Similar to a spin-1/2 particle, which has two states, protons and neutrons were said to be of isospin 1/2. The proton and neutron were then associated with different isospin projections "I" = +1/2 and −1/2 respectively.


title: Isospin

text: Although the neutron does in fact have a slightly higher mass due to isospin breaking (this is now understood to be due to the difference in the masses of the up and down quarks and the effects of the electromagnetic interaction), the appearance of an approximate symmetry is useful even if it does not exactly hold; the small symmetry breakings can be described by a perturbation theory, which gives rise to slight differences between the near-degenerate states.


title: Isospin

text: When constructing a physical theory of nuclear forces, one could simply assume that it does not depend on isospin, although the total isospin should be conserved.


title: Isospin

text: These considerations would also prove useful in the analysis of meson-nucleon interactions after the discovery of the pions in 1947. The three pions (, , ) could be assigned to an isospin triplet with and . By assuming that isospin was conserved by nuclear interactions, the new mesons were more easily accommodated by nuclear theory.


title: Isospin

text: As further particles were discovered, they were assigned into isospin multiplets according to the number of different charge states seen: 2 doublets of K mesons (, ), (, ), a triplet of Sigma baryons (, , ), a singlet Lambda baryon (), a quartet Delta baryons (, , , ), and so on.


title: Isospin

text: The power of isospin symmetry and related methods comes from the observation that families of particles with similar masses tend to correspond to the invariant subspaces associated with the irreducible representations of the Lie algebra SU(2). In this context, an invariant subspace is spanned by basis vectors which correspond to particles in a family. Under the action of the Lie algebra SU(2), which generates rotations in isospin space, elements corresponding to definite particle states or superpositions of states can be rotated into each other, but can never leave the space (since the subspace is in fact invariant). This is reflective of the symmetry present. The fact that unitary matrices will commute with the Hamiltonian means that the physical quantities calculated do not change even under unitary transformation. In the case of isospin, this machinery is used to reflect the fact that the mathematics of the strong force behaves the same if a proton and neutron are swapped around (in the modern formulation, the up and down quark).


title: Isospin

text: For example, the particles known as the Delta baryons baryons of spin 3/2 were grouped together because they all have nearly the same mass (approximately ) and interact in nearly the same way.


title: Isospin

text: They could be treated as the same particle, with the difference in charge being due to the particle being in different states. Isospin was introduced in order to be the variable that defined this difference of state. In an analogue to spin, an isospin projection (denoted ) is associated to each charged state; since there were four Deltas, four projections were needed. Like spin, isospin projections were made to vary in increments of 1. Hence, in order to have four increments of 1, an isospin value of 3/2 is required (giving the projections ). Thus, all the Deltas were said to have isospin , and each individual charge had different (e.g. the was associated with ).


title: Isospin

text: In the isospin picture, the four Deltas and the two nucleons were thought to simply be the different states of two particles. The Delta baryons are now understood to be made of a mix of three up and down quarks uuu (), uud (), udd (), and ddd (); the difference in charge being difference in the charges of up and down quarks (+ "e" and − "e" respectively); yet, they can also be thought of as the excited states of the nucleons.


title: Isospin

text: Attempts have been made to promote isospin from a global to a local symmetry. In 1954, Chen Ning Yang and Robert Mills suggested that the notion of protons and neutrons, which are continuously rotated into each other by isospin, should be allowed to vary from point to point. To describe this, the proton and neutron direction in isospin space must be defined at every point, giving local basis for isospin. A gauge connection would then describe how to transform isospin along a path between two points.


title: Isospin

text: This Yang–Mills theory describes interacting vector bosons, like the photon of electromagnetism. Unlike the photon, the SU(2) gauge theory would contain self-interacting gauge bosons. The condition of gauge invariance suggests that they have zero mass, just as in electromagnetism.


title: Isospin

text: Ignoring the massless problem, as Yang and Mills did, the theory makes a firm prediction: the vector particle should couple to all particles of a given isospin "universally". The coupling to the nucleon would be the same as the coupling to the kaons. The coupling to the pions would be the same as the self-coupling of the vector bosons to themselves.


title: Isospin

text: When Yang and Mills proposed the theory, there was no candidate vector boson. J. J. Sakurai in 1960 predicted that there should be a massive vector boson which is coupled to isospin, and predicted that it would show universal couplings. The rho mesons were discovered a short time later, and were quickly identified as Sakurai's vector bosons. The couplings of the rho to the nucleons and to each other were verified to be universal, as best as experiment could measure. The fact that the diagonal isospin current contains part of the electromagnetic current led to the prediction of rho-photon mixing and the concept of vector meson dominance, ideas which led to successful theoretical pictures of GeV-scale photon-nucleus scattering.


title: Isospin

text: The discovery and subsequent analysis of additional particles, both mesons and baryons, made it clear that the concept of isospin symmetry could be broadened to an even larger symmetry group, now called flavor symmetry. Once the kaons and their property of strangeness became better understood, it started to become clear that these, too, seemed to be a part of an enlarged symmetry that contained isospin as a subgroup. The larger symmetry was named the Eightfold Way by Murray Gell-Mann, and was promptly recognized to correspond to the adjoint representation of SU(3). To better understand the origin of this symmetry, Gell-Mann proposed the existence of up, down and strange quarks which would belong to the fundamental representation of the SU(3) flavor symmetry.


title: Isospin

text: In the quark model, the isospin projection ("I") followed from the up and down quark content of particles; uud for the proton and udd for the neutron. Technically, the nucleon doublet states are seen to be linear combinations of products of 3-particle isospin doublet states and spin doublet states. That is, the (spin-up) proton wave function, in terms of quark-flavour eigenstates, is described by


title: Isospin

text: Here, formula_8 is the up quark flavour eigenstate, and formula_9 is the down quark flavour eigenstate, while formula_10 and formula_11 are the eigenstates of formula_12. Although these superpositions are the technically correct way of denoting a proton and neutron in terms of quark flavour and spin eigenstates, for brevity, they are often simply referred to as "uud" and "udd". The derivation above assumes exact isospin symmetry and is modified by SU(2)-breaking terms.


title: Isospin

text: Although the discovery of the quarks led to reinterpretation of mesons as a vector bound state of a quark and an antiquark, it is sometimes still useful to think of them as being the gauge bosons of a hidden local symmetry.


title: Isospin

text: Isospin is similar to, but should not be confused with weak isospin. Briefly, weak isospin is the gauge symmetry of the weak interaction which connects quark and lepton doublets of left-handed particles in all generations; for example, up and down quarks, top and bottom quarks, electrons and electron neutrinos. By contrast (strong) isospin connects only up and down quarks, acts on both chiralities (left and right) and is a global (not a gauge) symmetry.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: Cocoon: The Return is a 1988 American science fiction comedy-drama film directed by Daniel Petrie and written by Stephen McPherson. The film serves as the sequel to the 1985 film "Cocoon". All of the starring actors from the first film reprised their roles in this film, although Brian Dennehy only appears in one scene at the end of the film. Unlike its predecessor, the film was neither a commercial nor a critical success.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: Five years after they left Earth following a failed rescue mission, the Antareans return to rescue the cocoons that were left behind. Before they can be retrieved, one of the cocoons is discovered by a science research team and taken to a secure laboratory for testing. The aliens and their human allies must find a way to retrieve the cocoon in time for their rendezvous with the rescue ship, while the humans travelling with them must decide whether to return to Antarea or stay on Earth and become mortal again.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: Joe learns that his leukemia has returned, but he knows it will be cured again as soon as he and Alma leave Earth. When Alma is hit by a car while saving a child, Joe gives up the last of his lifeforce, saving her life but sacrificing his. Before dying, he tells Alma to accept a job offer at a preschool and that he loves her. Art and Bess learn that Bess is pregnant, and decide to raise the child on Antarea so they will live long enough to see him grow up. Ben and Mary reconnect with their family and friends, including Bernie who is shown to have found love with Ruby, alleviating his suicidal depression over Rose's death. And although a lovelorn Jack once again attempts to woo Kitty, she instead grants him a vision of his future, showing him children and a wife with a small heart-shaped birthmark on her neck.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: The next night, before Ben, Mary, Art and Bess leave to meet the Antareans, Alma tells them she is staying on Earth to work at the preschool. Art, Kitty, Ben, and his grandson David (Barret Oliver) then rescue the Antarean from the Oceanographic Institute. Sara, one of the scientists working at the institute, becomes aware of the company's plans to hand the alien over to the military. Unhappy about this, when she discovers the rescuers, she allows them to escape.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: After the four get the Antarean on Jack's boat out at sea, Ben makes it known to everyone that he and Mary were going to stay on Earth as well, since family was more important than living forever and that they should not outlive their children. When the space ship arrives, they are met by Walter before the Antareans, Art, Bess, and the cocoons left behind from the previous trip are brought aboard the space ship which departs for their homeworld.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: Back at port after he has said his goodbyes to Ben, Mary, and David, Jack is approached by Sara asking if he knows of a place where she could get some gas. They walk and talk for a bit, where Sara tells him she just quit her job. He eventually notices the small heart-shaped birthmark on her neck.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: The score to "Cocoon: The Return" was composed and conducted by James Horner who had scored "Cocoon". The score mostly consisted of recycled themes and material from the first film. The soundtrack was released on 23 November 1988 through Varèse Sarabande and features nine tracks of score at a running time of just over fifty-three minutes.


title: Cocoon: The Return

text: The film had a generally negative reception. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film two and a half out of four stars saying "Yes, the performances are wonderful, and, yes, it's great to see these characters back again. But that's about it. For someone who has seen "Cocoon", the sequel gives you the opportunity to see everybody saying goodbye for the second time." On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, the film has an approval rating of 31% based on 13 reviews; the average rating is 4.50/10. On Metacritic, the film has a score of 45 out of 100 based on 13 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Glossary of physics

text: This glossary of physics is a list of definitions of terms and concepts relevant to physics, its sub-disciplines, and related fields, including mechanics, materials science, nuclear physics, particle physics, and thermodynamics. For more inclusive glossaries concerning related fields of science and technology, see Glossary of chemistry terms, Glossary of astronomy, Glossary of areas of mathematics, and Glossary of engineering.


title: Glycogen storage disease

text: A glycogen storage disease (GSD, also glycogenosis and dextrinosis) is a metabolic disorder caused by an enzyme deficiency affecting glycogen synthesis, glycogen breakdown, or glucose breakdown, typically in muscles and/or liver cells.


title: Glycogen storage disease

text: GSD has two classes of cause: genetic and acquired. Genetic GSD is caused by any inborn error of metabolism (genetically defective enzymes) involved in these processes. In livestock, acquired GSD is caused by intoxication with the alkaloid castanospermine.


title: Glycogen storage disease

text: Treatment is dependent on the type of glycogen storage disease. GSD I is typically treated with frequent small meals of carbohydrates and cornstarch, called modified cornstarch therapy, to prevent low blood sugar, while other treatments may include allopurinol and human granulocyte colony stimulating factor.


title: Glycogen storage disease

text: Overall, according to a study in British Columbia, approximately 2.3 children per 100,000 births (1 in 43,000) have some form of glycogen storage disease. In the United States, they are estimated to occur in 1 per 20,000–25,000 births. Dutch incidence rate is estimated to be 1 per 40,000 births.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Hittite mythology and Hittite religion were the religious beliefs and practices of the Hittites, who created an empire centered in what is now Turkey from .


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Most of the narratives embodying Hittite mythology are lost, and the elements that would give a balanced view of Hittite religion are lacking among the tablets recovered at the Hittite capital Hattusa and other Hittite sites. Thus, "there are no canonical scriptures, no theological disquisitions or discourses, no aids to private devotion". Some religious documents formed part of the corpus with which young scribes were trained, and have survived, most of them dating from the last several decades before the final burning of the sites. The scribes in the royal administration, some of whose archives survive, were a bureaucracy, organizing and maintaining royal responsibilities in areas that would be considered part of religion today: temple organization, cultic administration, reports of diviners, make up the main body of surviving texts.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The understanding of Hittite mythology depends on readings of surviving stone carvings, deciphering of the iconology represented in seal stones, interpreting ground plans of temples: additionally, there are a few images of deities, for the Hittites often worshipped their gods through Huwasi stones, which represented deities and were treated as sacred objects. Gods were often depicted standing on the backs of their respective beasts, or may have been identifiable in their animal form.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Though drawing on ancient Mesopotamian religion, the religion of the Hittites and Luwians retains noticeable elements of reconstructed Proto-Indo-European mythology. For example, Tarhunt, the god of thunder and his conflict with the serpent Illuyanka resembles the conflict between Indra and the cosmic serpent Vritra in Vedic mythology, or Thor and the serpent Jörmungandr in Norse mythology. This myth also bears a resemblance to the daily struggle between Re and the serpent Apophis in Egyptian mythology.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Hittite mythology was also influenced more directly by the Hurrians, a neighboring civilization close to Anatolia, where the Hittites were located. Hurrian mythology was so closely related that Oxford University Press published a guide to mythology and categorized Hittite and Hurrian mythology together as "Hittite-Hurrian". Unfortunately, much of the knowledge about the Hittites has come from artistic, rather than textual, sources, making it difficult to ascertain specific details on this topic. Hittite tablets regarding mythology often date back toward the end of the Old Hittite Kingdom, with significantly fewer sources beyond that. Groups of Hittite documents that are found are called ""cult inventories"" and are valuable in learning about how Hittite myth and practice was included in daily life.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Hittite mythology is a mix of Hattian, Hurrian and Hittite influences. Mesopotamian and Canaanite influences enter the mythology of Anatolia through Hurrian mythology. There are no known details of what the Hittite creation myth may have been but scholars speculate that the Hattian mother goddess who is believed to be connected to the "great goddess" concept known from the Neolithic site Çatalhöyük may have been a consort of the Anatolian storm god (who is believed to be related to comparable deities from other traditions like Thor, Indra and Zeus).


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The liminal figure mediating between the intimately connected worlds of gods and mankind was the king and priest; in a ritual dating from the Hittite Old Kingdom period:


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The gods, the Sun-God and the Storm-God, have entrusted to me, the king, the land and my household, so that I, the king, should protect my land and my household, for myself.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The Hittites did not perform regularly scheduled ceremonies to appease the gods, but instead conducted rituals in answer to hard times or to mark occasions. Myth and ritual were closely related, as many rituals were based on myth, and often involved performing the stories. Many of the rituals were performed at pits, sites that were created to represent a closeness between man and the gods, particularly those that were chthonic, or related to the earth. This type of pit ritual is known as "necromantic", because they were attempting to commune with gods of the Underworld and summon them into the living world.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The city of Arinna, a day's march from Hattusa, was perhaps the major cult center of the Hittites, and certainly of their major sun goddess, known as UTU "Arinna" "sun goddess of Arinna". Records found in cult-inventories show that local cults and practices were also active. Traditions and the status of local cults were constantly changing due to the lack of a national standard for ritual practice. Smaller festivals and times of worship did not always require the priest-king's presence, so local places had more leeway when it came to worshiping the gods, however the king did make a point to observe every cult site and temple on his lands, since that was his duty to the gods and to his people. Once the king died, he was deified, having served his people and worshiped the gods faithfully. Responsibilities placed upon the priest-king were not one-sided: the gods had to provide for the people if they were being worshiped properly. Gods held much of the obvious power, but without dedicated practice and ritual from mortals, they couldn't function. King Mursili II made a plea to the gods on behalf of his subjects, at a time when their agricultural livelihoods were struggling:


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: "All of the land of Hatti is dying, so that no one prepares the sacrificial loaf and libation for you [gods]. The plowmen who used to work the fields of the gods have died, so that no one works or reaps the fields of the gods any longer. The miller-women who used to prepare sacrificial loaves of the gods have died, so that they no longer make the sacrificial loaves. As for the corral and the sheepfold from which one used to cull the offerings of sheep and cattle – the cowherds and shepherds have died, and the corral and sheepfold are empty. So it happens that the sacrificial loaves, libation[s], and animal sacrifices are cut off. And you come to us, oh gods, and hold us culpable in this matter!"


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Obviously, the preservation of good relationships with deities that were closely affiliated with nature and agriculture, such as Arinna, would have been essential. If the balance between respect and criticism was significantly shifted, it could mean disfavor in the eyes of the gods, and likely a very unlucky harvest season at the very least. Despite this danger, the Hittites mostly communicated with their gods in an informal manner, and individuals often simply made requests of the gods without the accompaniment of rituals or the assistance of priests when the occasion was casual. The Hittites also utilized associations with the divine in a way similar to the ancient Egyptians, using the will of the gods to justify human actions.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The Hittites referred to their own "thousand gods", of whom a staggering number appear in inscriptions but remain nothing more than names today. This multiplicity has been ascribed to a Hittite resistance to syncretization: Beckman (1989) observes "many Hittite towns maintained individual storm-gods, declining to identify the local deities as manifestations of a single national figure."


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The multiplicity is doubtless an artifact of a level of social-political localization within the Hittite "empire" not easily reconstructed.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: In the 13th century BC some explicit efforts toward syncretism appear in inscriptions. The queen and priestess Puduhepa worked on organizing and rationalizing her people's religion. In an inscription she invokes:


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Sun goddess of Arinna, my lady, you are the queen of all lands! In the land of Hatti you have assumed the name of Sun-Goddess of Arinna, but in respect to the land which you made of cedars, you have assumed the name Hebat.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Many of the Hittite myths involve a large cast of characters, usually because the central problem in the story has widespread effects, and everyone has a stake in the issue(s) being resolved. Usually the solution can only be found by working together to overcome the issue, although these are not so much wholesome morality tales, but rather more like action-based epics with an ensemble cast.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: For example, the Hittites believed the Bronze Age cult centre of Nerik, to the north of the capitals Hattusa and Sapinuwa, was sacred to a local storm god who was the son of Wurusemu, sun goddess of Arinna.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The weather god there was identified with Mount Zaliyanu, near Nerik, and was responsible for arranging for rain for the city's croplands.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Kumarbi is the father of Tarhunt; his role in the "Song of Kumarbi" is reminiscent of that of Cronus in Hesiod's "Theogony". Ullikummi is a stone monster fathered by Kumarbi, otherwise vaguely reminiscent of Hesiod's Typhon.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Tarhunt has a son, Telipinu and a daughter, Inara. Inara is a protective deity (LAMMA) involved with the Puruli spring festival. Tarhunt's consort and Telipinu's mother is the Hattic sun goddess of Arinna ("Arinniti" or "Wuru(n)šemu"). This divine couple were presumably worshipped in the twin cellas of the largest temple at Hattusa.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: In the Telipinu myth, the disappearance of Telipinu, god of agriculture and fertility causes all fertility to fail, both plant and animal. This results in devastation and despair among gods and humans alike. In order to stop the havoc and devastation, the gods seek Telipinu but fail to find him. Only a bee sent by the goddess Hannahannah finds Telipinu, and stings him in order to wake him up. However this infuriates Telipinu further and he "diverts the flow of rivers and shatters the houses".


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: In the end, the goddess Kamrusepa uses healing and magic to calm Telipinu after which he returns home and restores the vegetation and fertility. In other references it is a mortal priest who prays for all of Telipinu's anger to be sent to bronze containers in the underworld, from which nothing escapes.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Another myth reflecting this style of plot is "The Slaying of the Dragon". This myth was recited during New Year rituals, which were performed to ensure agricultural prosperity in the coming year.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The myth centers around a serpent (or dragon) that represents the "forces of evil" and defeats the Storm God in a fight. The goddess Inara comes up with a plan to trick and kill the serpent, and enlists a human, Ḫupašiya, to help. Ḫupašiya is, of course, reluctant to assist without some kind of incentive, so he gets Inara to sleep with him before they carry out her scheme. Inara then invites the serpent over and they have a feast, getting so drunk that Ḫupašiya is able to tie the serpent up. The Storm God then steps in and slays the serpent himself.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Much like in the Telipinu myth, a human was used to help the gods in their plots, which further emphasizes the familiar relationship between mortal and divine. The mortal doesn't have much of a role in the story, but his presence is a help, rather than hindrance.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The story also illustrates the roles that goddesses played within myth: The powerful gods provoke a fight or do something else to create the central issue of each myth, and then the goddesses clean up after them and solve everything with careful thought and good sense. Unfortunately despite their helpful interference, nature cannot return to its status quo until the god completes the final step before normality can resume: He must wake up and return to his duties, or kill the beast, or some other action that demonstrates that his power is better suited to his role than any others'.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Similar to other kingdoms at the time, the Hittites had a habit of adopting gods from other pantheons that they came into contact with, such as the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, who is celebrated at her famous temple at Ain Dara. There also seem to be traces of Hittite / Anatolian deities that dispersed westward into Aeolis and Doreis.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Depictions of hybrid animals (like hippogriffs, chimerae etc.) are typical for the Anatolian art of the period.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: The Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar (Ištar) was one of the many adopted deities who were assimilated into Hittite pantheons through association with similar deities and adjustments to their myths. Since mythology was a large part of Hittite cult practice, an understanding of Ishtar's powers and history was essential to the development of rituals and incantations invoking her.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: Subtle changes like this were also made possible with her absorption or close association of other goddesses, namely Anzili, as well as Šawuška, and Geštinanna. With the personality traits of multiple other goddesses, Ishtar's power grew, as did her popularity. One innovative way that she was utilized was in purification rituals such as Allaiturahhi's, in which her affinity for the underworld was exploited and interpreted in a way that benefited the reader and cast her as a protector, rather than a victim, as in Mesopotamian myth. Ishtar's relationship with the underworld also made her a valuable chthonic deity, especially when her other affinities for war, sexuality, and magic were considered. The combination of these characteristics greatly increased her influence, as fertility of the earth was one of the most fundamental priorities for the Hittites. The Hittites even recognized that she was fairly prominent in other cultures and created a ritual which "treats her as an international goddess". The differences between outsider deities like Ishtar were respected, even though she had been appropriated for Hittite usage.


title: Hittite mythology and religion

text: It is lists of divine witnesses to treaties that seem to represent the Hittite pantheon most clearly, although some well-attested gods are inexplicably missing.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu is a comic book mystic published by DC Comics. The character is identified with Nimue, the sorceress from Arthurian mythology made popular by Sir Thomas Malory's "Le Morte d'Arthur".


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu debuted in "Doorway to Nightmare" #1 (February 1978). The character was designed by cover artist Michael William Kaluta at the request of editor Joe Orlando, based on Kaluta's unnamed host character (later known as Charity in the pages of "Starman") from the DC Comics mystery title "Forbidden Tales of Dark Mansion" (seen only on that title's indicia page) and the person of Cathy Ann Thiele. The original storyline was developed by writer David Michelinie.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: "Doorway to Nightmare", introduced in 1978, was the last of the DC "Mystery" line of titles in the 1970s that became the forerunner of Vertigo. It did not have a consistent creative team - the intent was to create writer-artist pairings that had never occurred before, except for the cover art of Michael William Kaluta. Madame Xanadu, the star of the series, was not a host but an active participant, albeit never the main character in her stories. The Phantom Stranger was criticized heavily in letter columns for taking a similar approach. The "Doorway to Nightmare" strip lasted for ten issues: five in its own series, four in "The Unexpected" issues #190, #192, #194 and #195, and one issue of "Madame Xanadu", which was DC's second direct sales only comic. "Madame Xanadu" was the first DC Comics publication exclusive to the direct market but the second overall due to a "Superboy Spectacular" release a year earlier. As explained by Paul Levitz: "In a further effort to find new distribution, a "Superboy Spectacular" was produced for Random House's in-school book club program and offered to comic shops but not newsstands". The first issue of "Madame Xanadu" bore little difference from an issue of "Doorway to Nightmare". There were several requests to reprint it in letter columns of "The Spectre", but they were refused because that issue gave little background as to her character, although it did introduce Ishtar to the DC Universe, who dated Destruction.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu was a regular supporting cast member in volumes 2 and 3 of "The Spectre", those versions written by Doug Moench (31 issues, 1987–1989) and John Ostrander (62 issues, 1993–1998).


title: Madame Xanadu

text: A "Madame Xanadu" ongoing series from Vertigo was announced at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con and started in 2008. It was written by Matt Wagner, with art by Amy Reeder Hadley. The series also featured art stints by Kaluta, Joëlle Jones, Marley Zarcone, Laurenn McCubbin, Chrissie Zullo, Celia Calle, and Marian Churchland. The series was concluded after 29 issues, the final one dated January 2011. The series dealt with Madame Xanadu's early life from Arthurian times until the 1960s. Starting with issue #9, the book coincided with the events of the Golden Age DC Universe.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: The "Doorway to Nightmare" stories were typically structured around a protagonist stumbling upon Madame Xanadu's shop (stated to be on "Christy Street" in the East Village) (changed to Greenwich Village in "The Unexpected" #192) and deciding to enter. She (usually) or he would tell a story of romance that was frustrated by an outside element. Xanadu, through a tarot reading, always determined this element to be of an occult nature, then sent the protagonist to do some task in which she would intervene with the use of her powers. Upon concluding the story, the occult element would wind up in a mason jar in her back room. In the first issue, she apparently became trapped in a burning building. The central couple returns to her shop for nostalgia's sake and discovers her to be quite alive. This was a hint at the extent of her powers. The primary variation in the stories was what the occult threat actually was, be it demonic forces, Asian mummies, vampires, incubi, or other supernatural threats. In one story, she fought Azazel, but he looked nothing like in "The Sandman".


title: Madame Xanadu

text: When the title was moved from its own series to a revamped, 68 page and ad-free version of "The Unexpected" (the stories were actually expanded from 17 to 22 pages with the move, part of the DC Implosion), she was shown to be friendly with Abel in the inside front covers, which may or may not have been in continuity. She never met Abel in an actual story until "DC Special Series" #21, when she and the Phantom Stranger arrive at the House of Mystery with Christmas presents.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu's origins were explored in the first few arcs of her Vertigo series. According to these stories, her full name was once Nimue Inwudu and she is the youngest sister of Morgana (to become Morgaine Le Fay) and Vivienne, the Lady of the Lake. The sisters are descendants of the Elder Folk, survivors of Atlantis who evolved into the race known as the "Homo magi".


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu is the same Nimue who casts an imprisoning spell on her former lover Merlin, blaming him for manipulating Camelot and the course of history for his own gain. Merlin has the last laugh, though, as he succeeds in stripping her magic away from her, forcing her to use potions to maintain her immortality. The mysterious Phantom Stranger influences her betrayal of Merlin and the two continue to meet throughout the centuries, sharing an ambivalent relationship. Shortly after this, either she or the Lady of the Lake (regardless, called "Nimue") bore a son to Kon-Sten-Tyne, an ancestor of John Constantine. The child was left with Kon-Sten-Tyne, who sacrificed the boy as a teenager to Eve.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Nimue wanders around the world for some time, becoming an advisor to many great rulers. She spends time in Kublai Khan's court at Xanadu, leading to her assumed name of "Madame Xanadu". Again she meets the Phantom Stranger. It does not go as expected, for she learns the Stranger walks outside of the timestream. During the French Revolution, she attempts to advise Marie Antoinette. During this era, she is able to regain her immortality by besting Death in a card game. Other incidents in her long years of life include a doomed lesbian love affair during the Spanish Inquisition.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In the 1940s, she has a sexual relationship with John Zatara, who wishes to marry her, but she foresees his true love, and the later existence of his daughter, Zatanna, "a love with whom she could never compete". Despite this, she uses Zatara to trap and ensnare the Phantom Stranger, preventing him from witnessing, and affecting, the supernatural origins of the Spectre. This, in turn, prevents Madame Xanadu from interfering, despite having foreseen the potential menace the unchecked Spectre would have brought on Earth. It is revealed that Xanadu's later behavior stems from this earlier fault, her magic parlor being devised as a way to control the supernatural being, ultimately hoping to restrain and quell his rage.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Eventually, Madame Xanadu decides that she wants to atone for her sins and begins operating the fortune-telling parlor out of "the Village". She, however, possesses limited real magic abilities of her own, but her mastery of the mystic arts has led her to manipulate various forces in order to gain great power. Having developed herself as an advisor, she now meets clientele plagued by supernatural problems. Although she can advise them, some force prevents her from directly interfering in solving their troubles. If one of her clients manages to conquer a supernatural force, she can contain that entity in jars within her fortune parlor to prevent it from causing any further trouble.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: When the Spectre is destroyed by the Anti-Monitor, Madame Xanadu performs a magic ritual that brings him back to existence. From that day forward she acts as the Spectre's spiritual advisor while he is bound to the soul of Jim Corrigan. At first, Xanadu tries to lead Corrigan astray in order to use the Spectre-Force for her own agendas. She is depicted in a nude love scene with the Spectre in the form of mist, although readers in the letters column did not find this clear and Xanadu's nudity gratuitous. Subsequent issues made clear that this was a romantic relationship, but no more nudity was used.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Over the course of their affiliation however, a strange form of friendship grows between Corrigan and Madame Xanadu. Over time, Madame Xanadu is instrumental in ensuring the safety of Corrigan's soul, stopping the various rampages of the Spectre, and ultimately shows up at Jim Corrigan's funeral not as an advisor or enemy, but as his friend. She even sheds a tear as Jim Corrigan's soul leaves the mortal plane to go to Heaven.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: She is also consulted by the Suicide Squad about the increasing difficulty of dealing with Enchantress. She provides the Squad with a ring and necklace that can harm the Enchantress if she tries to use her powers against the ring-bearers' wishes.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu also gives Timothy Hunter a reading, helping him along his path as an emerging sorcerer. She also confronts Tim's companion John Constantine, whom she believes stole a magic artifact called the Wind's Egg from her.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Although Madame Xanadu, among others, has no great love for or trust in the Phantom Stranger, she is a member of the Sentinels of Magic, a loose group of mages and mystics that are called upon to thwart Asmodel's uprising in Hell. Nonetheless, she prefers to operate alone and is one of the few heroes who outright refuses to ally herself with the Stranger.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In order to gain more power, Madame Xanadu bartered her soul to the demon Neron, who gave her three loyal demons named Bathopet, Maw and Atopeh to do her commands. At first, the demons responded to her every whim and almost raged out of her control. Over time, as she controlled her own emotions, she became able to control the demons as well.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In "Day of Vengeance" #2, an "Infinite Crisis" tie-in, the Spectre, then unstable and believing that magic equaled evil, disabled Madame Xanadu and took her eyes.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In the "Day of Vengeance" special it is revealed that Madame Xanadu is still blind. She has regrown her eyes 14 times, only for them to be burned out again, because the Spectre's powers are beyond hers. However, Madame Xanadu's abode would be the rallying point of the offense against the Spectre, gathering the Phantom Stranger, Zatanna, and Nabu.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Xanadu has also found a way around the Spectre's curse by training an adept, Daena, to read the cards for her. Through Daena, she sees the destruction of the world with the Spectre winning and destroying everything. It is at her place that Nabu begins his offense against the Spectre as well as the strategy for restoring the Rock of Eternity.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu's standing in the new magic order has yet to be explored in detail, but it is known that she is still trying to cure her blindness. She assists the Shadowpact when members of their team were temporarily blinded by the mystical powers of the villains known as 'the Congregation'. It is the mystical aspect that allows her to help, though some of the group are able to heal the blindness on their own.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu appears in "Countdown" #50, operating out of "Hokus & Pokus Occult Curiosities" in Greenwich Village. She is unable to help Mary Marvel locate Captain Marvel Jr. She does advise Mary to avoid Gotham City, because "it isn't safe for magic".


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In The New 52, Madame Xanadu has resurfaced as the result of Barry Allen's unintentional tampering with the timestream and the merging of the Vertigo, WildStorm and DC Universes.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In the new continuity, Xanadu is no longer blind and despite her past as Nimue still applying, she seems to have taken a more proactive stance during the Fall of Camelot. Instead of quietly observing like she did in her core miniseries, she staunchly opposed the surrendering of Excalibur to the Lady of the Lake, and then started traveling with Jason Blood, meeting other Dark Ages-based heroes and villains as Vandal Savage and the Shining Knight. Furthermore, the Dark Ages Madame Xanadu is seen in a relationship with both Etrigan and Jason Blood, each one believing she was humoring the other for the sake of their forced merging.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: The present-day Madame Xanadu is featured in the DC Universe reboot, in "Justice League Dark", resuming her role as the keystone and supporter of the magical community in the DCU. Xanadu assists the 'Dark League' in various incidents, such as Zatanna vanishing and the House of Mystery letting loose demonic threats in Manhattan. She is at length revealed to be the mother of the supervillain Doctor Destiny.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: "National Comics", a revival of the anthology title, was launched in July 2012. The title expanded upon the New 52 universe by presenting single-issue stories about different DC characters, each by a different creative team.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu has a supernatural sensitivity to occult activities and mystic phenomena. She uses tarot cards to interpret what she senses, and is also able to tell the future of others. Xanadu can levitate objects, teleport herself, and banish demons. Madame Xanadu's parlor is full of magical books and objects, as well as jars containing the essences of malevolent entities. She rarely uses these objects of power, merely acting as a guardian of them.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: Madame Xanadu is immortal, never aging and unable to die of natural causes thanks to her deal with Death. In the 2005 story "Day of Vengeance", not even the Spectre could kill her, and instead blinded her to make her harmless.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In the alternate timeline of the "Flashpoint", Madame Xanadu is still a fortune-teller. Traci Thirteen teleported to where Madame Xanadu is located and discovers that Madame Xanadu is dying. Before dying, Madame Xanadu tells her to stop the instigated Doctor Thirteen.


title: Madame Xanadu

text: In the Tangent Comics series "Joker's Wild", Madame Xanadu is one of three women who masquerade as a heroic version of the Joker.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision Systems Corporation was an American cable television company with systems serving areas surrounding New York City. It was the fifth-largest cable provider and ninth-largest television provider in the United States. Throughout its existence and in its final years, Cablevision exclusively served customers residing in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and a small part of Pennsylvania. However, at one time it provided service in as many as 19 states. Cablevision also offered high-speed Internet connections (Optimum Online), digital cable (Optimum TV/IO Digital Cable), and VoIP (Optimum Voice) phone service (the eighth-largest telephone provider in the U.S.) through its Optimum brand name. Cablevision also offered a WiFi-only mobile phone service dubbed Freewheel.


title: Cablevision

text: On June 21, 2016, Cablevision was acquired by European telecom conglomerate Altice. The former Cablevision services operate under Altice USA which continues to operate brands Optimum Online, Optimum Voice, and Optimum TV.


title: Cablevision

text: In the mid-1960s, Charles Dolan built a cable system called Sterling Manhattan Cable in the borough of Manhattan and launched Home Box Office (HBO). He ended up selling both the cable system and HBO to Time Life Inc. He used the money to start a new cable system in suburban Long Island called CableVision. Cablevision, having changed its name from CableVision, quickly expanded by building on Long Island and acquiring smaller cable systems from other providers. Cablevision also built systems throughout the New York metro area: some of the other boroughs of New York City, New Jersey, Westchester County, and Connecticut.


title: Cablevision

text: In the 1980s, Cablevision also expanded into the Chicago, Boston, and Cleveland areas. By the mid-1990s Cablevision would offer service to 2.9 million subscribers in 19 states. Through a series of transactions in the late 1990s, Cablevision decided to consolidate their cable systems into three core areas: New York, Cleveland, and Boston. Despite reducing the number of areas served they were able to bring the number of subscribers to 3.5 million through these transactions. One major transaction made at this time was with Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI). Cablevision gained 10 New York area cable systems from TCI and in exchange TCI gained 33% ownership in the company. In 1999, AT&T Corporation took over TCI thus giving them the one-third ownership in Cablevision. In 2000, Cablevision sold-off its remaining systems outside the New York area in Boston, Cleveland, and Kalamazoo, Michigan to MediaOne, Adelphia, and Charter Communications respectively. As part of the deal, Cablevision traded its Boston area systems for MediaOne's Hudson Valley systems. AT&T sold its share of Cablevision in 2001.


title: Cablevision

text: On June 13, 2010, Cablevision announced that it would acquire Bresnan Communications for $1.37 billion. Bresnan provided service to about 308,000 cable subscribers in Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming. This is the first time in a decade that Cablevision has owned systems outside the New York area (although Bresnan, like Cablevision, had its headquarters in the New York City suburbs). In May 2011, Cablevision rebranded the Bresnan systems as Optimum West.


title: Cablevision

text: On February 8, 2013, Cablevision reached an agreement to sell its Optimum West systems to Charter Communications for US$1.63 billion.


title: Cablevision

text: On September 17, 2015, it was announced that Patrick Drahi's European telecom conglomerate Altice would acquire Cablevision for $17.7 billion, including debt, pending regulatory approval. The deal was approved by the FCC on May 3, 2016 and after approval from various regional regulators such as New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities and the New York Public Service Commission, closed on June 21, 2016. Under the terms of the deal, Altice paid $34.90 in cash for each share in Cablevision and a 22% premium to the company's stock price; Altice also assumed Cablevision's debt. The former assets of Cablevision operate as Altice USA.


title: Cablevision

text: In 2004 and 2005, Cablevision provided funding for an advertising campaign against the proposed construction of a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan supported by the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg. The stadium would have principally served the New York Jets, and was an essential part of New York City's failed bid for the 2012 Olympics. Cablevision had offered a competitive bid that far exceeded the bid of the Jets for property owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, where the new stadium would have been located. The plans to build the stadium were abandoned in June 2005 when the New York State Assembly under the leadership of Speaker Sheldon Silver refused to provide state subsidies for the project.


title: Cablevision

text: In 1998, Cablevision helped found The Lustgarten Foundation, which has become the largest private foundation dedicated solely to funding pancreatic cancer research in America. The foundation was named after former Cablevision chairman Marc Lustgarten and has raised over $16 million. Cablevision currently underwrites the foundation, covering all administrative and fundraising costs, allowing 100% of all donations to go directly to research programs and grants to help cure pancreatic cancer, as well as sponsoring dozens of walks/runs across the country. The foundation is a 4-star charity on Charity Navigator, ranking at this level for its organizational and financial transparency, low administrative costs, board, and growth.


title: Cablevision

text: In 1994, Paramount Communications (formerly Gulf+Western), the owner of Madison Square Garden, was acquired by Viacom, who in turn sold the MSG properties to Cablevision and ITT Corporation, which had 50% ownership each. ITT would sell its share to Cablevision three years later.


title: Cablevision

text: On February 9, 2010 Cablevision spun off its subsidiary Madison Square Garden, L.P. into a new company named The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG). Although a separate company, it was run by the Cablevision CEO, James Dolan. He remained an important figure in both companies until Cablevision's sale in 2016, and continues to head MSG. The company has three divisions consisting of professional sports teams, two regional sports networks, and several entertainment venues.


title: Cablevision

text: MSG controls its namesake Madison Square Garden arena in New York City, and the professional sports teams that play there: the New York Knicks, and New York Rangers. The same company also owns the Hartford Wolf Pack, a minor-league professional hockey team affiliated with the Rangers.


title: Cablevision

text: MSG also holds the TV rights for the Knicks, Rangers, New York Islanders, New Jersey Devils, Buffalo Sabres and New York Red Bulls through their cable channels MSG Network, MSG Plus (formerly FSN New York), and MSG Western New York. Cablevision previously had the rights to the New York Yankees, New Jersey Nets and New York Mets, who left to start their own channels. Cablevision also previously attempted to purchase the Yankees, Mets and Boston Red Sox, in part, to control their broadcast rights.


title: Cablevision

text: Other properties that are owned by MSG include the Beacon Theater, The Theatre at Madison Square Garden (formerly known as Felt Forum, Paramount and WaMu Theatre), and a long-term lease to operate Radio City Music Hall.


title: Cablevision

text: On July 1, 2011, Cablevision spun off its subsidiary, formerly known as Rainbow Media LLC, into a new company named AMC Networks. AMC Networks owns several national cable networks including AMC, IFC, Sundance Channel, and WE tv. Wedding Central, a cable channel that was launched as a spin-off of WE tv in 2009, was also run by Rainbow Media. However, upon AMC Networks achieving its independence of Cablevision, the channel was shut down due to low ratings. Rainbow Media also controlled Fuse TV until 2010, when ownership was transferred to Cablevision's Madison Square Garden division, now operating independently as The Madison Square Garden Company (see above). The Rainbow Media subsidiary of Cablevision also operated a satellite television company called Voom, which was shut down on April 30, 2005, but lived on as a series of high-definition television channels named Voom HD Networks. They were available on Cablevision and iO digital cable until January 21, 2009. However, the 15 U.S. channels were eventually also shut down due to lack of distribution prior to the spinning off of Rainbow Media from Cablevision as the independent AMC Networks.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision also owned the former SportsChannel America from its beginning in 1976 until it was dissolved into Fox Sports Net in the late 1990s. In 2007 Cablevision sold its control of FSN Bay Area and FSN New England to Comcast for $570 million. These were the last of their regional sports networks outside the New York area.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision acquired the New York-area electronics chain The Wiz in 1998. The chain was closed in 2003. Since then the name was sold to P. C. Richard & Son and currently remains as a dormant subsidiary of the company only showing Wiz Deals on some P.C. Richard items.


title: Cablevision

text: From 1998 until April 29, 2013, Cablevision owned New York-area cinema chain Clearview Cinemas. It was sold to Bow Tie Cinemas of Connecticut.


title: Cablevision

text: On July 29, 2008, Cablevision acquired Newsday and amNewYork in a deal worth $650m. The Dolan family still maintains majority ownership of Newsday, with Altice USA having a 25% share.


title: Cablevision

text: From September 1988 through July 1989, Cablevision did not carry MSG Network (at the time owned by Gulf+Western, which later became Paramount Communications) over the question of whether MSG should be offered as a basic service or a premium service. This move also occurred as New York Yankees games on cable moved to MSG from Cablevision-owned SportsChannel. The Cablevision position was that those who wished to pay for sports programming should shoulder the burden, not every consumer. This dispute ended with Cablevision offering MSG as a premium subscription service.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision did not carry most of the games of the New York Yankees in 2002, because they would not accept the price asked during the inaugural season of YES Network. Again, at the root of the argument was who was to pay for sports programming. Cablevision wanted to offer YES as a premium service, like MSG and Fox Sports NY, where YES ownership wanted the channel on the 'Family Cable' tier. After a long standoff, a deal was made the following year. As a result, YES, along with MSG and Fox Sports NY, moved to the 'Family Cable' Tier.


title: Cablevision

text: Until 2012, Cablevision never carried the NFL Network, as the company stated that it would like to be able to carry NFL Sunday Ticket (which is, by contract, exclusive to DirecTV until the completion of the 2022 season) before it carries NFL Network. This has been criticized by New Jersey legislators. Recently however, Cablevision purchased Bresnan Communications, a company headquartered in Purchase, New York, but which did all of its business in the Rocky Mountain region. Because of this, the NFL Network is carried on the former Bresnan (now Optimum West) systems, but not on Optimum systems in Greater New York. Finally, on August 16, 2012, Cablevision announced that they have reached an agreement with the NFL to carry the network on all its systems effective August 17.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision also carried the Tennis Channel for a brief period of time from October 2009-September 2011. Cablevision joined the NCTC in August 2009 just to carry the Tennis Channel on the premium sports package which costs extra per month. By joining NCTC the Tennis Channel was forced to give its signal to Cablevision. Once the Tennis Channel's contract expired with NCTC on September 3, 2011 the Tennis Channel pulled its signal from all cable carriers unwilling to negotiate a new deal or carry the channel more widespread. The Tennis Channel was pulled from Verizon but returned on January 17, 2012. Cablevision has yet to make any attempt at bringing the Tennis Channel back as of June 2012.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision never carried ESPN360.com, rebranded as ESPN3.com, a broadband service of ESPN. Also, Cablevision had yet to carry and give customers access to WatchESPN which is an app that allows customers to watch ESPN Networks when they are not at home. ESPN requires users to give what cable provider they subscribe to in order to watch and Cablevision had yet to agree to carry WatchESPN.


title: Cablevision

text: On October 4, 2012, ESPN and Cablevision announced a comprehensive distribution and carriage agreement which included access for Cablevision customers to ESPN3 and WatchESPN in addition to other Watch apps covering the Walt Disney Company's family of networks. On November 19, Cablevision announced that ESPN3 was available to Optimum Online Customers. A month later on December 19, WatchESPN was released to Optimum TV Customers.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision, as a content provider, also engaged in a dispute with Verizon over the carriage of MSG Network and Fox Sports Net New York on its FiOS television systems. Verizon sued Cablevision, claiming that Cablevision, which still owned MSG Network along with all Madison Square Garden-related properties at the time, did not want to make their valuable local sports coverage of the NHL's New York Rangers and NBA's New York Knicks available to an emerging competitor to their cable systems. An agreement was reached in time for the 2006-07 NHL and NBA seasons allowing FiOS to carry these channels. However, MSG's programming was restricted to standard-definition on FiOS systems until the 2011-12 NHL and NBA seasons, when a court order forced Cablevision to provide Verizon with the HD feeds to both NY Rangers and NY Knicks programming.


title: Cablevision

text: Additionally, Cablevision owned exclusive rights to the MSNBC news network in its service territory, preventing its carriage by FiOS in overlapping areas. However, this exclusivity ended in February 2010.


title: Cablevision

text: Because it was unable to reach a deal with Scripps Networks Interactive concerning retransmission fees, Scripps Networks Interactive revoked Cablevision's rights to carry the disputed channels, HGTV and the Food Network, on January 1, 2010. Cablevision issued a statement saying, "We wish Scripps well and have no expectation of carrying their programming again, given the dramatic changes in their approach to working with distributors to reach television viewers."


title: Cablevision

text: While the channels were affected, Cablevision ran commercials advertising their point of view and set up an area on their website to send out messages to Scripps Networks to tell them to re-carry Food Network and Home & Garden Television. Cablevision also looped a public service announcement on each affected channel and forced all of its customers' set-top boxes to channel 1999, which looped the same announcement. Cablevision and Scripps reached an agreement, and as of January 21, 2010, the two networks were back on Cablevision systems. The details of the agreement have not been disclosed.


title: Cablevision

text: On March 2, 2010, WABC-TV in New York along with Philadelphia sister station WPVI (carried in Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean counties) stated that they would pull their programming from Cablevision on March 7, 2010 (at midnight), unless a new payment structure is implemented for its network programming. Cablevision responded by citing WABC-TV and WPVI's free, over-the-air accessibility. Cablevision spokesman Charles Scheuler stated "It is not fair for ABC-Disney to hold Cablevision customers hostage by forcing them to pay what amounts to a new TV tax."


title: Cablevision

text: The removal of both stations occurred on the weekend of the 82nd Academy Awards, which was scheduled to be one of ABC's largest yearly specials, and was projected to cause a devastating blow to advertisers for the Oscars and to Cablevision itself.


title: Cablevision

text: On Sunday March 7, 2010 at 12:01 am ET, both WABC and WPVI were removed from Cablevision leaving a black screen in their place, confirming the rumors that if a deal with Cablevision and ABC was not reached by midnight, the network and other Disney-owned channels would go off the air.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision began looping a public service announcement on each affected channel and forcing all of its customers' set-top boxes to channel 1999, which was looping the same announcement, much like was done when Scripps Networks pulled their cable channels' programming. Besides providing certain details of the disagreement they stated that ABC shows could be watched online through TV websites such as Hulu.


title: Cablevision

text: Also that day, Cablevision announced through e-mail that their entire film catalog of on-demand movies would be available without charge until midnight that evening as an apology to their customers.


title: Cablevision

text: At 8:50 pm that day, WABC and WPVI returned to Cablevision's programming, after a notification during the 82nd Academy Awards announced progression in "Work to complete our negotiations", and the return of ABC's programming during the negotiations.


title: Cablevision

text: Cablevision's contract with News Corp to carry FOX (including MyNetwork TV) expired on October 15, 2010. The contract includes WNYW and WWOR-TV in New York and WTXF in Philadelphia. The contract also includes the cable networks National Geographic Wild, Fox Business, and Fox Deportes (formerly Fox Sports en Español). Programming affected by the dispute includes the coverage of the NFL on Fox, 2010 National League Championship Series, part of the 2010 World Series, and popular shows like "American Idol" and "Glee".


title: Cablevision

text: On October 16, 2010 at 12:01 am, Fox pulled all of their networks involved in the dispute from Cablevision subscribers. Because of Cablevision's dispute with Fox, Cablevision customers missed multiple new episodes of Fox network programming, multiple weeks of the NBA season, and the entire NLCS. Cablevision looped a public service announcement on each affected channel and forcing all of its customers' set-top boxes to channel 1999, which looped the same announcement, much like was done when Scripps Networks and ABC/Disney pulled their cable channels' programming. On October 27, 2010, the same day as Game 1 of the World Series, Cablevision offered a new one-year deal to FOX, which was rejected, continuing the blackout. Cablevision also repeatedly called on FOX to submit to binding arbitration, an offer which FOX repeatedly did not take Cablevision up on.


title: Cablevision

text: The channels were restored during the evening of October 30, 2010, the same day as Game 3 of the World Series. News Corp and Cablevision reached a deal "in principle" to restore the channels. News Corp did not disclose the terms of the deal, but Cablevision said it paid the higher fees Fox and News Corp wanted, "because it does not think its customers should any longer be denied the Fox programs they wish to see."


title: Cablevision

text: In February 2011, Cablevision moved the Game Show Network (GSN) from the basic tier to an add-on sports package. In October 2011, GSN filed a lawsuit claiming that the network was being discriminated against because Cablevision gave preference to other channels that they owned (AMC Networks) which did not move. In November 2016, a Federal Communications Commission administrative law judge that Cablevision had acted unlawfully and recommended that the FCC require Cablevision (now Altice) to carry the channel on their expanded basic tier and imposed a maximum fine of $400,000.


title: Cablevision

text: On August 17, 2012, without warning, Cablevision pulled stations from the Tribune Company. The removed stations included WPIX (New York), which is carried on most Cablevision systems, WPHL (Philadelphia) on Central Jersey systems in Mercer, Monmouth and Ocean Counties, WCCT (Hartford, CT) on some Connecticut systems, and KWGN (Denver) on Optimum West systems in Colorado and Wyoming. WTIC-TV and WGN America were initially not included in this dispute, but on August 24, Tribune pulled WTIC in Connecticut and WGN from Cablevision's Connecticut and Optimum West systems. Like the dispute with Time Warner Cable and Hearst Television, these channels were replaced with other cable offerings.


title: Cablevision

text: In a statement, Cablevision said that "The bankrupt Tribune Co. and the hedge funds and banks that own it, including Oaktree Capital Management, Angelo Gordon & Co. and others, are trying to solve Tribune's financial problems on the backs of Cablevision customers. Tribune and their hedge fund owners are demanding tens of millions in new fees for WPIX and other stations they own. They should stop their anti-consumer demands and work productively to reach an agreement."


title: Cablevision

text: Tribune, in its own statement, said that "Cablevision took this action despite our offer of an unconditional extension of the current carriage agreement with no change in terms while negotiations continued. To be clear, Tribune was willing to provide Cablevision subscribers access to the valuable programming on these stations while working toward a new agreement. Tribune never made any threat to withdraw these stations or any demand that Cablevision remove them. Tribune makes a substantial annual investment in local news, live sports and high-quality entertainment programming. Cablevision has never compensated Tribune for the retransmission of its local stations, which are among the most highly watched channels on Cablevision's lineups. What we have proposed amounts to less than a penny a day per subscriber, well below what Cablevision pays to providers of less well-watched channels".


title: Cablevision

text: The dispute between the two companies ended on October 26, 2012, when Cablevision reached an agreement with Tribune after Connecticut viewers complained about not seeing the first two games of the 2012 World Series. The channels were not restored until the morning of October 27.


title: Cablevision

text: On January 3, 2014, WFSB, the CBS station in Hartford, CT, pulled its signal from Cablevision's Connecticut systems. The dispute was due to the fact that Cablevision did not want to pay Meredith Corporation, the station's owner, for Fairfield County and Litchfield County customers, because they already had the flagship CBS station, WCBS-TV from New York. The dispute ended on January 19.


title: Cablevision

text: At the time of the sale to Altice, the board of directors of Cablevision were: Charles Dolan, James Dolan, Patrick Dolan, Kristin Dolan, Marianne Dolan Weber, Rand Araskog, Frank Biondi, Charles Ferris, Richard Hochman, Victor Oristano, Thomas Reifenheiser, John R. Ryan, Brian Sweeney, Vincent Tese, Leonard Tow.


title: Cablevision

text: In 2006, the Dolan family announced a plan to purchase the company and privatize it, after a failed attempt in 2005, which would have spun off Rainbow Media as a publicly traded company.


title: Cablevision

text: On May 2, 2007, after repeated attempts, the Dolan family announced that a deal worth $10.6 billion had been reached for Cablevision to be taken private, but agreement was not reached with other shareholders. Cablevision stock trades under the ticker symbol CVC on the New York Stock Exchange.


title: Cablevision

text: On November 11, 2003, the company admitted that it had misrepresented some of its finances. It would restate its previously reported financial statements for the first and second quarters of 2003, and would revise the quarterly financial results released that day, to reflect the impact of expenses totaling approximately $15 million that were improperly recorded in 2002 and earlier periods.


title: Cablevision

text: On March 2, 2004, the company also said it would restate annual results for 2000 to 2002, in addition to its previously announced restatement of quarterly results in 2002 and 2003.


title: Daya Shankar Pandey

text: Daya Shankar Pandey (born 19 November 1965) is an Indian film and television actor. He has acted in a number of Hindi movies like "Lagaan" (2001), "Gangaajal" (2003), "Swades" (2004) and "Raajneeti" (2010). He began his career with the film "Pehla Nasha" (1993). He currently essays the role of Inspector Chalu Pandey in the famous serial Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah. He is also creative consultant of the show.Daya Shankar Pandey resides in Mumbai's Suburban Area.


title: SSh-68

text: The SSh-68 (Russian: СШ-68 [стальной шлем образца 1968 года/stalnoy shlyem], English: SSh-68 steel helmet model 1968) - is a steel combat helmet of the Soviet and then Russian Armed Forces. The SSh-68 is a further development of the SSh-60 helmet. It differs primarily in its greater strength, greater front slope of the dome and the shorter outer edge. It is usually painted in dark green.


title: SSh-68

text: The helmet weighs 1,300 grams (with leatherette balaclavas - 1,500 grams). SSh-68 provides protection from impact shock (machetes, etc.), and steel fragments (shrapnel) weighing 1.0 grams at speeds up to 250 m/s. The SSh-68 is not meant to protect against bullets.


title: SSh-68

text: The SSh-68 was used by the armed forces of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies, and others. Today, it is still in service in most countries of the CIS, as well as Vietnam, North Korea and Afghanistan.


title: SSh-68

text: Due to the introduction of improved helmets starting with the original 6B7, the SSh-68 was progressively withdrawn from service. In the Russian Armed Forces, the final examples are being gradually replaced by the newer 6B7-1M and 6B47 helmets.


title: SSh-68

text: SSh-68 are available in three different sizes, P1, P2, and P3. P1 (small) is good to about a 58 head, size 2 (medium) is between about 59 and 61 and size 3 (Large to extra large) is from 61 up. SSh-68s are not sized as NATO helmets are since they are designed to be able to adjust for soldiers to wear an Ushanka or other heavy hat underneath it during the winter.


title: SSh-68

text: In early 2000s the Russian military attempted to replace the SSh-68 with the new 6B7 helmet, which was never widely used. By the 2010s a new model, the 6B27 (see ) largely replaced SSh-68 in Russian service, but the old helmet is still in limited use by the Russian Armed Forces. In other post-Soviet states (except for Baltic countries and Georgia) there are still large stocks of SSh-68 in use, although in Ukraine it was sporadically replaced by Kaska-1M (see ).


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: In metrology, measurement uncertainty is the expression of the statistical dispersion of the values attributed to a measured quantity. All measurements are subject to uncertainty and a measurement result is complete only when it is accompanied by a statement of the associated uncertainty, such as the standard deviation. By international agreement, this uncertainty has a probabilistic basis and reflects incomplete knowledge of the quantity value. It is a non-negative parameter.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The measurement uncertainty is often taken as the standard deviation of a state-of-knowledge probability distribution over the possible values that could be attributed to a measured quantity. Relative uncertainty is the measurement uncertainty relative to the magnitude of a particular single choice for the value for the measured quantity, when this choice is nonzero. This particular single choice is usually called the measured value, which may be optimal in some well-defined sense (e.g., a mean, median, or mode). Thus, the relative measurement uncertainty is the measurement uncertainty divided by the absolute value of the measured value, when the measured value is not zero.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The purpose of measurement is to provide information about a quantity of interest – a measurand. For example, the measurand might be the size of a cylindrical feature, the volume of a vessel, the potential difference between the terminals of a battery, or the mass concentration of lead in a flask of water.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: No measurement is exact. When a quantity is measured, the outcome depends on the measuring system, the measurement procedure, the skill of the operator, the environment, and other effects. Even if the quantity were to be measured several times, in the same way and in the same circumstances, a different measured value would in general be obtained each time, assuming the measuring system has sufficient resolution to distinguish between the values.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Their average would provide an estimate of the true value of the quantity that generally would be more reliable than an individual measured value.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The dispersion and the number of measured values would provide information relating to the average value as an estimate of the true value.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The measuring system may provide measured values that are not dispersed about the true value, but about some value offset from it. Take a domestic bathroom scale. Suppose it is not set to show zero when there is nobody on the scale, but to show some value offset from zero. Then, no matter how many times the person's mass were re-measured, the effect of this offset would be inherently present in the average of the values.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The "Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement" (commonly known as the GUM) is the definitive document on this subject. The GUM has been adopted by all major National Measurement Institutes (NMIs) and by international laboratory accreditation standards such as ISO/IEC 17025 General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories, which is required for international laboratory accreditation; and is employed in most modern national and international documentary standards on measurement methods and technology. See Joint Committee for Guides in Metrology.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Measurement uncertainty has important economic consequences for calibration and measurement activities. In calibration reports, the magnitude of the uncertainty is often taken as an indication of the quality of the laboratory, and smaller uncertainty values generally are of higher value and of higher cost. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has produced a suite of standards addressing various aspects of measurement uncertainty. For example, ASME standards are used to address the role of measurement uncertainty when accepting or rejecting products based on a measurement result and a product specification, provide a simplified approach (relative to the GUM) to the evaluation of dimensional measurement uncertainty, resolve disagreements over the magnitude of the measurement uncertainty statement, or provide guidance on the risks involved in any product acceptance/rejection decision.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The above discussion concerns the direct measurement of a quantity, which incidentally occurs rarely. For example, the bathroom scale may convert a measured extension of a spring into an estimate of the measurand, the mass of the person on the scale. The particular relationship between extension and mass is determined by the calibration of the scale. A measurement model converts a quantity value into the corresponding value of the measurand.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: There are many types of measurement in practice and therefore many models. A simple measurement model (for example for a scale, where the mass is proportional to the extension of the spring) might be sufficient for everyday domestic use. Alternatively, a more sophisticated model of a weighing, involving additional effects such as air buoyancy, is capable of delivering better results for industrial or scientific purposes. In general there are often several different quantities, for example temperature, humidity and displacement, that contribute to the definition of the measurand, and that need to be measured.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Correction terms should be included in the measurement model when the conditions of measurement are not exactly as stipulated. These terms correspond to systematic errors. Given an estimate of a correction term, the relevant quantity should be corrected by this estimate. There will be an uncertainty associated with the estimate, even if the estimate is zero, as is often the case. Instances of systematic errors arise in height measurement, when the alignment of the measuring instrument is not perfectly vertical, and the ambient temperature is different from that prescribed. Neither the alignment of the instrument nor the ambient temperature is specified exactly, but information concerning these effects is available, for example the lack of alignment is at most 0.001° and the ambient temperature at the time of measurement differs from that stipulated by at most 2 °C.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: As well as raw data representing measured values, there is another form of data that is frequently needed in a measurement model. Some such data relate to quantities representing physical constants, each of which is known imperfectly. Examples are material constants such as modulus of elasticity and specific heat. There are often other relevant data given in reference books, calibration certificates, etc., regarded as estimates of further quantities.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The items required by a measurement model to define a measurand are known as input quantities in a measurement model. The model is often referred to as a functional relationship. The output quantity in a measurement model is the measurand.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Formally, the output quantity, denoted by formula_1, about which information is required, is often related to input quantities, denoted by formula_2, about which information is available, by a measurement model in the form of


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: where formula_4 is known as the measurement function. A general expression for a measurement model is


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: It is taken that a procedure exists for calculating formula_1 given formula_2, and that formula_1 is uniquely defined by this equation.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: In the GUM approach, formula_2 are characterized by probability distributions and treated mathematically as random variables.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: These distributions describe the respective probabilities of their true values lying in different intervals, and are assigned based on available knowledge concerning formula_2.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Sometimes, some or all of are interrelated and the relevant distributions, which are known as joint, apply to these quantities taken together.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Consider estimates formula_13, respectively, of the input quantities formula_2, obtained from certificates and reports, manufacturers' specifications, the analysis of measurement data, and so on.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The probability distributions characterizing formula_2 are chosen such that the estimates formula_13, respectively, are the expectations of formula_2.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Moreover, for the formula_18th input quantity, consider a so-called "standard uncertainty", given the symbol formula_19, defined as the standard deviation of the input quantity formula_20.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The use of available knowledge to establish a probability distribution to characterize each quantity of interest applies to the formula_20 and also to formula_1.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: In the latter case, the characterizing probability distribution for formula_1 is determined by the measurement model together with the probability distributions for the formula_20.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The determination of the probability distribution for formula_1 from this information is known as the "propagation of distributions".


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The figure below depicts a measurement model formula_27 in the case where formula_28 and formula_29 are each characterized by a (different) rectangular, or uniform, probability distribution.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Once the input quantities formula_2 have been characterized by appropriate probability distributions, and the measurement model has been developed, the probability distribution for the measurand formula_1 is fully specified in terms of this information. In particular, the expectation of formula_1 is used as the estimate of formula_1, and the standard deviation of formula_1 as the standard uncertainty associated with this estimate.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Often an interval containing formula_1 with a specified probability is required. Such an interval, a coverage interval, can be deduced from the probability distribution for formula_1. The specified probability is known as the coverage probability. For a given coverage probability, there is more than one coverage interval. The probabilistically symmetric coverage interval is an interval for which the probabilities (summing to one minus the coverage probability) of a value to the left and the right of the interval are equal. The shortest coverage interval is an interval for which the length is least over all coverage intervals having the same coverage probability.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Prior knowledge about the true value of the output quantity formula_1 can also be considered. For the domestic bathroom scale, the fact that the person's mass is positive, and that it is the mass of a person, rather than that of a motor car, that is being measured, both constitute prior knowledge about the possible values of the measurand in this example. Such additional information can be used to provide a probability distribution for formula_1 that can give a smaller standard deviation for formula_1 and hence a smaller standard uncertainty associated with the estimate of formula_1.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Knowledge about an input quantity formula_20 is inferred from repeated measured values ("Type A evaluation of uncertainty"), or scientific judgement or other information concerning the possible values of the quantity ("Type B evaluation of uncertainty").


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: In Type A evaluations of measurement uncertainty, the assumption is often made that the distribution best describing an input quantity formula_43 given repeated measured values of it (obtained independently) is a Gaussian distribution.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: formula_43 then has expectation equal to the average measured value and standard deviation equal to the standard deviation of the average.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: When the uncertainty is evaluated from a small number of measured values (regarded as instances of a quantity characterized by a Gaussian distribution), the corresponding distribution can be taken as a "t"-distribution.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: For a Type B evaluation of uncertainty, often the only available information is that formula_43 lies in a specified interval [formula_46].


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: In such a case, knowledge of the quantity can be characterized by a rectangular probability distribution with limits formula_47 and formula_48.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: If different information were available, a probability distribution consistent with that information would be used.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: Sensitivity coefficients formula_49 describe how the estimate formula_50 of formula_1 would be influenced by small changes in the estimates formula_13 of the input quantities formula_2.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: For the measurement model formula_54, the sensitivity coefficient formula_55 equals the partial derivative of first order of formula_4 with respect to formula_20 evaluated at formula_58, formula_59, etc.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: with formula_2 independent, a change in formula_21 equal to formula_19 would give a change formula_64 in formula_65


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The relative magnitudes of the terms formula_67 are useful in assessing the respective contributions from the input quantities to the standard uncertainty formula_68 associated with formula_50.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The standard uncertainty formula_68 associated with the estimate formula_50 of the output quantity formula_1 is not given by the sum of the formula_67, but these terms combined in quadrature, namely by an expression that is generally approximate for measurement models formula_54:


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: When the input quantities formula_20 contain dependencies, the above formula is augmented by terms containing covariances, which may increase or decrease formula_68.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The main stages of uncertainty evaluation constitute formulation and calculation, the latter consisting of propagation and summarizing.


title: Measurement uncertainty

text: The calculation stage consists of propagating the probability distributions for the input quantities through the measurement model to obtain the probability distribution for the output quantity formula_1, and summarizing by using this distribution to obtain