title: John Stuart Mill

text: Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethical theory, meaning that it holds that acts are justified insofar as they produce a desirable outcome. The overarching goal of utilitarianism—the ideal consequence—is to achieve the "greatest good for the greatest number as the end result of human action." In "Utilitarianism," Mill states that "happiness is the sole end of human action". This statement aroused some controversy, which is why Mill took it a step further, explaining how the very nature of humans wanting happiness, and who "take it to be reasonable under free consideration", demands that happiness is indeed desirable. In other words, free will leads everyone to make actions inclined on their own happiness, unless reasoned that it would improve the happiness of others, in which case, the greatest utility is still being achieved. To that extent, the "utilitarianism" that Mill is describing is a default lifestyle that he believes is what people who have not studied a specific opposing field of ethics would naturally and subconsciously use when faced with a decision.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Utilitarianism is thought of by some of its activists to be a more developed and overarching ethical theory of Immanuel Kant's belief in goodwill, and not just some default cognitive process of humans. Where Kant (1724–1804) would argue that reason can only be used properly by goodwill, Mill would say that the only way to universally create fair laws and systems would be to step back to the consequences, whereby Kant's ethical theories become based around the ultimate good—utility. By this logic the only valid way to discern what is the proper reason would be to view the consequences of any action and weigh the good and the bad, even if on the surface, the ethical reasoning seems to indicate a different train of thought.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill's major contribution to utilitarianism is his argument for the qualitative separation of pleasures. Bentham treats all forms of happiness as equal, whereas Mill argues that intellectual and moral pleasures ("higher pleasures") are superior to more physical forms of pleasure ("lower pleasures"). He distinguishes between happiness and contentment, claiming that the former is of higher value than the latter, a belief wittily encapsulated in the statement that, "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."


title: John Stuart Mill

text: This made Mill believe that "our only ultimate end" is happiness. One unique part of his utilitarian view, that is not seen in others, is the idea of higher and lower pleasures. Mill explains the different pleasures as:


title: John Stuart Mill

text: He defines higher pleasures as mental, moral, and aesthetic pleasures, and lower pleasures as being more sensational. He believed that higher pleasures should be seen as preferable to lower pleasures since they have a greater quality in virtue. He holds that pleasures gained in activity are of a higher quality than those gained passively.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill defines the difference between higher and lower forms of pleasure with the principle that those who have experienced both tend to prefer one over the other. This is, perhaps, in direct contrast with Bentham's statement that "Quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry", that, if a simple child's game like hopscotch causes more pleasure to more people than a night at the opera house, it is more incumbent upon a society to devote more resources to propagating hopscotch than running opera houses. Mill's argument is that the "simple pleasures" tend to be preferred by people who have no experience with high art, and are therefore not in a proper position to judge. He also argues that people who, for example, are noble or practise philosophy, benefit society more than those who engage in individualist practices for pleasure, which are lower forms of happiness. It is not the agent's own greatest happiness that matters "but the greatest amount of happiness altogether".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In the General Remarks portion of his essay, he speaks how next to no progress has been made when it comes to judging what is right and what is wrong of morality and if there is such a thing as moral instinct (which he argues that there may not be). However, he agrees that in general "Our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the name of thinkers, supplies us only with the general principles of moral judgments".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In What Utilitarianism Is, he focuses no longer on background information but utilitarianism itself. He quotes utilitarianism as "The greatest happiness principle", defining this theory by saying that pleasure and no pain are the only inherently good things in the world and expands on it by saying that "actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure." He views it not as an animalistic concept because he sees seeking out pleasure as a way of using our higher facilities. He also says in this chapter that the happiness principle is based not exclusively on the individual but mainly on the community.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill also defends the idea of a "strong utilitarian conscience (i.e. a strong feeling of obligation to the general happiness)". He argued that humans have a desire to be happy and that that desire causes us to want to be in unity with other humans. This causes us to care about the happiness of others, as well as the happiness of complete strangers. But this desire also causes us to experience pain when we perceive harm to other people. He believes in internal sanctions that make us experience guilt and appropriate our actions. These internal sanctions make us want to do good because we do not want to feel guilty for our actions. Happiness is our ultimate end because it is our duty. He argues that we do not need to be constantly motivated by the concern of people's happiness because most of the actions done by people are done out of good intention, and the good of the world is made up of the good of the people.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In Mill's fourth chapter, Of What Sort of Proof the Principle of Utility is Susceptible, he speaks of what proofs of Utility are affected. He starts this chapter off by saying that all of his claims cannot be backed up by reasoning. He claims that the only proof that something brings one pleasure is if someone finds it pleasurable. Next, he talks about how morality is the basic way to achieve happiness. He also discusses in this chapter that Utilitarianism is beneficial for virtue. He says that "it maintains not only that virtue is to be desired, but that it is to be desired disinterestedly, for itself." In his final chapter he looks at the connection between Utilitarianism and justice. He contemplates the question of whether justice is something distinct from Utility or not. He reasons this question in several different ways and finally comes to the conclusion that in certain cases justice is essential for Utility, but in others, social duty is far more important than justice. Mill believes that "justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case."


title: John Stuart Mill

text: The qualitative account of happiness that Mill advocates thus sheds light on his account presented in "On Liberty". As he suggests in that text, utility is to be conceived in relation to humanity "as a progressive being", which includes the development and exercise of rational capacities as we strive to achieve a "higher mode of existence". The rejection of censorship and paternalism is intended to provide the necessary social conditions for the achievement of knowledge and the greatest ability for the greatest number to develop and exercise their deliberative and rational capacities.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill redefines the definition of happiness as "the ultimate end, for the sake of which all other things are desirable (whether we are considering our own good or that of other people) is an existence as free as possible from pain and as rich as possible in enjoyments". He firmly believed that moral rules and obligations could be referenced to promoting happiness, which connects to having a noble character. While Mill is not a standard act utilitarian or rule utilitarian, he is a minimizing utilitarian, which "affirms that it would be "desirable" to maximize happiness for the greatest number, but not that we are morally "required" to do so".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill believed that for the majority of people (those with but a moderate degree of sensibility and of capacity for enjoyment) happiness is best achieved en passant, rather than striving for it directly. This meant no self-consciousness, scrutiny, self-interrogation, dwelling on, thinking about, imagining or questioning on one's happiness. Then, if otherwise fortunately circumstanced, one would "inhale happiness with the air you breathe".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill's early economic philosophy was one of free markets. However, he accepted interventions in the economy, such as a tax on alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds. He also accepted the principle of legislative intervention for the purpose of animal welfare. He originally believed that "equality of taxation" meant "equality of sacrifice" and that progressive taxation penalized those who worked harder and saved more and was therefore "a mild form of robbery".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Given an equal tax rate regardless of income, Mill agreed that inheritance should be taxed. A utilitarian society would agree that everyone should be equal one way or another. Therefore, receiving inheritance would put one ahead of society unless taxed on the inheritance. Those who donate should consider and choose carefully where their money goes—some charities are more deserving than others. Considering public charities boards such as a government will disburse the money equally. However, a private charity board like a church would disburse the monies fairly to those who are in more need than others.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Later he altered his views toward a more socialist bent, adding chapters to his "Principles of Political Economy" in defence of a socialist outlook, and defending some socialist causes. Within this revised work he also made the radical proposal that the whole wage system be abolished in favour of a co-operative wage system. Nonetheless, some of his views on the idea of flat taxation remained, albeit altered in the third edition of the "Principles of Political Economy" to reflect a concern for differentiating restrictions on "unearned" incomes, which he favoured, and those on "earned" incomes, which he did not favour.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In his autobiography, Mill stated that in relation to his later views on political economy, his "ideal of ultimate improvement... would class [him] decidedly under the general designation of Socialists". His views shifted partly due to reading the works of utopian socialists, but also from the influence of Harriet Taylor. In his work "Socialism", Mill argued that the prevalence of poverty in contemporary industrial capitalist societies was ""pro tanto" a failure of the social arrangements", and that attempts to condone this state of affairs as being the result of individual failings did not represent a justification of them but instead were "an irresistible claim upon every human being for protection against suffering".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill's "Principles", first published in 1848, was one of the most widely read of all books on economics in the period. As Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations" had during an earlier period, "Principles" came to dominate economics teaching. In the case of Oxford University it was the standard text until 1919, when it was replaced by Marshall's "Principles of Economics".


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In Karl Marx's critique of political economy, he mentioned Mill in the Grundrisse. Marx claimed that Mill's thinking posited the categories of capital in an ahistorical fashion.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill's main objection to Marxism focused on what he saw its destruction of competition. He wrote, "I utterly dissent from the most conspicuous and vehement part of their teaching—their declamations against competition." He was an egalitarian, but he argued more for equal opportunity and placed meritocracy above all other ideals in this regard. According to Mill, a socialist society would only be attainable through the provision of basic education for all, promoting economic democracy instead of capitalism, in the manner of substituting capitalist businesses with worker cooperatives. He says:


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill's major work on political democracy, "Considerations on Representative Government", defends two fundamental principles: extensive participation by citizens and enlightened competence of rulers. The two values are obviously in tension, and some readers have concluded that he is an elitist democrat, while others count him as an earlier participatory democrat. In one section, he appears to defend plural voting, in which more competent citizens are given extra votes (a view he later repudiated). However, in another chapter he argues cogently for the value of participation by all citizens. He believed that the incompetence of the masses could eventually be overcome if they were given a chance to take part in politics, especially at the local level.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill is one of the few political philosophers ever to serve in government as an elected official. In his three years in Parliament, he was more willing to compromise than the "radical" principles expressed in his writing would lead one to expect.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill was a major proponent of the diffusion and use of public education to the working class. He saw the value of the individual person, and believed that "man had the inherent capability of guiding his own destiny-but only if his faculties were developed and fulfilled", which could be achieved through education. He regarded education as a pathway to improve human nature which to him meant "to encourage, among other characteristics, diversity and originality, the energy of character, initiative, autonomy, intellectual cultivation, aesthetic sensibility, non-self-regarding interests, prudence, responsibility, and self-control". Education allowed for humans to develop into full informed citizens that had the tools to improve their condition and make fully informed electoral decisions. The power of education lay in its ability to serve as a great equalizer among the classes allowing the working class the ability to control their own destiny and compete with the upper classes. Mill recognized the paramount importance of public education in avoiding the tyranny of the majority by ensuring that all the voters and political participants were fully developed individuals. It was through education, he believed, that an individual could become a full participant within representative democracy.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: In "Principles of Political Economy", Mill offered an analysis of two economic phenomena often linked together: the laws of production and wealth and the modes of its distribution. Regarding the former, he believed that it was not possible to alter to laws of production, "the ultimate properties of matter and mind... only to employ these properties to bring about events we are interested". The modes of distribution of wealth is a matter of human institutions solely, starting with what Mill believed to be the primary and fundamental institution: Individual Property. He believed that all individuals must start on equal terms, with division of the instruments of production fairly among all members of society. Once each member has an equal amount of individual property, they must be left to their own exertion not to be interfered with by the state. Regarding inequality of wealth, Mill believed that it was the role of the government to establish both social and economic policies that promote the equality of opportunity.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Inheritance of capital and wealth plays a large role in development of inequality, because it provides greater opportunity for those receiving the inheritance. Mill's solution to inequality of wealth brought about by inheritance was to implement a greater tax on inheritances, because he believed the most important authoritative function of the government is taxation, and taxation judiciously implemented could promote equality.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: Mill demonstrated an early insight into the value of the natural world—in particular in Book IV, chapter VI of "Principles of Political Economy": "Of the Stationary State" in which Mill recognised wealth beyond the material, and argued that the logical conclusion of unlimited growth was destruction of the environment and a reduced quality of life. He concludes that a stationary state could be preferable to unending economic growth:


title: John Stuart Mill

text: I cannot, therefore, regard the stationary states of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally manifested towards it by political economists of the old school.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compel them to it.


title: John Stuart Mill

text: According to Mill, the ultimate tendency in an economy is for the rate of profit to decline due to diminishing returns in agriculture and increase in population at a Malthusian rate.


title: Pituitary gland

text: In vertebrate anatomy, the pituitary gland, or hypophysis, is an endocrine gland, about the size of a chickpea and weighing, on average, in humans. It is a protrusion off the bottom of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain. The hypophysis rests upon the hypophyseal fossa of the sphenoid bone in the center of the middle cranial fossa and is surrounded by a small bony cavity (sella turcica) covered by a dural fold (diaphragma sellae).


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anterior pituitary (or adenohypophysis) is a lobe of the gland that regulates several physiological processes including stress, growth, reproduction, and lactation. The intermediate lobe synthesizes and secretes melanocyte-stimulating hormone. The posterior pituitary (or neurohypophysis) is a lobe of the gland that is functionally connected to the hypothalamus by the median eminence via a small tube called the pituitary stalk (also called the infundibular stalk or the infundibulum).


title: Pituitary gland

text: Hormones secreted from the pituitary gland help to control growth, blood pressure, energy management, all functions of the sex organs, thyroid glands and metabolism as well as some aspects of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, water/salt concentration at the kidneys, temperature regulation and pain relief.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The pituitary gland, in humans, is oval in shape and is a pea-sized gland that sits in a protective bony enclosure called the sella turcica. It is composed of two lobes: anterior and posterior, with the intermediate lobe that joins the two regions. In many animals, these three lobes are distinct. The intermediate is avascular and almost absent in human beings. The intermediate lobe is present in many animal species, in particular in rodents, mice and rats, that have been used extensively to study pituitary development and function. In all animals, the fleshy, glandular anterior pituitary is distinct from the neural composition of the posterior pituitary, which is an extension of the hypothalamus.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The height of the pituitary gland ranges from 5.3 to 7.0 mm. The volume of the pituitary gland ranges from 200 to 440 mm.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anterior pituitary arises from an invagination of the oral ectoderm (Rathke's pouch). This contrasts with the posterior pituitary, which originates from neuroectoderm.


title: Pituitary gland

text: Endocrine cells of the anterior pituitary are controlled by regulatory hormones released by parvocellular neurosecretory cells in the hypothalamic capillaries leading to infundibular blood vessels, which in turn lead to a second capillary bed in the anterior pituitary. This vascular relationship constitutes the hypothalamo-hypophyseal portal system. Diffusing out of the second capillary bed, the hypothalamic releasing hormones then bind to anterior pituitary endocrine cells, upregulating or downregulating their release of hormones.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anterior lobe of the pituitary can be divided into the pars tuberalis (pars infundibularis) and pars distalis (pars glandularis) that constitutes ~80% of the gland. The pars intermedia (the intermediate lobe) lies between the pars distalis and the pars tuberalis, and is rudimentary in the human, although in other species it is more developed. It develops from a depression in the dorsal wall of the pharynx (stomal part) known as Rathke's pouch.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anterior pituitary contains several different types of cells that synthesize and secrete hormones. Usually there is one type of cell for each major hormone formed in anterior pituitary. With special stains attached to high-affinity antibodies that bind with distinctive hormone, at least 5 types of cells can be differentiated.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The posterior lobe develops as an extension of the hypothalamus, from the floor of the third ventricle. The posterior pituitary hormones are synthesized by cell bodies in the hypothalamus. The magnocellular neurosecretory cells, of the supraoptic and paraventricular nuclei located in the hypothalamus, project axons down the infundibulum to terminals in the posterior pituitary. This simple arrangement differs sharply from that of the adjacent anterior pituitary, which does not develop from the hypothalamus.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The release of pituitary hormones by both the anterior and posterior lobes is under the control of the hypothalamus, albeit in different ways.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anterior pituitary synthesizes and secretes hormones. All releasing hormones (-RH) referred to, can also be referred to as releasing factors (-RF).


title: Pituitary gland

text: These hormones are released from the anterior pituitary under the influence of the hypothalamus. Hypothalamic hormones are secreted to the anterior lobe by way of a special capillary system, called the hypothalamic-hypophysial portal system.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The posterior pituitary stores and secretes (but does not synthesize) the following important endocrine hormones:


title: Pituitary gland

text: All of the functions of the pituitary gland can be adversely affected by an over- or under-production of associated hormones.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The pituitary gland is important for mediating the stress response, via the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA axis) Critically, pituitary gland growth during adolescence can be altered by early life stress such as childhood maltreatment or maternal dysphoric behavior.


title: Pituitary gland

text: It has been demonstrated that, after controlling for age, sex, and BMI, larger quantities of DHEA and DHEA-S tended to be linked to larger pituitary volume. Additionally, a correlation between pituitary gland volume and Social Anxiety subscale scores was identified which provided a basis for exploring mediation. Again controlling for age, sex, and BMI, DHEA and DHEA-S have been found to be predictive of larger pituitary gland volume, which was also associated with increased ratings of social anxiety. This research provides evidence that pituitary gland volume mediates the link between higher DHEA(S) levels (associated with relatively early adrenarche) and traits associated with social anxiety. Children who experience early adrenarcheal development tend to have larger pituitary gland volume compared to children with later adrenarcheal development.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The Greek physician Galen referred to the pituitary gland by only using the (Ancient Greek) name ἀδήν, "gland". He described the pituitary gland as part of a series of secretory organs for the excretion of nasal mucus. Anatomist Andreas Vesalius translated ἀδήν with "glans, in quam pituita destillat", "gland in which slime ("pituita") drips". Besides this 'descriptive' name, Vesalius used "glandula pituitaria", from which the English name "pituitary gland" is ultimately derived.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The expression "glandula pituitaria" is still used as official synonym beside "hypophysis" in the official Latin nomenclature "Terminologia Anatomica". In the seventeenth century the supposed function of the pituitary gland to produce nasal mucus was debunked. The expression "glandula pituitaria" and its English equivalent "pituitary gland" can only be justified from a historical point of view. The inclusion of this synonym is merely justified by noting that the main term "hypophysis" is a much less popular term.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The anatomist Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring coined the name "hypophysis". This name consists of ὑπό ('under') and φύειν ('to grow'). In later Greek ὑπόφυσις is used differently by Greek physicians as "outgrowth". Sömmering also used the equivalent expression "appendix cerebri", with "appendix" as "appendage". In various languages, "Hirnanhang" in German and "hersenaanhangsel" in Dutch, the terms are derived from "appendix cerebri".


title: Pituitary gland

text: The division of the pituitary described above is typical of mammals, and is also true, to varying degrees, of all tetrapods. However, only in mammals does the posterior pituitary have a compact shape. In lungfish, it is a relatively flat sheet of tissue lying above the anterior pituitary, but in amphibians, reptiles, and birds, it becomes increasingly well developed. The intermediate lobe is, in general, not well developed in any species and is entirely absent in birds.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The structure of the pituitary in fish, apart from the lungfish, is generally different from that in other animals. In general, the intermediate lobe tends to be well developed, and may equal the remainder of the anterior pituitary in size. The posterior lobe typically forms a sheet of tissue at the base of the pituitary stalk, and in most cases sends irregular finger-like projection into the tissue of the anterior pituitary, which lies directly beneath it. The anterior pituitary is typically divided into two regions, a more anterior "rostral" portion and a posterior "proximal" portion, but the boundary between the two is often not clearly marked. In elasmobranchs there is an additional, "ventral lobe" beneath the anterior pituitary proper.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The arrangement in lampreys, which are among the most primitive of all fish, may indicate how the pituitary originally evolved in ancestral vertebrates. Here, the posterior pituitary is a simple flat sheet of tissue at the base of the brain, and there is no pituitary stalk. Rathke's pouch remains open to the outside, close to the nasal openings. Closely associated with the pouch are three distinct clusters of glandular tissue, corresponding to the intermediate lobe, and the rostral and proximal portions of the anterior pituitary. These various parts are separated by meningial membranes, suggesting that the pituitary of other vertebrates may have formed from the fusion of a pair of separate, but associated, glands.


title: Pituitary gland

text: Most armadillos also possess a neural secretory gland very similar in form to the posterior pituitary, but located in the tail and associated with the spinal cord. This may have a function in osmoregulation.


title: Pituitary gland

text: Although rudimentary in humans (and often considered part of the anterior pituitary), the intermediate lobe located between the anterior and posterior pituitary is important to many animals. For instance, in fish, it is believed to control physiological color change. In adult humans, it is just a thin layer of cells between the anterior and posterior pituitary. The intermediate lobe produces melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH), although this function is often (imprecisely) attributed to the anterior pituitary.


title: Pituitary gland

text: The intermediate lobe is, in general, not well developed in tetrapods, and is entirely absent in birds.


title: Zombieland

text: Zombieland is a 2009 American post-apocalyptic zombie comedy film directed by Ruben Fleischer in his theatrical debut and written by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The film follows a geeky college student (Jesse Eisenberg) making his way through a post-apocalyptic zombie apocalypse, meeting three strangers (Woody Harrelson, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin) along the way and together taking an extended road trip across the Southwestern United States in an attempt to find a sanctuary free from zombies.


title: Zombieland

text: The film premiered at Fantastic Fest on September 25, 2009, and was theatrically released on October 2, 2009, in the United States by Columbia Pictures. "Zombieland" was a critical and commercial success, grossing more than $75.6 million in U.S. and surpassing the 2004 film "Dawn of the Dead" as the top-grossing zombie film in the U.S. until "World War Z" in 2013. The film was extremely successful in home sales, grossing $54 million, which is half of the film's box office. A sequel, "", was released in 2019.


title: Zombieland

text: Two months have passed since a strain of mad cow disease mutated into "mad person disease" that became "mad zombie disease", which overran the entire United States (with the infection presumably spreading to the rest of the world), turning many Americans into vicious zombies. Survivors of the zombie epidemic have learned that growing attached to other survivors is not advisable because they could die at any moment, so many have taken to using their city of origin as nicknames.


title: Zombieland

text: A lonely college student is making his way from his college dorm in Austin, Texas, to Columbus, Ohio, to see whether his parents are still alive. Columbus encounters another survivor heading to Tallahassee, a hardened redneck. Tallahassee reluctantly allows Columbus to travel with him. He mentions to Columbus that he misses his puppy, "Buck", that was killed by zombies, as well as his addiction to Twinkies, which he actively tries to find.


title: Zombieland

text: The pair meets con artist sisters Wichita and Little Rock, who trick Tallahassee and Columbus into handing over their weapons by pretending that Little Rock is infected by the disease, then stealing their Escalade. The two men find a yellow Hummer H2 loaded with weapons and go after the sisters. However, the girls spring another trap for them and take them hostage. Tallahassee steals his gun back and has a stand-off with Wichita, until Columbus intervenes saying that they have bigger problems to worry about, resulting in an uneasy truce between them.


title: Zombieland

text: The sisters reveal that they are going to the Pacific Playland amusement park in Los Angeles, an area supposedly free of zombies. After learning his hometown has been destroyed, and his parents likely killed, Columbus decides to accompany the others. Along the trip, Columbus becomes attracted to Wichita, but is wary of a relationship due to his first experience with a zombie being a college dormmate he also had a crush on.


title: Zombieland

text: When the group reaches Hollywood, Tallahassee directs them to the mansion of his celebrity crush, Bill Murray, to stay for the night. Tallahassee and Wichita meet Murray himself, uninfected but disguised as a zombie so he can walk safely around town. They try playing a prank on Columbus and Little Rock by having him pretend to be a real zombie, only for Columbus to accidentally kill Murray. Columbus realizes during a game of Monopoly that "Buck" was actually Tallahassee's son, who had become infected and died as a result. While at Murray's mansion, Tallahassee bonds with Little Rock, with whom he was previously feuding. Despite Wichita's attraction to Columbus, she fears attachment and leaves with Little Rock for Pacific Playland the next morning. Columbus decides to go after Wichita and convinces Tallahassee to join him.


title: Zombieland

text: At Pacific Playland, the sisters activate all the rides and lights so they can enjoy the park, only to unwittingly draw the attention of a multitude of zombies in the surrounding area. A chase ensues, and just as the sisters are trapped on a drop tower ride, Tallahassee and Columbus arrive. Tallahassee lures the zombies away, creating a distraction for Columbus to get to the tower ride; both using the attractions to their advantage. Tallahassee eventually locks himself in a game booth, shooting zombies as they arrive. Columbus successfully evades and shoots through several zombies to reach the tower and help the girls down, but not before changing one of his rules for survival to conquer his fear of clowns while facing off against a clown zombie. As a show of gratitude, Wichita kisses Columbus and reveals her real name: Krista. As the group leaves Pacific Playland, Columbus realizes that without relating to other people, one might as well be a zombie and that he now has what he has always wanted—a family.


title: Zombieland

text: A running gag (and a central theme throughout the film) is the list of rules Columbus comes up with for surviving in the zombie-infested world. By the end of the film, his list has 33 rules, yet only a few are mentioned. A series of promotional videos starring Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg expanded on the list presented in the film.


title: Zombieland

text: The main characters do not use each other's real names, but identify themselves using place names (Columbus, Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock) that relate to them. This includes Columbus' neighbor, named 406 after her room, and his fictional sexual conquest Beverly Hills, as well as Sister Cynthia Knickerbocker, whom Columbus identifies as a "Zombie Kill of the Week" winner, and whose surname is actually an obsolete term for a citizen or inhabitant of New York City. The one exception is Murray playing himself. At the end of the film, Wichita tells Columbus that her real name is Krista.


title: Zombieland

text: Writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick stated that the idea for "Zombieland" had "lived in [their] heads" for four-and-a-half years. The story was originally developed in 2005 as a spec script for a television pilot in the summer of 2005.


title: Zombieland

text: Wernick stated, "We've got a long brainstorming document that still to this day gets updated on a near-weekly basis with ideas". Director Ruben Fleischer helped develop the script from a series into a self-contained feature by providing a specific destination to the road story, the amusement park. Earlier versions of the script called the protagonists Flagstaff and Albuquerque, rather than Columbus and Tallahassee, and the female characters were called Wichita and Stillwater.


title: Zombieland

text: The celebrity who would cameo as himself was written as a zombified, dancing Patrick Swayze, including references to highlights of Swayze's career, even including a recreation of the potter's wheel scene from "Ghost". Later versions of the script considered Sylvester Stallone, Joe Pesci, Mark Hamill, Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Bacon, Jean-Claude Van Damme or Matthew McConaughey as the celebrity. The actor cast in the part dropped out a week before filming, and Harrelson made a few calls and was able to get Bill Murray to play the part instead. According to Harrelson most of the scene was improvised. Harrelson accepted the role on four conditions, two of which were about casting and crew. The third condition required the film to have an environmentally conscious set. The fourth condition required that the director not eat dairy products for a week, a task which Fleischer described was "like for an alcoholic not to drink". He succeeded and maintained a vegetarian diet for 11 months.


title: Zombieland

text: Principal photography began February 2009 in Hollywood, California, with scenes being shot at Scream Fest Theme Park and other locations. Filming continued in March in Atlanta, Hapeville, Morrow, Decatur, Newnan and Powder Springs, Georgia, where actress Abigail Breslin celebrated her 13th birthday by adopting a shelter puppy. "Zombieland" was filmed in digital, using the Panavision Genesis digital camera and had a 41-day shooting schedule.


title: Zombieland

text: The theme-park scenes for the film's climax, Pacific Playland, were mostly shot in Valdosta's local theme park Wild Adventures Water and Theme Park. Some of the amusement rides prominently featured in the film include Pharaoh's Fury, the Double Shot (redubbed "Blast Off"), the Rattler, the Aviator, and the Bug Out. A haunted-house facade was constructed at the theme park, but the interior was filmed on location at Netherworld Haunted House outside Atlanta.


title: Zombieland

text: Special effects makeup designer Tony Gardner, who helped Rick Baker create the signature look of Michael Jackson's music video "Thriller" and has contributed to other Hollywood films such as "127 Hours", "Hairspray", and "There's Something About Mary", was brought on to design the look of the film's zombies. Michael Bonvillain, who was "Cloverfield"s cinematographer, was brought on for the "lively" hand-held camerawork. "Basically, it's the end of the world; the entire nation is zombies", stated Gardner. "And [the humans] are trying to get from the east coast to the west coast". For one shooting scene, Gardner said, "There were 160 zombies, in prosthetics, on set in an amusement park". He said it is "how you present yourself as a zombie that determines how people will react to you" and that "once the contact lenses go in", he thinks "all bets are off".


title: Zombieland

text: Gardner said he was excited about working on the film with first-time filmmaker Ruben Fleischer, who gave him free rein in his zombie design. "[We] are just trying to be real extreme with it", stated Gardner, "and trying to balance the scares out with the comedy". He described having to makeover physically attractive actors who usually benefit from their looks as "a little off-putting" after seeing some of them in their character makeup for the first time.


title: Zombieland

text: Harrelson had input into the wardrobe for his character, Tallahassee. "I never worked so long and hard on an outfit in my life," he stated. "What this guy wears is who he is. You want to get a sense of this guy as soon as you see him. So I pick out the necklaces, the sunglasses. But the hat? The minute you see that on Tallahassee, you buy him. He's real. And he's got a real cool hat". Harrelson's choice of headwear for Tallahassee came not just down to style, but also to his environmental passions: the distinctive hat is handmade in Brazil by a company called The Real Deal using recycled cargo-truck tarps and wire from old truck tires.


title: Zombieland

text: Shortly after finishing the filming of "Zombieland", Harrelson had an altercation with a TMZ photographer at New York City's LaGuardia Airport. His defense was that he was still in character and thought the cameraman was a zombie.


title: Zombieland

text: The special-effects team created several visual elements, including "The Rules for Survival", which appear on-screen as they are related to the audience by Columbus: "Do cardio", "Beware of bathrooms", "Check the back seat", and so forth. The texts are rendered in three dimensions. "When a previously stated rule becomes relevant—when nature calls, for instance—the relevant text pops up, occasionally getting splattered with blood." "Slate"'s Josh Levin said, "The pop-up bit works precisely because "Zombieland" unspools like a game—how can you survive a zombie horde armed with a shotgun, an SUV and a smart mouth?"


title: Zombieland

text: A trailer of "Zombieland" was released on June 18, 2009. Distributed by Columbia Pictures, the film was released on 2 October 2009, a week earlier than originally advertised.


title: Zombieland

text: "Zombieland" was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on February 2, 2010, on Blu-ray and DVD. The film was released on March 15, 2010 on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK. Select Best Buy stores sold a special edition on both DVD and Blu-ray with an additional disc featuring two featurettes. It was also released as a film for the PSP UMD.


title: Zombieland

text: As of January, 2020, the film had sold 2,816,504 DVDs and 623,782 Blu-ray Discs, totalling $37,048,110 and $16,970,383, respectively, for a total of $54,018,493 in North America.


title: Zombieland

text: Zombieland was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on October 1, 2019, a few weeks before was released in theatres.


title: Zombieland

text: The film debuted at number one at the box office in North America, with ticket sales of $24,733,155 over its opening weekend, averaging about $8,147 from 3,036 theaters, matching its production budget. It was credited as having the second-highest-grossing start on record for a zombie film behind the 2004 "Dawn of the Dead" remake, and as "the first American horror comedy in recent memory to find significant theatrical success". The film grossed $60.8 million in 17 days, becoming the top-grossing zombie film in history; the record was previously held by the "Dawn of the Dead" remake. It was later surpassed by "" which grossed over $290 million worldwide and "World War Z" which grossed over $540 million worldwide. "Zombieland" closed on December 13, 2009, with a final gross of $75,590,286 in North America and $26,801,254 in other territories for a worldwide gross of $102,391,540.


title: Zombieland

text: "Zombieland" received positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of based on reviews from critics, with a rating average of . The website's consensus reads: "Wickedly funny and featuring plenty of gore, "Zombieland" is proof that the zombie subgenre is far from dead." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average which assigns a normalized rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a score of 73 out of 100 based on 31 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore during the opening weekend, gave "Zombieland" an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Zombieland

text: Roger Ebert was surprised by "Zombieland"s ability to be significantly humorous while zombies remained the focus of the film, and felt that "all of this could have been dreary, but not here. The filmmakers show invention and well-tuned comic timing". He credited Bill Murray's cameo appearance as receiving the "single biggest laugh" of the year and gave the film 3 out of 4 stars.


title: Zombieland

text: Murray's cameo was called out for attention by other reviewers: Marc Savlov of the "Austin Chronicle" credited it as "the single most outrageously entertaining unexpected celebrity cameo of any film—genre or otherwise—" that he had seen in a "long, long time" and that while the film did little to advance the genre, its smart script and high action made it very enjoyable. Savlov categorized "Zombieland" as being "dead set against being dead serious" with its tonal pallor "ha[ving] more in common with a foreshortened "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" than with "28 Days" or "Weeks Later"".


title: Zombieland

text: The film's witty use of dialogue and popular culture was also praised by Ty Burr of "The Boston Globe", who said the film "makes no claims to greatness", but that what it "has instead—in spades—is deliciously weary end-of-the-world banter".


title: Zombieland

text: Michael Ordona of "Los Angeles Times" praised director Fleischer for "bring[ing] impeccable timing and bloodthirsty wit to the proceedings".


title: Zombieland

text: Some reviewers saw deeper levels in the plot and cinematography; cinematographer Michael Bonvillain was praised for capturing "some interesting images amid the postapocalyptic carnival of carnage, as when he transforms the destruction of a souvenir shop into a rough ballet", while Stephanie Zacharek of Salon.com said, "the picture is beautifully paced" and highlighted "a halcyon middle section where, in what could be viewed as a sideways homage to "Rebel Without a Cause", our rootless wanderers share a brief respite in an empty, lavish mansion".


title: Zombieland

text: Claudia Puig of "USA Today" said, "underlying the carnage in "Zombieland" is a sweetly beating heart", and, "This road movie/horror flick/dark comedy/earnest romance/action film hybrid laces a gentle drollness through all the bloody mayhem". "Entertainment Weekly"s Lisa Schwarzbaum concluded, "At the bone, "Zombieland" is a polished, very funny road picture shaped by wisenheimer cable-TV sensibilities and starring four likable actors, each with an influential following".


title: Zombieland

text: Josh Levin of "Slate" drew parallels with "Adventureland": in both films, Jesse Eisenberg tries to win over his dream girl, a girl who has been hardened by life, and both feature a theme park. He goes so far as to call the film "an undead "Adventureland"—a "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" for the Facebook generation".


title: Zombieland

text: "Time"'s Richard Corliss described the film as "an exhilarating ride, start to finish" and reasoned "Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg set a high bar for this subgenre with "Shaun of the Dead," but Reese, Wernick, and Fleischer may have trumped them". "This isn't just a good zombie comedy. It's a damn fine movie, period. And that's high praise, coming from a vampire guy", he stated.


title: Zombieland

text: Not all comparisons with "Shaun of the Dead" were favorable: Joshua Rothkopf of "Time Out New York" characterized the "extra injection of pop-culture neuroticism" as "the one innovation" of the film, declaring that while "Zombieland" was funny, it was not particularly scary and stated that it "simply isn't as witty as "Shaun of the Dead", forever the yuks-meet-yucks standard".


title: Zombieland

text: Similarly, "The Globe and Mail"s Rick Groen said "it's far more charming than chilling and way more funny than frightening", though he suggested that Rule No. 32 to 'enjoy the little things' was worth observing for a light comedy.


title: Zombieland

text: Manohla Dargis of "The New York Times" classified the film as "[a] minor diversion dripping in splatter and groaning with self-amusement" and lamented the lack of a real plot more concrete than a series of comedy takes on zombie-slaying.


title: Zombieland

text: The film's music was composed by David Sardy. The soundtrack was released on October 6, 2009, by Relativity Music Group.


title: Zombieland

text: Due to the film's success, writers Reese and Wernick always planned a possible sequel, with many more ideas they wanted to explore. In August 2016, Reese and Wernick confirmed that they were working on "Zombieland 2" and meeting with Woody Harrelson to discuss the film, while stating "all the cast is pretty excited."


title: Zombieland

text: The film, "Zombieland: Double Tap", featuring the return of the original cast, was released on October 18, 2019, the tenth anniversary of the original film's release, and was once again a critical and financial success.


title: Zombieland

text: In October 2011, it was reported that Fox Broadcasting Company and Sony Pictures were considering a television adaption of the series to be aired on CBS, with Paul Wernick and Rhett Reese writing the script, but with the main actors of the original film likely not returning. The television program was planned to begin in fall, 2012. These plans did not come to fruition. In January 2013, it was revealed that the casting call for the production just went out for the main characters, with a few changes to the movie for the show and the addition of two new characters, Atlanta and Ainsley.


title: Zombieland

text: In March 2013, it was announced that Amazon Studios had ordered a pilot episode. Reese, Wernick and Pollone were joined by Eli Craig, who directed the pilot. Tyler Ross plays Columbus, Kirk Ward plays Tallahassee, Maiara Walsh plays Wichita and Izabela Vidovic plays Little Rock. A new character named Detroit (voiced by Kendra Fountain) was introduced as an ex-OnStar operator, serving as the gang's navigator. The pilot was released in April 2013 on Lovefilm and at Amazon Video. On May 17, 2013, Rhett Reese, creator of the TV adaptation, announced that "Zombieland: The Series" would not be picked up to be a series by Amazon. Reese commented on the fan backlash, saying "I'll never understand the vehement hate the pilot received from die-hard Zombieland fans. You guys successfully hated it out of existence."


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the latter half of the 19th century after commercialization of the electric telegraph, the telephone, and electrical power generation, distribution, and use.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineering is now divided into a wide range of different fields, including computer engineering, systems engineering, power engineering, telecommunications, radio-frequency engineering, signal processing, instrumentation, photovoltaic cells, electronics, and optics and photonics. Many of these disciplines overlap with other engineering branches, spanning a huge number of specializations including hardware engineering, power electronics, electromagnetics and waves, microwave engineering, nanotechnology, electrochemistry, renewable energies, mechatronics/control, and electrical materials science.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineers typically hold a degree in electrical engineering or electronic engineering. Practising engineers may have professional certification and be members of a professional body or an international standards organization. These include the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) "(formerly the IEE)".


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineers work in a very wide range of industries and the skills required are likewise variable. These range from circuit theory to the management skills of a project manager. The tools and equipment that an individual engineer may need are similarly variable, ranging from a simple voltmeter to sophisticated design and manufacturing software.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electricity has been a subject of scientific interest since at least the early-17th-century. William Gilbert was a prominent early electrical scientist, and was the first to draw a clear distinction between magnetism and static electricity. He is credited with establishing the term "electricity". He also designed the versorium: a device that detects the presence of statically charged objects. In 1762 Swedish professor Johan Wilcke invented a device later named electrophorus that produced a static electric charge. By 1800 Alessandro Volta had developed the voltaic pile, a forerunner of the electric battery.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In the 19th century, research into the subject started to intensify. Notable developments in this century include the work of Hans Christian Ørsted who discovered in 1820 that an electric current produces a magnetic field that will deflect a compass needle, of William Sturgeon who, in 1825 invented the electromagnet, of Joseph Henry and Edward Davy who invented the electrical relay in 1835, of Georg Ohm, who in 1827 quantified the relationship between the electric current and potential difference in a conductor, of Michael Faraday (the discoverer of electromagnetic induction in 1831), and of James Clerk Maxwell, who in 1873 published a unified theory of electricity and magnetism in his treatise "Electricity and Magnetism".


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1782, Georges-Louis Le Sage developed and presented in Berlin probably the world's first form of electric telegraphy, using 24 different wires, one for each letter of the alphabet. This telegraph connected two rooms. It was an electrostatic telegraph that moved gold leaf through electrical conduction.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1795, Francisco Salva Campillo proposed an electrostatic telegraph system. Between 1803 and 1804, he worked on electrical telegraphy and in 1804, he presented his report at the Royal Academy of Natural Sciences and Arts of Barcelona. Salva's electrolyte telegraph system was very innovative though it was greatly influenced by and based upon two new discoveries made in Europe in 1800 – Alessandro Volta's electric battery for generating an electric current and William Nicholson and Anthony Carlyle's electrolysis of water. Electrical telegraphy may be considered the first example of electrical engineering. Electrical engineering became a profession in the later 19th century. Practitioners had created a global electric telegraph network, and the first professional electrical engineering institutions were founded in the UK and USA to support the new discipline. Francis Ronalds created an electric telegraph system in 1816 and documented his vision of how the world could be transformed by electricity. Over 50 years later, he joined the new Society of Telegraph Engineers (soon to be renamed the Institution of Electrical Engineers) where he was regarded by other members as the first of their cohort. By the end of the 19th century, the world had been forever changed by the rapid communication made possible by the engineering development of land-lines, submarine cables, and, from about 1890, wireless telegraphy.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Practical applications and advances in such fields created an increasing need for standardised units of measure. They led to the international standardization of the units volt, ampere, coulomb, ohm, farad, and henry. This was achieved at an international conference in Chicago in 1893. The publication of these standards formed the basis of future advances in standardisation in various industries, and in many countries, the definitions were immediately recognized in relevant legislation.


title: Electrical engineering

text: During these years, the study of electricity was largely considered to be a subfield of physics since the early electrical technology was considered electromechanical in nature. The Technische Universität Darmstadt founded the world's first department of electrical engineering in 1882 and introduced the first degree course in electrical engineering in 1883. The first electrical engineering degree program in the United States was started at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the physics department under Professor Charles Cross, though it was Cornell University to produce the world's first electrical engineering graduates in 1885. The first course in electrical engineering was taught in 1883 in Cornell's Sibley College of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanic Arts. It was not until about 1885 that Cornell President Andrew Dickson White established the first Department of Electrical Engineering in the United States. In the same year, University College London founded the first chair of electrical engineering in Great Britain. Professor Mendell P. Weinbach at University of Missouri soon followed suit by establishing the electrical engineering department in 1886. Afterwards, universities and institutes of technology gradually started to offer electrical engineering programs to their students all over the world.


title: Electrical engineering

text: During these decades use of electrical engineering increased dramatically. In 1882, Thomas Edison switched on the world's first large-scale electric power network that provided 110 volts — direct current (DC) — to 59 customers on Manhattan Island in New York City. In 1884, Sir Charles Parsons invented the steam turbine allowing for more efficient electric power generation. Alternating current, with its ability to transmit power more efficiently over long distances via the use of transformers, developed rapidly in the 1880s and 1890s with transformer designs by Károly Zipernowsky, Ottó Bláthy and Miksa Déri (later called ZBD transformers), Lucien Gaulard, John Dixon Gibbs and William Stanley, Jr. Practical AC motor designs including induction motors were independently invented by Galileo Ferraris and Nikola Tesla and further developed into a practical three-phase form by Mikhail Dolivo-Dobrovolsky and Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown. Charles Steinmetz and Oliver Heaviside contributed to the theoretical basis of alternating current engineering. The spread in the use of AC set off in the United States what has been called the "war of the currents" between a George Westinghouse backed AC system and a Thomas Edison backed DC power system, with AC being adopted as the overall standard.


title: Electrical engineering

text: During the development of radio, many scientists and inventors contributed to radio technology and electronics. The mathematical work of James Clerk Maxwell during the 1850s had shown the relationship of different forms of electromagnetic radiation including the possibility of invisible airborne waves (later called "radio waves"). In his classic physics experiments of 1888, Heinrich Hertz proved Maxwell's theory by transmitting radio waves with a spark-gap transmitter, and detected them by using simple electrical devices. Other physicists experimented with these new waves and in the process developed devices for transmitting and detecting them. In 1895, Guglielmo Marconi began work on a way to adapt the known methods of transmitting and detecting these "Hertzian waves" into a purpose built commercial wireless telegraphic system. Early on, he sent wireless signals over a distance of one and a half miles. In December 1901, he sent wireless waves that were not affected by the curvature of the Earth. Marconi later transmitted the wireless signals across the Atlantic between Poldhu, Cornwall, and St. John's, Newfoundland, a distance of .


title: Electrical engineering

text: Millimetre wave communication was first investigated by Jagadish Chandra Bose during 18941896, when he reached an extremely high frequency of up to 60GHz in his experiments. He also introduced the use of semiconductor junctions to detect radio waves, when he patented the radio crystal detector in 1901.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1897, Karl Ferdinand Braun introduced the cathode ray tube as part of an oscilloscope, a crucial enabling technology for electronic television. John Fleming invented the first radio tube, the diode, in 1904. Two years later, Robert von Lieben and Lee De Forest independently developed the amplifier tube, called the triode.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1920, Albert Hull developed the magnetron which would eventually lead to the development of the microwave oven in 1946 by Percy Spencer. In 1934, the British military began to make strides toward radar (which also uses the magnetron) under the direction of Dr Wimperis, culminating in the operation of the first radar station at Bawdsey in August 1936.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1941, Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, the world's first fully functional and programmable computer using electromechanical parts. In 1943, Tommy Flowers designed and built the Colossus, the world's first fully functional, electronic, digital and programmable computer. In 1946, the ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) of John Presper Eckert and John Mauchly followed, beginning the computing era. The arithmetic performance of these machines allowed engineers to develop completely new technologies and achieve new objectives.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In 1948 Claude Shannon publishes "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" which mathematically describes the passage of information with uncertainty (electrical noise).


title: Electrical engineering

text: The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen and Walter Houser Brattain while working under William Shockley at the Bell Telephone Laboratories (BTL) in 1947. They then invented the bipolar junction transistor in 1948. While early junction transistors were relatively bulky devices that were difficult to manufacture on a mass-production basis, they opened the door for more compact devices.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The first integrated circuits were the hybrid integrated circuit invented by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments in 1958 and the monolithic integrated circuit chip invented by Robert Noyce at Fairchild Semiconductor in 1959.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) was invented by Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at BTL in 1959. It was the first truly compact transistor that could be miniaturised and mass-produced for a wide range of uses. It revolutionized the electronics industry, becoming the most widely used electronic device in the world.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The MOSFET made it possible to build high-density integrated circuit chips. The earliest experimental MOS IC chip to be fabricated was built by Fred Heiman and Steven Hofstein at RCA Laboratories in 1962. MOS technology enabled Moore's law, the doubling of transistors on an IC chip every two years, predicted by Gordon Moore in 1965. Silicon-gate MOS technology was developed by Federico Faggin at Fairchild in 1968. Since then, the MOSFET has been the basic building block of modern electronics. The mass-production of silicon MOSFETs and MOS integrated circuit chips, along with continuous MOSFET scaling miniaturization at an exponential pace (as predicted by Moore's law), has since led to revolutionary changes in technology, economy, culture and thinking.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The Apollo program which culminated in landing astronauts on the Moon with Apollo 11 in 1969 was enabled by NASA's adoption of advances in semiconductor electronic technology, including MOSFETs in the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) and silicon integrated circuit chips in the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).


title: Electrical engineering

text: The development of MOS integrated circuit technology in the 1960s led to the invention of the microprocessor in the early 1970s. The first single-chip microprocessor was the Intel 4004, released in 1971. The Intel 4004 was designed and realized by Federico Faggin at Intel with his silicon-gate MOS technology, along with Intel's Marcian Hoff and Stanley Mazor and Busicom's Masatoshi Shima. The microprocessor led to the development of microcomputers and personal computers, and the microcomputer revolution.


title: Electrical engineering

text: One of the properties of electricity is that it is very useful for energy transmission as well as for information transmission. These were also the first areas in which electrical engineering was developed. Today electrical engineering has many subdisciplines, the most common of which are listed below. Although there are electrical engineers who focus exclusively on one of these subdisciplines, many deal with a combination of them. Sometimes certain fields, such as electronic engineering and computer engineering, are considered disciplines in their own right.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Power & Energy engineering deals with the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity as well as the design of a range of related devices. These include transformers, electric generators, electric motors, high voltage engineering, and power electronics. In many regions of the world, governments maintain an electrical network called a power grid that connects a variety of generators together with users of their energy. Users purchase electrical energy from the grid, avoiding the costly exercise of having to generate their own. Power engineers may work on the design and maintenance of the power grid as well as the power systems that connect to it. Such systems are called "on-grid" power systems and may supply the grid with additional power, draw power from the grid, or do both. Power engineers may also work on systems that do not connect to the grid, called "off-grid" power systems, which in some cases are preferable to on-grid systems. The future includes Satellite controlled power systems, with feedback in real time to prevent power surges and prevent blackouts.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Telecommunications engineering focuses on the transmission of information across a communication channel such as a coax cable, optical fiber or free space. Transmissions across free space require information to be encoded in a carrier signal to shift the information to a carrier frequency suitable for transmission; this is known as modulation. Popular analog modulation techniques include amplitude modulation and frequency modulation. The choice of modulation affects the cost and performance of a system and these two factors must be balanced carefully by the engineer.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Once the transmission characteristics of a system are determined, telecommunication engineers design the transmitters and receivers needed for such systems. These two are sometimes combined to form a two-way communication device known as a transceiver. A key consideration in the design of transmitters is their power consumption as this is closely related to their signal strength. Typically, if the power of the transmitted signal is insufficient once the signal arrives at the receiver's antenna(s), the information contained in the signal will be corrupted by noise, specifically static.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Control engineering focuses on the modeling of a diverse range of dynamic systems and the design of controllers that will cause these systems to behave in the desired manner. To implement such controllers, electronics control engineers may use electronic circuits, digital signal processors, microcontrollers, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Control engineering has a wide range of applications from the flight and propulsion systems of commercial airliners to the cruise control present in many modern automobiles. It also plays an important role in industrial automation.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Control engineers often use feedback when designing control systems. For example, in an automobile with cruise control the vehicle's speed is continuously monitored and fed back to the system which adjusts the motor's power output accordingly. Where there is regular feedback, control theory can be used to determine how the system responds to such feedback.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Control engineers also work in robotics to design autonomous systems using control algorithms which interpret sensory feedback to control actuators that move robots such as autonomous vehicles, autonomous drones and others used in a variety of industries.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electronic engineering involves the design and testing of electronic circuits that use the properties of components such as resistors, capacitors, inductors, diodes, and transistors to achieve a particular functionality. The tuned circuit, which allows the user of a radio to filter out all but a single station, is just one example of such a circuit. Another example to research is a pneumatic signal conditioner.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Prior to the Second World War, the subject was commonly known as "radio engineering" and basically was restricted to aspects of communications and radar, commercial radio, and early television. Later, in post-war years, as consumer devices began to be developed, the field grew to include modern television, audio systems, computers, and microprocessors. In the mid-to-late 1950s, the term "radio engineering" gradually gave way to the name "electronic engineering".


title: Electrical engineering

text: Before the invention of the integrated circuit in 1959, electronic circuits were constructed from discrete components that could be manipulated by humans. These discrete circuits consumed much space and power and were limited in speed, although they are still common in some applications. By contrast, integrated circuits packed a large number—often millions—of tiny electrical components, mainly transistors, into a small chip around the size of a coin. This allowed for the powerful computers and other electronic devices we see today.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Microelectronics engineering deals with the design and microfabrication of very small electronic circuit components for use in an integrated circuit or sometimes for use on their own as a general electronic component. The most common microelectronic components are semiconductor transistors, although all main electronic components (resistors, capacitors etc.) can be created at a microscopic level.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Nanoelectronics is the further scaling of devices down to nanometer levels. Modern devices are already in the nanometer regime, with below 100 nm processing having been standard since around 2002.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Microelectronic components are created by chemically fabricating wafers of semiconductors such as silicon (at higher frequencies, compound semiconductors like gallium arsenide and indium phosphide) to obtain the desired transport of electronic charge and control of current. The field of microelectronics involves a significant amount of chemistry and material science and requires the electronic engineer working in the field to have a very good working knowledge of the effects of quantum mechanics.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Signal processing deals with the analysis and manipulation of signals. Signals can be either analog, in which case the signal varies continuously according to the information, or digital, in which case the signal varies according to a series of discrete values representing the information. For analog signals, signal processing may involve the amplification and filtering of audio signals for audio equipment or the modulation and demodulation of signals for telecommunications. For digital signals, signal processing may involve the compression, error detection and error correction of digitally sampled signals.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Signal Processing is a very mathematically oriented and intensive area forming the core of digital signal processing and it is rapidly expanding with new applications in every field of electrical engineering such as communications, control, radar, audio engineering, broadcast engineering, power electronics, and biomedical engineering as many already existing analog systems are replaced with their digital counterparts. Analog signal processing is still important in the design of many control systems.


title: Electrical engineering

text: DSP processor ICs are found in many types of modern electronic devices, such as digital television sets, radios, Hi-Fi audio equipment, mobile phones, multimedia players, camcorders and digital cameras, automobile control systems, noise cancelling headphones, digital spectrum analyzers, missile guidance systems, radar systems, and telematics systems. In such products, DSP may be responsible for noise reduction, speech recognition or synthesis, encoding or decoding digital media, wirelessly transmitting or receiving data, triangulating positions using GPS, and other kinds of image processing, video processing, audio processing, and speech processing.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Instrumentation engineering deals with the design of devices to measure physical quantities such as pressure, flow, and temperature. The design of such instruments requires a good understanding of physics that often extends beyond electromagnetic theory. For example, flight instruments measure variables such as wind speed and altitude to enable pilots the control of aircraft analytically. Similarly, thermocouples use the Peltier-Seebeck effect to measure the temperature difference between two points.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Often instrumentation is not used by itself, but instead as the sensors of larger electrical systems. For example, a thermocouple might be used to help ensure a furnace's temperature remains constant. For this reason, instrumentation engineering is often viewed as the counterpart of control.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Computer engineering deals with the design of computers and computer systems. This may involve the design of new hardware. Computer engineers may also work on a system's software. However, the design of complex software systems is often the domain of software engineering, which is usually considered a separate discipline. Desktop computers represent a tiny fraction of the devices a computer engineer might work on, as computer-like architectures are now found in a range of embedded devices including video game consoles and DVD players. Computer engineers are involved in many hardware and software aspects of computing. Robots are one of the applications of computer engineering.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Photonics and optics deals with the generation, transmission, amplification, modulation, detection, and analysis of electromagnetic radiation. The application of optics deals with design of optical instruments such as lenses, microscopes, telescopes, and other equipment that uses the properties of electromagnetic radiation. Other prominent applications of optics include electro-optical sensors and measurement systems, lasers, fiber optic communication systems, and optical disc systems (e.g. CD and DVD). Photonics builds heavily on optical technology, supplemented with modern developments such as optoelectronics (mostly involving semiconductors), laser systems, optical amplifiers and novel materials (e.g. metamaterials).


title: Electrical engineering

text: Mechatronics is an engineering discipline which deals with the convergence of electrical and mechanical systems. Such combined systems are known as electromechanical systems and have widespread adoption. Examples include automated manufacturing systems, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, and various subsystems of aircraft and automobiles.


title: Electrical engineering

text: "Electronic systems design" is the subject within electrical engineering that deals with the multi-disciplinary design issues of complex electrical and mechanical systems.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The term "mechatronics" is typically used to refer to macroscopic systems but futurists have predicted the emergence of very small electromechanical devices. Already, such small devices, known as Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), are used in automobiles to tell airbags when to deploy, in digital projectors to create sharper images, and in inkjet printers to create nozzles for high definition printing. In the future it is hoped the devices will help build tiny implantable medical devices and improve optical communication.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In Aerospace engineering and robotics, an example is the most recent electric propulsion and ion propulsion.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineers typically possess an academic degree with a major in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, electrical engineering technology, or electrical and electronic engineering. The same fundamental principles are taught in all programs, though emphasis may vary according to title. The length of study for such a degree is usually four or five years and the completed degree may be designated as a Bachelor of Science in Electrical/Electronics Engineering Technology, Bachelor of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, Bachelor of Technology, or Bachelor of Applied Science, depending on the university. The bachelor's degree generally includes units covering physics, mathematics, computer science, project management, and a variety of topics in electrical engineering. Initially such topics cover most, if not all, of the subdisciplines of electrical engineering. At some schools, the students can then choose to emphasize one or more subdisciplines towards the end of their courses of study.


title: Electrical engineering

text: At many schools, electronic engineering is included as part of an electrical award, sometimes explicitly, such as a Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical and Electronic), but in others, electrical and electronic engineering are both considered to be sufficiently broad and complex that separate degrees are offered.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Some electrical engineers choose to study for a postgraduate degree such as a Master of Engineering/Master of Science (MEng/MSc), a Master of Engineering Management, a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Engineering, an Engineering Doctorate (Eng.D.), or an Engineer's degree. The master's and engineer's degrees may consist of either research, coursework or a mixture of the two. The Doctor of Philosophy and Engineering Doctorate degrees consist of a significant research component and are often viewed as the entry point to academia. In the United Kingdom and some other European countries, Master of Engineering is often considered to be an undergraduate degree of slightly longer duration than the Bachelor of Engineering rather than a standalone postgraduate degree.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In most countries, a bachelor's degree in engineering represents the first step towards professional certification and the degree program itself is certified by a professional body. After completing a certified degree program the engineer must satisfy a range of requirements (including work experience requirements) before being certified. Once certified the engineer is designated the title of Professional Engineer (in the United States, Canada and South Africa), Chartered engineer or Incorporated Engineer (in India, Pakistan, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Zimbabwe), Chartered Professional Engineer (in Australia and New Zealand) or European Engineer (in much of the European Union).


title: Electrical engineering

text: The advantages of licensure vary depending upon location. For example, in the United States and Canada "only a licensed engineer may seal engineering work for public and private clients". This requirement is enforced by state and provincial legislation such as Quebec's Engineers Act. In other countries, no such legislation exists. Practically all certifying bodies maintain a code of ethics that they expect all members to abide by or risk expulsion. In this way these organizations play an important role in maintaining ethical standards for the profession. Even in jurisdictions where certification has little or no legal bearing on work, engineers are subject to contract law. In cases where an engineer's work fails he or she may be subject to the tort of negligence and, in extreme cases, the charge of criminal negligence. An engineer's work must also comply with numerous other rules and regulations, such as building codes and legislation pertaining to environmental law.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Professional bodies of note for electrical engineers include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). The IEEE claims to produce 30% of the world's literature in electrical engineering, has over 360,000 members worldwide and holds over 3,000 conferences annually. The IET publishes 21 journals, has a worldwide membership of over 150,000, and claims to be the largest professional engineering society in Europe. Obsolescence of technical skills is a serious concern for electrical engineers. Membership and participation in technical societies, regular reviews of periodicals in the field and a habit of continued learning are therefore essential to maintaining proficiency. An MIET(Member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology) is recognised in Europe as an Electrical and computer (technology) engineer.


title: Electrical engineering

text: In Australia, Canada, and the United States electrical engineers make up around 0.25% of the labor force.


title: Electrical engineering

text: From the Global Positioning System to electric power generation, electrical engineers have contributed to the development of a wide range of technologies. They design, develop, test, and supervise the deployment of electrical systems and electronic devices. For example, they may work on the design of telecommunication systems, the operation of electric power stations, the lighting and wiring of buildings, the design of household appliances, or the electrical control of industrial machinery.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Fundamental to the discipline are the sciences of physics and mathematics as these help to obtain both a qualitative and quantitative description of how such systems will work. Today most engineering work involves the use of computers and it is commonplace to use computer-aided design programs when designing electrical systems. Nevertheless, the ability to sketch ideas is still invaluable for quickly communicating with others.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Although most electrical engineers will understand basic circuit theory (that is the interactions of elements such as resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, and inductors in a circuit), the theories employed by engineers generally depend upon the work they do. For example, quantum mechanics and solid state physics might be relevant to an engineer working on VLSI (the design of integrated circuits), but are largely irrelevant to engineers working with macroscopic electrical systems. Even circuit theory may not be relevant to a person designing telecommunication systems that use off-the-shelf components. Perhaps the most important technical skills for electrical engineers are reflected in university programs, which emphasize strong numerical skills, computer literacy, and the ability to understand the technical language and concepts that relate to electrical engineering.


title: Electrical engineering

text: A wide range of instrumentation is used by electrical engineers. For simple control circuits and alarms, a basic multimeter measuring voltage, current, and resistance may suffice. Where time-varying signals need to be studied, the oscilloscope is also an ubiquitous instrument. In RF engineering and high frequency telecommunications, spectrum analyzers and network analyzers are used. In some disciplines, safety can be a particular concern with instrumentation. For instance, medical electronics designers must take into account that much lower voltages than normal can be dangerous when electrodes are directly in contact with internal body fluids. Power transmission engineering also has great safety concerns due to the high voltages used; although voltmeters may in principle be similar to their low voltage equivalents, safety and calibration issues make them very different. Many disciplines of electrical engineering use tests specific to their discipline. Audio electronics engineers use audio test sets consisting of a signal generator and a meter, principally to measure level but also other parameters such as harmonic distortion and noise. Likewise, information technology have their own test sets, often specific to a particular data format, and the same is true of television broadcasting.


title: Electrical engineering

text: For many engineers, technical work accounts for only a fraction of the work they do. A lot of time may also be spent on tasks such as discussing proposals with clients, preparing budgets and determining project schedules. Many senior engineers manage a team of technicians or other engineers and for this reason project management skills are important. Most engineering projects involve some form of documentation and strong written communication skills are therefore very important.


title: Electrical engineering

text: The workplaces of engineers are just as varied as the types of work they do. Electrical engineers may be found in the pristine lab environment of a fabrication plant, on board a Naval ship, the offices of a consulting firm or on site at a mine. During their working life, electrical engineers may find themselves supervising a wide range of individuals including scientists, electricians, computer programmers, and other engineers.


title: Electrical engineering

text: Electrical engineering has an intimate relationship with the physical sciences. For instance, the physicist Lord Kelvin played a major role in the engineering of the first transatlantic telegraph cable. Conversely, the engineer Oliver Heaviside produced major work on the mathematics of transmission on telegraph cables. Electrical engineers are often required on major science projects. For instance, large particle accelerators such as CERN need electrical engineers to deal with many aspects of the project including the power distribution, the instrumentation, and the manufacture and installation of the superconducting electromagnets.


title: Botulism

text: Botulism is a rare and potentially fatal illness caused by a toxin produced by the bacterium "Clostridium botulinum". The disease begins with weakness, blurred vision, feeling tired, and trouble speaking. This may then be followed by weakness of the arms, chest muscles, and legs. Vomiting, swelling of the abdomen, and diarrhea may also occur. The disease does not usually affect consciousness or cause a fever.


title: Botulism

text: Botulism can be spread in several ways. The bacterial spores which cause it are common in both soil and water. They produce the botulinum toxin when exposed to low oxygen levels and certain temperatures. Foodborne botulism happens when food containing the toxin is eaten. Infant botulism happens when the bacteria develops in the intestines and releases the toxin. This typically only occurs in children less than six months old, as protective mechanisms develop after that time. Wound botulism is found most often among those who inject street drugs. In this situation, spores enter a wound, and in the absence of oxygen, release the toxin. It is not passed directly between people. The diagnosis is confirmed by finding the toxin or bacteria in the person in question.


title: Botulism

text: Prevention is primarily by proper food preparation. The bacteria, though not the spores, are destroyed by heating it to more than for longer than 5 minutes. Honey can contain the organism, and for this reason, honey should not be fed to children under 12 months. Treatment is with an antitoxin. In those who lose their ability to breathe on their own, mechanical ventilation may be necessary for months. Antibiotics may be used for wound botulism. Death occurs in 5 to 10% of people. Botulism also affects many other animals. The word is from Latin , meaning sausage.


title: Botulism

text: The muscle weakness of botulism characteristically starts in the muscles supplied by the cranial nerves—a group of twelve nerves that control eye movements, the facial muscles and the muscles controlling chewing and swallowing. Double vision, drooping of both eyelids, loss of facial expression and swallowing problems may therefore occur. In addition to affecting the voluntary muscles, it can also cause disruptions in the autonomic nervous system. This is experienced as a dry mouth and throat (due to decreased production of saliva), postural hypotension (decreased blood pressure on standing, with resultant lightheadedness and risk of blackouts), and eventually constipation (due to decreased forward movement of intestinal contents). Some of the toxins (B and E) also precipitate nausea, vomiting, and difficulty with talking. The weakness then spreads to the arms (starting in the shoulders and proceeding to the forearms) and legs (again from the thighs down to the feet).


title: Botulism

text: Severe botulism leads to reduced movement of the muscles of respiration, and hence problems with gas exchange. This may be experienced as dyspnea (difficulty breathing), but when severe can lead to respiratory failure, due to the buildup of unexhaled carbon dioxide and its resultant depressant effect on the brain. This may lead to respiratory compromise and death if untreated.


title: Botulism

text: Clinicians frequently think of the symptoms of botulism in terms of a classic triad: bulbar palsy and descending paralysis, lack of fever, and clear senses and mental status ("clear sensorium").


title: Botulism

text: Infant botulism (also referred to as floppy baby syndrome) was first recognized in 1976, and is the most common form of botulism in the United States. Infants are susceptible to infant botulism in the first year of life, with more than 90% of cases occurring in infants younger than six months. Infant botulism results from the ingestion of the "C. botulinum" spores, and subsequent colonization of the small intestine. The infant gut may be colonized when the composition of the intestinal microflora (normal flora) is insufficient to competitively inhibit the growth of "C. botulinum" and levels of bile acids (which normally inhibit clostridial growth) are lower than later in life.


title: Botulism

text: The growth of the spores releases botulinum toxin, which is then absorbed into the bloodstream and taken throughout the body, causing paralysis by blocking the release of acetylcholine at the neuromuscular junction. Typical symptoms of infant botulism include constipation, lethargy, weakness, difficulty feeding, and an altered cry, often progressing to a complete descending flaccid paralysis. Although constipation is usually the first symptom of infant botulism, it is commonly overlooked.


title: Botulism

text: Honey is a known dietary reservoir of "C. botulinum" spores and has been linked to infant botulism. For this reason, honey is not recommended for infants less than one year of age. Most cases of infant botulism, however, are thought to be caused by acquiring the spores from the natural environment. "Clostridium botulinum" is a ubiquitous soil-dwelling bacterium. Many infant botulism patients have been demonstrated to live near a construction site or an area of soil disturbance.


title: Botulism

text: Infant botulism has been reported in 49 of 50 US states (all save for Rhode Island), and cases have been recognized in 26 countries on five continents.


title: Botulism

text: Botulism can result in death due to respiratory failure. However, in the past 50 years, the proportion of patients with botulism who die has fallen from about 50% to 7% due to improved supportive care. A patient with severe botulism may require mechanical ventilation (breathing support through a ventilator) as well as intensive medical and nursing care, sometimes for several months. The person may require rehabilitation therapy after leaving the hospital.


title: Botulism

text: "Clostridium botulinum" is an anaerobic, Gram-positive, spore-forming rod. Botulinum toxin is one of the most powerful known toxins: about one microgram is lethal to humans when inhaled. It acts by blocking nerve function (neuromuscular blockade) through inhibition of the excitatory neurotransmitter acetylcholine's release from the presynaptic membrane of neuromuscular junctions in the somatic nervous system. This causes paralysis. Advanced botulism can cause respiratory failure by paralysing the muscles of the chest; this can progress to respiratory arrest. Furthermore, acetylcholine release from the presynaptic membranes of muscarinic nerve synapses is blocked. This can lead to a variety of autonomic signs and symptoms described above.


title: Botulism

text: In all cases, illness is caused by the botulinum toxin produced by the bacterium "C. botulinum" in anaerobic conditions and not by the bacterium itself. The pattern of damage occurs because the toxin affects nerves that fire (depolarize) at a higher frequency first.


title: Botulism

text: The most common form in Western countries is infant botulism. This occurs in infants who are colonized with the bacterium in the small intestine during the early stages of their lives. The bacterium then produces the toxin, which is absorbed into the bloodstream. The consumption of honey during the first year of life has been identified as a risk factor for infant botulism; it is a factor in a fifth of all cases. The adult form of infant botulism is termed "adult intestinal toxemia", and is exceedingly rare.


title: Botulism

text: Toxin that is produced by the bacterium in containers of food that have been improperly preserved is the most common cause of food-borne botulism. Fish that has been pickled without the salinity or acidity of brine that contains acetic acid and high sodium levels, as well as smoked fish stored at too high a temperature, presents a risk, as does improperly canned food.


title: Botulism

text: Food-borne botulism results from contaminated food in which "C. botulinum" spores have been allowed to germinate in low-oxygen conditions. This typically occurs in improperly prepared home-canned food substances and fermented dishes without adequate salt or acidity. Given that multiple people often consume food from the same source, it is common for more than a single person to be affected simultaneously. Symptoms usually appear 12–36 hours after eating, but can also appear within 6 hours to 10 days.


title: Botulism

text: Wound botulism results from the contamination of a wound with the bacteria, which then secrete the toxin into the bloodstream. This has become more common in intravenous drug users since the 1990s, especially people using black tar heroin and those injecting heroin into the skin rather than the veins. Wound botulism accounts for 29% of cases.


title: Botulism

text: Symptoms of botulism may occur away from the injection site of botulinum toxin. This may include loss of strength, blurred vision, change of voice, or trouble breathing which can result in death. Onset can be hours to weeks after an injection. This generally only occurs with inappropriate strengths of botulinum toxin for cosmetic use or due to the larger doses used to treat movement disorders. Following a 2008 review the FDA added these concerns as a boxed warning.


title: Botulism

text: The toxin is the protein botulinum toxin produced under anaerobic conditions (where there is no oxygen) by the bacterium "Clostridium botulinum".


title: Botulism

text: "Clostridium botulinum" is a large anaerobic Gram-positive bacillus that forms subterminal endospores.


title: Botulism

text: There are eight serological varieties of the bacterium denoted by the letters A to H. The toxin from all of these acts in the same way and produces similar symptoms: the motor nerve endings are prevented from releasing acetylcholine, causing flaccid paralysis and symptoms of blurred vision, ptosis, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, cramps, and respiratory difficulty.


title: Botulism

text: Botulinum toxin is broken into eight neurotoxins (labeled as types A, B, C [C1, C2], D, E, F, and G), which are antigenically and serologically distinct but structurally similar. Human botulism is caused mainly by types A, B, E, and (rarely) F. Types C and D cause toxicity only in other animals.


title: Botulism

text: In October 2013, scientists released news of the discovery of type H, the first new botulism neurotoxin found in forty years. However, further studies showed type H to be a chimeric toxin composed of parts of types F and A (FA).


title: Botulism

text: Some types produce a characteristic putrefactive smell and digest meat (types A and some of B and F); these are said to be proteolytic; type E and some types of B, C, D and F are nonproteolytic and can go undetected because there is no strong odor associated with them.


title: Botulism

text: When the bacteria are under stress, they develop spores, which are inert. Their natural habitats are in the soil, in the silt that comprises the bottom sediment of streams, lakes, and coastal waters and ocean, while some types are natural inhabitants of the intestinal tracts of mammals (e.g., horses, cattle, humans), and are present in their excreta. The spores can survive in their inert form for many years.


title: Botulism

text: Toxin is produced by the bacteria when environmental conditions are favourable for the spores to replicate and grow, but the gene that encodes for the toxin protein is actually carried by a virus or phage that infects the bacteria. Little is known about the natural factors that control phage infection and replication within the bacteria.


title: Botulism

text: The spores require warm temperatures, a protein source, an anaerobic environment, and moisture in order to become active and produce toxin. In the wild, decomposing vegetation and invertebrates combined with warm temperatures can provide ideal conditions for the botulism bacteria to activate and produce toxin that may affect feeding birds and other animals. Spores are not killed by boiling, but botulism is uncommon because special, rarely obtained conditions are necessary for botulinum toxin production from C. botulinum spores, including an anaerobic, low-salt, low-acid, low-sugar environment at ambient temperatures.