text: Despite the success of "Gladiator" in 2000, also starring Crowe, the historical epic had lost much of its popularity among general audiences by the time of the "Master and Commander" release. In 2003, the box office was largely dominated by escapist and fantasy films, such as "X2: X-Men United", "", and "". In addition to being more erudite, "Master and Commander" realistic and gruesome depiction of combat may have been too serious for audiences during the holiday season. O'Brian's novels also had little name recognition.


title: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

text: On review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes, 85% of 219 critics gave the film an overall positive review, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The site's critics consensus states: "Russell Crowe's rough charm is put to good use in this masterful adaptation of Patrick O'Brian's novel." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 81 out of 100 based on 42 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


text: Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars out of 4, saying that "it achieves the epic without losing sight of the human". "The Guardian"s Peter Bradshaw praised the film and Crowe's performance. "New York Times" critic A. O. Scott described the film as "stupendously entertaining". However, Jason Epstein, also writing for "The New York Times", criticized the film, taking issue with changes from the novel, Crowe's "one-dimensional action hero", and implausible events in the script.


text: Christopher Hitchens gave a mixed review: "Any cinematic adaptation of O'Brian must stand or fall by its success in representing this figure [Dr. Stephen Maturin]. On this the film doesn't even fall, let alone stand. It skips the whole project." (The film omits completely the fact that the doctor and naturalist is also a spy for England—a key plot element in the novels.) Hitchens nonetheless praised the action scenes, writing: "In one respect the action lives up to its fictional and actual inspiration. This was the age of Bligh and Cook and of voyages of discovery as well as conquest, and when HMS "Surprise" makes landfall in the Galapagos Islands we get a beautifully filmed sequence about how the dawn of scientific enlightenment might have felt."


text: "San Francisco Chronicle" film reviewer Mick LaSalle was generally downbeat and, after praising director Weir's handling of scenes with no dialogue, observed that "Weir is less surefooted as a screenwriter. Having not read any of O'Brian's novels, I can't say if the fault is in Weir's adaptation or in the source material, but halfway into 'Master and Commander,' the friendship of the captain and the doctor begins to seem schematic, as if all the positive traits that an individual could have were divided equally between these two guys, just so they can argue. Their interaction takes on a preening quality, reminiscent of the interaction of the 'Star Trek' characters four or five movies down the line. We come to realize that the specific adventure matters little except as a showcase for these personalities. Once that happens, the story involving the French ship loses much of its interest and all of its danger, and the movie starts taking on water. 'Master and Commander' stays afloat to the finish, but that's all that can be said."


text: At the 76th Academy Awards in 2004, "Master and Commander" received ten nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Best Sound Mixing and Best Visual Effects. It won the awards for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Editing but lost the rest to "The Return of the King". The film also garnered Weir the BAFTA Award for Best Direction.


text: Weir, asked in 2005 if he would make a sequel, stated he thought it "most unlikely", and after internet rumors to the contrary, stated "I think that while it did well..."ish" at the box office, it didn't generate that monstrous, rapid income that provokes a sequel." In 2007 the film was included on a list of "13 Failed Attempts To Start Film Franchises" by The A.V. Club, noting that "this surely stands as one of the most exciting opening salvos in nonexistent-series history, and the Aubrey–Maturin novels remain untapped cinematic ground."


text: In December 2010, Crowe launched an appeal on Twitter to get the sequel made: "If you want a "Master and Commander" sequel I suggest you e-mail Tom Rothman at Fox and let him know your thoughts".


text: Film critic Scott Tobias wrote a positive retrospective article about this film in 2019, begrudging the fact that "", another sea-faring film also released in 2003, had led to a string of "Pirates of the Caribbean" fantasy films, but there was no demand for a sequel featuring Captain Jack Aubrey and deeply rooted in historical facts of the Napoleonic Wars, the Age of Sail and the Age of Discovery.


text: In summer 2020, "Vulture" noted that the "film is ripe for reappraisal." In January 2021, Crowe publicly defended the film from criticism.


text: In June 2021, it was reported that a second film is in development by 20th Century Studios, a prequel based on the first novel only, with Patrick Ness penning the script.


title: Dark triad

text: The dark triad is a psychological theory of personality, first published by Delroy L. Paulhus and Kevin M. Williams in 2002, that describes three notably offensive, but non-pathological personality types: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism, and sub-clinical psychopathy. Each of these personality types are called "dark" because each is considered to contain malevolent qualities.


title: Dark triad

text: All three dark triad traits are conceptually distinct although empirical evidence shows them to be overlapping. They are associated with a callous–manipulative interpersonal style.


title: Dark triad

text: High scores in these traits have been found to statistically increase a person's likelihood to commit crimes, cause social distress, and create severe problems for organizations, especially if they are in leadership positions. They also tend to be less compassionate, agreeable, empathetic, and satisfied with their lives, and less likely to believe they and others are good.


title: Dark triad

text: A factor analysis found that among the big five personality traits, low agreeableness is the strongest correlate of the dark triad, while neuroticism and a lack of conscientiousness were associated with some of the dark triad members. Agreeableness and the dark triad show correlated change over development.


title: Dark triad

text: In 1998, McHoskey, Worzel, and Szyarto provoked a controversy by claiming that narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are more or less interchangeable in normal samples. Delroy L. Paulhus and McHoskey debated these perspectives at a subsequent American Psychological Association conference, inspiring a body of research that continues to grow in the published literature. Paulhus and Williams found enough behavioral, personality, and cognitive differences between the traits to suggest that they were distinct constructs; however, they concluded that further research was needed to elucidate how and why they overlap.


title: Dark triad

text: The dark triad traits have significant theoretical and empirical overlap. All three traits share characteristics such as a lack of empathy, interpersonal hostility, and interpersonal offensiveness.


title: Dark triad

text: A number of measures have been developed to measure all three dark triad traits simultaneously, such as the Dirty Dozen and the Short Dark Triad (SD3). Most of these measures are questionnaire-style and either self-response or observer-response (e.g., ratings from supervisors or coworkers). Both methods can prove problematic when attempting to measure any socially-aversive trait. Self-responders may be motivated to lie, and with observer responses—particularly for Machiavellianism—individuals who are skilled at deceiving and manipulating others should be perceived as low in deceptiveness and manipulation by others, resulting in inaccurate ratings.


title: Dark triad

text: Despite these challenges and the acknowledged commonalities among the dark triad traits, there is evidence that the three traits are distinct.


title: Dark triad

text: Individuals who score high on narcissism display grandiosity, entitlement, dominance, and superiority. Narcissism has been found to correlate positively with extraversion and openness and negatively with agreeableness. Narcissism has also been found to have a significant correlation with psychopathy.


title: Dark triad

text: Assessment of narcissism required clinical interviews until the popular Narcissistic Personality Inventory was created by Raskin and Hall in 1979. Since the NPI, several other measures have emerged which attempt to provide self-report alternatives for personality disorder assessment. In addition, new instruments have been developed to study pathological narcissism as opposed to grandiose narcissism, which is what many argue the NPI measures.


title: Dark triad

text: People who score high on this trait, named after the political philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli, are callous, lack morality, and are excessively motivated by self-interest. They view interpersonal manipulation as the key for life success, and behave accordingly. Individuals who are measured to have a high level of Machiavellianism tend to have low agreeableness and conscientiousness.


title: Dark triad

text: While some psychologists argue that Machiavellianism seems to be indistinguishable from psychopathy and that scales of Machiavellianism seem to measure the psychopathy construct, There is enough to suggest that they are two separate traits, as Paulhus notes that psychopaths are impulsive and careless, which makes them different from High Machs who are calculating and plan for the long term.


title: Dark triad

text: Psychopathy is considered the most malevolent of the dark triad. Individuals who score high on psychopathy show low levels of empathy and high levels of impulsivity and thrill-seeking. With respect to the Big Five personality factors, psychopathy has been found to correlate negatively with agreeableness and conscientiousness.


title: Dark triad

text: Robert Hare revolutionized the study of psychopathy with his Psychopathy Checklist (PCL), and its revision (PCL-R). Hare noted that asking psychopaths to self-report on psychologically important matters does not necessarily provide accurate or unbiased data. However, efforts have been made to study psychopathy in the dimensional realm using self-reported instruments, as with the Levenson Primary and Secondary Psychopathy Scales, The Psychopathic Personality Inventory, and the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale.


title: Dark triad

text: Several researchers have suggested expanding the dark triad to contain a fourth dark trait: sadism. It is defined as the enjoyment of cruelty, and is the most common addition. While sadism is highly correlated with the dark triad, researchers have shown that sadism predicts anti-social behavior beyond the dark triad. Sadism shares common characteristics with psychopathy and antisocial behavior (lack of empathy, readiness for emotional involvement, inflicting suffering), although Reidy et al. (2011) showed that sadism distinctively predicted unprovoked aggression separate from psychopathy.


title: Dark triad

text: Furthermore, sadism predicted delinquent behavior separately from the other dark triad traits when evaluating high school students.


title: Dark triad

text: Harmful behavior against living creatures, brutal and destructive amoral dispositions, and criminal recidivism were additionally more prominently predicted by sadism than psychopathic traits.


title: Dark triad

text: Studies on how sadists gain pleasure from cruelty to subjects were applied towards testing people who possessed dark triad traits. Results showed that only people exhibiting traits of sadism derived a sense of pleasure from acts of cruelty, concluding that sadism encompasses distinctly cruel traits not covered by the rest of the dark triad, therefore deserving of its position within the dark tetrad.


title: Dark triad

text: The vulnerable dark triad comprises three related and similar constructs: vulnerable narcissism, sociopathy, and borderline personality disorder. A study found that these three constructs are significantly related to one another and manifest similar nomological networks. Although the vulnerable dark triad members are related to negative emotionality and antagonistic interpersonal styles, they are also related to introversion and disinhibition; however, these findings are based largely on the reports of parents of white undergraduate students rather than information gleaned from clinical evaluation.


title: Dark triad

text: In general, clinicians view narcissism and psychopathy as pathological. Given the dimensional model of narcissism and psychopathy, these traits are present at the subclinical level, which is a less severe form of clinical narcissism and psychopathy. People with subclinical traits can be identified using self-report assessments that are appropriate for the general population. In the general population, the prevalence rates for sub-clinical and clinical psychopathy are estimated at 1% and 0.2%, respectively.


title: Dark triad

text: Machiavellianism has never been referenced in any version of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders". It has been treated as strictly a personality construct. A study from 2016 notes that Machiavellianism seems to be indistinguishable from psychopathy and that scales of Machiavellianism seem to measure the psychopathy construct.


title: Dark triad

text: Oliver James identifies each of the three dark triadic personality traits as typically being prevalent in the workplace. Furnham (2010) has identified that the dark triad is related to the acquisition of leadership positions and interpersonal influence. In a meta-analysis of dark triad and workplace outcomes, Jonason and colleagues (2012) found that each of the dark triad traits were related to manipulation in the workplace, but each via unique mechanisms. Specifically, Machiavellianism was related with the use of excessive charm in manipulation, narcissism was related with the use of physical appearance, and psychopathy was related with physical threats. Jonason and colleagues also found that the dark triad traits fully mediated the relationship between gender and workplace manipulation. The dark triad traits have also been found to be fairly well-represented in upper-level management and CEOs.


title: Dark triad

text: Recent studies have found that people who are identified as internet trolls tend to have dark personality traits and show signs of sadism, antisocial behavior, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. The 2013 case study suggested that there are a number of similarities between anti-social and flame trolling activities, and the 2014 survey indicated that trolling is a manifestation of everyday sadism. Both studies suggest that this trolling may be linked to bullying in both adolescents and adults. A 2021 study found that the dark triad's influence may be mediated by malicious motives, and that there is no strong connection between having these traits and engaging in trolling.


title: Dark triad

text: Youth who score higher in dark triad traits show higher amounts of violent delinquency, specifically with interpersonal violence. Individuals with low self control and dark triad traits showed more overall delinquency, however higher self control lowered the delinquency. Another study found that those who have admitted to stealing at some point in their life score higher on Machiavellianism and primary and secondary psychopathy. Those higher in psychopathy and Machiavellianism were shown to predict psychological abuse with intimate partner violence, however agreeableness was found to be the main factor.


title: Dark triad

text: There is a clear distinction in the methods of a cyber attack between each part of the dark triad. Psychopathy correlated with faster speeds of persistence and exploitation, Narcissism correlated with faster privilege escalation, persistence, and extraction, and Machiavellianism correlated with stealth. Individuals with higher levels of psychopathy are more likely to engage in cyber bullying, with some correlation to both narcissism and Machiavellianism. Individuals with dark triad traits were also found to be more likely to commit acts of online fraud, with each trait having different impacts on factors. Machiavellianism has impacts on opportunity and motivation, psychopathy has impacts on rationalization, and narcissism has impacts on perceptions of motivation and capabilities.


title: Dark triad

text: Dark triad characteristics correlate with support for various extremist ideologies. Support for the alt-right, which is prolifically associated with online trolling and harassment, and politically correct authoritarianism both correlate with all three traits as well as measures of entitlement. To a lesser extent, support for a more liberal form of political correctness correlates negatively with psychopathy. Dark triad characteristics correlate positively with out-group threat perceptions, anti-immigrant prejudice, and social dominance orientation, a psychological disposition toward group-based supremacy. Costello et al (2022) found that left- and right-wing authoritarianism correlate similarly with psychopathy.


title: Dark triad

text: In a similar manner to research on the Big Five personality traits, twin studies have been conducted in an effort to understand the relative contributions of genetic and environmental factors in the development of dark triad traits.


title: Dark triad

text: All three traits of the dark triad have been found to have substantial genetic components. It has also been found that the observed relationships between the three traits, and with the Big Five, are strongly driven by individual differences in genes. Within the triad, psychopathy and narcissism have both been found to be more inheritable than Machiavellianism.


title: Dark triad

text: Environmental factors contribute to the development of dark triad traits, although they have less influence than genetics. During childhood and adolescence, environmental factors that are not shared with siblings (such as friends or extracurricular activities) contribute to all three dark triad traits. However, only Machiavellianism is related to environmental factors that are shared with siblings.


title: Dark triad

text: Some researchers have interpreted these findings to mean that, of the three, Machiavellianism is the trait most likely to be influenced by the environment.


title: Dark triad

text: Evolutionary theory may also explain the development of dark triad traits. Despite the relationship of these traits with clinical disorders, some argue that adaptive qualities may accompany the maladaptive ones; their frequency in the gene pool requires at least some local adaptation. The everyday versions of these traits appear in student and community samples, where even high levels can be observed among individuals who manage to get along in daily life. Even in these samples, research indicates correlations with aggression, racism, and bullying among other forms of social aversiveness.


title: Dark triad

text: It has been argued that evolutionary behavior predicts not only the development of dark triad personalities, but also the flourishing of such personalities. Indeed, it has been found that individuals demonstrating dark triad personality can be highly successful in society. However, this success is typically short-lived. The main evolutionary argument behind the dark triad traits emphasizes mating strategies. This argument is based on life history theory, which proposes that individuals differ in reproductive strategies; an emphasis on mating is termed a "fast life" strategy, while an emphasis on parenting is termed a "slow reproductive" strategy. There is some evidence that the dark triad traits are related to fast life history strategies; however, there have been some mixed results, and not all three dark triad traits have been related to this strategy. A more detailed approach has attempted to account for some of these mixed results by analyzing the traits at a finer level of detail. These researchers found that while some components of the dark triad are related to a fast life strategy, other components are related to slow reproductive strategies.


title: Dark triad

text: Studies have suggested that, on average, those who exhibit the dark triad of personality traits have an accelerated mating strategy, reporting more sex partners, more favorable attitudes towards casual sex, lowered standards in their short-term mates, a tendency to steal or poach mates from others, more risk-taking in the form of substance abuse, a tendency to prefer immediate but smaller amounts of money over delayed but larger amounts of money, limited self-control and greater incidence of ADHD symptoms, and a pragmatic and game-playing romance style. These traits have been identified as part of a fast life strategy that appears to be enacted by an exploitative, opportunistic, and protean approach to life in general and at work.


title: Dark triad

text: The evidence is mixed regarding the exact link between the dark triad and reproductive success. For example, there is a lack of empirical evidence for reproductive success in the case of psychopathy. Additionally, these traits are not universally short-term-oriented nor are they all impulsive. Furthermore, much of the research reported pertaining to the dark triad cited in the above paragraph is based on statistical procedures that assume the dark triad is a single construct, in spite of genetic and meta-analytic evidence to the contrary.


title: Dark triad

text: Several academic studies have found evidence that people with dark triad personalities are judged as slightly better-looking than average on first sight. Two studies have determined that this is because people with dark triad traits put more effort into their appearance, and the difference in attractiveness disappears when "dressed down" with bland clothing and without makeup. Two more studies found that only narcissistic subjects were judged to be better-looking, but the other dark triad traits of Machiavellianism and psychopathy had no correlation with looks. Facial features associated with dark triad traits tend to be rated as less attractive.


title: Dark triad

text: The most pronounced group difference is in gender: numerous studies have shown that men tend to score higher than women on narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, although the magnitude of the difference varies across traits, the measurement instruments, and the age of the participants. One interesting finding related to narcissism—albeit one based on non-representative samples—is that while men continue to score higher than women, it seems that the gender gap has shrunk considerably when comparing cohort data from 1992 and 2006. More specifically, the aforementioned findings indicate that there has been a general increase in levels of narcissism over time among college students of both sexes, but comparatively, the average level of narcissism in women has increased more than the average level of narcissism in men.


title: Dark triad

text: There is far less information available on race differences in dark triad traits, and the data that is available is not representative of the population at-large. For instance, a 2008 research study using undergraduate participants found that Caucasians reported higher levels of narcissism relative to Asians. Similarly, another 2008 study using undergraduate participants found that Caucasians tended to score slightly higher than non-Caucasians on Machiavellianism. When attempting to discern whether there are ethnic differences in psychopathy, researchers have addressed the issue using different measurement instruments (e.g., the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale and The Psychopathic Personality Inventory), but no race differences have been found regardless of the measure used. Additionally, when comparing Caucasians and African Americans from correctional, substance abuse, and psychiatric samples—groups with typically high prevalence rates of psychopathy—researchers again failed to find any meaningful group differences in psychopathy. However, in controversial research conducted by Richard Lynn, a substantial racial difference in psychopathy was found. Lynn proposes "that there are racial and ethnic differences in psychopathic personality conceptualised as a continuously distributed trait, such that high values of the trait are present in blacks and Native Americans, intermediate values in Hispanics, lower values in whites and the lowest values in East Asians." However this research has been heavily criticized for not distinguishing between psychopathy and other anti-social behaviors, confusing between personality and behavioral concepts of psychopathy and presuming rather than demonstrating genetic or evolutionary causes for supposed disparities.


title: Dark triad

text: The focal variable when analyzing generational or cohort differences in dark triad traits has tended to be narcissism, arising from the hypothesis that so-called "Generation Me" or "Generation Entitlement" would exhibit higher levels of narcissism than previous generations. Indeed, based on analyses of responses to the Narcissistic Personality Inventory collected from over 16,000 U.S. undergraduate students between 1979 and 2006, it was concluded that average levels of narcissism had increased over time. Similar results were obtained in a follow-up study that analyzed the changes within each college campus. However, a 2017 study found little evidence of strong or widespread cohort-linked changes in disposition or behavioral strategies, although they did find some indications that the current generation is more cynical and less trusting.


title: Dark triad

text: An alternative perspective explored group differences in the dark triad and how they relate to positive emotion. Applying structural equation modeling and Latent Profile Analysis, a type of mixture model, to establish patterns in UK, US, and Canadian students, four groups were found: "unhappy but not narcissistic", "vulnerable narcissism", "happy non-narcissism" and "grandiose narcissism". Some extrapolations on how a person might deal with these groups of individuals in practice have been suggested.


title: Dark triad

text: The five factor model of personality has significant relationships with the dark triad combined and with each of the dark triad's traits. The dark triad overall is negatively related to both agreeableness and conscientiousness. More specifically, Machiavellianism captures a suspicious versus trusting view of human nature which is also captured by the Trust sub-scale on the agreeableness trait. Extraversion captures similar aspects of assertiveness, dominance, and self-importance as narcissism. Narcissism also is positively related to the achievement striving and competence aspects of Conscientiousness. Psychopathy has the strongest correlations with low dutifulness and deliberation aspects of Conscientiousness.


title: Dark triad

text: The honesty–humility factor from the HEXACO model of personality is used to measure sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, and modesty. Honesty–Humility has been found to be strongly negatively correlated to the dark triad traits. Likewise, all three dark triad traits are strongly negatively correlated with Honesty–Humility. The conceptual overlap of the three traits which represents a tendency to manipulate and exploit others for personal gain defines the negative pole of the honesty–humility factor. Typically, any positive effects from the Dark Triad and low Honesty–Humility occur at the individual level, that is, any benefits are conferred onto the one with the traits (e.g., successful mating, obtainment of leadership positions) and not onto others or society at large.


title: Dark triad

text: Influenced by the dark triad, Scott Barry Kaufman proposed a light triad of personality traits: humanism, Kantianism, and faith in humanity. High scorers on humanism are more likely to value others' dignity and self worth. High scorers on Kantianism are more likely to see others as people, not as a means to an end. High scorers for faith in humanity are more likely to believe others are fundamentally good. When comparing individuals who take both dark triad and light triad tests, the average person was more likely to exhibit light triad traits. This test is not an inversion of dark triad tests, as Kaufman instead focused on developing characteristics that were conceptually opposite from the dark triad. A reliable measure of the light triad traits was developed, and demonstrated that they are not simply the opposite of the dark triad's Big Five and HEXACO model traits. The light triad predicts positive and negative outcomes regarding Agreeableness and Honesty-Humility personality traits, and expands on understanding the dark triad as a useful contrasting analog.


title: Dark triad

text: Individuals who score high on light triad traits also report higher levels of religiosity, spirituality, life satisfaction, acceptance of others, belief that they and others are good, compassion, empathy, self-esteem, authenticity, sense of self, positive enthusiasm, having a quiet ego, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Additionally, those who score higher on the light triad scale are intellectually curious, secure in their attachments to others, and more tolerant to other perspectives. These individuals typically have less motives for achievement and self-enhancement (even though the light triad was positively related to productivity and competence). In contrast to the character strengths of the dark triad, the light triad was uncorrelated with bravery or assertiveness. Lack of such characteristics may be problematic for individuals attempting to reach more challenging goals and fully self-actualizing.


title: Dark triad

text: The Atlas of Personality, Emotion and Behaviour is a catalogue of 20,500 words descriptive of personality, emotion and behaviour. The words in the catalogue were scored according to a two dimensional matrix taxonomy with orthogonal dimensions of affiliation and dominance. Adjectives representing the behavioural patterns described by the Dark Triad were scored according to the atlas and visualised using kernel density plots in two dimensions. The atlas clearly delineates the three components of the Dark Triad, narcissism (green), Machiavellianism (blue), and psychopathy (red).


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Hillel Slovak (; April 13, 1962 – June 25, 1988) was an Israeli-American musician best known as the founding guitarist of the Los Angeles rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers, with whom he recorded two albums. His guitar work was rooted in funk and hard rock, and he often experimented with other genres, including reggae and speed metal. He is considered to have been a major influence on the Red Hot Chili Peppers' early sound.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Born in Haifa, Israel, he moved to Nahariya and later to a kibbutz, before emigrating to the United States with his family in 1967. Slovak met future bandmates Anthony Kiedis, Flea, and Jack Irons while attending Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. There, he formed the group What Is This? with Irons, Alain Johannes, and Todd Strassman; Flea later replaced Strassman.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak, Flea, Kiedis, and Irons founded Red Hot Chili Peppers in 1983, gaining popularity in Los Angeles through their energetic stage presence and spirited performances. Slovak eventually quit to focus on What is This?, which had been signed to a record deal, leaving the Red Hot Chili Peppers to record their 1984 debut album without him, including five songs he co-wrote. Slovak rejoined the Chili Peppers in 1985 and recorded the albums "Freaky Styley" (1985) and "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan" (1987) with them.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: During his career, Slovak developed a serious heroin addiction. He attempted to quit many times but died of an overdose on June 25, 1988, at age 26. Several Red Hot Chili Peppers songs have been written as tributes to Slovak, including "Knock Me Down", "My Lovely Man", and "Feasting on the Flowers". In 1999, his brother James published a book, "Behind the Sun: The Diary and Art of Hillel Slovak", which features Slovak's diaries and paintings. Slovak was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on April 14, 2012, with his brother accepting the award on his behalf.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Hillel Slovak was born in Haifa, Israel, to Jewish parents who were survivors of the Holocaust. His mother was originally from Poland while his father grew up in Yugoslavia. They settled in the Queens borough of New York City, then in 1967 relocated to Southern California. As a child, Slovak developed an interest in art, and often spent time painting with his mother, Esther. He attended Laurel Elementary School in West Hollywood and Bancroft Jr. High School in Hollywood, where he met future bandmates Jack Irons and Michael "Flea" Balzary. Slovak received his first guitar at age 13 as a bar mitzvah present, and regularly played the instrument into the late hours of the night. During this time, he was highly influenced by hard rock music such as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Kiss.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: As a freshman at Fairfax High School, Slovak formed a band with Irons on drums and two other high school friends, Alain Johannes and Todd Strassman. They called their band Chain Reaction, then changed the name to Anthem after their first gig. After one of the group's shows, Slovak met audience member Anthony Kiedis, and invited him to his house for a snack. Kiedis later described the experience in his autobiography "Scar Tissue": "Within a few minutes of hanging out with Hillel, I sensed that he was absolutely different from most of the people I'd spent time with ... He understood a lot about music, he was a great visual artist, and he had a sense of self and a calm about him that were just riveting." Slovak, Kiedis and Flea became best friends and often used LSD, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine recreationally.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: The original bassist for Anthem, which renamed to Anthym, was deemed unsatisfactory, so Slovak began teaching Flea to play bass. Following several months of commitment to the instrument, Flea developed proficiency and a strong musical chemistry with Slovak. When Strassman saw Flea playing Anthym songs on his equipment he quit the band, with Flea quickly replacing him. Shortly afterwards Anthym entered a local Battle of the Bands contest and won second place. Anthym started to play at local nightclubs, despite the fact that the members were all underage. After graduating from high school, the band changed their name to What Is This?. Flea left Anthym around this time to accept an offer of playing bass in the prominent L.A. punk band Fear. What Is This? continued on and performed many shows along the California coast.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak, Kiedis, and Flea began to create their own music after finding inspiration in a punk-funk fusion band called Defunkt. The three formed a band with former Anthym-drummer Jack Irons called Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem. The band had only one song, entitled "Out in L.A.", and was formed for the purpose of playing the song once. The song was based on a guitar riff that Slovak wrote while "jamming" with Irons, and was not meant to become a real song until Kiedis decided to rap over the music. Following the group's first show at The Rhythm Lounge, the owner of the bar asked them to return, but with two songs instead of one. After several more shows, and the addition of several songs to their repertoire, the band's name was changed to Red Hot Chili Peppers.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: After the band started to gain popularity amongst the L.A. club scene, Kiedis began writing more lyrics. The lyrics would eventually become songs such as "Green Heaven" and "True Men Don't Kill Coyotes", and the band's concert repertoire quickly grew to nine songs as a result of months of playing local nightclubs and bars. Over the course of the next six months, the Red Hot Chili Peppers played many shows in L.A. clubs and became something of an underground hit. Slovak, Kiedis, and Flea moved into a small house in a high-crime area in Hollywood where they collaborated musically and continued their drug addictions. The threesome traveled to New York City to perform more shows and to "spread Chili Pepperdom". Shortly after the trip, Slovak moved out of the group's shared house to live with his girlfriend.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: The Red Hot Chili Peppers entered Bijou Studios to record a demo tape and subsequently secured a record deal with EMI. Flea left Fear to pursue the Red Hot Chili Peppers. At the same time, What is This? had also gotten a record deal. Since Slovak considered the Chili Peppers to merely be a side project and not a serious commitment, he left them to concentrate on What is This?. Flea ultimately respected the decision, but felt the band would suffer musically without him and Irons. He and Kiedis hired drummer Cliff Martinez and guitarist Jack Sherman to fill Irons' and Slovak's places, respectively. During the recording of the second What is This? album, Slovak became frustrated with the band and contacted Flea about rejoining the Red Hot Chili Peppers. This came at an opportune time, as the group was dissatisfied with Slovak's replacement, Jack Sherman. Kiedis felt that Sherman's guitar work "didn't have the same spirit" that Slovak contributed to the band's sound. When Flea asked Kiedis how he felt about Slovak rejoining the band, Kiedis responded by saying, "I'd give my firstborn son to get him back in the band." After the culmination of the promotional tour for their first album, Sherman was fired and Slovak rejoined the band.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak returned to the Chili Peppers for their second album, "Freaky Styley", which was released on August 16, 1985. What is This? had finally disbanded, and Irons returned to the Chili Peppers in mid 1986 after Martinez was fired. Flea, Slovak and Kiedis especially were involved in heavy drug use and their relationships became strained. Flea recalled that "it began to seem ugly to me and not fun; our communication was not healthy". Kiedis became dependent on heroin, leaving the rest of the group to work on much of the album's material by themselves. The band lived in Detroit for a portion of the recording of the album, where Kiedis and Slovak indulged in heavy cocaine use. When Slovak was under the influence, he would often wear brightly colored clothing and dance in a "shuffling" fashion, which became the inspiration for the song "Skinny Sweaty Man" from the band's next album. After Kiedis completed a stint in rehab, he rejoined the Red Hot Chili Peppers in Los Angeles to record their third album "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan". Slovak felt a deep connection to the album; he reflected in his diary "It was so fun. I'm so extremely proud of everybody's work—it is at times genius." Slovak was the subject of the songs "Skinny Sweaty Man", "Me and My Friends", & "No Chump Love Sucker". He was nicknamed "Slim Bob Billy", "Slim", or "Huckleberry", and throughout the albums Kiedis calls him by these nicknames before he starts a guitar solo. On "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan", Slovak experimented with different musical styles, playing the sitar on the song "Behind the Sun".


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak and Kiedis became addicted to heroin early in their careers, and Slovak often attempted to conceal his addiction from his friends and family. The band was generally more worried about Kiedis' addiction, which was much more open and noticeable to the other members, while Slovak according to Kiedis was "much more subtle and much more cunning in his disguise." During the tour in support of "Freaky Styley", Slovak's health began to deteriorate. Slovak and Flea would wrestle regularly on tour, but Slovak became too weak to participate. Kiedis commented on the situation: "I could tell that Hillel had no inner core of strength; he had been robbed by his addiction of the life force that allows you to at least defend yourself. It was a sad moment." A roadie of the band who was concerned for Slovak's health contacted his brother, James, who had been unaware that Slovak had ever used heroin.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Deciding to give sobriety a chance, both Kiedis and Slovak stopped using drugs prior to their European tour in support of "The Uplift Mofo Party Plan", and decided to help each other "steer clear" of heroin. An entry from Slovak's diary on January 21, 1988, discusses his attempts to "begin a new drug-free phase of life". During the tour both experienced intense heroin withdrawal, with Slovak much more unstable than Kiedis. His withdrawal symptoms took a toll on his ability to play his instrument; at one point Slovak had a mental breakdown and was unable to play a show, leaving the rest of the band to play an entire set with no guitar. He recovered a few days later, but was briefly kicked out of the band and replaced by DeWayne McKnight for a few shows. After a few days with McKnight, the band decided to give Slovak another chance, and he rejoined for the European leg of the tour. Kiedis attempted to take Slovak to drug addiction counseling, but Slovak had difficulty admitting that his addiction was serious enough to require medical help.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Upon returning home, Slovak isolated himself from the rest of his bandmates, and struggled to resist drug abuse without the support of his friends, and Kiedis in particular. He stopped painting and writing in his diary during this time, and little is known about his life during the weeks following the tour, aside from a phone call to his brother on June 24, in which Slovak told him that he was having difficulty staying clean despite his desire to stop taking heroin. A few weeks after the band returned from the tour, the members attempted to contact Slovak, but were unable to do so for several days. Slovak died in his Hollywood apartment on June 25, 1988. On June 27, 1988, his autopsy confirmed, authorities determined that he died due to a heroin overdose. He is interred at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Hollywood Hills, California.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Following his death Kiedis fled town and did not attend the funeral, considering the situation to be surreal. Although he found the death to be a shock, he was not initially "scared straight" and continued to use heroin. However, a few weeks later his friend convinced him both to check into rehab and visit Slovak's grave, which inspired him to get clean. Irons was unable to cope with his death and subsequently left the band, saying that he did not want to be part of something that resulted in the death of his friends. Irons has suffered from severe depression since his death. This did not end Irons' musical career however, as he would work with Johannes on several projects including the band Eleven, and would join Pearl Jam for a period in the 1990s after initially declining to join the band upon its founding. Kiedis and Flea decided to continue making music, hoping to continue what he "helped build". They hired DeWayne McKnight and D.H. Peligro as replacements shortly, who were later replaced by Chad Smith and John Frusciante.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak was primarily influenced by hard rock artists such as Jimi Hendrix, Santana, and Led Zeppelin. His playing method was markedly based on improvisation, a style commonly used in funk music. He was also noted he would often play with such force that his fingers would "come apart." Kiedis observed that his playing evolved during his time away from the group in What Is This?, with Slovak adopting a more fluid style featuring "sultry" elements as opposed to his original hard rock techniques. On "Uplift", Slovak experimented with genres outside of traditional funk music including reggae and speed metal. His guitar riffs would often serve as the basis of the group's songs, with the other members writing their parts to complement his guitar work. His melodic riff featured in the song "Behind the Sun" inspired the group to create "pretty" songs with an emphasis on melody. Kiedis describes the song as "pure Hillel inspiration". Slovak also used a talk box on songs such as "Green Heaven" and "Funky Crime", in which the sounds of his amplified guitar would be played through a tube into his mouth and then back into a microphone, creating psychedelic, voice-like effects. Slovak helped to incorporate new sounds in the group's work, including adding occasional drum machines. Despite the fact that the group billed itself as "The Organic Anti-Beat Box Band", Kiedis states that Slovak showed the group that drum machines could be used as artistic instruments.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: Slovak's work was one of the major contributing factors to Red Hot Chili Peppers' early sound. When Kiedis and Flea were searching for a new guitarist to replace Slovak, Kiedis likened the experience to "shopping for a new Mom and Dad" because of his influence over the band. Flea, who originally listened exclusively to jazz, added that Slovak introduced him to a new genre of music, saying that "it was Hillel who first got me into hard rockin. He was also a huge influence on a young John Frusciante, who would later replace him as guitarist in the band. Frusciante based a lot of his playing style on Slovak's work, and explained, "I learned everything I needed to know about how to sound good with Flea by studying Hillel's playing and I just took it sideways from there." Just like Slovak before him, Frusciante developed a heroin addiction. Unlike Slovak, Frusciante eventually managed to break and defeat the habit. The songs "Knock Me Down" (from "Mother's Milk"), "My Lovely Man" (from "Blood Sugar Sex Magik"), "This is the Place" (from "By the Way"), and "Feasting on the Flowers" (from "The Getaway") were written about or as tributes to Slovak. The band's 1987 cover version of Jimi Hendrix's song "Fire", recorded with Slovak and previously only released on the "Fight Like a Brave" single and "The Abbey Road EP", was included on 1989's "Mother's Milk" along with an image of one of Slovak's paintings inside the album's booklet. In 1999, a book titled "Behind the Sun: The Diary and Art of Hillel Slovak" was published. The book was authored by Slovak's brother, James Slovak, and features writings from his brother's diaries, paintings, photos and hand-written notes from Kiedis and Flea.


title: Hillel Slovak

text: On December 7, 2011, Red Hot Chili Peppers were announced as 2012 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Slovak's brother James accepted the award on his behalf and gave a speech honoring his brother. In an interview with "Rolling Stone", Kiedis expressed his excitement with Slovak's induction, explaining "He's a beautiful person that picked up a guitar in the 1970s and didn't make it out of the 1980s, and he is getting honored for his beauty". Flea echoed those comments on the same day: "Hillel grew up loving rock and roll so much, he hasn't been here for some time, but I know how much it would mean to him. It's a powerful thing."


title: Möbius strip

text: In mathematics, a Möbius strip, Möbius band, or Möbius loop is a surface that can be formed by attaching the ends of a strip of paper together with a half-twist. As a mathematical object, it was discovered by Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858, but it had already appeared in Roman mosaics from the third century CE. The Möbius strip is a non-orientable surface, meaning that within it one cannot consistently distinguish clockwise from counterclockwise turns. Every non-orientable surface contains a Möbius strip.


title: Möbius strip

text: As an abstract topological space, the Möbius strip can be embedded into three-dimensional Euclidean space in many different ways: a clockwise half-twist is different from a counterclockwise half-twist, and it can also be embedded with odd numbers of twists greater than one, or with a knotted centerline. Any two embeddings with the same knot for the centerline and the same number and direction of twists are topologically equivalent. All of these embeddings have only one side, but when embedded in other spaces, the Möbius strip may have two sides. It has only a single boundary curve.


title: Möbius strip

text: Several geometric constructions of the Möbius strip provide it with additional structure. It can be swept as a ruled surface by a line segment rotating in a rotating plane, with or without self-crossings. A thin paper strip with its ends joined to form a Möbius strip can bend smoothly as a developable surface or be folded flat; the flattened Möbius strips include the trihexaflexagon. The Sudanese Möbius strip is a minimal surface in a hypersphere, and the Meeks Möbius strip is a self-intersecting minimal surface in ordinary Euclidean space. Both the Sudanese Möbius strip and another self-intersecting Mobius strip, the cross-cap, have a circular boundary. A Möbius strip without its boundary, called an open Möbius strip, can form surfaces of constant curvature. Certain highly-symmetric spaces whose points represent lines in the plane have the shape of a Möbius strip.


title: Möbius strip

text: The many applications of Möbius strips include mechanical belts that wear evenly on both sides, dual-track roller coasters whose carriages alternate between the two tracks, and world maps printed so that antipodes appear opposite each other. Möbius strips appear in molecules and devices with novel electrical and electromechanical properties, and have been used to prove impossibility results in social choice theory. In popular culture, Möbius strips appear in artworks by M. C. Escher, Max Bill, and others, and in the design of the recycling symbol. Many architectural concepts have been inspired by the Möbius strip, including the building design for the NASCAR Hall of Fame. Performers including Harry Blackstone Sr. and Thomas Nelson Downs have based stage magic tricks on the properties of the Möbius strip. The canons of J. S. Bach have been analyzed using Möbius strips. Many works of speculative fiction feature Möbius strips; more generally, a plot structure based on the Möbius strip, of events that repeat with a twist, is common in fiction.


title: Möbius strip

text: The discovery of the Möbius strip as a mathematical object is attributed independently to the German mathematicians Johann Benedict Listing and August Ferdinand Möbius in However, it had been known long before, both as a physical object and in artistic depictions; in particular, it can be seen in several Roman mosaics from the In many cases these merely depict coiled ribbons as boundaries. When the number of coils is odd, these ribbons are Möbius strips, but for an even number of coils they are topologically equivalent to untwisted rings. Therefore, whether the ribbon is a Möbius strip may be coincidental, rather than a deliberate choice. In at least one case, a ribbon with different colors on different sides was drawn with an odd number of coils, forcing its artist to make a clumsy fix at the point where the colors did not Another mosaic from the town of Sentinum (depicted) shows the zodiac, held by the god Aion, as a band with only a single twist. There is no clear evidence that the one-sidedness of this visual representation of celestial time was intentional; it could have been chosen merely as a way to make all of the signs of the zodiac appear on the visible side of the strip. Some other ancient depictions of the ourobouros or of figure-eight-shaped decorations are also alleged to depict Möbius strips, but whether they were intended to depict flat strips of any type is


title: Möbius strip

text: Independently of the mathematical tradition, machinists have long known that mechanical belts wear half as quickly when they form Möbius strips, because they use the entire surface of the belt rather than only the inner surface of an untwisted belt. Additionally, such a belt may be less prone to curling from side to side. An early written description of this technique dates to 1871, which is after the first mathematical publications regarding the Möbius strip. Much earlier, an image of a chain pump in a work of Ismail al-Jazari from 1206 depicts a Möbius strip configuration for its drive Another use of this surface was made by seamstresses in Paris (at an unspecified date): they initiated novices by requiring them to stitch a Möbius strip as a collar onto a


title: Möbius strip

text: The Möbius strip has several curious properties. It is a non-orientable surface: if an asymmetric two-dimensional object slides one time around the strip, it returns to its starting position as its mirror image. In particular, a curved arrow pointing clockwise (↻) would return as an arrow pointing counterclockwise (↺), implying that, within the Möbius strip, it is impossible to consistently define what it means to be clockwise or counterclockwise. It is the simplest non-orientable surface: any other surface is non-orientable if and only if it has a Möbius strip as a Relatedly, when embedded into Euclidean space, the Möbius strip has only one side. A three-dimensional object that slides one time around the surface of the strip is not mirrored, but instead returns to the same point of the strip on what appears locally to be its other side, showing that both positions are really part of a single side. This behavior is different from familiar orientable surfaces in three dimensions such as those modeled by flat sheets of paper, cylindrical drinking straws, or hollow balls, for which one side of the surface is not connected to the other. However, this is a property of its embedding into space rather than an intrinsic property of the Möbius strip itself: there exist other topological spaces in which the Möbius strip can be embedded so that it has two For instance, if the front and back faces of a cube are glued to each other with a left-right mirror reflection, the result is a three-dimensional topological space (the Cartesian product of a Möbius strip with an interval) in which the top and bottom halves of the cube can be separated from each other by a two-sided Möbius In contrast to disks, spheres, and cylinders, for which it is possible to simultaneously embed an uncountable set of disjoint copies into three-dimensional space, only a countable number of Möbius strips can be simultaneously


title: Möbius strip

text: A path along the edge of a Möbius strip, traced until it returns to its starting point on the edge, includes all boundary points of the Möbius strip in a single continuous curve. For a Möbius strip formed by gluing and twisting a rectangle, it has twice the length of the centerline of the strip. In this sense, the Möbius strip is different from an untwisted ring and like a circular disk in having only one A Möbius strip in Euclidean space cannot be moved or stretched into its mirror image; it is a chiral object with right- or Möbius strips with odd numbers of half-twists greater than one, or that are knotted before gluing, are distinct as embedded subsets of three-dimensional space, even though they are all equivalent as two-dimensional topological More precisely, two Möbius strips are equivalently embedded in three-dimensional space when their centerlines determine the same knot and they have the same number of twists as each With an even number of twists, however, one obtains a different topological surface, called the


title: Möbius strip

text: The Möbius strip can be continuously transformed into its centerline, by making it narrower while fixing the points on the centerline. This transformation is an example of a deformation retraction, and its existence means that the Möbius strip has many of the same properties as its centerline, which is topologically a circle. In particular, its fundamental group is the same as the fundamental group of a circle, an infinite cyclic group. Therefore, paths on the Möbius strip that start and end at the same point can be distinguished topologically (up to homotopy) only by the number of times they loop around the strip.


title: Möbius strip

text: Cutting a Möbius strip along the centerline with a pair of scissors yields one long strip with two half-twists in it, rather than two separate strips. The result is not a Möbius strip, but instead is topologically equivalent to a cylinder. Cutting this double-twisted strip again along its centerline produces two linked double-twisted strips. If, instead, a Möbius strip is cut lengthwise, a third of the way across its width, it produces two linked strips. One of the two is a central, thinner, Möbius strip, while the other has two These interlinked shapes, formed by lengthwise slices of Möbius strips with varying widths, are sometimes called "paradromic"


title: Möbius strip

text: The Möbius strip can be cut into six mutually-adjacent regions, showing that maps on the surface of the Möbius strip can sometimes require six colors, in contrast to the four color theorem for the Six colors are always enough. This result is part of the Ringel–Youngs theorem, which states how many colors each topological surface The edges and vertices of these six regions form Tietze's graph, which is a dual graph on this surface for the six-vertex complete graph but cannot be drawn without crossings on a plane. Another family of graphs that can be embedded on the Möbius strip, but not n the plane, are the Möbius ladders, the boundaries of subdivisions of the Möbius strip into rectangles meeting These include the utility graph, a six-vertex complete bipartite graph whose embedding into the Möbius strip shows that, unlike in the plane, the three utilities problem can be solved on a transparent Möbius The Euler characteristic of the Möbius strip is zero, meaning that for any subdivision of the strip by vertices and edges into regions, the numbers formula_1, formula_2, and formula_3 of vertices, edges, and regions satisfy formula_4. For instance, Tietze's graph has formula_5 vertices, formula_6 edges, and formula_7 regions;


title: Möbius strip

text: There are many different ways of defining geometric surfaces with the topology of the Möbius strip, yielding realizations with additional geometric properties.


title: Möbius strip

text: One way to embed the Möbius strip in three-dimensional Euclidean space is to sweep it out by a line segment rotating in a plane, which in turn rotates around one of its For the swept surface to meet up with itself after a half-twist, the line segment should rotate around its center at half the angular velocity of the plane's rotation. This can be described as a parametric surface defined by equations for the Cartesian coordinates of its points,


title: Möbius strip

text: where one parameter formula_10 describes the rotation angle of the plane around its central axis and the other parameter describes the position of a point along the rotating line segment. This produces a Möbius strip of width 1, whose center circle has radius 1, lies in the formula_11-plane and is centered at The same method can produce Möbius strips with any odd number of half-twists, by rotating the segment more quickly in its plane. The rotating segment sweeps out a circular disk in the plane that it rotates within, and the Möbius strip that it generates forms a slice through the solid torus swept out by this disk. Because of the one-sidedness of this slice, the sliced torus remains


title: Möbius strip

text: A line or line segment swept in a different motion, rotating in a horizontal plane around the origin as it moves up and down, forms Plücker's conoid or cylindroid, an algebraic ruled surface in the form of a self-crossing Möbius It has applications in the design of


title: Möbius strip

text: A strip of paper can form a flattened Möbius strip in the plane by folding it at formula_12 angles so that its center line lies along an equilateral triangle, and attaching the ends. The shortest strip for which this is possible consists of three equilateral triangles, folded at the edges where two triangles meet. Its aspect ratiothe ratio of the strip's length to its widthis and the same folding method works for any larger aspect For a strip of nine equilateral triangles, the result is a trihexaflexagon, which can be flexed to reveal different parts of its For strips too short to apply this method directly, one can first "accordion fold" the strip in its wide direction back and forth using an even number of folds. With two folds, for example, a formula_13 strip would become a formula_14 folded strip whose cross section is in the shape of an 'N' and would remain an 'N' after a half-twist. The narrower accordion-folded strip can then be folded and joined in the same way that a longer strip


title: Möbius strip

text: The Möbius strip can also be embedded as a polyhedral surface in space or flat-folded in the plane, with only five triangular faces sharing five vertices. In this sense, it is simpler than the cylinder, which requires six triangles and six vertices, even when represented more abstractly as a simplicial complex. A five-triangle Möbius strip can be represented most symmetrically by five of the ten equilateral triangles of a four-dimensional regular simplex. This four-dimensional polyhedral Möbius strip is the only "tight" Möbius strip, one that is fully four-dimensional and for which all cuts by hyperplanes separate it into two parts that are topologically equivalent to disks or


title: Möbius strip

text: Other polyhedral embeddings of Möbius strips include one with four convex quadrilaterals as faces, another with three non-convex quadrilateral and one using the vertices and center point of a regular octahedron, with a triangular Every abstract triangulation of the projective plane can be embedded into 3D as a polyhedral Möbius strip with a triangular boundary after removing one of its an example is the six-vertex projective plane obtained by adding one vertex to the five-vertex Möbius strip, connected by triangles to each of its boundary However, not every abstract triangulation of the Möbius strip can be represented geometrically, as a polyhedral To be realizable, it is necessary and sufficient that there be no two disjoint non-contractible 3-cycles in the


title: Möbius strip

text: A rectangular Möbius strip, made by attaching the ends of a paper rectangle, can be embedded smoothly into three-dimensional space whenever its aspect ratio is greater than the same ratio as for the flat-folded equilateral-triangle version of the Möbius This flat triangular embedding can lift to a smooth embedding in three dimensions, in which the strip lies flat in three parallel planes between three cylindrical rollers, each tangent to two of the Mathematically, a smoothly embedded sheet of paper can be modeled as a developable surface, that can bend but cannot As its aspect ratio decreases toward formula_15, all smooth embeddings seem to approach the same triangular


title: Möbius strip

text: The lengthwise folds of an accordion-folded flat Möbius strip prevent it from forming a three-dimensional embedding in which the layers are separated from each other and bend smoothly without crumpling or stretching away from the Instead, unlike in the flat-folded case, there is a lower limit to the aspect ratio of smooth rectangular Möbius strips. Their aspect ratio cannot be less than even if self-intersections are allowed. Self-intersecting smooth Möbius strips exist for any aspect ratio above this Without self-intersections, the aspect ratio must be at


title: Möbius strip

text: For aspect ratios between this bound it is unknown whether smooth embeddings, without self-intersection, If the requirement of smoothness is relaxed to allow continuously differentiable surfaces, the Nash–Kuiper theorem implies that any two opposite edges of any rectangle can be glued to form an embedded Möbius strip, no matter how small the aspect ratio The limiting case, a surface obtained from an infinite strip of the plane between two parallel lines, glued with the opposite orientation to each other, is called the "unbounded Möbius strip" or the real tautological line bundle. Although it has no smooth embedding into three-dimensional space, it can be embedded smoothly into four-dimensional Euclidean


title: Möbius strip

text: The minimum-energy shape of a smooth Möbius strip glued from a rectangle does not have a known analytic description, but can be calculated numerically, and has been the subject of much study in plate theory since the initial work on this subject in 1930 by Michael Sadowsky. It is also possible to find algebraic surfaces that contain rectangular developable Möbius


title: Möbius strip

text: The edge, or boundary, of a Möbius strip is topologically equivalent to a circle. In common forms of the Möbius strip, it has a different shape from a circle, but it is unknotted, and therefore the whole strip can be stretched without crossing itself to make the edge perfectly One such example is based on the topology of the Klein bottle, a one-sided surface with no boundary that cannot be embedded into three-dimensional space, but can be immersed (allowing the surface to cross itself in certain restricted ways). A Klein bottle is the surface that results when two Möbius strips are glued together edge-to-edge, andreversing that processa Klein bottle can be sliced along a carefully chosen cut to produce two Möbius For a form of the Klein bottle known as Lawson's Klein bottle, the curve along which it is sliced can be made circular, resulting in Möbius strips with circular


title: Möbius strip

text: Lawson's Klein bottle is a self-crossing minimal surface in the unit hypersphere of 4-dimensional space, the set of points of the form formula_17 for Half of this Klein bottle, the subset with formula_18, gives a Möbius strip embedded in the hypersphere as a minimal surface with a great circle as its This embedding is sometimes called the "Sudanese Möbius strip" after topologists Sue Goodman and Daniel Asimov, who discovered it in the Geometrically Lawson's Klein bottle can be constructed by sweeping a great circle through a great-circular motion in the 3-sphere, and the Sudanese Möbius strip is obtained by sweeping a semicircle instead of a circle, or equivalently by slicing the Klein bottle along a circle that is perpendicular to all of the swept Stereographic projection transforms this shape from a three-dimensional spherical space into three-dimensional Euclidean space, preserving the circularity of its The most symmetric projection is obtained by using a projection point that lies on that great circle that runs through the midpoint of each of the semicircles, but produces an unbounded embedding with the projection point removed from its Instead, leaving the Sudanese Möbius strip unprojected, in the 3-sphere, leaves it with an infinite group of symmetries isomorphic to the orthogonal group the group of symmetries of a


title: Möbius strip

text: The Sudanese Möbius strip extends on all sides of its boundary circle, unavoidably if the surface is to avoid crossing itself. Another form of the Möbius strip, called the cross-cap or crosscap, also has a circular boundary, but otherwise stays on only one side of the plane of this making it more convenient for attaching onto circular holes in other surfaces. In order to do so, it crosses itself. It can be formed by removing a quadrilateral from the top of a hemisphere, orienting the edges of the quadrilateral in alternating directions, and then gluing opposite pairs of these edges consistently with this The two parts of the surface formed by the two glued pairs of edges cross each other with a pinch point like that of a Whitney umbrella at each end of the crossing the same topological structure seen in Plücker's


title: Möbius strip

text: The open Möbius strip is the relative interior of a standard Möbius strip, formed by omitting the points on its boundary edge. It may be given a Riemannian geometry of constant positive, negative, or zero Gaussian curvature. The cases of negative and zero curvature form geodesically complete surfaces, which means that all geodesics ("straight lines" on the surface) may be extended indefinitely in either direction.


title: Möbius strip

text: The minimal surfaces are described as having constant zero mean curvature instead of constant Gaussian curvature. The Sudanese Möbius strip was constructed as a minimal surface bounded by a great circle in a 3-sphere, but there is also a unique complete (boundaryless) minimal surface immersed in Euclidean space that has the topology of an open Möbius strip. It is called the Meeks Möbius after its 1982 description by William Hamilton Meeks, III. Although globally unstable as a minimal surface, small patches of it, bounded by non-contractible curves within the surface, can form stable embedded Möbius strips as minimal Both the Meeks Möbius strip, and every higher-dimensional minimal surface with the topology of the Möbius strip, can be constructed using solutions to the Björling problem, which defines a minimal surface uniquely from its boundary curve and tangent planes along this


title: Möbius strip

text: The family of lines in the plane can be given the structure of a smooth space, with each line represented as a point in this space.


title: Möbius strip

text: The resulting space of lines is topologically equivalent to the open Möbius One way to see this is to extend the Euclidean plane to the real projective plane by adding one more line, the line at infinity. By projective duality the space of lines in the projective plane is equivalent to its space of points, the projective plane itself. Removing the line at infinity, to produce the space of Euclidean lines, punctures this space of projective Therefore, the space of Euclidean lines is a punctured projective plane, which is one of the forms of the open Möbius The space of lines in the hyperbolic plane can be parameterized by unordered pairs of distinct points on a circle, the pairs of points at infinity of each line. This space, again, has the topology of an open Möbius


title: Möbius strip

text: These spaces of lines are highly symmetric. The symmetries of Euclidean lines include the affine transformations, and the symmetries of hyperbolic lines include the The affine transformations and Möbius transformations both form Lie groups, topological spaces having a compatible algebraic structure describing the composition of Because every line in the plane is symmetric to every other line, the open Möbius strip is a homogeneous space, a space with symmetries that take every point to every other point. Homogeneous spaces of Lie groups are called solvmanifolds, and the Möbius strip can be used as a counterexample, showing that not every solvmanifold is a nilmanifold, and that not every solvmanifold can be factored into a direct product of a compact solvmanifold These symmetries also provide another way to construct the Möbius strip itself, as a "group model" of these Lie groups. A group model consists of a Lie group and a stabilizer subgroup of its action; contracting the cosets of the subgroup to points produces a space with the same topology as the underlying homogenous space. In the case of the symmetries of Euclidean lines, the stabilizer of the consists of all symmetries that take the axis to itself. Each line formula_20 corresponds to a coset, the set of symmetries that map formula_20 to the Therefore, the quotient space, a space that has one point per coset and inherits its topology from the space of symmetries, is the same as the space of lines, and is again an open Möbius


title: Möbius strip

text: Beyond the already-discussed applications of Möbius strips to the design of mechanical belts that wear evenly on their entire surface, and of the Plücker conoid to the design of gears, other applications of Möbius strips include:


title: Möbius strip

text: Scientists have also studied the energetics of soap films shaped as Möbius strips, the chemical synthesis of molecules with a Möbius strip shape, and the formation of larger nanoscale Möbius strips using DNA origami.


title: Möbius strip

text: Two-dimensional artworks featuring the Möbius strip include an untitled 1947 painting by Corrado Cagli (memorialized in a poem by Charles Olson), and two prints by M. C. Escher: "Möbius Band I" (1961), depicting three folded flatfish biting each others' tails; and "Möbius Band II" (1963), depicting ants crawling around a lemniscate-shaped Möbius strip. It is also a popular subject of mathematical sculpture, including works by Max Bill ("Endless Ribbon", 1953), José de Rivera ("Infinity", 1967), and Sebastián. A trefoil-knotted Möbius strip was used in John Robinsons "Immortality" (1982). Charles O. Perry's "Continuum" (1976) is one of several pieces by Perry exploring variations of the Möbius strip.


title: Möbius strip

text: Because of their easily recognized form, Möbius strips are a common element of graphic design. The familiar three-arrow logo for recycling, designed in 1970, is based on the smooth triangular form of the Möbius as was the logo for the environmentally-themed Expo '74. Some variations of the recycling symbol use a different embedding with three half-twists instead of and the original version of the Google Drive logo used a flat-folded three-twist Möbius strip, as have other similar designs. The Brazilian Instituto Nacional de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA) uses a stylized smooth Möbius strip as their logo, and has a matching large sculpture of a Möbius strip on display in their building. The Möbius strip has also featured in the artwork for postage stamps from countries including Brazil, Belgium, the Netherlands, and


title: Möbius strip

text: Möbius strips have been a frequent inspiration for the architectural design of buildings and bridges. However, many of these are projects or conceptual designs rather than constructed objects, or stretch their interpretation of the Möbius strip beyond its recognizability as a mathematical form or a functional part of the architecture. An example is the National Library of Kazakhstan, for which a building was planned in the shape of a thickened Möbius strip but refinished with a different design after the original architects pulled out of the project. One notable building incorporating a Möbius strip is the NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is surrounded by a large twisted ribbon of stainless steel acting as a façade and canopy, and evoking the curved shapes of racing tracks. On a smaller scale, "Moebius Chair" (2006) by Pedro Reyes is a courting bench whose base and sides have the form of a Möbius strip. As a form of mathematics and fiber arts, scarves have been knit into Möbius strips since the work of Elizabeth Zimmermann in the early 1980s. In food styling, Möbius strips have been used for slicing bagels, making loops out of bacon, and creating new shapes for pasta.


title: Möbius strip

text: Although mathematically the Möbius strip and the fourth dimension are both purely spatial concepts, they have often been invoked in speculative fiction as the basis for a time loop into which unwary victims may become trapped. Examples of this trope include Martin Gardners "No-Sided Professor" (1946), Armin Joseph Deutschs "A Subway Named Mobius" (1950) and the film "Moebius" (1996) based on it. An entire world shaped like a Möbius strip is the setting of Arthur C. Clarke's "The Wall of Darkness" (1946), while conventional Möbius strips are used as clever inventions in multiple stories of William Hazlett Upson from the 1940s. Other works of fiction have been analyzed as having a Möbius strip–like structure, in which elements of the plot repeat with a twist; these include Marcel Proust "In Search of Lost Time" (1913–1927), Luigi Pirandello "Six Characters in Search of an Author" (1921), Frank Capras "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), John Barth "Lost in the Funhouse" (1968), Samuel R. Delanys "Dhalgren" (1975) and the film "Donnie Darko" (2001).


title: Möbius strip

text: One of the musical canons by J. S. Bach, the fifth of 14 canons (BWV 1087) discovered in 1974 in Bach's copy of the "Goldberg Variations", features a glide-reflect symmetry in which each voice in the canon repeats, with inverted notes, the same motif from two measures earlier. Because of this symmetry, this canon can be thought of as having its score written on a Möbius strip. In music theory, tones that differ by an octave are generally considered to be equivalent notes, and the space of possible notes forms a circle, the chromatic circle. Because the Möbius strip is the configuration space of two unordered points on a circle, the space of all two-note chords takes the shape of a Möbius strip. This conception, and generalizations to more points, is a significant application of orbifolds to music theory. Modern musical groups taking their name from the Möbius strip include American electronic rock trio Mobius Band and Norwegian progressive rock band Ring Van Möbius.


title: Möbius strip

text: Möbius strips and their properties have been used in the design of stage magic. One such trick, known as the Afghan bands, uses the fact that the Möbius strip remains a single strip when cut lengthwise. It originated in the 1880s, and was very popular in the first half of the twentieth century. Many versions of this trick exist and have been performed by famous illusionists such as Harry Blackstone Sr. and Thomas Nelson Downs.


title: Caesarean section

text: Caesarean section, also known as C-section or caesarean delivery, is the surgical procedure by which one or more babies are delivered through an incision in the mother's abdomen, often performed because vaginal delivery would put the baby or mother at risk. Reasons for the operation include obstructed labor, twin pregnancy, high blood pressure in the mother, breech birth, and problems with the placenta or umbilical cord. A caesarean delivery may be performed based upon the shape of the mother's pelvis or history of a previous C-section. A trial of vaginal birth after C-section may be possible. The World Health Organization recommends that caesarean section be performed only when medically necessary. Most C-sections are performed without a medical reason, upon request by someone, usually the mother.


title: Caesarean section

text: A C-section typically takes 45 minutes to an hour. It may be done with a spinal block, where the woman is awake, or under general anesthesia. A urinary catheter is used to drain the bladder, and the skin of the abdomen is then cleaned with an antiseptic. An incision of about 15 cm (6 inches) is then typically made through the mother's lower abdomen. The uterus is then opened with a second incision and the baby delivered. The incisions are then stitched closed. A woman can typically begin breastfeeding as soon as she is out of the operating room and awake. Often, several days are required in the hospital to recover sufficiently to return home.


title: Caesarean section

text: C-sections result in a small overall increase in poor outcomes in low-risk pregnancies. They also typically take longer to heal from, about six weeks, than vaginal birth. The increased risks include breathing problems in the baby and amniotic fluid embolism and postpartum bleeding in the mother. Established guidelines recommend that caesarean sections not be used before 39 weeks of pregnancy without a medical reason. The method of delivery does not appear to have an effect on subsequent sexual function.


title: Caesarean section

text: In 2012, about 23 million C-sections were done globally. The international healthcare community has previously considered the rate of 10% and 15% to be ideal for caesarean sections. Some evidence finds a higher rate of 19% may result in better outcomes. More than 45 countries globally have C-section rates less than 7.5%, while more than 50 have rates greater than 27%. Efforts are being made to both improve access to and reduce the use of C-section. In the United States as of 2017, about 32% of deliveries are by C-section. The surgery has been performed at least as far back as 715 BC following the death of the mother, with the baby occasionally surviving. Descriptions of mothers surviving date back to 1500 AD, with earlier attests to ancient times (including the apocryphal account of Julius Caesar being born by caesarean section, a commonly stated origin of the term). With the introduction of antiseptics and anesthetics in the 19th century, survival of both the mother and baby, and thus the procedure, became significantly more common.


title: Caesarean section

text: Caesarean section (C-section) is recommended when vaginal delivery might pose a risk to the mother or baby. C-sections are also carried out for personal and social reasons on maternal request in some countries.


title: Caesarean section

text: The prevalence of caesarean section is generally agreed to be higher than needed in many countries, and physicians are encouraged to actively lower the rate, as a caesarean rate higher than 10–15% is not associated with reductions in maternal or infant mortality rates, although some evidence support that a higher rate of 19% may result in better outcomes.


title: Caesarean section

text: Some of these efforts are: emphasizing a long of labor is not abnormal and not a justification for C-section; a new definition of the start of active labor from a cervical dilatation of 4 cm to a dilatation of 6 cm; and allowing women who have previously given birth to push for at least 2 hours, with 3 hours of pushing for women who have not previously given birth, before labor arrest is considered. Physical exercise during pregnancy decreases the risk. Additionally, results from a 2021 systematic review of the evidence on outpatient cervical ripening found that in women with low-risk pregnancies, the risk of cesarean delivery with harms to the mother or child were not significantly different than when done in an inpatient setting.


title: Caesarean section

text: Adverse outcomes in low-risk pregnancies occur in 8.6% of vaginal deliveries and 9.2% of caesarean section deliveries.


title: Caesarean section

text: In those who are low risk, the risk of death for caesarean sections is 13 per 100,000 vs. for vaginal birth 3.5 per 100,000 in the developed world. The United Kingdom National Health Service gives the risk of death for the mother as three times that of a vaginal birth.


title: Caesarean section

text: In Canada, the difference in serious morbidity or mortality for the mother (e.g. cardiac arrest, wound hematoma, or hysterectomy) was 1.8 additional cases per 100. The difference in in-hospital maternal death was not significant.


title: Caesarean section

text: A caesarean section is associated with risks of postoperative adhesions, incisional hernias (which may require surgical correction), and wound infections. If a caesarean is performed in an emergency, the risk of the surgery may be increased due to a number of factors. The patient's stomach may not be empty, increasing the risk of anaesthesia. Other risks include severe blood loss (which may require a blood transfusion) and post-dural-puncture spinal- headaches.


title: Caesarean section

text: Wound infections occur after caesarean sections at a rate of 3–15%. The presence of chorioamnionitis and obesity predisposes the woman to develop a surgical site infection.


title: Caesarean section

text: Women who had caesarean sections are more likely to have problems with later pregnancies, and women who want larger families should not seek an elective caesarean unless medical indications to do so exist. The risk of placenta accreta, a potentially life-threatening condition which is more likely to develop where a woman has had a previous caesarean section, is 0.13% after two caesarean sections, but increases to 2.13% after four and then to 6.74% after six or more. Along with this is a similar rise in the risk of emergency hysterectomies at delivery.


title: Caesarean section

text: Mothers can experience an increased incidence of postnatal depression, and can experience significant psychological trauma and ongoing birth-related post-traumatic stress disorder after obstetric intervention during the birthing process. Factors like pain in the first stage of labor, feelings of powerlessness, intrusive emergency obstetric intervention are important in the subsequent development of psychological issues related to labor and delivery.


title: Caesarean section

text: Women who have had a caesarean for any reason are somewhat less likely to become pregnant again as compared to women who have previously delivered only vaginally.


title: Caesarean section

text: Women who had just one previous caesarean section are more likely to have problems with their second birth. Delivery after previous caesarean section is by either of two main options:


title: Caesarean section

text: Both have higher risks than a vaginal birth with no previous caesarean section. A vaginal birth after caesarean section (VBAC) confers a higher risk of uterine rupture (5 per 1,000), blood transfusion or endometritis (10 per 1,000), and perinatal death of the child (0.25 per 1,000). Furthermore, 20% to 40% of planned VBAC attempts end in caesarean section being needed, with greater risks of complications in an emergency repeat caesarean section than in an elective repeat caesarean section. On the other hand, VBAC confers less maternal morbidity and a decreased risk of complications in future pregnancies than elective repeat caesarean section.


title: Caesarean section

text: There are several steps that can be taken during abdominal or pelvic surgery to minimize postoperative complications, such as the formation of adhesions. Such techniques and principles may include:


title: Caesarean section

text: Despite these proactive measures, adhesion formation is a recognized complication of any abdominal or pelvic surgery. To prevent adhesions from forming after caesarean section, adhesion barrier can be placed during surgery to minimize the risk of adhesions between the uterus and ovaries, the small bowel, and almost any tissue in the abdomen or pelvis. This is not current UK practice, as there is no compelling evidence to support the benefit of this intervention.


title: Caesarean section

text: The risk of adhesion formation is one reason why vaginal delivery is usually considered safer than elective caesarean section where there is no medical indication for section for either maternal or fetal reasons.


title: Caesarean section

text: Non-medically indicated (elective) childbirth before 39 weeks gestation "carry significant risks for the baby with no known benefit to the mother." Newborn mortality at 37 weeks may be up to 3 times the number at 40 weeks, and is elevated compared to 38 weeks gestation. These early term births were associated with more death during infancy, compared to those occurring at 39 to 41 weeks (full term). Researchers in one study and another review found many benefits to going full term, but no adverse effects in the health of the mothers or babies.


title: Caesarean section

text: The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and medical policy makers review research studies and find more incidence of suspected or proven sepsis, RDS, hypoglycemia, need for respiratory support, need for NICU admission, and need for hospitalization > 4–5 days. In the case of caesarean sections, rates of respiratory death were 14 times higher in pre-labor at 37 compared with 40 weeks gestation, and 8.2 times higher for pre-labor caesarean at 38 weeks. In this review, no studies found decreased neonatal morbidity due to non-medically indicated (elective) delivery before 39 weeks.


title: Caesarean section

text: For otherwise healthy twin pregnancies where both twins are head down a trial of vaginal delivery is recommended at between 37 and 38 weeks. Vaginal delivery, in this case, does not worsen the outcome for either infant as compared with caesarean section. There is some controversy on the best method of delivery where the first twin is head first and the second is not, but most obstetricians will recommend normal delivery unless there are other reasons to avoid vaginal birth. When the first twin is not head down, a caesarean section is often recommended. Regardless of whether the twins are delivered by section or vaginally, the medical literature recommends delivery of dichorionic twins at 38 weeks, and monochorionic twins (identical twins sharing a placenta) by 37 weeks due to the increased risk of stillbirth in monochorionic twins who remain in utero after 37 weeks. The consensus is that late preterm delivery of monochorionic twins is justified because the risk of stillbirth for post-37-week delivery is significantly higher than the risks posed by delivering monochorionic twins near term (i.e., 36–37 weeks).


title: Caesarean section

text: The consensus concerning monoamniotic twins (identical twins sharing an amniotic sac), the highest risk type of twins, is that they should be delivered by caesarean section at or shortly after 32 weeks, since the risks of intrauterine death of one or both twins is higher after this gestation than the risk of complications of prematurity.


title: Caesarean section

text: In a research study widely publicized, singleton children born earlier than 39 weeks may have developmental problems, including slower learning in reading and math.


title: Caesarean section

text: Birth by caesarean section also seems to be associated with worse health outcomes later in life, including overweight or obesity, problems in the immune system, and poor digestive system. However, caesarean deliveries are found to not affect a newborn's risk of developing food allergy. This finding contradicts a previous study that claims babies born via caesarean section have lower levels of "Bacteroides" that is linked to peanut allergy in infants.


title: Caesarean section

text: Caesarean sections have been classified in various ways by different perspectives. One way to discuss all classification systems is to group them by their focus either on the urgency of the procedure (most common), characteristics of the mother, or as a group based on other, less commonly discussed factors.


title: Caesarean section

text: Conventionally, caesarean sections are classified as being either an elective surgery or an emergency operation. Classification is used to help communication between the obstetric, midwifery and anaesthetic team for discussion of the most appropriate method of anaesthesia. The decision whether to perform general anesthesia or regional anesthesia (spinal or epidural anaesthetic) is important and is based on many indications, including how urgent the delivery needs to be as well as the medical and obstetric history of the woman. Regional anaesthetic is almost always safer for the woman and the baby but sometimes general anaesthetic is safer for one or both, and the classification of urgency of the delivery is an important issue affecting this decision.


title: Caesarean section

text: A planned caesarean (or elective/scheduled caesarean), arranged ahead of time, is most commonly arranged for medical indications which have developed before or during the pregnancy, and ideally after 39 weeks of gestation. In the UK, this is classified as a 'grade 4' section (delivery timed to suit the mother or hospital staff) or as a 'grade 3' section (no maternal or fetal compromise but early delivery needed).


title: Caesarean section

text: Emergency caesarean sections are performed in pregnancies in which a vaginal delivery was planned initially, but an indication for caesarean delivery has since developed. In the UK they are further classified as grade 2 (delivery required within 90 minutes of the decision but no immediate threat to the life of the woman or the fetus) or grade 1 (delivery required within 30 minutes of the decision: immediate threat to the life of the mother or the baby or both.)


title: Caesarean section

text: Elective caesarean sections may be performed on the basis of an obstetrical or medical indication, or because of a medically non-indicated maternal request. Among women in the United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia, about 7% preferred caesarean section as a method of delivery. In cases without medical indications the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the UK Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists recommend a planned vaginal delivery. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends that if after a woman has been provided information on the risk of a planned caesarean section and she still insists on the procedure it should be provided. If provided this should be done at 39 weeks of gestation or later. There is no evidence that ECS can reduce mother-to-child hepatitis B and hepatitis C virus transmission.


title: Caesarean section

text: Caesarean delivery on maternal request (CDMR) is a medically unnecessary caesarean section, where the conduct of a childbirth via a caesarean section is requested by the pregnant patient even though there is not a medical indication to have the surgery. Systematic reviews have found no strong evidence about the impact of caesareans for nonmedical reasons. Recommendations encourage counseling to identify the reasons for the request, addressing anxieties and information, and encouraging vaginal birth. Elective caesareans at 38 weeks in some studies showed increased health complications in the newborn. For this reason ACOG and NICE recommend that elective caesarean sections should not be scheduled before 39 weeks gestation unless there is a medical reason. Planned caesarean sections may be scheduled earlier if there is a medical reason.


title: Caesarean section

text: Mothers who have previously had a caesarean section are more likely to have a caesarean section for future pregnancies than mothers who have never had a caesarean section. There is discussion about the circumstances under which women should have a vaginal birth after a previous caesarean.


title: Caesarean section

text: Vaginal birth after caesarean (VBAC) is the practice of birthing a baby vaginally after a previous baby has been delivered by caesarean section (surgically). According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), successful VBAC is associated with decreased maternal morbidity and a decreased risk of complications in future pregnancies. According to the American Pregnancy Association, 90% of women who have undergone caesarean deliveries are candidates for VBAC. Approximately 60–80% of women opting for VBAC will successfully give birth vaginally, which is comparable to the overall vaginal delivery rate in the United States in 2010.


title: Caesarean section

text: For otherwise healthy twin pregnancies where both twins are head down a trial of vaginal delivery is recommended at between 37 and 38 weeks. Vaginal delivery in this case does not worsen the outcome for either infant as compared with caesarean section. There is controversy on the best method of delivery where the first twin is head first and the second is not. When the first twin is not head down at the point of labor starting, a caesarean section should be recommended. Although the second twin typically has a higher frequency of problems, it is not known if a planned caesarean section affects this. It is estimated that 75% of twin pregnancies in the United States were delivered by caesarean section in 2008.


title: Caesarean section

text: A breech birth is the birth of a baby from a breech presentation, in which the baby exits the pelvis with the buttocks or feet first as opposed to the normal head-first presentation. In breech presentation, fetal heart sounds are heard just above the umbilicus.


title: Caesarean section

text: Babies are usually born head first. If the baby is in another position the birth may be complicated. In a 'breech presentation', the unborn baby is bottom-down instead of head-down. Babies born bottom-first are more likely to be harmed during a normal (vaginal) birth than those born head-first. For instance, the baby might not get enough oxygen during the birth. Having a planned caesarean may reduce these problems. A review looking at planned caesarean section for singleton breech presentation with planned vaginal birth, concludes that in the short term, births with a planned caesarean were safer for babies than vaginal births. Fewer babies died or were seriously hurt when they were born by caesarean. There was tentative evidence that children who were born by caesarean had more health problems at age two. Caesareans caused some short-term problems for mothers such as more abdominal pain. They also had some benefits, such as less urinary incontinence and less perineal pain.


title: Caesarean section

text: The bottom-down position presents some hazards to the baby during the process of birth, and the mode of delivery (vaginal versus caesarean) is controversial in the fields of obstetrics and midwifery.


title: Caesarean section

text: Though vaginal birth is possible for the breech baby, certain fetal and maternal factors influence the safety of vaginal breech birth. The majority of breech babies born in the United States and the UK are delivered by caesarean section as studies have shown increased risks of morbidity and mortality for vaginal breech delivery, and most obstetricians counsel against planned vaginal breech birth for this reason. As a result of reduced numbers of actual vaginal breech deliveries, obstetricians and midwives are at risk of de-skilling in this important skill. All those involved in delivery of obstetric and midwifery care in the UK undergo mandatory training in conducting breech deliveries in the simulation environment (using dummy pelvises and mannequins to allow practice of this important skill) and this training is carried out regularly to keep skills up to date.